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Jun 16, 2024

Sending the Twelve

Passage: Mark 6:1-13

Preacher: Jess Achenbach

Series: Gospel of Mark

Keywords: faith, home, prophet, rejection, sending, twelve

Summary:

Jesus returns to his Hometown, a prophet is rejected there... Serious lack of faith.

Detail:

Mark 6:1-13 

Jesus is rejected:

He went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. 2 And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? 3 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 offense at him. 4 And Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.” 5 And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. 6 And he marveled because of their unbelief.

And he went about among the villages teaching.

 

Jesus leaves the area where he had been preaching and returns to his Hometown which is about 25 miles from where he had been teaching in Galilee.   There have been excavations in Nazareth and we know that the entire town was about 60 acres total, which to put in perspective, Riverfront Park is 64 acres.  They believe that would accommodate somewhere around 500 people.  In a village that size everyone would know each other. 

Jesus makes his way to the synagogue as was his custom and begins to teach, and the people are astonished by his knowledge. 

They knew he had studied under his father Joseph who was a carpenter.  The odd thing though is that they call him the “son of Mary”.  The common way to refer to someone was to refer to them by who their father was.  Even if the person's father had passed away, they were still connected to them by the association with their father. So why were they not referring to Jesus as the son of Joseph?  Our best guess is that the people in this town associated Jesus as the illegitimate son of Mary.

Jesus is also associated with his siblings.  Even they didn’t believe in Jesus as the Messiah.  We know this because his brother James who is mentioned here becomes a believer after the resurrection and eventually becomes the first pastor of the Christian church in Jerusalem, but the Pharisees eventually martyred him by stoning in either 62 or 69 AD. 

So while eventually James had belief, during this time, he and his siblings rejected Jesus as the Christ along with the rest of the village. 

It is interesting to read the account of this in Luke 4 because it tells us what Jesus said in the Synagogue:

16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19     to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”[a]

20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

This word astonished is very common in the New Testament, everywhere he went people were amazed by his power, and wisdom, but here in this setting they were doubly astonished, not just by his what they had heard about him, but that it was coming from Jesus, the person they knew and had grown up in their town.  The people would have known that Jesus didn’t study under the great rabbis in Jerusalem, hadn’t gone to seminary and didn’t have the credentials to be teaching with such authority.

In verse three it says they were offended by him, the Greek word here is skandalizō which is where we get the word scandal.  They were scandalized that this illegitimate man was preaching.  They were embarrassed and offended by him.  The Greek word skandalizō literal meaning is to be a stumbling stone.

 John in chapter 1:11 confirms this, he says “He came to his own people, and even they rejected him”.

Back again in Luke 4 it tells us more about their response. 28 All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff.

 

One of the reasons why I wear these Jesus shirts is because it forces me to proclaim HIM.  Have you ever been embarrassed or worried that you might offend by being a Christian?  It is easy to fall into that trap, because the term “Christian” means different things to different people, everybody has a perception of what being a Christian is supposed to mean.  But we are not to be undercover Christians, especially with those that are the closest to us.  Here Jesus is boldly teaching to his own people his own family with full understanding that he will be rejected, does that stop him?  Then why do we allow it to stop us?

What is Jesus’s response to the rejection while talking to his disciples?  He says “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.”  While he is referring to the town of Nazareth, it is easy to see that he is preparing his disciples for the job he has ahead of them to go out into the whole world.  The Israelites as a nation who understood the Messiah to come, ended up rejecting the Christ just like we see happening in his hometown.

 

In the parallel passage in Matthew Chapter 13 we see just before this account Jesus is talking to the disciples and they had been asking about why he always talked in parables.

“Though seeing, they do not see;
    though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

14 In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

“‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
    you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
15 For this people’s heart has become calloused;
    they hardly hear with their ears,
    and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
    hear with their ears,
    understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.

In Verse  5  and 6 it says: And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. 6 And he marveled because of their unbelief.

And he went about among the villages teaching.

The folks who knew him best were blind and deaf to him, they had calloused hearts and the result was that he couldn’t heal them.

I would like to point out that it wasn’t that Jesus didn’t have the ability to heal the people in Nazareth because of their unbelief, but rather, their unbelief kept them from coming, surely if they had come, they would have been healed.  Instead, they drove him out because they were offended.

There is an English phrase: Familiarity breeds contempt.  Often people don’t want to hear the truth from someone that is closest to them.

It says here that Jesus marveled because of their unbelief. This word marveled only appears twice in the new testament.

 The word is thaumazo (thou-mad’-zo, also in Matthew 8:10 and Luke 7), which we translate “marveled” or “amazed,” and it was used to describe Jesus’s response to the centurion’s faith.

 Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. Therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed. Then Jesus turned to his disciples and the small crowd that had followed him off the mountain and said in a loud voice, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith” (verse 9).

So what is our response supposed to be, do we just focus on the ones that are not closest to us? NO, In the sermon that John preached several weeks about about the soils, we see that we are to be sowing the seeds wherever we are.  While some may fall upon the rocky soil, or the weedy area, fertile soil, our responsibility is not to judge the heart, but rather to be faithful to spread the seed. 

Let us have the same faith the centurion had,

I shared this with the noon bible study this last week. Lee Strobel the author of “The Case for Christ” recalled his wonderful testimony that will surely inspire others to obey God.

Strobel shared that he was still a new believer in Christ when he heard God’s voice. The instruction was to go back to their office and invite his atheist friend to church for the Easter service. And so, he obeyed God.

He told his friend about Easter and how Christians celebrated the day of Jesus’ resurrection. Strobel even pointed out evidence that proved Jesus was resurrected. Then he invited him to church. But, to his surprise, his friend was just shutting him down.

Confused by God’s instruction, Strobel left. He thought, “What was that about? Why did I feel so specifically compelled to go and invite him to Easter services and talk about resurrection? I’d shared the Gospel with him, and he just shuts me down.”

The experience bothered him for years because his friend is still an atheist to this day.

But four years later, a man came up to him after service and greeted him. He said, “Thank you for the spiritual influence you’ve had in my life.”

Strobel replied, “That’s nice, but who are you?”

The guy then introduced himself. He recalled his first meeting with the author. “One day, not long before Easter,” the man was working in the office where Strobel worked.

He went on to describe Strobel coming in and talking to his atheist friend. The man revealed he was listening to their conversation the whole time.

Although his friend was shutting him down, the man was convicted by what he heard. “My heart was beating fast,” he recalled. “I’m thinking, I need God.”

“I called my wife, and I said, ‘We’re going to church this Easter.”

He continued, “We came to your church at Easter. I came to faith. My wife came to faith, and our teenage son came to faith. And I just wanted to thank you.”

Our obedience to God may not produce the fruit that we expected, but God’s purpose will surely prevail. We only need to trust Him and obey!

Now we move on to the second section of today’s passage:

Jesus sends out the 12 disciples:

7 And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. 8 He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their belts— 9 but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics.[a] 10 And he said to them, “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there. 11 And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” 12 So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. 13 And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.

He sends them out two by two for practical reasons.  Ecclesiastes 4:9-11  “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. 10 For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! 11 Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? “

They were sent in pairs to give witness what they had learned and in the Jewish culture you had to have two or more witnesses to give it credibility.

Deuteronomy 19:15 “A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established.

The Old Testament principal, if something was established as true it had the witness of two testimonies.  Jesus is sending them out to testify to the coming of the kingdom of God.

The difference between apostle and disciple is this.  One is a student and the other is sent out from the teacher to also teach.  Jesus commissioned these 12 to do what they had been witnessing Jesus doing and he gives them authority do it.  They were ambassadors of Jesus, who was an ambassador of God the Father.

Jesus sends them out two by two and he gives them this authority to cast out demons, but it came with some other specific instructions.    They could take a staff, but no food, or money, only one pair of shoes, and only a single tunic or cloak. 

At the time there were rules about travelling preachers and people would take them in, Jesus is asking them to have faith that people would house them and feed them.  Normally people would have two cloaks while travelling, one to sleep on and one to cover them, he is saying trust that people will take you in.

The final instruction is to enter in to the house that first receives you and stay there for the entirety of your time in that place.  Basically, don’t enter the home of someone poor and then if a rich person with better accommodations invites you over to stay at their place, shun the hospitality of the poor to stay somewhere better.

The last part of the instruction has to be the most poignant.  What do you do when your message is received and rejected.  Jesus had just been rejected from Nazareth and he instructs the disciples to shake the dust off of their feet as a testimony. 

The tradition of shaking dust off of their feet was a tradition that Jewish Rabbi’s required of travelling Jewish merchants.  When they would go out to pagan nations to do trade they were required to shake the pagan dust from their feet before entering back into Israel as a sign that they were leaving the pagan practices behind.

Jesus is using this same visual like we would say “I wash my hands of this”. 

There are times in our lives when we shake the dust off, and other times when we stand steadfast to the truth and hold our ground.

I found this explanation from Got Questions.com:

There are situations in our lives where God calls us to stand firm, proclaim truth, and give patient testimony. Sometimes we need to continue until we see the results of that testimony. Other times God gives us the freedom to move on. We figuratively “shake the dust off our feet” when, under the Holy Spirit’s direction, we surrender those people to the Lord and emotionally let go. We have the freedom then to move into the next phase of ministry. Jesus’ instruction to “shake the dust off our feet” reminds us that we are only responsible for our obedience to God, not for the results of that obedience.

We are only responsible for our own actions. The disciples were faithful and went out and proclaimed for people to repent.  The result was that many believed and were healed.