As you can tell, we're in Mark 6, one through six, making Jesus commonplace, or making Jesus just common. Years ago, I was traveling in Europe and Holland with some colleagues of mine, people I work with, they're from different companies, Dave and Remy, and we're looking for new perennial plants to bring to the market, and perennial plants are ones that come back every year, and we were trying to find brand new plants that we could then get in production, bring into the market, and so the whole trip from England Germany and then in Holland was all to find that. Remy is a Dutch breeder and producer. Dave owned a brokerage plant sales firm with about 15 salespeople on the road, traveling around selling perennials. And then there was me. Well, we've been just to Germany to visit a well-known and large perennial seed breeder. So this person makes new perennials, and then they produce seeds that they sell. And we were on our way back to Holland, and I was happy to get back to Holland. We were making great time, and I was hopeful to get back at a decent hour. We were staying near Amsterdam, and then I was flying out the next day. I wanted to handle some additional work. and catch up a bit. But Remy had a surprise for us, a real treat, he thought. There was a guy with a garden that contained most of the current types of perennials that are grown, something that's not necessarily easy to capture in one place. Dave is ecstatic. This is the best thing ever. He produces a large catalog for his salespeople, and he is just dreaming of the pictures he can get that he's been missing for years. My emotions, on the other hand, were at best disinterested, but I would say borderline annoyed we were stopping at all. That was how I entered into this great garden experience. I was not struck by the magnitude of varieties there. I didn't care to see them. to be honest with you, and I definitely was not taking any pictures of them. To me, it was like wandering around a garden when you have better things to do. It was very commonplace to me. And so instead of it being a unique opportunity to evaluate all these different perennials, I was just frustrated. Dave, I'm watching him, because I did want to walk through the garden. So I took 20 minutes to walk the garden. It was acres, and I only took 20 minutes to see it. I found a park bench. This is me. I'm on a park bench, and this is before your phone could get a signal anywhere. The park bench, you could get a signal. I'm checking emails until I knew Heather was awake and I called her. That's how annoyed I had gotten. I watched Dave laying on the ground taking snapshots of plants from the bottom side up. I mean, just basically drooling over the plants. And I'm there saying, let's go, let's go. Hours. We spent hours there, by the way. My annoyance was in my mind fitting, because to me the garden was a colossal waste of my time, commonplace, and something I could find anywhere. Here's the reality, and this is sadly true, you can't find this type of garden anywhere, where someone put all this energy, acres and acres, most gardens you go to grow the new varieties. This was actually a very unique opportunity to look at perennial plants and quote-unquote a natural habitat, and to see all the different genres that are there. But to me, it was just a waste of my time. To Dave, it was the highlight of the whole trip. Our trip was there to find new perennials. We ended up at a garden full of old perennials. And to Dave, that was the best thing we ever did. To me, it was just common and an absolute waste. Sadly, when you look at people now, today, and throughout history, they commit the error of making Jesus commonplace, or common, or not unique. They act like there's a Savior at every corner, and they miss the magnitude of who He is and what He came to accomplish. They miss it completely. Because Jesus is just, to put it in relation to the story, another garden that you're wasting time walking around. Sure, we have to be there, but we really don't want to be there. Now we've just finished up three dynamic scenes that have emphasized Jesus's power. And we'll kind of walk through that very moving 24 to 36 hours. We've seen his power over nature. That was the story of calming the sea. So as he left teaching the parables from the boat, he went across the lake, the Sea of Galilee, and we saw his power over nature, the calming of the storm. He lands on that eastern shore and we find his power over the supernatural, where in the healing of the demoniac, the man that had a thousand plus demons in him, bringing the full force of the devil against Christ, his minions poured out. And we see that he has the power of the supernatural, power over nature, power of the supernatural. He comes back now. to Capernaum and what happens is we see his power over the physical and that's disease and death. He crushes disease and death by healing the woman with the 12-year illness and by raising the one girl from the dead. And so we find out in the last 24-36 hours of his life that Christ has proven to everyone Without a shadow of a doubt that he's over nature, he's over the supernatural, and he's over the physical. There's nothing else, and I hope you can see that, that he needs to show his power over. Everything you could fear in life, he has dominion over it. Nature can swirl up and destroy, he has the power over nature. The supernatural, which oftentimes we discount and push back and say doesn't matter, he is in control of. And then over disease and death, which encompasses everything about our lives. We fear disease and death more than anything else. And now the scene shifts, and I want you to realize that. We're making a movement here in Mark 6. It's a scene shift, and what we're doing is he's gonna go back home. It's a visit back home. Mark 6, one says, and he went out from thence. Where's thence? Capernaum. That's been the base of his operation for about a year. So he's leaving Capernaum and he's going home and came into his own country. He's talking about Nazareth and his disciples follow him. Now this is his second and final visit home after starting his public ministry. So as Christ left, What we're seeing here, Mark records the second visit. He doesn't record the first visit. The first visit took place shortly after his temptation in the wilderness. So going all the way back to Mark 1, Mark doesn't record that story, but Luke actually does record that story, Luke 4, 14-30. And during that visit, He is already well-known, he's talked about, he's renowned, so the homeboy, quote, unquote, comes home, and they invite him to teach in the synagogue, and he teaches in such a way that they get furious at him, and it says in Luke 4, it says they were so enraged that they force him out of the town, the town is built on a cliff, and they attempt to murder him, push him headlong over the cliff, and then we see a miracle, Luke 4, 30, but he passing through the midst of them went his way." So an enraged group of citizens comes and the first time Jesus is home, this is going back to Mark 1 if you want to place it in time, he teaches in the synagogue, they force him out of town and the mob is going to push him over a cliff and suddenly a miracle happens and he walks through their midst and he's done. Months have now passed since that visit. He returns again to Nazareth, which, by the way, Nazareth is an obscure town 25 miles southwest of Capernaum. It has a population of around 500. It is so insignificant, it's not even in Jewish history books. They didn't even care to mention it. It doesn't make the map, it doesn't make Yet this time, he comes with his disciples. This is the difference. He's bringing his disciples. Now remember, if you have disciples and you're a teacher, remember, you're a rabbi, you would be followed around by your students. We go to school, so to speak, and there the teachers are, and we leave and go. In that culture, you would follow your rabbi. So he's coming with every indication that he has even more standing than before. He comes with his disciples not alone, he again teaches in the synagogue, and though they don't attempt to kill him this visit, the response is still hard-hearted unbelief. They don't care, they prove that. They can't help but make Jesus into something commonplace, ordinary, and unworthy of real consideration. And I'm gonna be honest with you this morning, I hope I can confront you no matter where you are in your walk with Christ, whether you don't know him, or whether you've been a Christian for years, I wanna confront us with the fact that we, oftentimes act like he's unworthy of real consideration. Making Jesus commonplace. How does someone do that? Well, this visit to Nazareth is gonna give us the lesson and the inhabitants become the master teachers on how to make Jesus basically insignificant, common, human, everything he's not. To start with, just be astonished and ignore the obvious. You want to make Jesus commonplace? Just be astonished and ignore the obvious. Verse 2 says this, and when the Sabbath day was come, he's home, it's Sabbath, what happens? He began to teach in the synagogue. And many hearing him were astonished, saying, from whence hath this man these things and what wisdom is this which is given unto him that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands and that one simple simple kind of complex sentence there tells us everything they're blown away by what he says and they're blown away by what he has done i read a story once I think it's years ago of a mine that was having a theft problem or was being stolen and they couldn't quite get the finger on who was doing it, how it was being done, so they started searching every miner as they left, searching through lunchboxes and the wheelbarrows, and I'm going to say that wrong at some point, just ride with me, it's something I struggle with. to see if any ore could be found. And what happens is they caught the thieves taking the ore and ended the searching. But there was one guard that kept searching this one miner because he was positive this guy was stealing. So he personally searched the wheelbarrow, he searched his lunchbox, he searched his tool bag, and never caught him doing anything wrong. Years pass and this guard is retired. He sees the miner in town and he says, look, I'm retired from the company. I'm positive you're stealing. I know you were part of this theft. You were taking something and we never caught you. It's all done now. I'm retired. I'm not gonna turn you into company, but I just can't, I need to know how in the world you were stealing stuff and we missed it. I mean, I searched you personally. I know I could find it. The miner smiled and says, that's because I was stealing the wheelbarrows. the obvious thing, he's rolling out, they missed every single time. How often do we miss the obvious thing? And that's the point. They're astonished and they're gonna miss the obvious. And I want you to think in your life briefly, how many times have you witnessed life-changing faith in people, people you know, people you're friends with, people you encounter, and then you witness life-changing faith and then you explain it away? You just say, well, it's because they grew up that way. Ah, because they have a tradition. Ah, because they do this. Because they do that. We explain away life-changing faith. We are astonished, and then we ignore the obvious. See, we put religion in a box. We hear and see its amazing effect and change, and then we rationalize it away. Have we not done that? And think about this, don't think broad scope as a church, think individually. How have you seen life-changing faith, things that alter how someone does things, and yet you found a way to rationalize it away? You're astonished, but you don't care enough to let it change you. We know people like that, don't we? people like that. Whether we're unsaved or saved, we've engaged in it. For the lost person, the person that doesn't know Christ as their personal Savior, they see the change in the church, they see the change in individuals, they see the change in family or friends, and they rationalize it away. They find a way to say, well, it's because of your upbringing, it's because of your family, it's because you've had a bad financial loss, it's because you lost someone dear to you, and so you're using religion as a crutch. You need this, I don't. That's called rationalizing away what you know to be the truth. You're astonished, but you ignore the obvious. I wrote a question, in what ways have we agreed with, but not believed in Jesus Christ? Oh, I agree with you. I agree Jesus exists. I agree he died on the cross for the sins. I agree with this faith. I agree with it, but I don't believe in. There was a lot of people in Israel that agreed with Jesus for a time, but they didn't believe in Jesus Christ. One author notes this, the people of Nazareth freely acknowledged that Jesus' teaching was amazing and that the miracles they had heard about manifested great wisdom. They're not denying that he is God. way above what they've ever heard someone teach. And they're not denying that they're seeing things they've never seen before. The word translated astonished in Greek actually means to strike or blast. So here's the idea I want you to get. When he says astonished, it's a good word, but they are getting you to the depths of that word. It's mind blowing. That's the whole idea. Their minds were blown by what they saw. The problem is they missed the point of what he was saying. They missed the obvious. Because here's the facts, what he said, the words and the works, the miracles of Jesus, proved objectively, and that means it's not an opinion thing, it's an obvious fact that he was, without a doubt, God. He was the Messiah. There was no need for more proof for them, but all they were were astonished and ignored the obvious. What was obvious here? That this is the Messiah. Yet they chose to just be astonished and miss that obvious truth about him, which should make us think, in what ways have we seen biblical truth and just explained it away? What biblical truth have you seen that you've talked yourself out of? It's obvious. but you find a reason for it not to be obvious for you. How have you explained away biblical truth? What happens when the obvious is ignored and we just embrace the feeling of astonishment in the moment? We may be blown away, we may read scripture and see a truth, and light is dawning, and then we find a way to turn it off, that's called being astonished in the moment. You feel something, you let your emotions reign, but then you ignore it. What's the next emotion and reaction that you're gonna have? Just be embarrassed and focus on the irrelevant. And that's what the people in Nazareth did. They were just embarrassed and focused on the irrelevant. Look at verse three. So right after saying, our mind is blown. This guy's teaching and we can't even fathom where it's coming from, which obviously is coming from God. He's doing miracles that are beyond nature, beyond reason. Look, in Capernaum, he's revolutionized the health community. I mean, you're lining up to get healed. That changes a whole generation of people, all illness gone. And he did that, don't lose sight of it. It wasn't just one-offs here. There's massive changes in communities. And so instead of seeing the obvious fact that this is the Messiah fulfilling every prophecy in scripture, they're just embarrassed and focused on the irrelevant because they go from that and verse three, they say this, is not this the carpenter? the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph and of Judah and of Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" What's the response? And they were offended at him. Offended. You see, the people of Nazareth were astonished to see Jesus teaching like a rabbi, training disciples like a rabbi, when they knew he was not qualified to be a rabbi. So they go from being blown away to being angry that this hometown guy is gonna pretend to have the right to be the rabbi. So they fixate on his family background and how they know his heritage. Don't miss this. In their culture, you were not the son of your mother, you were the son of your father. They unpurposely said he is the son of Mary. Why? To slight him and to slight his birth because they knew about his birth. And so he had a unique birth and they're expressing their very base viewpoint of it, their condescending way. The Pharisees picked up on this. They've said this before, I think in Mark three, they've made some hints towards this. And now they're expressing it in the most ugly way possible. Is this not the son of Mary? Not the son of Joseph. They were embarrassed by him. That word translated offended is a Greek word. The base of that word is scandaliso, the word which we get scandalized. Now offended is a good word. It tells us their emotions. So it's depicting how they're responding. It's great to see the Greek word there because they felt embarrassed by him. They viewed his teaching and miraculous work as scandalous. They made a movement from being blown away and in a blink of the eye, they're embarrassed to scandalize that this guy coming from Nazareth, a nothing town, is actually teaching like a rabbi and beyond, doing miraculous works, and they're scandalized by it. They turned irrelevant issues into stumbling blocks to defend their unbelief. How have you done that? Think about this. How have you grabbed the most irrelevant thing, made it the biggest deal ever, so that you can trip over that and continue in your unbelief? The lost world does this all the time. The fact is, Christ coming and redeeming us from our sins makes sense. Because there's not a single person who has a minute of honesty that says, oh, I'm perfect. You know you're not. And if you really think about how horrible you are, you recognize that you don't deserve heaven. And so it makes sense that God who loves you is gonna send his son to die on the cross for your sins. But what do we do? We find the most irrelevant thing we can fixate on, and then we trip over that over and over in our unbelief. That's what Nazareth is teaching us. Just be embarrassed and focus on the irrelevant. R.C. Sproul wrote this, and I think it bears repeating. Here's a paragraph in one of his books, is Christ scandalizo for you? Are you embarrassed by him? Are you a secret service Christian not wanting anyone to know your real identity because you find that being identified with him is an embarrassment, a source of shame? And he says, if so, I urge you to pray that he would change your heart and cause you to love and adore him, for adoration is the only proper response to the one the Father has placed as the cornerstone. He's referring back to a verse in Psalms that's been quoted. He is the cornerstone. You're gonna see Paul reference that in his letters. He is who all of this is built upon. Our old faith, everything. He's the cornerstone. And our response as believers is adoration, that is the only response worthy of Christ. But we're too often embarrassed. I wrote this, what is it about Jesus that offends and embarrasses us? How have we been apologizing for our faith because culture is upset at it? And look at that, look how many Christians apologize for the God of the Bible. How dare you make an apology for God who is perfect, who is holy, who is just, who is righteous. We think that we're going to write on or add on to justice when God is just. He is right. He defines justice. And yet as believers, we'll search outside of scriptures for a definition of justice that shows how we view our Savior. And it's a sad reflection of Christianity. What is more important, the truth or everyone being okay with you? I can promise you this, the world is not okay with you, unless you're like the world. And so we can get fixated on the world being okay with Christ, but if you read the Gospels, the world was not okay with Christ. We have to ask ourselves this, in what way have we shown contempt for the Jesus revealed in Scripture? How have we shown contempt for our Savior? by our words, by our responses, by our actions, by our apologies for Christ. I'll apologize for my behavior. It's oftentimes obnoxious, and I'll admit to that, but I don't need to apologize for my Savior's behavior at all. The people of Nazareth were consumed with the inconsequential details of his life. They were caught up in what they knew about him since he was a little boy. Well, I've known him. Now he never sinned, recognize that, he never sinned, he never did anything wrong. That's a testimony he had, but they wanted to get caught up in inconsequential details. Verse four says this, but Jesus said unto them, a prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, which again is a quote of Old Testament scripture, and among his own kin and in his own house. You see, another way to make Jesus commonplace is to just be familiar and forget his divinity. Just be familiar and forget His divinity. Here we find exposed our own United States traditional Christianity. We're so familiar with being a Christian nation. Many of our traditions that are Christian, our holidays are Christian, and I'm not sad about that. I am thrilled about that. I love the fact that I live in a nation that can trace its founding to biblical principles, yet that doesn't in any way redeem me individually. The danger is, so here's the blessings of something, the amazing blessings of seeing it. The danger is we start viewing our upbringing, our citizenship, our association with church, and think that that suddenly makes us a true believer. We know about Jesus, and we treat it like the most common thing on earth. Look, even in our own culture, there's a casualness about Christ that permeates even lost people's wording and expressions. People don't even realize how often they quote scripture and some of the little cliche statements they make. I've read books on it, 50, 60, there's tons of things you say and you think that are linked to scripture. And so we have a tendency to be very familiar with Jesus and we make him very commonplace because we forget his divinity. One writer notes this, we must never let our growing familiarity rob us of the dazzling wonder and demands of our faith. Being a Christian is more than being a citizen of a country. It's going to call on you to act in ways that are beyond the call of your nation. Nazareth had concluded that Jesus was nothing special. They knew Jesus too well as a boy and young man from their own town. And so they say this, there's no way he's the real Savior, the true Messiah. He's just a passing fad, is how they're looking at it. Just another one of those revolutionaries. How do we apply that in our own time and place? Here we are in Culpeper. Let's narrow it down from country to right here in Culpeper, Orange, Madison, where we're all from. He represents our family and our country heritage. That's what it is. That's being familiar. And again, I am pleased with my heritage. I love being able to be here and preaching. There's a lot of places in the world where this is not possible. And I am grateful for the liberties I have, and I think they're worth fighting for. But the reality is, if that's where your faith ends, it is not a full or real faith. Jesus is not our buddy, our homeboy, or our soulmate. He's not your genie in the Bible prepared to grant your every whim. He is your Lord and creator, sustainer and Savior. You see, when you become really familiar with him and forget his divinity, you forget verses like Colossians 1, I think it's 16 Hebrews 1, 3, and 4 that speaks that He is sustaining this world right now, that if He takes His hands off this world, there's no science out there that can stop it from spinning out of control. The fact that you're breathing right now is in the hands of Jesus Christ. And we want to make Him our buddy And our soul may, this is what Nazareth is doing, and we're forgetting his divinity, the fact that he holds this world in his hands. And you can walk out of here and you can say, Kenny's nuts. He doesn't know what he's talking about. It doesn't change the fact that he sustains your breathing, whether you think so or not. And I can say this with utmost certainty, there's gonna come a time when you're gonna know that he sustained your breathing and that you will bow your knee to him. You'll know it. Because your, quote unquote, ignorance of the truth or on purpose rejection of truth doesn't change the reality of truth. You can say I don't believe in gravity, but gravity's still gonna make things drop to the ground. You can deny him like Nazareth did and it's not going to change who he is. The fact is, we become so familiar that we forget who he really is, and we make broad assumptions about eternity and our rights to heaven, assumptions that are not built on the truth of Scripture. We become very familiar. We need to ask ourself this, though. What assumptions do we make about Jesus? What are you assuming about your Savior? Sadly, we assume we know him best, we claim him as our mascot, and yet are the ones that know him the least. One writer, Atkins, asked this, have we become so familiar with him, having been raised in church all our lives, that his words no longer convict, his miracles no longer astonish, and his death on the cross no longer strikes the chord of amazing grace? Have we become so familiar, so casual, so presumptuous, about who we are, our rights, and what we can say to God when we get to heaven, that we have lost sight that He is our Lord and Creator, our Savior and Sustainer, that we are not going to walk into heaven and tell Him how it is. In all honesty, all you're going to do is bow the knee, as you should do. Added all that, the hearts of the people were so hardened that even miracles, the ones that everybody is talking about and is revolutionizing the overall health and communities. Capernaum is massively changed because Christ was there doing miracles. The ruler of the synagogue didn't wonder if he could heal his daughter. He knew he could. He had faith in that and he had massive testimony to point to that. Life was different for people. And that amazing revolutionary miracles cannot nor should have been done there in Nazareth. Why? The Nazarites close out making Jesus commonplace with extremely cold hearts. And what I mean by a cold heart is it's a hard heart. It's something that says, I won't be convicted. I won't be changed. I will not listen. It doesn't matter to me what you're saying, what you're doing. I don't care how much truth comes at me. I've made up my mind and I'm gonna do what I want. And the fact is, we do that. We see that unfold in people because we'll just say, well, I don't care what you think or believe. I believe this and this is what I think is truth. And we will stand on what we think is truth even though God has revealed to us what really is truth. And we will be stubborn and we think that we're being independent and all we're being is duped by Satan in this world. But they decided to be extremely cold. So if you want the final lesson on how to make Jesus common, just be cold. Just be cold and miss the miraculous. Verse five, and he could there do no mighty work. Not that he was incapable of, but he's not gonna do miracles just for the sake of doing miracles. Save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk and healed them. And I love that phrase in there because you see the compassion of Christ in the midst of extreme hardheartedness, he still heals some people because he is a loving God. and we see massive compassion woven into a reality. You wanna make Jesus common? You wanna make him ordinary? You wanna not let him affect your life much at all? Just be cold and miss the miraculous. You see, he didn't perform a wide range of miracles at home because the point of the miracles was to attest to the truth and reveal who he was. Who is he? God, the Messiah. He did miracles to draw sinners to himself. Miracles would have been a mute point in such an unbelieving atmosphere. Here's my simple action step or question. Let's examine ourselves. In what way have we removed any reason for God's miraculous working in and through our lives? How have you made sure that you don't need Jesus or any miracle in your life? How self-assured have you become? How have you taken care of everything in your life and become so consumed with your ability that you don't need a miracle in your life at all? Because that's what rejecting Christ looks like in our society. Kenny, you may need a Savior, but I don't. I'll pull myself up. I'll do it myself. God better be happy with what I do. Because I've done enough for them, really. Based on whose standard? Your standard, wow. The whole world is built on your standard. Now how arrogant do you have to be to think that? You have to think very highly of yourself. You have to be very cold to get to that point. Because the fact is, your life needs a miracle. Every person who gets saved is a miracle. Because the reality is this, I didn't deserve salvation at all. There is no reason for God to save me. There's nothing about me that is redemptive except for his love for me and his gift on the cross for me. And see, when we don't see the miracle of salvation, we are cold and hard. And we say to God, I don't need you working in and through my life. As a believer, in what way have you spurned the opportunity for him to express his deity and purpose through your life? How have I made it impossible for God to show others who he is? How have I become cold and made it impossible for the warmth of Christ to be seen in the world around me? Now the close of this scene is amazing. Mark 6, 6 says this, and he, speaking of Jesus, marveled because of their unbelief, and he went around about villages teaching, and that last part is he left. He marveled at their unbelief in Nazareth, and then he left, and he never came back. Jesus, it says, was shocked by their unbelief, which was the cold-hearted rejection of obvious truth and redemption. And by the way, you live in the United States, you're sitting here, if you're watching this on livestream, and you don't believe in Jesus Christ for forgiveness of sins, you are a cold-hearted rejection of obvious truth and redemption. You sit in the United States with opportunity, massive opportunity, that the world before us didn't have to hear truth. Their faithlessness and open hostility affected him to the core of his being. And sadly, the outcome for Nazareth was horrible and forever tragic. He never went back there. But ask yourself this question, in what way would you amaze Jesus? It's interesting, Luke speaks of another time Jesus was amazed or marveled. There's only two occurrences in the gospel story, but it was for the opposite reason. Here, a Roman centurion petitions Jesus to come to his house to heal his servant. Jesus is on his way to the house, and that centurion sends people to Jesus as, hey, I'm not worthy for you to walk in my house, but if you just say the word right here, my servant's healed. In other words, I'm not relying on your magic touch, your magic words, your magic presence. I believe in you and I know there's power in what you say. And what's interesting, Luke 7, 9 states about this centurion, when Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him. Now, if you go to Mark 6, 6, it says, he marveled because of their unbelief. Here he marveled at him, Luke 7, 9, and turned him about and said unto the people that followed him, I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And that was a pretty huge reprimand to all of Israel. He says, the nation that should have the most faith, I haven't found faith like this except for in a Roman who you hate. who represents the Roman army, which you despise, and the dominion that Rome brings. This guy right here has more faith than anyone I've ever seen in Israel. There, Jesus was amazed at the amount of faith the centurion had in him. The centurion was not consumed with his power or his right to call on Christ. He just said, if you say the word, My servant is healed. I understand this idea of authority very well. We do not understand that idea of authority. We refuse to see the authority of God in our lives. That's why we say things like, God better do this for me, and God will listen to me when I'm in heaven, because you've missed the idea of who's in charge. And just as a little cliff note bonus, it's not you. Not you, it's him. But this centurion who was powerful, who was influential, who has every right to feel confident and arrogant, recognized the authority of Christ and displayed a faith that made Jesus marvel. So expressing a human emotion there. Here, Jesus was amazed by the utter absence of faith. Which I go back to my question, how are you amazing Jesus? Because it's either going to be a strong faith or the complete lack thereof. How do you amaze Jesus? Or another question, would we be known for our cold-hearted unbelief? Hugh notes this, it's one of the commentators I read, unbelief freezes the exercise of God's power. It robs the church of its power. As a church, we can add new programs until we don't have enough hours in the day to administrate them or enough bulletin inserts to advertise them. But without a believing expectancy in Christ and his power, nothing will come of it. We can have the most polished Facebook videos. We can have everything lined up. You could walk in here and we could have a vacation Bible school that blows your mind. And we can have droves of people walking in. And the reality is this, without the power of Christ, we've got nothing. Hebrews 11, six states, but without faith it is impossible to please him for he that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. That's a verse I use whenever I'm talking to anyone talking about faith. Any searcher, any seeker, I go to that verse because the reality is without faith it is impossible to please him. We know that part. For he that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. So how do they reject Jesus in the face of all this evidence? How in the world does Nazareth see Jesus walk in, he's done miracles, he's teaching, here's what's amazing, they got offended because he's a rabbi and shouldn't be, which is only evidence that it was from God because he didn't have the training of a rabbi. So here's Jesus walking in, teaching beyond any wisdom they've ever seen. And how in the world do they miss that evidence? Or to put it more personal, how do we miss it? Because we have overwhelming evidence of Christ. Well, it's really easy. Just make him commonplace. Make him commonplace. Embrace your blinding unbelief. Think about this for a second. Look at your life. How have you embraced your unbelief? And what do I mean by that? You revel in it. You're proud of it. It's kind of how you push back to anyone that may speak to you of believing, where you push back. Whatever you may say, and you can have a thousand different answers. Look, there's been philosophers through the ages, and I've had the, I quote, opportunity to read a couple of them. All their logic falls apart. All of them have a different spin or a different twist, and some of them are very crafty individuals with really pithy statements. Their end result is, when they are facing their deathbed, and I have a quote of a bunch of them, what they said when they were dying, and it is a dark, depressing statement, because they have no confidence, and they have no idea, except they are crushed by fear. I've shared this before, Hugo Chavez, I watch Spanish news working on my Spanish, and the most creepy thing I've ever seen in my life, they filmed his last words that he said in Spanish, and it's haunting, because there was a man who had no peace at all. He had rejected his faith, Catholicism, had embraced it a ton in the last couple years, and there was no peace. He was the scaredest little kid, quote-unquote, in that moment. And it's been years, and it is the most haunting thing I've ever heard on TV. Watching someone go that way, why and how did he do it? By embracing his blinding unbelief. Just be astonished and ignore the obvious. Just be embarrassed and fixate on the irrelevant. Just be familiar and forget His divinity. Just be cold and miss the miraculous. When you consider Jesus, are you only astonished? Are you just offended? Are you clearly guilty of unbelief? When you think about Jesus, is He just astonishing? Does he just offend you? And are you clearly guilty of unbelief? Let's pray together. Father, thank you for this opportunity we have to gather together to study your word. And in a very sad story, we see what unbelief can do, what making Jesus commonplace can work in a life and in a community. And what we see is tragic and horrible. Overwhelming evidence that He is the Messiah, that He is their Savior they've been longing for, something they would know based on Scripture and the pointing that Daniel had, this is the Messiah who would be coming at this time. There was an expectancy of Him during those ages, yet they reject the Messiah even though He grew up in their town because they made Him commonplace. They embrace their blinding unbelief. I ask, Lord, as we close out our service, that this will affect people in two different ways. If they don't know Christ as their Savior, if they are the town of Nazareth, blinding unbelief, throwing out responses to any faith conviction they feel or see or hear, explaining away the obvious, forgetting your divinity. I hope that they're confronted with the reality that you are Lord and Savior, that you are the creator and sustainer, that they would let go of their pride, because that is what is cropped up in their heart and their mind, And they would recognize that they need you. They were created to need you. And that they would not have peace in their mind about the decisions and direction of their life, but instead would be driven to ask, to seek, to know you personally as their Savior. And for those of us that know you as Savior yet treat you as common. We have neglected the amazing blessings you have given to us. We have allowed our own life to inhibit your message, the expression of your deity through us, I hope that we'll be convicted this morning. That as we look at the town of Nazareth, it would wake us up to realizing that you are the Messiah and that our life is to be dedicated to you. That we're called to let your light shine through our life. That when people see us, they glorify you. Help us to make changes, help us to be convicted, And again, not have peace to walk out and just be like we were. In your precious and holy name, amen.