Unbelief is Amazing Because...
- It chooses to ignore the EVIDENCE (Mk 6:1-2)
- It chooses to object with IRRELEVANCE (Mk 6:3a)
- It chooses to think with EMOTION (Mk 6:3b-4)
- It chooses to forfeit BLESSING (Mk 6:5-6)
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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Well, today we're going to Jesus' hometown.
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Mark chapter 6, your Bible tells you that Jesus went back to his hometown.
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And the thing with hometowns, especially little ones, everybody kind of knows everybody, right?
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Sally, that was certainly the case where you're from, right?
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And Tom, I'm sure everybody in a town of 100.
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Let me tell you how crazy it was for us.
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I feel like Shakurah now is like Mexico City after talking to some of these other people.
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Our father was a bank manager.
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It was Citizens, what's it called now, Nextier, it's up at the top of the hill by the grocery store that was Foodland and now it's Freedman's or whatever.
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But anyways, right?
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The dad was a bank manager, and being in a town of about a thousand people and your dad's the bank manager, like, everybody knew who we were.
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"Oh, you're Dick Miller's son." I remember one time, I was, after school I was going to my friend's house, and came home, dad was looking at me.
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I could tell he was not happy.
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knowing your dad's not happy, right? He said, "Dick Hillis called me." I'm like, "Oh?" He goes, "He said you took that turn in Petroia awfully fast by his place. Slow it down!" Do you remember this, Darren? Dick Hillis was the funeral home director in the next town over. Now I only got this side of the story, but I had to wonder, I had to wonder what was happening in the funeral home. You know, like Dick Hillis at the funeral home and he's consoling people, "Yeah, I'm so sorry for your loss. I'm just..." Hang on. You're gonna have to give me a second. I think that was Jeff Miller that just went around that. That was Jeff Miller. Hang on a second. I gotta get on the phone, "Dick, you're not going to believe what your son just did." He had the time down and everything. Yeah, Dick Hill has said at a quarter to five, you took that turn awfully fast. Nark. Well, that's how it is in a little hometown, right? You big city people right now are like, "I'm not quite sure what you're talking about." And that's okay. But when When you're from a little town, that's the kind of stuff that happens.
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Well here, God in the flesh actually went back to his hometown, which was Nazareth.
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And do you know how big Nazareth was?
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Nazareth was about 500 people.
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Okay?
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So like half of Shekura are like 10 times the size of Salyburg.
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But Mark 6 says, "He went away from there and came to his hometown and his disciples followed him." And as we're going on tour with Jesus, this stop takes us to his hometown.
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Was this his first visit?
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Well, it's the first visit that we read about in the Gospel of Mark, but did you know this was actually the second and the last visit that Jesus made to his hometown?
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Did you know that?
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The first was actually in Luke chapter 4.
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Jesus showed up and he read from the book of Isaiah and he said, "Today the scriptures are being fulfilled." And do you know how the people in his hometown responded to his claim about being the Messiah?
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Luke chapter 4 tells us they tried to throw him off of a cliff.
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And you small-town people kind of get that, don't you?
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That in a small town, your neighbor is also the lunch lady and is also the librarian and they're also the gym teacher, the constable, and the mayor.
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And if I showed up in Shakur and started walking around saying, "I'm God," you can imagine the kind of reactions that people are going to have.
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Not pretty.
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and over throughout the gospel of Mark, we read that the crowds were amazed by Jesus.
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We saw this last week, Mark chapter 5 verse 42. Over and over, they were amazed at His teaching. They were astonished. Everyone marveled. But in this passage that we're going to look at today, it says that Jesus is amazed. I want you to jump down with me in verse 6.
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It says, "And he and Jesus, and he marveled because of their unbelief." When you study the life of Jesus, do you know the Bible only talks about two events that marveled Jesus?
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Did you know that?
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There were two events that just left Jesus completely astonished.
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One was the faith of the centurion.
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Okay, you can read about that.
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in Matthew chapter 8, that's in Luke chapter 7.
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The centurion showed great faith in the person and the power of Jesus.
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Jesus marveled in his faith.
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This is the only other instance that the Bible tells us that Jesus marveled.
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And what happened to make Jesus marvel?
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Well, we saw it here.
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He marveled because of their what?
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Verse 6.
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He marveled because of their what?
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unbelief. If you were with us last week, we talked about faith. We talked about how faith comes to God in humility and it believes that God can and will help me. And faith trusts, even if God seems late, and faith accepts what we don't understand. Faith is powerful.
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Amen?
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Faith is powerful.
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Do you know what Jesus said about faith?
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Faith can move mountains.
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But do you know what else is powerful?
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Unbelief.
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Unbelief is powerful.
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Faith is powerful as it moves towards God.
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Unbelief is also powerful because you're moving away from God.
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Unbelief invites God's wrath.
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Unbelief is what casts people into hell.
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And unbelief, the only thing unbelief has to look forward to is God's judgment.
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Jesus said in John 8, 24, "I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins." So in this passage we see today, we're going to look at God shows up in his hometown and their rejection amazes him.
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Can we just pause for like three seconds and try to wrap our brains around the concept that Jesus was amazed by something?
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How many other people here think that that concept is amazing?
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I mean, the Bible says Jesus knows what was in the heart of a man.
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Jesus knew.
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Did Jesus know?
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Did Jesus know?
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Did Jesus know He was going to be rejected?
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Of course He did.
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But this rejection, this unbelief was of such magnitude that the Bible says that God Almighty incarnate marveled at how incredible this unbelief was.
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Why did he marvel?
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How did that happen?
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I want you to write these things down.
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This is on your outline if you have a bulletin.
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Grab your inserts.
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Unbelief is amazing.
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You're like, "Why is unbelief amazing?" Well, unbelief is amazing, number one, it chooses to ignore the evidence.
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chooses to ignore the evidence. Look at verses 1 and 2. Again, "He went away from there and came to his hometown, Nazareth, and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue." That's what Jesus commonly did. It says, "And many who heard him were astonished." By the way, astonished does not equal faith, right? Astonished to your co-worker that you know doesn't follow the Lord, say, "Hey, our little young church plant just raised almost $6,000 to help a church in Moldova." They'll be astonished by that, but that doesn't mean they've suddenly come to faith in Jesus.
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Does that make sense?
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Well, these were people that heard the teaching of Jesus and were absolutely blown away at and his wisdom." Picking up in verse 2, "Saying, these astonished people were saying, 'Where did this man get these things?
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What is the wisdom given to him?
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How are such mighty works done by his hands?'" Unbelief is amazing because it chooses to ignore the evidence.
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You have to notice, first of all, they didn't deny his wisdom or his work.
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You notice that?
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These weren't a group of people that were like, "Well, I don't really think he's that wise.
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I mean, yeah, he's okay.
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He's like a C-minus teacher." These were people blown away, and they knew that he was a miracle worker.
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They weren't saying, "We think he's some kind of a charlatan or a trickster." They said, "This guy does some awesome things.
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How does he do it?
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Where does this stuff come from?" They thought it was more important to ponder where it came from than what it was.
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It's obvious where it came from.
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Somebody who taught like Jesus taught, somebody who did the miracles that Jesus performed, there's only one answer to the question, "Where did this come from?" What's the answer?
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It came from God.
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This is supernatural.
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This is beyond anything of the earth.
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Actually in John 5:36, Jesus said that His works were to authenticate His person.
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That's the reason Jesus did the miracles, by the way.
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You know that, right?
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Jesus wasn't like this magic performer, like ta-da.
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They were acts of compassion, healing.
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They always benefited people.
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But the reason He performed the miracles was to point to who He was.
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He wasn't just some preacher, He wasn't just some rabbi, He was God in the flesh.
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But ignoring the evidence is the first sign of unbelief.
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I want you to jot this reference down.
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Romans 118, this is a whole other sermon.
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Romans 118 says, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth." These are people that suppress the truth.
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By what?
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Your Bible says by unrighteousness, by sin.
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Like, what do you mean by that?
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What I mean is the evidence is there.
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The evidence is totally there.
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I just grabbed random stuff from my shelf here.
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There's so much more.
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The evidence is there.
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Refuting evolution.
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I've given out a lot of these books, very scientific, looking at the idea of creation versus evolution from a scientific perspective.
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The case for Christ.
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How many people have read the case for Christ?
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Fantastic.
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And how about the case for faith?
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Like who's read this one?
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You guys read the case for faith?
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You should read that one.
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That's a good one.
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Oh, here's the case for Christmas.
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Now, I think you're just marketing yourself, Strobel.
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Defeating Darwinism by opening minds.
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This is an easy to understand one.
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It's got like pages you can color and stuff.
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The ultimate proof of creation, resolving the origins debate.
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The origin of life equipping course.
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This is a purely scientific approach to examining, is it possible for life as we know it to come through the macroevolutionary model? The answer is absolutely not. And I dug through my filing cabinet. Look what I found. Here's some creation materials that I've researched and amassed. Oh, and here's some more. So many that I couldn't even fit in one. Here is a binder of research that I've compiled on apologetics and studying all of the religions of the world. Not all of them, there's like 9,000 and some, but you understand that there's like different branches of Hinduism and Buddhism and many branches. But studying all of the major mainstream religions of the world and history and archeology, those are just some of my notes. That doesn't even include all the stuff I have on my computer, which if If I were to print that out, I'd probably need to borrow the church trailer just to haul it.
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Like, what's the point?
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The point is the evidence is there.
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The point is we have reason to believe that the Bible is true.
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Science backs what the Bible says about creation, things reproducing after their own kind.
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Archeology backs the Bible.
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history actually backs the Bible? And the person that says, "Well, how do we know the Bible that we have today is actually what was originally written?" That's one of the big questions people get. You know, "Well, the Bible's been translated so many times.
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How do we know that that's what it was originally written?" Well, the way you test for that is called the bibliographical test. Okay? I wasn't there. Were you there? No. But the The way you test an ancient document to see if its message has been preserved through the generations is called the bibliographical test.
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What does that mean?
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That means you compile all the ancient copies that are known to exist and compare them one with another to see if the message is consistent.
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The number two document in history that passes the bibliographical test for reliability of an ancient text is the Iliad written by Homer, not Simpson, the poet.
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Okay, do you know how many copies there are?
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Just north of 600 copies.
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That means they have 600 and some copies of the Iliad that they've lined up.
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Is the message consistent throughout?
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Any college professor, any English professor will say, "Yeah, what we have today in the Iliad is a reliable document because we have so much ancient evidence." You know what the number one document is for the bibliographical test?
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Take a guess.
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The New Testament.
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Remember, the Iliad has like just north of 600 copies.
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Do you know how many ancient copies of the New Testament we're able to line up to match?
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Over 20,000.
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That's what you were going to say, right Jay?
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Yeah, over 20,000.
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We have over 20,000 ancient copies that we can line up.
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Is the message consistent?
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And what is the answer?
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The answer is yes.
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Yes, the Bible that you're holding in your hands is as was originally written.
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And you get into these discussions with people about the evidence, about creation, archaeology, history, and the reliability of Scripture.
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You get in these discussions with people and you share with them some of the things that I just shared with you.
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Many times this is the reaction I've gotten.
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I don't know.
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I don't know if the Bible we have was accurately translated.
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You share the whole bibliographical thing, and they're like, "Yeah, I don't know." Like, you don't know what?
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What about experiential evidence?
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What about the impact that God and His Word have had on lives right here?
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Do you know, this blows my mind, but do you know, after giving almost $6,000 to help of pastor and his family that you don't know, in a country most of you never heard of.
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Last week, actually last Sunday, immediately after service, I found out that one of our church family here had an emergency.
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And we sent an email out to our church body saying, "Hey, New Testament Church, right, rally around this family that's in need and try to help them with this emergency.
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And you gave another, how much was it, like 2,000 and some more?
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Blows my mind.
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You can go tell somebody that.
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Like, "Listen to how awesome God is.
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Look at how He's working in our church." Somebody's going to hear that and just be like, "I don't know.
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I wonder what really happened there.
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I wonder what really happened.
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I wonder what's really going on.
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I bet Ken has this rich uncle that he called, and that's how that really happened, and they're just kind of like putting God on the hook for that.
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I don't know.
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I don't know what really happened there.
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Unbelief chooses to ignore the evidence.
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The problem is not, "Well, I don't have any evidence to show people." The problem is people don't want to deal with the evidence that's before them.
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That's what was happening with Jesus.
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He was giving this evidence that He was God, and their response was, "Where does He get these things?" Why don't people want to deal with the evidence?
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Because if there's a God, I'm accountable to that God, and He should be the boss, not me.
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He should have reign over my life, not me.
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That's why Paul tells us in Romans that people that choose to believe suppress the truth.
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The issue isn't lack of evidence.
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The issue is I love my sin too much to give it up.
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I love my sin too much to be saved from it.
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Is there like an option from Jesus where I can be saved in my sin and not saved from my sin?
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Is there a "I can still sin as much as I want" option?
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Is there a, "God doesn't tell me what to do, but I can still go to heaven" option?
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No.
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No.
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No.
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It is about dying to yourself.
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It is about carrying your cross daily.
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It's about turning from sin.
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It's about repentance.
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The unbelieving mind doesn't want to deal with those things because you just love your sin too much.
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You just love your sin.
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I would rather have that than Jesus.
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What about all this evidence?
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What about… It's just suppressing the truth.
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I don't want to deal with it.
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That's the first thing that's amazing about unbelief.
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The second one, number two, it chooses to object with irrelevance.
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It chooses to object with irrelevance.
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Like, what do you mean by that?
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Other questions continue.
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Look at verse three.
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Is this not, excuse me, is not this the carpenter?
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You have to understand what an insult this was.
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Not like bashing carpenters, okay?
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But the way that they were saying this was an insult.
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I have mad respect for people that can work with wood because I can't.
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When I was in high school in woodshop, I made a paperweight.
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Actually, I made five paperweights.
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They weren't supposed to be paperweights, but that's what they all ended up.
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So I have mad respect, okay?
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But understand that when they were saying, is not this the carpenter, this was a bit of a slam.
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Like, this guy's just a carpenter.
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Is not this the carpenter?
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the son of Mary and brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon?
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And are not his sisters here with us?
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It chooses to object with irrelevance.
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Okay, so God shows up and he's like teaching in your synagogue this Sabbath day.
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And they're like, "Isn't this guy just like the carpenter and like we know his mother and brothers and sisters and question, what does any of that have to do with anything?
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Right?
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Instead of looking at the evidence, unbelief chooses to occupy itself with matters that make no difference.
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Did you see that?
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What difference does it make?
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Yeah, his sisters are here, so what?
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Yeah.
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Yeah, he was a carpenter for a while, and that disqualifies him from being Messiah how?
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The people that object with irrelevance, you have to understand, they sound so intelligent in their own minds when they do this.
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I remember one guy I shared the gospel with, telling him about his need for a Savior, deliverance from sin, eternal life, and Jesus Christ.
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You know what his response was?
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He like, "You know there's only 6% difference in the DNA between a human and a chimpanzee." I was like, "What?
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Thank you, Dr. Science.
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Like, what do you say to that?
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So what?
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Good for the chimp?" I think his point was like, "That's proof of evolution." My response is, do you know how much that 6% really stands for?
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It is volumes and volumes and volumes and volumes of genetic information.
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6% of a dollar is what?
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Not very much.
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6% of a trillion dollars is what?
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A lot.
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Okay?
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When you understand how much genetic information is in your DNA, 6% is an amount of information you can't even wrap your brain around." But that was his big objection. "I'm telling you about Jesus and he wants to talk about the chimp." I shared a gospel with another guy. His response was, "You know what? I know a lady that got real religious and she went crazy." And I'm like, "Okay, where do you take the conversation from there. What does that have to do with anything? I'm telling you about your need for a Savior. What about all the contradictions in the Bible? Do you know the Bible's full of contradictions? Next time somebody tells you that, ask them for one. I'm batting a thousand on that. I've had so many people say, "You know the Bible's full of contradictions.
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You know that Bible's full of contradictions." I'm like, "Yeah, I have an open mind. Show "Uh, uh, uh, I don't know off the top of my head." Like well then maybe you shouldn't present yourself as an expert unless you actually have them ready.
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If you have them, bring them to me.
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Bring your objections and let's study the Scriptures together.
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Don't make a claim like that.
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That's just getting off of the issue.
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You need a Savior.
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Well now let's talk about words in the Bible.
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Three years ago, my former church, we got a call at the office from a man, answer the phone.
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The receptionist says, "Hey, there's a guy that really needs to talk to you." So I'm like, "Hey, this is Pastor Jeff." The guy says, "I'm going to kill myself." I'm like, "Okay." He said, "The reason I was calling was I wanted to make sure I didn't go straight to hell if I killed myself." I said, "How did you get our number?" He said, "I just opened up the phone book and the first church I found, I called." I'm like, "Oh." I said, "Okay." He goes, "I just need to know.
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I'm going to kill myself today and I need to know." Well, I go straight to hell if I kill myself because I've heard like different teaching about that or whatever.
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I said, "Well, let me ask you a question." I said, "Do you know the Lord?" I said, "Do you know the Lord?" And he said, "Well, I don't know.
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I think, you know what man, I really don't know." And I said, "Do you really want to step into eternity not knowing where you're going to land?" And he said, "You should work for suicide hotlines." And I said, "I'm coming to your house, where do you live?" I went out to his house trying to share the gospel with him.
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He's like, "I have a question.
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What about people of other faiths that don't believe in Jesus?" And I would just start answering that question.
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He goes, "I have another question.
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What about UFOs?
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Do you think there's UFOs?" I start to answer that question.
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The Bible says Eve's the mother of all the living and man is created in God's image and The Bible doesn't talk about any other life as it exists on earth, outside of earth.
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I started to talk about that.
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"Well, what about the dinosaurs?" "Well, the Bible says that God created the earth and He created the animal." I would just start answering these questions and he was on to the next one, on to the next one, on to the next one.
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What about the guy sitting in Africa that ain't never seen a Bible before?
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It's funny, you weren't concerned about that guy sitting in Africa a minute ago.
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Now when we're talking about your need for a Savior, all we can think about is some guy sitting somewhere in Africa." Eventually just got to the point that I said, "You know what, man?" I said, "You have questions.
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You have a lot of questions." The questions just kept on coming and I shared with him a little bit and had a prayer with him.
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But it wasn't long into the conversation that I realized that he was asking questions that he didn't really care what the answer was before he was on to the next question.
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In church, we need to be equipped.
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But we need to acknowledge that when people start asking questions like this, what they're really doing is talking themselves out of seeking the Lord.
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What they're really doing is hardening their heart.
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That's why we see in this passage here, God is standing in front of them.
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And they just, it's just nothing but question after question after question after question question after question after question. They're not looking for answers. They just want to spit out their stupid questions. If I rationalize my objections in my own mind, I've excused myself from allowing the gospel to confront me. That's what's happening. It's going to happen to you too. So, unbelief is amazing. It chooses to ignore the evidence. It chooses to object with irrelevance. Thirdly, it chooses to think with emotion. It chooses to think with emotion. Look at the end of verse 3. After all their questions, it says, "And they took offense at him." And they took offense at him. Literally, the Greek says, "He was scandalized by them. This is what the literal Greek is. He was scandalized by them.
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Question, what was the offense again? What horrible thing did Jesus do to offend them?
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Something violent, I'm sure. No? He probably deceived them somehow. No? He probably stole something now? What was so horrible that Jesus was doing that all of these people were offended?
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What was so horrible that these 33 Christians that are being executed in North Korea, did you read about that? I just read this this morning. What was their offense? What horrible crime have they committed? Loving people, telling people about the Lord, leading people of salvation, planting in North Korea, planting 500 churches. Jesus said in John 15, 18, "If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before it hated you." Church people are going to hate you because you follow Jesus. People are going to hate you because you follow of Jesus. Please understand that's not an intellectual exercise. That is an emotional… it's a spiritual… and it's foundation, amen? It's a spiritual thing. But understand, it's not an intellectual thing. It often manifests as an emotional thing. People aren't sitting down evaluating you like you would go through your checkbook. You know, they're not sitting down saying, "Well, I might not necessarily agree with what James believes about Jesus and the Bible, but you know what?
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He seems harmless and I've seen him be very compassionate and very giving and very thoughtful.
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And even if I don't necessarily agree with Jesus, I can at least acknowledge that James seems like..." Nobody's doing that, people.
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Nobody's doing that.
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Jesus said they're going to hate you just because of your association with Him.
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But note this, and keep this on file.
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When someone has invested themselves to an opinion emotionally, it's hard for them to change their mind.
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True or false?
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I'm going to say that again.
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When someone has invested themselves to an opinion emotionally, it's hard for them to change their mind.
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You want proof of that?
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You want proof of that?
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You know what the most awkward moment in the world is?
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You know what it is?
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You've been there.
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The most awkward moment is when you're right in the middle of a heated argument and you realize that you're wrong.
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Has that ever happened to anyone?
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Have you ever been in an argument and you're like fired up?
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And they're like, "You so too said that.
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I did not say that.
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You so too said that.
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I did not say that.
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I would never say that.
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You did say that.
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There is no way that I'd say that.
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You said that to my mother last Saturday when we were at her house, and you're like, "She's right." But what do you do then?
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You're like, "You're right." Is that what you do?
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Oh, come on.
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That's not what you do.
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What do you do, Steve?
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You've backed yourself into a corner emotionally, and you're still coming out swinging even though that you're wrong.
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"Well, yeah, you know, I might have said that, but your mother kind of brought that out.
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I didn't really mean it the way it came out." You said it, man.
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You said it.
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But you can't give up the fight because you've invested yourself emotionally, right?
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That's what happened with Jesus.
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His hometown people were so opposed to him that it got to the point that they were offended by him.
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Shame on you Jesus for healing these people.
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Shame on you Jesus for raising the dead.
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Shame on you for casting out demons.
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They had their minds so made up, they were offended at Jesus Christ.
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That's why Jesus said in verse 4, Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor, in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.
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There's an expression that we use to describe what Jesus is talking about here.
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You know what it is, right?
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Familiarity breeds contempt, right?
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Familiarity breeds contempt.
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Growing up in Shakora, we didn't have a lot that put Shakora on the map, but we were right next door to a little town. East Brady, birthplace of Jim Kelly. Do you know everybody up our way has a Jim Kelly story? True or false? Right? My cousins went to high school with Jim Kelly. My aunt dated Jim Kelly. Everybody's got like a Jim Kelly story. If you go up there and say, "You know what? I think Jim Kelly was a great quarterback." Your reaction is gonna be, "He was a bum. He was a bum. Yeah, my mom went to school with him. He was a bum. He was a good quarterback though, right? He was a great quarterback. He was a bum. My aunt went out with him. He made her pick up the check. He was a bum. I'm not talking about that. He was a great quarterback. He was a bomb. He's not going to get the acclaim that he deserves in his hometown. Unbelief chooses to think with emotion.
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God gave us a book so that we can seek him with our minds, and that's where the fight is going to take place for the skeptic, and it's on that level that you need to challenge. Are these things that you researched? Or is this purely an emotional response.
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Finally, why is unbelief amazing?
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Last, and I would suggest to you most important - I would say most amazing - it chooses to forfeit blessing.
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That's the amazing thing about unbelief.
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It chooses to forfeit blessing.
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Look at verses 5 and 6.
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Verse 5 says, "And he could do no mighty work there except that he laid his hands a few sick people and healed them. Why did He do that? Grace. Grace, compassion, love.
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But it says He could do no mighty work there. And He marveled because of their unbelief.
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And He went about among the villages teaching. It says He could do no mighty work there.
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It wasn't because of lack of power, it was lack of reason to display his power.
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Remember, we said the purpose of the miracles was to verify the truth.
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And if you reject the truth, there's really no need for miracles, right?
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Jairus and the woman that we talked about previously, they chose to believe that God can and will help me.
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And Nazarene's chose to go the other way on that one.
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And I believe that's why Mark, when he's putting this biography of Jesus together, when he's putting this writing together, I think this is exactly why he told these stories back to back.
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If you have a faith that is reaching out towards God, here's what's going to happen.
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You're going to see awesome things!
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But Mark's like, "On the other hand, let me tell you about what happened when Jesus went back home." John 14, 21, Jesus said, "Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.
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And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I," note this, "and I will love him and manifest myself to him." That is a promise right out of the mouth of Jesus.
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You see what he's saying?
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He's saying that by faith when you pursue Him, He will manifest Himself to you.
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Meaning if you love your sin and have shut Jesus out, He's not going to kick the door down.
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But if you're reaching out to Him, He will manifest Himself to you.
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Like the Nazarenes, if you don't want to believe, you're not going to see much of God's hand in your life.
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Unbelief chooses pain.
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Unbelief chooses self-destroying sin.
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Unbelief chooses depression.
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Unbelief chooses to walk through this life on this earth with no purpose.
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Unbelief ultimately chooses hell, chooses to be shut out from God for eternity.
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question for someone who doesn't want to believe. What is it? You don't want to be blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places? You don't want the fruit of the Spirit? You don't want love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? That doesn't interest you at all. That's something you would choose to forfeit. You don't want to see Almighty God answer prayers and move mightily on your behalf.
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You don't want wisdom for friendship, for marriage, for parenting, for the workplace, for... you don't want the wisdom from the Eternal One as you walk through this world.
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You don't want hope.
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You would rather resolve yourself to "this is all that there is." This is as good as it's ever going to get.
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You don't want peace.
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You don't want the internal presence of the God who loves you to comfort you through the tragedies in life that you will face.
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You don't want heaven.
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You would walk away from the invitation to a place that is described as being eternally in the presence of the one who loves you, where there is no more sin, there is no more death, there is no more disease, there is no more suffering.
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You can look right at God's provision of grace and walk away.
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That is amazing.
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That is so amazing that it amazed God Himself.
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Let's pray.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Mark 6:1-6
What is the hardest objection to the Christian faith / the Bible, in your opinion? (Evolution, what about the dinosaurs, where did Cain get his wife? etc etc).
Why do people “suppress the truth in unrighteousness”? (Mark 6:12, Romans 1:18) Why is sin such a motivator to deny the truth of God?
Why did Jesus “do no mighty work there” in Nazareth? (Mark 6:5) How did unbelief play a part in that? Why did He still do a few?
How could Jesus “marvel” at their reaction if He already knows what is in the heart of a man? (John 2:24-25)
Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another: that we be people of faith moving towards God instead of unbelief moving away from God.