“Paralyzing Omnipotence”  Mark 6: 1-6

Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason -- March 19, 2006

Sometimes people tell us that something cannot be done:

Years ago new engineers in the Lamp Division of General Electric were assigned, as a joke, the impossible task of frosting bulbs on the inside. Eventually, however, an undaunted newcomer named Marvin Pipkin not only found a way to frost bulbs on the inside but developed an etching acid that gave minutely rounded pits instead of sharp depressions. This materially strengthened each bulb. Fortunately, no one had told him it couldn't be done, so he did it.

A Universal executive dismissed both Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds at a meeting in 1959. To Burt Reynolds: "You have no talent." To Clint Eastwood: "You have a chip on your tooth, your Adam's apple sticks out too far, and you talk too slow."

A United artists executive, dismissing the suggestion that Ronald Reagan be offered the starring role in the movie, The Best Man in 1964: "Reagan doesn't have the Presidential look."

There are also times when even Omnipotence is paralyzed.

That is the message of the passage before us in Mark 6:1-6

Mark now tells us of the second trip of Jesus made to Nazareth. Matthew also speaks of this second trip Jesus took to Nazareth with his disciples.

Luke, however, wrote about the first trip he took by himself to Nazareth. (Luke 4:14ff) It was about a year earlier than the trip Mark now writes about. On that first trip he performed no miracles. It was there in the synagogue that Jesus quoted from Isaiah 61:1 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…” And he told the people “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

And at first they were speaking well of him. Some one asked: “Is this not Joseph’s son? At the end, the people were enraged by him and his assertion and rose up, cast him out of the city and were ready to throw him down the cliff. He passed through the crowd and went on his way.

On this trip, he takes his disciples with him. Jesus has grown in fame and his power has been wonderfully revealed to the people.

Recently his mother and brothers traveled to Capernaum from Nazareth to get him and take him home saying: “He is beside himself.” They went for him because they loved him. He declined to go with them.

The disciples have just experienced the storm and his stilling of the waves and wind and have been amazed by his power. And now they are going to have another lesson as they travel with him. They are going to see a revelation of a limitation of his power.

What is the situation in Nazareth?  How do the people respond to him and his teachings?

Jesus goes back to the synagogue there. He begins teaching and many people are astonished.

Two questions are asked about Jesus.

First of all: Where did he get this wisdom? Secondly, where did he get the power to perform miracles?

These are two very important questions. The questions reveal something quite important for our consideration today. For these people are trying to reconcile what they know about Jesus with what they have heard in the reports that have been circulating about Him. They witnessed his wisdom personally the year before when he taught in their synagogue. They have heard about his miracles, the power he has manifested in other places.

They are face to face with Jesus whom they have known most of his life and the stories being passed around about him.

Notice what follows the questions: (vs 3) “Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James, Joses, Judas and Simon and are not his sisters here with us?”

You have to understand that Nazareth is a small town. It had about 10,000 inhabitants at the time of Jesus. Like all small towns, in Nazareth everyone knows everybody  and everybody knows everybody else’s business. And as a rule they know other’s business better than their own. If you have ever lived in a small town, you would know that this is true.

So what do they know about Jesus?

They know that Jesus was one of them. He was from an ordinary family of Nazareth.

They know that Jesus had brothers and sisters.

They knew that Mary was his mother.

In Luke’s rendering of the first trip to Nazareth, they spoke of Jesus as Joseph’s son. Now they ask if Jesus is not the son of Mary. “Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary?” And implied is the attachment of a stigma to this man. The suggestion is there regarding his birth…as being illegitimate. Remember, there was another occasion on which people challenging him said, “We were not born of fornication.” And you can imagine the pain Mary had to live with as the misunderstood one whom God had chosen for the honor of being the mother of the Messiah. This is the most infinite mystery in all of man kind and most people assumed that she had been immoral.

So they also knew him as the carpenter. He was the one who built or repaired their homes, made their furniture, plows and yokes for their oxen.

They knew that he was a worker of powers, miracles. They admitted it. They had heard about these miraculous powers.

And because they knew him, they wondered where the power came from and where he got the wisdom. How could this man have the wisdom and the power? They knew him well because he had lived side by side with them. He had no halo above his head. They had seen no sign of supernatural glory around him. “He is one of us.” they said.

And their questions lead to a suspicion and then to a conclusion that this wisdom that had amazed them and the power they had heard of must have come because he was in league with Satan, the power of evil. They have concluded that it was impossible for the wisdom to be his own. They had concluded that the miraculous power was not his own either. It must have come from the underworld of evil.

Had they concluded that the secret of his wisdom and power was his fellowship with God the Father, that he was an instrument of God, that God was working these mighty works through Him, they would have openly received him.

Not many days before this the charge was made that Jesus was casting out demons in league with the underworld of evil, even Satan himself.

And they were offended in him. That is what Mark says. What Mark actually writes is literally “They were scandalized in him.” They tripped over him and fell. He was their stumbling block. And stumbling over him, they refused to submit to his wisdom or to the appeal of  his works of power. The reason for this was that they could not see that these things were from God. Their conclusion was that these things could only be evil in origin.

And Jesus puts his finger on the problem: “A prophet is not without honor except in his own home town and among his own relatives and in his own household.” They could not accept the fact that he was anything more than one of them…an ordinary man from Nazareth. How could this man be their teacher? We know all about him. Therefore, we can’t believe in him.

So their conclusion was that these good things came from evil. He is on my own level, therefore, he can’t teach me anything.

And the result was that he could do no miracles there among them.

Jesus had told the people in Jerusalem: “If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak from myself.”

Willingness to do God’s will, created the capacity for detecting the Divine authorship and authority of what Jesus said. Whoever wills to do the will of God shall know! Wherever a man is found who in his heart wants to do the will of God, when that man hears his teaching, he will know it as the voice of God.

This tells us the reason for their unbelief. They did not want to do the will of God. They wanted to do what they themselves wanted to do. The central motive of their lives was wrong. They were God’s people and they did not want to do God’s will. That was their heart attitude.

If there is a man who is not doing the will of God, but wants to in his heart, Christ can reach that man. Who is the perfect man? He is the one who wants to be perfect. Jesus appeals to the desire of the heart; however broken or crippled it might be. If the desire is there, Christ can appeal to it and that person will recognize the authority of that appeal.

What was the effect of their unbelief?  Jesus could do no miracles among them, except heal a few sick people. There is in Nazareth the paralysis of omnipotence. He could not do any mighty works, because God had been excluded from the central desire and motive of their lives. When the light of His wisdom and His works flashed upon them, they loved the darkness and hurried back into it, refusing the light and the result was that God was shut out again.

And Jesus marveled at their unbelief. Their unbelief was what caused him to marvel. He was astonished at their unbelief and it’s power to paralyze omnipotence.

Jeremiah had said about God’s people “My people have committed tow evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.”

He marveled at their unbelief. This was God’s astonishment in the presence of the unutterable and appalling folly of human unbelief.

There was some discrimination in his grace there in Nazareth. There were a few sick people, whose longing eyes and hearts were fixed upon him, and from whose hearts there came an appeal to Him and he responded by healing them. In that town hardened by its unbelief, paralyzing his own power, there were a few weak hearts trembling toward him. And he laid his hands on a few sick folks and he healed them.

The final effect of their unbelief was that he left them never to return.

Do you see the irony of their unbelief?

The One they were waiting for to come save Israel and to set up His Kingdom had come, and they could not imagine that this carpenter, the Son of Mary, was their Messiah.

Alistair Cooke writes, "Adlai Stevenson once told me about a curious experience he had relative to Abraham Lincoln. It was 1952. Stevenson had just lost the election to Eisenhower, and had been asked by outgoing President Harry Truman to spend the night at the White House. He was put in the Lincoln Room. When he came to undress, he looked at the bed, shuffled around it, staring in awe. But he could not bring himself to lie in it. He bedded down on the sofa. I don't know if he was ever apprised of the irony: in Lincoln's day the bed wasn't there; the sofa was." Alistair Cooke, Six Men.

The people of Israel couldn’t imagine this man was their Messiah and so they were offended by him and so much so that they killed him. His power among them was paralyzed and he could not do much to help most of them. And he was amazed at that.

Most people in our world today are offended in Him. Why do I need a savior they ask? Or they declare that they do not think they need a savior. This Jesus can’t be who the Bible says he is, because he is just like one of us and we know that no man could do anything to save us any way. They have their own will and desire for their own lives and no room for God in them. Because they do not believe, God’s Omnipotence is paralyzed. He is unable to do any works of power among them

But there are those people whose hearts want to do God’s will, even if right now they are not doing His will. They will find God’s power manifest in their lives to save them, to provide for them, to heal them.

The key for us is the desire to do His will in our lives.

If we have that, even when we fail to do his will, we will find that His power is able to be manifest in our lives. Our hearts can be touched by His love and His power will never be paralyzed in our lives.

 --Dennis Gleason