Rejected - Wild Heart: Mark's Portraits of a Radical Messiah

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We’re continuing our series Wild Heart: Mark’s Portrait of a Radical Messiah this morning.

Last time we looked at two stories that showed us that Jesus responds to the desperate people who reach out to Him.

Today we’re looking at something that we all can relate to: rejection. There’s a common thought among Christians that the more people know about Jesus the more drawn to Him they’ll be. But if you look at the Gospel’s that isn’t always what happens. In fact you often see the opposite. Jesus is very popular with people at first, but the closer they get to Him the more difficult it seems to find Him comfortable. Think about John’s gospel when just after feeding the 5,000 Jesus starts off on this talking about things that make them uncomfortable and it says that many turned away from Him.

In this passage another group of people turn away from Jesus.

So let’s take a look at it: Read Mark 6:1-6

Jesus travelled back to His home town. Anyone want to venture a guess at what that town is?

a) Bethlehem,

b) Sephoris,

c) Nazereth.

If you said C you are correct. These are the people who would have known Jesus the best. It’s clear from verse 3 that they knew Him well. Just look at what that verse alone tells us about Jesus:

He was a carpenter

Joseph had passed away and/or there was knowledge of Jesus’ unique birth (Mary’s son)

He had 4 brothers and at least 2 sisters.

His family still all lived in town.

They knew Him so well that when He got up to speak in the synagogue they began to say in essence “Who does He think He is.”

The people knew Jesus the best rejected Him. vs. 2-3

They clearly had heard about His miracles because they talked about them even though He hadn’t done any in Nazareth up to that point.

I find it interesting that everything seemed to be going fine until He began to teach them. Have you ever noticed that with the unbelievers who know you the best? They may or may not like your lifestyle but as long as you keep your opinions to yourself things are fine. But as soon as you start to talk to them about your faith in Jesus all of a sudden they reject you and they start watching you closely looking for any misstep in order to criticize you.

But if we look at Jesus’ example we can learn how to respond when we face these situations.

Jesus had a clear understanding of the issue.In vs. 4 He used a ‘proverbial’ saying to reveal the root of the problem. Being too familiar with someone can get in the way of seeing who they really are. When people begin to rest on what they know about someone they stop trying to know more.

Do we find ourselves being so confident in what we know about Jesus that we stop really trying to re-discover Him? vs. 4 That’s what happened to the people in Nazareth. They were blinded by familiarity. That can happen in our families with our children or spouses can’t it? Suddenly we seem to wake up and find a stranger in our house! What happened? We just grew too familiar and stopped re-discovering who they were.

We can do this with Jesus too. In fact it’s particularly true of children raised in Christian homes. They hear about Jesus so much they reach a point where they ‘know it all’ and stop re-discovering Him. It can happen to adults as well.

One of my hopes for this series is that we’ll re-discover Jesus all over again.

Rejection can cause us to try too hard to change people’s hearts. vs. 5 That’s a trap that the enemy sets for us all the time. Here’s how it goes: you feel the pressure of rejection and it hurts to know that the people you care about the most don’t know Jesus. Then when you give them space to think about it the enemy comes along and tells you that if you really cared about them you’d try harder to convince them making you feel guilty and so it goes.

Jesus didn’t fall into that trap. He recognized that He couldn’t make people believe in Him and while it amazed Him He didn’t over react or start a fight. He did what He could then He moved on.

We can only do what we can and then to move on. vs. 6 But when we move on God doesn’t stop working on their hearts. In time even some of Jesus’ family came to believe. We know because they wrote two of the books of the NT, James and Jude!

We may have to move on but that doesn’t mean we have to give up. When we’re faithful in what God has called us to do the ripple effects will have far reaching influence. Because Jesus was faithful to His calling He had influence that reached the hearts of His family members so that after His death they came to understand who He was.

We may never see the results of our faithfulness, but God is at work to make sure that your faithfulness isn’t wasted.