Simply teaching the Bible, simply

This study, taught by pastor Barry Forder, was recorded at our Sunday morning family service on 17th June 2018.

As we move into Mark chapter 6 we see Jesus return to his boyhood home – Nazareth.

From what we glean from Psalm 69 Jesus’ childhood was far from easy! The townsfolk of Nazareth had made Jesus the object of their scorn; he had become the ‘song of the drunkards’. Maybe it was because Jesus was different? Maybe because he wouldn’t go along with the typical childhood schemes and plotting that may seem harmless enough to you and I, but would not and could not be found in the Son of God. Maybe it was because of the rumors that no-doubt still abounded about Jesus being born out of wed-lock? Whatever the reasons, Nazareth had been a cruel place to grow up.

But it had not got better as Jesus reached adulthood. Luke records for us that as the start of Jesus’ ministry, as He returned from the temptation in the wilderness, He entered into the synagogue in Nazareth one Sabbath day and stood up to read. In all probability, He would have been passed the scroll with the reading for that Sabbath day; but it ‘just so happened’ that on that particular day the reading was from the scroll of Isaiah, so Jesus read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears”. Luke 4:18-21.

This was too much for them to take! This boy who had grown up in their town, working in his ‘dad’s’ carpenters shop, was daring to claim that He had been sent by God to deliver and heal – in a word, He was claiming to be their Messiah!

They did not stand for it and Luke records who they took Jesus up to the top of the steep hill overlooking the Jezreel Valley and tried to push Him off! Jesus simply walked through the midst of the crowd, as if untouchable – and headed up to Capernaum.

Well, now He was back, and once again taught in the Synagogue on the Sabbath, and once again the townsfolk of Nazareth were nonplussed! Sadly too many souls throughout the ages have missed their opportunity to embrace Jesus because of their preconceived ideas of how their ‘saviour’ will look or when he will appear. But Jesus comes to us on His terms, we have the choice to accept Him and fall at His feet, or to harden our hearts and what Him go.

“Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts” Heb 4:7
The stir that Jesus caused prompted some to think the prophecy in Malachi about Elijah returning had been fulfilled, others, that Moses had returned. Herod – probably from a deep sense of guilt after putting John the Baptist to death – feared that John had come back to life to haunt him!