Jesus Revealed = Unbelief Repealed
Many of you will remember that following the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, the Royal Mail celebrated each Great Britain gold medal by painting a post box gold in the hometown of each gold medal winner; each athlete was lauded as a ‘Hometown Hero’ in the very place of their birth.
Well, in Mark 6 Jesus returns to His hometown of Nazareth but far from being received with honour and recognition, Jesus faces rejection and offence!
As He begins teaching in the synagogue, the people respond with a series of questions: “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us? And they took offence at him”.
Their response reveals their attitude toward Jesus, their perspective of Him, the extent of their revelation of Him, the basis on which they knew Him. The framework within which they knew Jesus is clear: as a carpenter, a member of the local community, the lad who had played in the streets as a child, who had grown up through His teens and twenties. This was the extent of their revelation of Jesus. This was how they knew Him. No wonder they dismissed all He was saying and doing for as the people gathered to worship God that day, they had very narrow parameters about who Jesus was.
Surely Jesus had the power to teach and work miracles in such a way as to break through all their hard-headedness and closed-mindedness?! Yet in the passage, we see the reality of v5-6 as the consequence of their v2-3 response, hingeing on the truth of v4. Somehow, the posture and perspective, the limited revelation and realisation of the people was sufficient to hinder the effectiveness of Jesus’ teaching and miracle-working ministry.
It leaves us pondering an outcome that is as perplexing as it is intriguing. Pondering the impact of the people’s limited revelation of Jesus. Pondering how their incomplete and skewed revelation of the person they saw, believed and knew to be Jesus somehow limited, regulated and hindered the extent to which Jesus was able minister and move amongst them.
“And He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them.
And He marvelled because of their unbelief.” (V5-6) It’s a similar dynamic to that which Jesus spoke about in the parable of the Sower, where we discover that there’s nothing wrong with the seed (it absolutely contains life-giving power!) but the nature of the ground into which it is planted determines whether it can produce a bountiful harvest or disappear into the ether.
You see, the issue in Mark 6 is not whether Jesus has the ability or the authority to bring Kingdom life, rather the incompleteness and distortion of the people’s revelation of, and therefore relationship with, Jesus is obstructing Him from moving in power.
The most direct consequence is the disabling presence of ‘unbelief’. The deficiency of how they knew Jesus births the toxin of unbelief within them, which acts as a brick wall between the people and the life-giving ministry of the Gospel and works of Jesus. It’s the defective parameters by which they know Jesus that fully restrain them from receiving from and encountering Him. So much so that Jesus “marvelled” at their unbelief!
For all the strategies of the enemy, he knows that to somehow limit or distort a person’s revelation of Jesus is to severely disaffect their relationship with Him. More than that, he knows the inevitable by-product here is ‘unbelief’ and once this is present, he knows all-too-well its ability to cut people off from the freedom-giving, life-releasing, prevailing-power of Almighty God.
As leaders, we are called to help unbox Jesus and challenge the restrictive dimensions of how they know Jesus. To help people continually grow into a greater, clearer, fuller revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ – that we all might know Him and the power of His resurrection.
As leaders, we are to contend against the cancer of unbelief and its ability to prevent any conviction concerning those things which Jesus longs and is well able to do (Hebrews 3:12). As we realise that Jesus rebuked His disciples for ‘unbelief’ more than any other thing, may we check ourselves and those whom we lead, to see growing faith displace any such unbelief.
Simon Taylor