254 Mark 6:1-13 Preaching the gospel in a hostile environment

Talk 16   Mark 6:1-13   Preaching the gospel in a hostile environment

Welcome to Talk 16 in our series on Mark’s Gospel. Today we’ll be looking at Mark 16:1-13. We’ll be concentrating on verses 1-5 where Mark tells us that Jesus was unable to do any mighty miracle in his home town because of the people’s unbelief, and then we’ll see how this relates to verses 6-13 where Jesus sends out the twelve apostles. We’ll begin by reading verses 1-6.

1 Jesus left there and went to his home town, accompanied by his disciples. 2 When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed. "Where did this man get these things?" they asked. "What's this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles! 3 Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him. 4 Jesus said to them, "Only in his home town, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honour." 5 He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6 And he was amazed at their lack of faith…

1 Jesus left there and went to his home town, accompanied by his disciples.

Jesus leaves the home of Jairus and travels with his disciples away from the shore of Lake Galilee to his home town of Nazareth. He had been born in Bethlehem, and, as we’ve seen in previous talks, the base for his ministry was Capernaum, but he was always known as Jesus of Nazareth because that is where he had been brought up. So by Jesus’ home town Mark means Nazareth.

2 When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue

He does in Nazareth exactly what he has done elsewhere. He begins to teach in the synagogue. By saying that Jesus began to teach Mark is indicating that Jesus might well have continued to teach there if only the people had accepted him. Mark doesn’t tell us here what Jesus’ message was, but he would expect us to assume that it was in line with what he has already told us in Mark 1:14-15:

… Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. "The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!

But the people of Nazareth would not believe the good news. They took offense at him (v3). Why? Because the good news is Jesus! They were amazed. They asked, Where did this man get these things?  They recognised that he had been given wisdom and acknowledged that he worked miracles. But they could not look beyond the fact that they had known him as the carpenter. So in verse 3 they say:

3 Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?”

Despite the supernatural evidence of the miracles they had heard about, they refused to look beyond the natural. Yes, he was the carpenter. Yes, he was the son of Mary – if they had heard the story of his virgin birth, they had clearly not believed it.

Yes, he was the half-brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon and his sisters. But didn’t the miracles show that he was so much more! He was, in the opening words of Mark’s  Gospel, Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And they took offense at him.

The verb that’s used here is closely connected with the noun skandalon which is frequently used in the New Testament to mean a stumbling block or something that trips you up. What tripped up the people of Nazareth was their refusal to see beyond the humanity of Jesus. And Paul, using the same word in 1 Corinthians 1:23, tells us that the Jews in general stumble at the message of Christ crucified. There is a danger that our preconceived ideas prevent us from seeing the whole truth about Jesus.

4 Jesus said to them, "Only in his home town, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honour."

This reminds us of Luke 4:24 which records Jesus as saying, No prophet is accepted in his home town. Note the word accepted. The problem with the people of Nazareth was that they refused to accept Jesus. It’s interesting that Luke’s account of this whole incident is far more detailed than Mark’s. He tells us that Jesus read from the passage in Isaiah where it says:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour (Luke 4:18-19, quoting Isaiah 61:1-2).

Luke goes on to tell us that Jesus went on to say, Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing (v21), and that the people spoke well of Jesus and were amazed at the way he spoke. As in Mark 6, their amazement sprang from the fact that they knew his family. Their familiarity with his humanity prevented them from seeing his divinity. They had heard of the miracles Jesus had performed in Capernaum and were expecting him to do something similar in Nazareth (v23).

But Jesus knew that they would not accept him, and provocatively stated:

I tell you the truth… no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25 I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. 27 And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed – only Naaman the Syrian (vv24-27).

As a result, Luke tells us that:

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 down the cliff. 30 But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way (vv28-30).

So they not only refused to accept him. They actually tried to destroy him! But, perhaps surprisingly, Mark leaves out all this detail and simply tells us in verses 5-6:

He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. And he was amazed at their lack of faith…

Does Mark really mean that Jesus could not do any miracles there? Couldn’t Jesus do anything? We may be tempted to say that Jesus could have but chose not to do any miracle there. But that is not what Mark says. The Greek literally means he was unable to do. So how do we explain this? Of course, God can do anything, but he has sovereignly chosen to work in response to faith. Jesus only did what he saw the Father do (John 5:19). He was unable to work outside of the parameters by which God has chosen to operate. So he was unable to do any miracle (literally, powerful thing) there because of their lack of faith, although presumably a few sick people had enough faith to be healed.

I personally believe that this teaches us a very important principle. We know from experience that miracles seem to happen more frequently in some places than in others and we wonder why. The answer lies in this passage. Community unbelief inhibits the miraculous. If even Jesus could do no miracle in a place because of unbelief, we must not be surprised if we find that the same is true for us today.

But why is faith so important? The answer lies in the message of salvation. Salvation is by faith. Jesus preached, Repent, and believe the good news. He came because God loves us. He came to give his life a ransom for many. He came to take the punishment our sins deserved, so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. He knew that we would never be good enough for Heaven by our own self effort. That’s why he made a way for us to be saved by faith. Accepting Jesus, believing in him, is the only way to be saved. That’s why faith is important.

And that’s why Jesus worked miracles and why he commissioned his disciples to do so. He came to die for us. He wanted people to have faith in him for salvation, and miracles encourage faith. They give a practical demonstration of God’s love for us. By working miracles Jesus was giving people every opportunity to believe. But if they refuse to believe despite the evidence of the miracles, they will have no excuse when they stand before God on the day of judgment. Our eternal destiny is determined by whether or not we accept Jesus. But sadly, for the time being at least, the people of Nazareth would not, and so Jesus leaves them and goes around teaching from village to village (v6). But now let’s read verses 7-13.

7 Calling the Twelve to him, he sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits. 8 These were his instructions: "Take nothing for the journey except a staff – no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. 9 Wear sandals but not an extra tunic. 10 Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. 11 And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them." 12 They went out and preached that people should repent. 13 They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.

7 Calling the Twelve to him, he sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits

We know from Mark 3:14-15 that Jesus had already chosen his twelve apostles so that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons. These verses express Jesus’ purpose in choosing them, but it’s not until now in chapter 6 that Jesus actually gives them that authority and sends them out. God’s timing is so important. He often reveals his purposes for us before he intends us to begin to fulfil them. And he gives us the authority we need as and when we need it. In the case of the Twelve, it was almost certainly so that they might have time to learn from his teaching and example before he gave them authority and sent them out to preach. It was by following him that he would make them fishers of men (1:17).

The specific instructions Jesus’ gave on this occasion are recorded in more detail by Matthew, where it is clear that this was a specific mission to the lost sheep of Israel (Matthew 10:6), but not at this time to the Samaritans or the Gentiles. That would come later. And where Mark only mentions that Jesus gave them authority over evil spirits, Matthew includes authority to heal every kind of sickness and disease, to cleanse lepers, and even raise the dead.

Some Christians take the view that these passages are intended to indicate that as Christians we all have the right to ‘take authority’ over these things, but that ignores the fact that nowhere in the Bible are we told to take authority. We only have authority if we are given it. Even Jesus’ authority was given him by God (Matthew 18:19). The fact that Jesus gave this authority to twelve specific disciples at a specific time and for a specific mission does not automatically mean that he has given it to you or me today.

Indeed, these very disciples, after Jesus had ascended into Heaven, had to wait to receive the power of the Spirit. In the Gospels they worked miracles with a specific authority given them by the Lord Jesus, but in Acts he would continue to work miracles through them as they were led and empowered by the Holy Spirit. And so it is with us. We can, and we should, expect the Lord to work through us in miraculous ways, but only as we are led by the Spirit.

The fact that he sent them out in pairs provides us with a wise example of how we should work today. Teamwork is essential. However great our gifting or experience, none of us is infallible, and we all need the wisdom, support and encouragement that comes from others who work alongside us. This principle was followed by the disciples in Acts – e.g. Peter and John, Paul and Barnabas etc., although Paul’s apostolic teams were often larger than two. The basic principle is that we should not go it alone.

8 These were his instructions: "Take nothing for the journey except a staff – no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. 9 Wear sandals but not an extra tunic.

Again, these instructions were given with regard to a specific mission, and we should certainly not assume that when we go out on evangelism we must never take any money with us and that we should wear sandals rather than shoes! But we can certainly learn from the principles Jesus was teaching.

We can trust the Lord to meet our needs as we seek to proclaim the good news. How can we have faith to work miracles if we cannot trust God to provide for our basic needs? The Christian life is by faith from first to last.

10 Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. 11 And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them."

Amazed at the lack of faith of the people of Nazareth (v6), Jesus was only too aware of the opposition that he and his disciples were facing. Nevertheless, people must be given the opportunity to accept him, or to reject him. So he sent his disciples out to preach the good news to the surrounding villages, knowing that some would not listen. The disciples were to shake the dust off their feet as a testimony against those who rejected the message.

This was something Jewish people did when passing through a Gentile town or village. It was a sign that they were distancing themselves from them because they were different. They were the people of God. But Jesus’ disciples were not visiting Gentile towns or villages on this mission (Matthew 10:5). They were visiting Jewish villages. So by shaking the dust off their feet the disciples were showing the Jews that there is a distinction between those who believe the good news and those who reject it. Only those who accept Jesus, whether Jew or Gentile, are truly the people of God.

In most cultures today shaking the dust off one’s feet would mean nothing to those who might be watching, but as Christians we need to show by what we say and how we live that we are different from those who deny Christ. We have a different lifestyle and a different destiny.

12 They went out and preached that people should repent. 13 They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.

We saw in Mark 1:15 that Jesus’ message was, The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news. The miracles were the evidence. They helped people to believe. Sadly, as we have seen in today’s passage, there were those who refused to believe despite the evidence. Could this have been because they were not willing to repent? It’s much the same today. There’s plenty of evidence for the truth of the Christian message, but many refuse to believe it because of the implications it has for their lifestyle.

So what can we learn from this passage about preaching the gospel in a hostile environment? Follow the example of Jesus. Proclaim the good news. Expect miraculous confirmation of the message. Miracles demonstrate God’s love and make it easier for people to believe. Remember that Jesus gave his disciples authority for that specific mission. After he had returned to Heaven they received their authority from the Holy Spirit. As we keep filled with the Spirit he will lead us and empower us. The Holy Spirit will enable people to repent and believe, but he will not force them to do so. If people adamantly refuse our message we should move on to those who will accept it. Whether they accept it or reject it, it’s our responsibility whether people accept it or not to tell them the truth. We are not to blame if people refuse to accept Christ. But it is our responsibility to point out the consequences of doing so.