would be looking at Mark chapter 6, verses 1 through 6, you can either read that long in your Bible or you can find a text in your order of worship. So I say to you, hear the word of God. He went away from there and came to his hometown and his disciples followed him. 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 is such mighty works done by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us? And they took offense at him. And Jesus said to them, a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household. And he could do no mighty work there except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief. Let us pray. Father, I pray now that you would come and open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the death. I pray that you would help us in our unbelief and you would help us more and more to believe the promise of God. I pray that you be in my head and in my thinking, in my heart and in my understanding, in my mouth and in my speaking. Christ, name, we pray these things, amen, amen. You know, one of the small pleasures I get out of life is how easily people are surprised when they find out that I'm a pastor. For some reason, no matter where I go, people are always surprised. And sometimes it's more fun than others, you know, but probably about a month ago or so. One of the guys in the neighborhood has a huge dog. And this dog walks off leash and as he walks it off leash, the dog always comes in our yard and doesn't business. The bothers me on a number of levels. One day I thought I want to go out and catch this guy. And as I went out to talk to this guy, he's walking the dog off leash, the dog came charging at me, which of course, as you know, I watched the dog whisper so that was no problem. The dog came barreling at me and I went and the dog just coward. But what's interesting is apparently the guy thought it was going to hurt his dog. That's how powerful that is. And he came running at me and he unloaded a list of obscenities like I've not heard for 20 years. In fact, I can't imagine him saying that anybody, he just unloaded, he kept going and going and going and going. And you know, as you can imagine, if you saw the movie Sherlock Holmes, the new version, as he was doing this, he's pointing his finger in my chest. I was sort of running through various scenarios in my head. And then the final scenario I landed upon made me laugh, which of course made him more frustrated. What are you laughing at? He said, you don't know who you're dealing with. That's what made me laugh. Because here's a man, no matter how hard hard it you are, no matter how uncouth you are, very few people would want to unload a list of obscenities like this guy did to Tom Allen minister. I live for those moments. It gets better, you know, even. And the further back you go and the closer to home, you get the more interesting it becomes, you know, a while ago, I was, well, my girls and I were watching TV and I saw a guy on an army reserve commercial. And I said, I know that guy. We were in a range of Italian together. And of course, my girl said, oh, he was, he's a Facebook him, a Facebook them. What do you know? He immediately, within a day or two, he Facebooked back and we're all sudden friends now on Facebook. And through him, my old assistant gunner found me. And he and I were chatting one day. He said, oh, it's so good to be back in contact with you. I chat back, you know, hey, what do you do it now? He said, I'm an engineer in South Carolina. What are you doing? I'm a preacher. Crickets. Are you there? And then his next line was the most funny, at least to me. He said, you always were encouraging. I can tell stories like that all day long. But I'm here this morning to talk about Jesus, not me. But the point is, Jesus today experiences that, but he experiences it in a even deeper fashion. Jesus goes home today. And it's amazing to me. If you've been here, we're looking at the Gospel of Mark over the past month or so. We've looked at Jesus, basically, be on top of the world. You hear you see Jesus who, he shows himself to have authority over nature. He calms the storm by just saying, peace, be still. And then he shows himself to cast out a legion or an army of demons from one guy. It's done. Last week, we looked at Jesus exercises authority over illness and uncleanness and sin with this woman who had been bleeding for 12 years. And then after that, he raised a little girl from the dead. So here's a guy with authority. And you notice the title of the sermon says, you win some. Of course, the back part of that should say, and you lose some. You win some. You lose some. So here's Jesus on top of the world. And where does he need to go to fail? Or at least where does he need to go for people to fail in their unbelief? Well, he goes where everyone goes. He goes home. He goes to his hometown. For the sake of time this morning, we'd really only have time to look at two things. We're going to look at the amazement of the crowd, but also we're going to look at the amazement of Jesus. This is one of two places in the whole New Testament where you hear that Jesus was amazed or Jesus marveled. One is at the face of a centurion. And here he is marvels or is amazed at people's unbelief. So let's we're going to work through this sort of verse by verse. The first thing we're going to look at is the amazement of the crowds. And ultimately, we're going to look at their skepticism and their unbelief and the root of their unbelief. So notice what it says in the first verse there. It says he went away from there and came to his hometown and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue for many who heard him were astonished saying, where did this man get these things? Now on the surface, the questions seem valid. Those first few questions. He says, where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him and how is this mighty works done by his hands? Those are valid questions assuming that you're asking them with the right motives. You see what Jesus, what we left Jesus was last week he was in cavernum. His ministry basically he grew up in Nazareth. He went and started his ministry in cavernum and now he's going home. And Nazareth by all accounts is a very small town outside of the New Testament. Only one other ancient Near Eastern writer actually mentions Nazareth. It's a guy named Julius Afro-Canis if I remember correctly. He just mentions it off handedly and most archaeologists think, depending on who you read, it's between 500 and 1,000 people lived in Nazareth. And you can understand people's surprise when Jesus came home because in a small town, everyone knows everyone's business. And Jesus was a carpenter and really the word there is tecton. In the word tecton, most of the time means woodworker. A lot of times it'll mean stone mason and sometimes it just means handyman. The reason most that we think Jesus was a carpenter is in the first century, Justin Martyr actually wrote a piece about the yokes and the ox plows that Jesus had made. So either way, he was a handyman. In a small town, a carpenter probably had to do lots of different stuff. So people knew who he was. They had to have known who he was. And imagine they're surprised when Jesus left. He didn't go to college if you will. He went to tech school under his dad. He didn't have a degree. He certainly didn't have a master's degree. He certainly didn't have a PhD. In other words, he hadn't trained under a rabbi. And in the ancient Near East, much like today, if you hadn't trained under a rabbi, people didn't think you had anything to say. And it's just like today, depending on who the rabbi was, that's the amount of credibility they would give you. It's much like today, it always amazes me how much weight we put behind master's degrees and PhD degrees. But it's just a degree because a lot of what people say is worthless at the end of the day. And yet, if they don't have it, we won't talk to them. Well, imagine Jesus now coming back into town. They saw him leave as a carpenter. They didn't know why he was leaving. And now, as he comes back into town, he actually has a retinue of followers. That would raise people, questions and people's minds. Who is this guy? I mean, I mean, we thought we knew him. You see, at some level, the problem with Jesus in his hometown is not because people knew him. It's because people didn't know him. In other words, we say the reason you have trouble in your own hometown is because people know you well. They know you know, they know all the things that you did when you were a kid and they have trouble believing it. Well, if you think about it, they had to know all the things Jesus did as a kid as well. And somehow still didn't get it. They still didn't know who he was. That's why they ask these questions. But let me read the questions again. Where did this man get these things? What wisdom is the wisdom given to him and how or such mighty works done by his hands? Did you notice the questions? They're not questioning whether he has great wisdom. They're not questioning whether he did mighty works. They're questioning how he did them. How did he do these things? And remember, that question has been asked of Jesus before by the religious leaders back in chapter 4. And they actually didn't ask the question. They just made an accusation. They said there was only two ways, two places this miraculous power could come from. If either comes from God or it comes from Satan. And we say that it comes from Satan. And that's when Jesus said, do you can Satan cast out demons by himself? You know, by his own name and a house divided against itself can't stand. So it has to be God. And now in his own hometown, the same question is being asked. And they're asking the question not because they know him, but because they really don't know him, or they think they know him. Is that one of the frustrating things when you go back home and your friends and your neighbors, especially for me, I became a Christian right before I left home. And then when I came back, everyone thinks you're one way, but really you're a different way. It's because they don't know you. And they really didn't understand. They'd only heard rumors about Jesus and they'd heard about him, but they didn't know his person. And so now they're with this dilemma. What were they going to do? Well, they manifest it looks like the skepticism. Instead of saying, tell us more, they immediately tried to write him off. Because there's two kinds of skeptics. There are honest skeptics and dishonest skeptics. The dishonest skeptic is not looking for the truth. The honest skeptic is looking for the truth. I remember when I was in seminary, R.C. Sproul was one of my teachers. And there were a lot of things that got him upset. To be honest with you, one of them were skeptics. And it wasn't that he didn't like answering questions. In fact, he loved answering questions and doing apologetics. But he hated when skeptics, he called them academic parasites, frankly. That's what that was what he called them. Because instead of seeking the truth, they were just seeking to tear down. Anyway, anyone can tear down something. He would say it takes a man or it takes a woman, I would say, as well, to seek the truth. In other words, if you're going to ask questions about Jesus, are you really willing to get the answer that he's going to give you? In fact, every skeptic that I've known, who literally went to seek out the truth about Jesus, ultimately ended up becoming a Christian. And skeptics who didn't want to know the truth about Jesus didn't become a Christian. Surprise, surprise. But the question is, is it true? You see, the root of skepticism ultimately is unbelief. And the root of unbelief ultimately is fear. Or pride. But fear and pride are actually two sides of the same coin. I'll talk about that in a second. Notice how they begin immediately. When they don't get the answers, we assume, they've started to disparage him in verse three. They say, is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon, or not his sisters with us, and they took offense at him. In other words, instead of waiting for the answer to the first three questions, they begin to ask other questions. And the purpose of the questions literally is to disparage Jesus. Is this not the carpenter? In other words, he's not a rabbi. He's not been to the right schools. He's not had the right education. And so how in the world could he be saying these things the way he's saying them? Now, mind you, he is saying them. They're hearing him, saying them, but they're saying it just couldn't be true if it's coming from the mouth of a carpenter. And then they say, is this not the son of Mary? That's a slap in the face. In the ancient Near East, even if the father was dead, you would never refer to a son as the son of his mother. And Joseph, at this point, probably wasn't dead. If you look at John chapter 6, they say, isn't this the son of Joseph? So why did they say, is this not the, isn't this the son of Mary? Well, the implication there is that Jesus is illegitimate and that Joseph really isn't his father, which on one hand we know he really isn't, but that's because God is his father. On the other hand, Joseph is his father as far as the world knew and as far as the earth knew. And yet they're disparaging him because Joseph really isn't his father. And if he's really illegitimate, then that gives us the reason to write off everything else he says. They say, don't we know his brothers, you know, Joseph and Justice, all these guys and his sisters, they're here with us. They're looking for every angle they can to not believe in Jesus. And the question is, why? And the answer really is only two. The root of unbelief really only has two roots and they both are the same different sides of the same coin. One side is fear and the other side is pride. They're afraid. What if Jesus, what if Jesus is saying is true? If you're not a Christian here today, what if what Jesus says is true? What if he, when he teaches and says that I am God, come in the flesh and I have died, come to die for your sins and I raise again so you could have a new life? If what he says is true, that changes everything for you. If Jesus is right, that means you're wrong. If Jesus, if what Jesus says is true, that means what you believe is not true necessarily. And so most many of us, we don't become Christians because we're afraid it's going to change everything. And you're right, it will. And the gospel says you should consider the cost. But also it's pride. Because who wants to admit that the carpenter that used to work for you is now God. Think about how hard that would be, honestly. The carpenter that used to work for you now says he's the Messiah. The carpenter that put up the windows in your house, now is coming and saying, unless you believe in me, you will not have eternal life. Those would be hard words, especially if you knew him or you thought you knew him. And but a lot of it just comes down to pride. Are you willing to give up your pride so that Jesus might have his way? You see, Jesus didn't meet their expectations. They were expecting a royal king, someone to come in and release them from the oppressors. And Jesus is just a carpenter. What they didn't realize though is they didn't need a king to come in all his regalia. What they needed was a carpenter who would come and deliver them from their sins. And that's exactly what Jesus offered them. One of the most interesting lines I think in the New Testament is in verse 5 here, which it says, and it says he could do no mighty work there except that he lays hands on a few sick people and healed them. In verse 16, he marveled because of their unbelief. Notice it says he marveled because of their unbelief, not at their unbelief. He marveled at the root cause of their unbelief. In other words, they couldn't argue with the fact that he had done mighty works. They couldn't argue with the fact that his teaching had authority. The only thing that would keep them from believing was either their pride or their fear. And that was amazing apparently to Jesus. And it says he could do no mighty work there. Now why is that? Well, Jesus works were tied to faith and Jesus works were tied to actually witnessing this message of the kingdom of God being at hand. And the reason skeptics at least of Christianity don't often see these things is because they don't have faith. Why would Jesus do something just to please you? In other words, Augustine said, you have to believe in order to see. It's not seeing in order to believe. But the question is, are you going to deal honestly with the truth? You know, when I was a drug rep at Lily every now and then, you know, I sold the best medicine in the world for schizophrenia. And every now and then, a case report would come out. One case report where a doctor would write, I had something bad happen. And of course, doctor, I can't write that medicine anymore. I can't do that anymore. And I would always do, they would, as soon as they would say that, I'd give them the big foot treatment. Because I'd have a lunch together and I'd say, okay, I want first thing at this lunch, I want to ask you, how many people believe in big foot? We can do it now if you want, but I do. And you know, always one person would sort of put their hand up. But most people wouldn't partly because they were afraid to admit that because people would come up to me after and they say, oh, I saw them. They just want to be ostracized. And I'd say, how come you don't believe in big foot? And they'd say, I won't believe it until I see it. And I'd say that there's tens of thousands of case reports going all the way back to leaf erics and the Vikings recorded in their journal, sightings of big foot. They called them big hairy man, but same guy. And yet you won't believe in the time. I won't believe it until I see it. I'd say, so you won't believe 10,000 case reports about sightings of big foot. They'd say, nope. And I'd say, but you'll believe one case report about my medicine. Crickets, right? In other words, there's something beneath that. Really, you're not looking for evidence, you're looking for an excuse not to believe. And you're looking for an excuse not to use my medicine. It's the same thing. When you look at Jesus, are you looking for excuses to believe, or are you looking for excuses not to believe? Do you look at the church and say the church's flawed? Therefore, I don't have to believe. Do you look at things in the past that maybe have done been wrong in the name of religion? You say, religion's bad. Therefore, I don't have to believe. I would encourage you if you are not a Christian to look to Jesus and ask him to tell you the truth. Ask him, what is the truth? And if you are a Christian, I'd ask you this question, why don't more great things happen in your life? Why don't more encouraging things happen in your life? You know, I made the mistake, I told first officer of the Reading Charles Spurgeon sermon on this passage. And the whole sermon was basically an exhaustive account of the different ways that people who say they believe don't believe. In other words, we say we believe that Jesus has saved us from our sins and yet we still worry about whether or not we're forgiven. We say that we believe that Jesus will finish the job and yet we still lay awake at night wondering if he's going to finish the job. In fact, he said our faith is a theory and our doubts are facts and he said it needs to be just the opposite. In other words, you need to doubt your doubts. And as your faith, the fact, when Jesus says I promise you I'll never fail you or forsake you, do you believe that? When Jesus promises, when Jesus says, cast all your anxiety upon me because I care for you, do you cast it on him because you know he cares for you or do you keep it to yourself out of fear? It's the same route. In other words, I believe we don't see more things happen in our church and in most churches as I read this simply because we lack faith and I'm not a health and wealth person. On one hand, on the other hand, Jesus requires faith that he's going to work. He's not just going to work and then we're going to believe he says, trust me in this. If the question is will you, think about that. Let us pray. Father, I pray that as we consider our own unbelief that you would give us more belief that you would encourage us in our belief and I pray that you would open our eyes even wider to see Jesus. We thank you and I pray that you with us, we begin to prepare hearts for the Lord's supper that you would draw us closer into your heart as well. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Amen.