Jesus is Rejected in Nazareth Again

Take Every Passage to Prayer - Volume 2, The Gospels
^{Thursday July 18, 2024}

Matthew 13:53-58, Mark 6:1-6

Father, help me to love those who deny the good works You have done in my life. Help me to share the gospel with them over and over, regardless of their persecution of me. Please forgive me for being envious of those who appear to be walking closer with You than I am. Please forgive me for my attempts to find faults in those who desire to walk closely with You. Please help me to celebrate the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in those who are closest to me, even if their walk with You appears to be stronger than mine. Amen.

Father, I am reminded of the title of the Beach Boys song, “Wouldn’t it be Nice” from their Pet Sounds album. Wouldn’t it be nice if the Biblical canon were in chronological order? Wouldn’t it be nice if my brothers who participated in the Councils of Hippo (AD 393) and Carthage (AD 397) had decided to organize the gospels in accordance with the step-by-step movements of Jesus throughout Palestine? However, that was not Your will. Therefore, students of Your Word face a daunting challenge in any attempt to piece together the sequence of events in Jesus’ life. I humbly submit to Your wisdom, and I thank You for the perfect organization of the Word of God.
There appears to be two different occasions when Jesus taught in the synagogue in Nazareth. As I summarized in “Trouble for Jesus in Nazareth”, Luke 4:16-30 describes such an encounter that ended with the Nazarenes wanting to push Jesus off of a cliff. Matthew and Mark both describe a similar encounter at a synagogue in Nazareth. However, their description of the encounter did not include the climatic cliffhanger present in Luke’s description. It would seem logical that Matthew and Mark would not skip the important part about the crowd wanting to push Jesus off of a cliff. Given additional consideration that the Matthew and Mark descriptions appear to be later in Jesus’ ministry and Luke’s description appears to be earlier in Jesus’ ministry, I conclude that Jesus visited Nazareth a second time to preach in the synagogue. Luke describes the first visit and Mathew and Mark describe the second.

What significance is there that Jesus’ returned to preach in the synagogue in Nazareth after His last visit had ended with an attempt on His life? Mercy. Grace. Forgiveness. The same sort of forgiveness that led Jesus to say, while hanging on the cross, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.” Jesus felt compassion on the people of His hometown even though they could be described as His enemy.

In Matthew 5:43-48, Jesus taught us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. As a manifestation of Jesus’ integrity, He practiced what He preached. “My hometown persecuted Me. I will now return to them to preach the gospel once more to them. I want them to be saved.” Jesus traveled to the synagogue in Nazareth, accompanied by His disciples.

• Once more, Jesus preached on the sabbath.
• Once more, Jesus’ teaching amazed the crowd.
• Once more, the crowd questioned how Jesus could be such an effective teacher given He was the son of Joseph and Mary, the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon, and the brother of his sisters. Apparently, this family was not well regarded in Nazareth. Since Jesus is a member of this family, He should not be regarded well either.
• Once more, Jesus expressed shock at how foolish the people of His hometown were. Despite all the evidence of what He has done in the region and despite all that He has taught them, and despite the expression of His love to return to preach to them once more, the Nazarenes stubbornly refused to believe that He was the Son of God, the promised Messiah.

Father, Jesus listed three groups of people who tend to deny the reality that the Holy Spirit is working in someone’s life.

• Family members.
• Relatives.
• Neighbors (hometown).

In short, the more we know someone, the more envious we are likely to become of their success. Few envy a famous college student who creates a multi-billion-dollar social media empire. However, if our brother, classmate, or next-door neighbor is that college student, we are likely to be inflamed with envy. Father, in our sinful human desire to become our own god, the second to last thing that we want is for there to be overwhelming evidence that someone appears vastly superior to us. The last thing that we want is for that person to know us by name and for them to know that they are vastly superior to us. Therefore, I believe that the Nazarenes refusal to accept Jesus is an acknowledgement that they could tell He was vastly superior to them, that He knew them by name, and that He thought He was superior to them.

Rejected once more, Jesus did not heal large crowds of people in Nazareth. When faith that Jesus is the Son of God is missing, healings cannot take place. The text suggests that Jesus did not heal anyone who lacked faith in Him. Our faith has much to do with how our prayers are answered. Instead, Jesus healed the handful of the sick who did have faith who approached Him privately, perhaps as He left on the road out of town. Amen.