Sermon Tone Analysis

I want to focus on the last sentence of verse 3 “and they took offense at him” and hyper focus on the “offense”.

Offense is the Greek word skandalon, from which we get our word scandal.

It says they were scandalized by him.

What does that mean?

During a sabbatical in Cambridge, England, my wife and I had occasion to take a taxi the evening before national elections, and our taxi driver volunteered his unsolicited political views.

He said that though he did not like Margaret Thatcher, he was going to vote for her because he respected her.

Then he added, “Even though I can’t stand her middle-class accent!”

Our cabbie, who certainly did not speak Oxbridge English, disdained Margaret Thatcher for her common accent—it betrayed her origin as a green grocer’s daughter.

There are people who find it personally offensive if someone who was one of them yesterday should have become much more today.

Montaigne, the famous French philosopher, politician, and writer, said that at home he was considered just a scribbling country proprietor, in the neighboring town a man of recognized business ability, and farther away a noted author.

The greater the distance away, the greater he became.

There may be a reason familiarity breeds contempt: when you get close to others, you see their inconsistencies, foibles, and contradictions.

But not so with Jesus.

His ethos was perfect.

The better people knew him, the more they experienced a growing respect.

This was (and is) always true with Jesus.

This jealous, rung-dropping attitude toward Jesus by his hometown was simply “part of humanity’s contempt for itself.”5

As a result of their contempt, “they took offense at him.”

Knowing his claims, they were faced with the great trilemma of C. S. Lewis: he was either the Lord, a lunatic, or a liar.

They chose liar and a demonized one at that.

We must never let our growing familiarty rob us of the dazzling wonder and demands of our faith.

The Scriptures reveal that Jesus was amazed both by faith and unbelief.

In one case he was amazed at the great faith of the Gentile Roman soldier, the centurion who urged Jesus to just say the word and his servant would be healed.

“When Jesus heard this, he was astonished and said to those following him, ‘I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith’” ().

How marvelous it is to amaze God with the extent of one’s faith!

But here Christ is astounded at his own people’s lack of faith.

How terrifying it is to amaze God with one’s unbelief!

I know some people like that.

They have seen the power of God in others’ lives—they have seen it in their spouses’s life and in family members—and they just “blow it off!”

Everything is neatly psychologized and rationalized.

Jesus’ personal witness through his Body, the Church, is despised.

What darkness—to have made such a cavalier rejection of Christ!

Why is this so terrifying?

Because such disbelief ties Christ’s hands, so to speak, so that healing power, miracles, and grace cease to come.

“He could not do any miracles there” (v.

5).

Unbelief hinders God’s power.

Let me make it clear: Jesus could not do miracles because he would not.

Omnipotence is not omnipotence if it is bound by anything but its own will.

Jesus was morally compelled not to show his power.

Matthew makes this clear: “And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith” (13:58).

Unbelief freezes the exercise of God’s power.

I have experienced this as a preacher.

I have sometimes preached sermons which I sensed were used by God, and at other times the hearers were ice sculptures.

The eminent Scottish preacher A. J. Gossip once had the more famous Scottish divine Alexander Whyte ask him why he wasn’t at the evening service as usual.

Gossip replied that he was preaching to a certain congregation.

“And how did you get on?”

asked Whyte.

“I found it very cold,” answered Gossip.

“Cold,” cried Whyte, “cold—I preached there two years ago and I have not got the chill out of my bones yet.”6

Unbelief robs the Church of its power.

We can add new programs until we do not 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.

“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” ().

If we want to please God, to know his pleasure and power, we must believe that the God revealed in the Old and New Testaments exists and that he acts equitably in behalf of his children.

Do you believe this?

Christ was amazed by faith as well as the lack of it.

What about us amazes him?

The disciples, which now included the Twelve, sat transfixed in Nazareth’s synagogue as they watched the tragic exchange between Jesus and the hometown crowd.

They learned some important things.

They had seen his astounding displays of power, such as calming the sea.

But now they saw that there were situations in which “He could not do any miracles”—times when faith was subverted.

To serve him they must believe.

They also learned that it would not be easy out there.7 If Christ found it hard to work, how much more would they?

With these lessons in place, Jesus sent them out to the unbelieving world.

“Jesus went out from there,” meaning Capernaum where He had been ministering in the prior chapter; we saw that.

“He went out from there and came in to His hometown;” – that would be Nazareth – “and His disciples followed Him.

When the Sabbath came, He began to teach in the synagogue; and the many listeners were astonished, saying, ‘Where did this man get these things, and what is this wisdom given to Him, and such miracles as these performed by His hands?

Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon?

Are not His sisters here with us?’

And they took offense at Him. Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honor except in His hometown and among His own relatives and in His own household.

And He could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them.

And He wondered at their unbelief.”

The Bible doesn’t say that Jesus wondered, or was astonished, or was amazed, except for two times: here, and on an occasion when He was amazed at the faith of a centurion – as recorded both by Matthew and Luke.

The Bible tells us the people were constantly amazed at Him.

They were astonished at Him.

But only those two times was He amazed at them.

Once with the centurion He was amazed at his faith.

Here, He is amazed at the unbelief in His own hometown.

For example, Eve exercised unbelief in the Word of God and brought the entire human race down into a curse and eternal judgment.

In the days of Noah, Noah was a preacher of righteousness warning the world.

The world would not believe, and the world of unbelievers brought down a flood upon their own heads that drowned all of humanity with the exception of Noah and his three sons and their wives and his own wife.

Unbelief caused the destruction of the whole human race and all creatures and all life living on the earth.

It was unbelief on the part of Israel in the wilderness that caused them to die there before ever entering into the Promised Land.

And the story of Israel’s ongoing unbelief even after they entered the land of Canaan is clear for all to read in the Old Testament.

They were judged again and again by God for their apostasy and their unbelief.

Being a little more individual and looking at the power of unbelief, we remember Aaron’s unbelief led to three thousand people being slaughtered.

We remember that Moses’ unbelief kept him out of the Promised Land.

We remember that Achan’s unbelief, resulting in his disobedience, brought about the execution of himself and his entire family.

You might remember Sennacherib’s unbelief, the Gentile king, led to his assassination by his own sons after an angel of the Lord had massacred 185,000 of his troops.

And, of course, then there is the unbelief of Judas, which led to his suicide and his everlasting punishment.

The Pharisees and the scribes were unbelievers to the very end with few exceptions.

And like all other unbelievers, their unbelief resulted in them dying in their sins, and forfeiting heaven, and gaining hell.

The New Testament has a lot to say about believing.

It has a lot to say about faith.

But it has an awful lot to say equally about unbelief.

In the familiar words of , “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

For God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.

He who believes in Him is not judged, but he who does not believe is judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

It was unbelief that brought a curse on all of humanity.

It was unbelief that broke up the fountains of the deep, and brought down the rain from heaven, and drowned the entire human race.