"Rejected!" Matthew 13:53-58 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Matthew chapter 13, Matthew chapter 13, verse 53 is where we'll begin this this morning.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention Matthew 13:53

I'm going to read from verse 53 to the end of the chapter, and this will conclude our time in Matthew's 13th chapter.

We have been in this chapter for a while now, and it's been an encouragement to my heart.

So we say goodbye to it this morning.

Matthew 13, verse 53.

Matthew 13:53

When Jesus had finished these parables, he went away from there.

And coming to his hometown, he taught them in their synagogue.

So they were astonished and said, Where did this man get his wisdom and these mighty works?

Isn't this the carpenter's son?

Isn't his mother called Mary?

And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?

Are not all his sisters with us?

Where then did this man get all these things?

They took offense at him.

And Jesus said to them, A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.

He did not do mighty works there because of their unbelief.

This is the word of God, and I pray he would seal it in your hearts.

Unbelief is indeed the world's oldest sin.

God made the world perfect and sinless, but capable of change, and change did indeed happen, and change happened through unbelief.

From the moment Satan slithered his way into the garden and tempted Eve, unbelief came with him.

Unbelief became the Achilles' heel of humanity.

Adam and Eve began to entertain the devil's question.

If you recall, it was, did God really say?

And from the moment that question escaped his serpentine lips, sin had been embedded in mankind's heart.

The battle over sin and holiness was really lost before the fruit was picked.

The moment Adam and Eve entertained the words, did God really say the seed of unbelief became rooted in their heart?

The fall didn't happen at the moment of consumption, but at the moment of contemplation, when they begin to question if God's words were true.

It was through doubting God's word that unbelief entered the world.

And unbelief spread like a cancer from there.

Cain refused to believe God when God told him to offer a sacrifice.

He said, the sin offering is waiting there for you to master it, and he refused, instead slaying his brother Abel.

Sin scattered through the world with unbelief.

Unbelief is what drove Lemek to be a murderer and a polygamist.

Lemmech acted as if God didn't know, and Lemmech did not believe that God would care.

Unbelief kept people off of the ark.

Unbelief spread through Noah's kids as they scattered.

Unbelief was rooted in the hearts of mankind.

God said, Fill the earth, and instead they built up at the Tower of Babel, not believing God would resist sending another flood to destroy them.

The sin of unbelief is, of course, heard in Sarah's mocking laugh towards God.

The sin of unbelief is commemorated in Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt because she refused to believe both the angels and Lot.

She did not believe that God was righteous and knew how to rescue those who placed their faith in him.

When you jump to the New Testament, you see unbelief all over the pages of scripture there.

Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night.

Of course, through his unbelief, he harbored a question about God and about Christ and about salvation in his heart.

He didn't articulate it out loud.

Instead, he flattered Jesus, saying, We know you've come from God, of course.

But remember, John says that Jesus did not entrust himself to Nicodemus because he knew what was in his heart.

In fact, Jesus rebukes Nicodemus and says, You're a teacher of Israel and you don't understand these things.

If you don't, remember what he says, believe me when I tell you about things on earth.

How will you believe me when I tell you about things in heaven?

Nicodemus' sin was a sin of unbelief.

By unbelief, nations have been destroyed, families have been ripped apart.

By unbelief, sin is entertained, worldliness is courted, and the devil is appeased.

And this is why John 3, verse 18 says, He who does not believe stands condemned before God already for refusing to believe in God's only begotten Son.

John 3:18

You've perhaps heard it said or asked what will happen to the person who is, you know, a good person and leads a good moral life.

It's just that they don't believe in Jesus.

But do you understand that unbelief is a moral issue?

It is a moral issue.

There is no true concept of somebody who is a good person absent belief.

And let me reason it to you this way: if the greatest command is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, it follows that the greatest sin is failure to do that.

Failure to believe in the Son of God whom he sent.

This is why Revelation 21, verse 8, says that no unbelieving person will enter heaven.

Revelation 21:8

When people die, the books of works are opened in front of them, and they'll be held accountable for all the works they did.

But understand that unbelief is sort of the catch-all category there.

Yes, you're accountable and sent to hell for your works that you've done.

But behind all of those works is operating the heart of unbelief.

And that dynamic is on full display in the passage we just read this morning.

Jesus goes to Nazareth, people who know him and is met with people who know of his miracles, know of his signs, are amazed by his teaching, and yet have recalcitrant hard and unbelieving hearts.

It actually is amazing what Jesus finds in Nazareth.

In fact, that's the word that Mark uses in his gospel account of this similar encounter here in Nazareth.

Jesus, in a sense, was amazed at their unbelief.

An outline that will guide us this morning is the amazing faith of unbelief because we trace what's really operating the hearts of those in Nazareth.

And those, this happened so long ago, the crux of the heart of the unbeliever has not essentially changed.

You're going to see the same dynamics that play in the hearts of those in Nazareth are at play in the hearts today of people.

Our culture has changed, our world has changed, our economics and education have changed, but unbelief has not changed.

In a sense, you could argue it's even become less sophisticated than that of the Jewish leaders here in Nazareth on this day.

Now, Matthew 13, really Matthew 12 and 13 together are bracketed with these two encounters.

Matthew 12, Jesus is at the synagogue in Capernaum.

Capernaum is where he had lived.

It's where his ministry was headquartered.

For a couple years he spent in Capernaum.

That's where Peter's family was.

He lived with Peter's mother-in-law.

That's Capernaum.

And Matthew 12, he's in the synagogue in Capernaum, and he heals the man with the withered hands, and the Jewish leaders decide they're going to put him to death.

Because, John records in his gospel, that Jesus, though being a man, kept making himself out to be equal to God.

In fact, in Matthew 12, he declares himself to be the Lord of the Sabbath, and that's what did it.

He declared himself to be God.

The Sabbath exists to point people to God, and Jesus declared that he was the Lord of the Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders decided they were going to kill him.

That's the start of Matthew 12.

Jesus withdraws from there, goes into the countryside, because he's not his time to die yet, teaching and healing and preaching.

The crowds grow.

They don't stay in the synagogue.

They go out to the wilderness with him.

They are astonished at his teaching.

The crowds keep growing.

And yet their belief doesn't.

Recall that they give a summary verdict on his life.

They attribute his works to that of the devil.

They look at all that he's doing and they say it could be the devil.

And Jesus tells them listen, the only way to be saved, the only way to go to heaven, to be with the Father when you die is if you come through the Son.

And the only way to come through the Son is to be drawn by the Spirit.

And so if you reject the work of the Spirit, you're committing blasphemy against the Spirit of God, and there is no hope of salvation.

There's one door to heaven, and that door is through the Son.

And the Spirit is the key that opens it.

And if you attribute this work of the Spirit to the work of the devil, it's not just that you've locked the door, you've barred it shut and burned the house down.

That's what he tells them.

And yet the crowd still grows.

And so Jesus pushes himself off in the boat to give space and begins teaching from the boat.

That's the parables we've looked at over the last several months.

Seven parables he teaches them to prepare them to think about heaven and think about the role of the church on the earth.

He teaches in such a way the disciples are encouraged, but the crowds are blinded to the truth.

They don't understand it.

From this, Jesus goes back on shore and walks to Nazareth.

It would take a day, perhaps, to walk to Nazareth.

It's not that far.

If Jesus was off on a boat outside of Capernaum, maybe towards Magdala, it takes about, I don't know, 30 minutes, 45 minutes to drive that today.

It's not incredibly far.

Nazareth is up on a hill overlooking the whole valley of Armageddon.

If you've been to Israel, you can see Nazareth.

Now it's growing down the side of the hill, but in Jesus' lifetime, it hadn't, it was up on top of the hill.

It's a town of maybe 500 people, 800 people, archaeologists tell us at the life of Christ, a very, very small place.

Now it's, you know, a rather large city, but back then it was just less than a thousand people.

Jesus heads there from Nazar from Capernaum, leaving the Sea of Galilee, makes his way winding up the hill.

The crowd, in a sense, dissipates.

They're not going to Nazareth.

And he walks into Nazareth with just himself and his disciples.

He fits into a synagogue there.

The synagogues are rather small, and that's where their unbelief is on display.

I'll structure our time this morning through this the amazing faith of unbelief.

First, they're dazzled by the divine.

He went into his hometown.

He taught them there in their synagogue.

And this would be a normal thing where different people can come into synagogues and teach.

Jesus was known as a rabbi.

It wouldn't be unusual for him to show up in a synagogue and be invited to teach, to have the scroll and to open it and read it as he did in Luke's gospel.

This is not that visit.

This is a second visit to Nazareth.

But he takes up his position there.

He's obviously welcome to do that.

There might even be more than one teaching on a specific Sabbath.

He teaches them.

They've never had a teaching like this.

They were astonished, it says in verse 54.

They were amazed.

The word astonished is actually a pretty fun Greek word.

It's not the normal word for amazed.

It's used all over Mark's gospel, for example.

This is a different word.

Astonished.

It's the literal word for being blasted.

But it's done in the passive.

So they were blasted.

And then it has this intensive preposition on the front side of it.

So they were super blasted.

You could say it like this way in English.

They were blown away.

The words of Jesus had so impacted them, it rocked their world, it blasted them.

They were astonished, their mouths were open.

And yet they didn't believe.

Now Jesus taught as one with authority.

That's what stood out.

Their teachers, you know, rambled on and on.

But Jesus taught with authority.

And you saw this earlier in Matthew's gospel after the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 5, 6, and 7, it ends a very convicting sermon.

You don't read the Sermon on the Mount, by the way, and go, oh, I just feel lovely about life.

You read the Sermon on the Mount and you're undone.

You're convicted by your sin.

Jesus ends it, and the crowd says, We've never seen someone teach with such authority.

He drove them to the gospel.

He's teaching about what he knows.

He is the Lord, and so he's driving them to faith in himself, and they were astonished.

So here, the same effect, only it doesn't produce faith.

They were astonished, but hardened.

And then you see the same effect today in people.

There are so many people that recognize the authority of Jesus' teaching.

They recognize the power or the insight of his teaching.

I mean, can you even count how many times you've heard somebody say, I'm not a Christian, I don't believe in Jesus, but he was a good teacher.

He was a the he had a paradigm of ethics and virtue that has transformed the world to, oh, I love, I love Jesus and his teaching, just not his followers, that kind of language.

That's that's these people.

They're so dazzled by his teaching.

Oh man, he had such insight and such authority and such power.

When he taught about ethics and virtue and holiness, and man, that really resonated with me.

I'm not gonna give my life to him.

They're dazzled by the teaching, they esteem the teaching.

They don't give their hearts to him.

Second.

You see, they're dismayed by the daily.

They're dismayed by the daily.

And if you think I'm working too hard on my outline now, just wait.

They said, where did he get this wisdom, mighty works?

Isn't it the carpenter's son?

A carpenter is the word for you know making big things.

It's rendered carpenter here because I'm sure they made chairs and you know houses, some houses maybe out of wood.

But it's also the word for mason.

They didn't have two different words in Hebrew for this.

Mason is somebody who makes like a stone fence, or they have these terraced vineyards.

So you'd build a retaining wall, so to speak.

And so perhaps uh Joseph was a mason or perhaps he was a carpenter.

Likely owing to the fact that they use the same word, it was probably the same person who did both.

You know, a handyman would be our word that we use it.

It's the same, the same guy who's gonna build you a railing on your deck in the backyard, and he he might also mow your grass and build your shed and build your fence.

You you have a handyman maybe on speed dial, some of you.

That's this person.

That's this word.

It's not an esteemed physician.

I know this is more of an agrarian society, but even so, in an agrarian society, you esteem the farmers and you esteem the vineyard owners or the vineyard workers, might be more day laborers, but you esteem the teachers and the doctors.

They had doctors, of course.

There's all kinds of career paths available to people, and yet Joseph, who's unnamed here, but Joseph, Jesus' father, worked with his hands.

He built fences and made chairs.

That's what he did.

And so the idea here is that it's a low job.

That's how they can't you hear that in their words?

We sometimes overlook that because we as Christians esteem the carpenter.

You know, we read Josh McDowell's more than a carpenter kind of thing and lost the irony of the title.

You know, it's meant to be diminutive.

That's what they're saying here, aren't they?

How can this guy is articulate, but isn't he the carpenter's son?

They don't mean that, like, and we love carpenters, don't get us wrong.

You know, yeah, this guy who's who's preaching, he has power and insight, but wasn't he, isn't he like a day laborer at the Home Depot parking lot?

Like that's the attitude of this.

Like, you can't really listen to what he says because he's just he works with his hands.

It's meant to be diminishing, it's low.

And they know him, of course.

Jesus grew up here.

He grew up in this town.

Like I said, there's less than a thousand people in this town.

My high school, by the way, where I went to high school, had 3,000 students at the high school.

Nazareth is smaller than that.

And I may not have known every student in my high school, but I certainly would have recognized them.

And if somebody stood out, I would have known who they were.

Imagine how well people know each other in Nazareth.

Jesus spent much of his life there, decades there.

They know his mother, Mary.

Now Joseph isn't named.

I mean, some commentators surmise maybe Joseph had died, and that's why he's not named, which makes sense.

And if he died, Mary clearly remarried here, and there's other children involved.

Isn't his mother called Mary?

Perhaps she's named because she's alive as opposed to Joseph, but you know, that's a that's a guess.

Maybe both of them are still alive, but seems likely Joseph could have gone by now.

His mother's called Mary, and by the way, we know his brothers, James and Joseph, Simon and Judas.

Also, verse 56, all of his sisters.

Like we know him.

There's nothing special about this guy.

That's the way it comes across.

People like to make up all kinds of fanciful things about Jesus' life.

There's the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas that you know describes Jesus playing with a bird with some of his friends, a dove, and I forget if they like kill the dove with a slingshot or something like that, and then Jesus resurrects the dove, and everybody's like, oh.

But there's nothing remarkable about Jesus' childhood.

Those stories aren't true.

Eastern religions say that between ages you know 12 and 30, Jesus must have traveled to India and seen the world.

And there's even stories in the Eastern religions about all the miracles Jesus did when he was in India as a 20-something.

Not true.

Jesus didn't travel the world, he didn't resurrect doves, he didn't do anything.

He was a very normal person.

That's the point of this objection.

He was so normal that now they're listening to him preach and they think that's he's the carpenter's son.

This is absurd.

Sometimes I've even joked before, and you perhaps you've heard me make this joke that it would have been hard to compete with Jesus as a carpenter in Nazareth because you're working all week on a chair and Jesus just says, chair.

You know, it messes up the supply and demand curve for sure.

You know, that's a that's a joke.

It's not true.

Jesus made chairs just like the other carpenters.

I mean, he worked with his hand, and that's obvious by this, because had he just said chair and made chairs, they wouldn't have had this conversation.

They would have said, oh, of course he does miracles.

Do you remember the time he made Fred's chair?

No, the point is Jesus' life was completely unremarkable.

So much so that they they won't believe in him because of it.

Even his brothers who grew up with him.

John 7, verse 5 says they wouldn't believe in him.

John 7:5

Earlier in Matthew, remember his family wanted him to come inside because they thought he was out of his mind.

They were not believing in him because he was so normal.

There's often a latent tendency to disdain the normal daily affairs of life as unspiritual.

And that can quickly give way to the idea, unless you're doing something huge for God, you're not being faithful.

But understand the pattern of Jesus Christ.

There is immense faithfulness in just daily living a Christian life.

This is what Paul tells the Thessalonians.

In 1 Thessalonians, he says, make it your ambition.

Now, think about how parents talk to kids.

Make it your ambition to what?

Walk on the moon, to be president, to make your ambition to what?

Paul tells the Thessalonians, make it your ambition to lead a quiet life.

Mind your own business and get a job where you work with your hands.

That's what Paul tells the Thessalonians.

You want to dream big?

Stay out of your neighbor's business, be quiet, and work for a living.

And you think, well, that's kind of low.

What about change the world?

Listen, in our world, that kind of life does change the world.

That kind of life stands out.

Like, you know who the Christian is on your street?

The person who leads a normal life, you know?

Like, oh wow, they're so crazy.

They like their kids and they walk their dog and they stay out of my business.

Those people must be saved.

I mean, that's the kind An idea.

And that's the pattern of Jesus' life.

Don't undervalue that.

That's what the perfect life looked like.

Jesus was minding his own business, working with his hands, fulfilling the law, doing everything the law commanded.

He was, of course, sinless, but he was also unnoticed.

And because of that, they refused to believe.

Third, they were distracted by deflections.

They were distracted by deflections.

It says in verse 57, they took offense at him.

They took offense at him.

Well, what are they offended at?

They were offended at how normal he was.

They were offended at what they they just listed.

I mean, this is an inspired account.

Matthew was there.

Matthew saw this and heard this.

What he was recording here is what he heard them saying.

They were saying, we're not going to follow him because we know his mom and we know his sisters and we know his brothers and we know who his dad was, and so we're not following him.

And you think, what does that have to do with anything?

You mean you're not going to follow him because you know his family?

That doesn't make any sense.

It is something so secondary or tertiary, it almost doesn't even merit a response.

Of course, it doesn't merit a response.

Jesus gives a, I don't know, it's an idiom, somewhat of a sarcastic response.

A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.

Jesus says, he takes an idiom.

The Jews had an idiom about a doctor that a doctor is never want for patients except in his own family.

In other words, and I don't think this is true in our culture, we don't have the same kind of idiom, but in the in the Jewish culture, you say a doctor could be a famous surgeon, but his kids won't go to him for medical advice.

I don't think we have that in our own culture, because the doctors I know, like everybody is going to them for free medical advice.

But the Jews had that idiom, and Jesus takes it and makes it about a prophet.

A prophet has honor everywhere.

He had thousands of people pressing against him yesterday on the Sea of Galilee, but today, in his own town, and nobody cares.

He's not honored in his own town.

They were offended at him.

Why were they offended?

Because of his family, that they knew them.

And it doesn't make any sense.

And you see the same things today.

I've shared this illustration with you before, but a couple years ago, I was speaking at a conference thing on adolescence, and one of the other speakers there was this professor from Harvard.

She's sort of well known.

And in between breaks there, I got to share the gospel with her.

She knew I was a pastor, and I got to explain the gospel to her.

And her response just I will remember the rest of my life.

She said, first of all, she had the Jesus is a good teacher response.

But then after that, she said, But I could never be an evangelical.

I hadn't used that word yet.

So that she had the vocab.

I could never be an evangelical because of Trump's immigration policies.

Now, this was about two years ago when President Biden was in office.

I was not in the weeds politically enough to know what exactly she was mentioning.

I assume the wall or something like that.

I don't know.

But it was just really astonishing to me.

So I said, kind of we need to take a step back here.

Like what I'm talking about is God comes from heaven to earth, takes on a human nature, leads a sinless life, dies a death on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin, rises from the dead on the third day, has the spirit inspire a book that tells us about it, and invites us to put our faith in it and have our sins forgiven.

Trump's immigration policy is not part of that discussion.

And maybe in my mind, or as I'm retelling it now, I'm coming across more confident than I probably was at the moment.

It was just amazing to me.

Can't you take a step back?

Who said anything about this is thousands of years earlier?

And her response to me was, yeah, but it reflects uh the ethics of the of evangelicals who voted for him, and you know, so I can't be part of that system.

I was like, it's not, it's not about the system, it's not about any of this.

It's about Jesus Christ having the power of God and offering salvation from sins and to come up with these weird distractions, how many animals could fit on the ark?

Come on.

You see this with the religious people as well.

It's not just the intellectuals.

You see this with religious people in this very verse.

You know, the heart of the gospel is that Jesus lived the perfect life and through grace you can place your faith in him, which is a gift of God, and be saved from your sins apart from works, so that no man can boast.

So the gospel depends on God who wills, not on man who runs, not on man who does things.

And what do other religions do with this?

You think, even what does, let me just be direct here, what does Catholicism do with these very verses we just read?

You know, they say, oh, Mary is a perpetual virgin, these children must have been from Joseph's other marriage, she never remarried, she didn't have sons, she didn't have daughters.

Why would they say that?

Because they're so strongly guarding this idea that salvation comes through faith energized by works.

Some of those works are not the works of Jesus, but are your works or Mary's works.

And Mary is the guardian of heaven, the queen of heaven, and it is through her you can avail yourself, you can pray the hail Mary, you can receive her grace and her works to you.

Through your faith, of course, energized by God's grace and all that, and you can and it starts to dilute the gospel and water it down.

You think, where is this coming from?

It's not coming from this passage.

Where is this coming from?

It's coming from holding on to a secondary or tertiary thing that you're using to deflect the force of the gospel.

Think of what other religions do with these kinds of verses, the fanciful stories they made up.

You know, it's worth asking yourself, what did what did Jesus' own brothers do with these verses?

I mean, two of them went on to write books that are given to us in the New Testament.

Judas is the one who wrote Jude, of course, because of the betrayal, they changed his name.

James writes the gospel the letter to James from James.

These people they believed in Jesus eventually.

You should get there as well.

Number four.

They were disillusioned by deity.

They took offense at him.

Verse 58, they he did not do many mighty works there.

Why not?

Because of their unbelief.

Just real briefly here, what what the charismatics and um health, wealth, faith healer kind of people do with this passage is poor.

They look at this passage and say, oh, this shows you that you have to have faith in order to receive a miracle.

And so if you're sick, so in that whole world system, remember that if you're sick, you can pray for healing, and you know, one of their apostles or faith healers can heal you, but only if you have enough faith, which is a you know something you can't nullify, because if you're not healed, that means the problem is you.

You don't have enough faith.

It's not that the dude's a charlatan, it's that you don't have enough faith.

And so they pointed this kind of verse to say, see, you need faith to be healed by Jesus and have your prayers answered, your prayers aren't answered, that's your lack of faith.

Well, that's not true.

And that's not what this verse is teaching either.

And it doesn't even logically work.

Think of all the miracles Jesus did.

Did they require faith on behalf of the people he healed?

No, they did not.

And I'll show I can prove it to you right now.

A category of Jesus' miracles is raising the dead.

The dead person did not have enough faith to be raised.

In fact, a lot of the miracles Jesus did were the people that were coming out to him to bring somebody else to him.

And that's what this passage is describing.

Think of the layman lowered to the roof.

Whose faith made that guy healed?

It was his friends that brought him there.

What about the blind man who is led to Jesus?

You know, what about the guy in John chapter 9, by the way?

John 9 · chapter mention

That blind man who comes to Jesus, he's healed, and then Jesus comes to him and says, Well, you believe in the Messiah, and then I was like, I don't know who that is.

He obviously wasn't healed because of his faith.

The kind of miracles that are in view here are the miracles where people are bringing the sick and the lame to Jesus for help.

In Nazareth, they can't be bothered.

They're not interested in this.

They believe he has the power.

They are astonished by his teaching, but they're disinterested in believing him.

They will not follow him because they feel like they know him.

He is too normal, and so they're not even bringing the sick to him.

The centurion in Capernaum, do you remember the centurion in Capernaum?

He ran out to meet Jesus outside the city, begging him to heal his servant.

Nothing like that's happening in Nazareth.

Everybody's just going their own way.

Mark's gospel says, so Jesus could only do a few miracles there, and that just makes me laugh every time I read it.

You know, how was your how was your day today?

Oh, it was kind of a boring day.

I only did a few miracles.

That was a boring day for Jesus and Nazareth.

He only did a few miracles.

This is a kind of a perfect passage for us on Palm Sunday here.

Palm Sunday is the most complicated of all the Christian uh celebrations because it's festive, right?

We have the kids up here with the palm branches and yay, team Jesus kind of thing.

Hosanna in the highest.

And yet you know that the crowd turns on him.

You know, Jesus, it wasn't for lack of evidence.

They had enough evidence.

They're coming, Jesus is coming to Jerusalem from Jericho where he healed the blind man.

Uh, everybody knew that he did these miracles.

After he walks down to the temple, he cleanses the temple.

He drives out the money changers from it, and the people were astonished by him.

Thousands and thousands of people show up for his teaching on Monday and on Tuesday, they try to trap him and he outsmarts them.

And on Wednesday, they've given up.

You know, Thursday comes around and it's just quiet.

As Jesus talking with his disciples as the widow flicks her coin into the money offering, the crowds are gone.

It's just a sad turn.

Thursday night he's betrayed.

Friday, the crowd is back, but shouting for a murderer to be given in exchange for Jesus.

Saturday, Friday, he's crucified, of course.

Saturday, his disciples are alone hiding in fear.

And then Sunday comes.

And there's a resurrection, and there's such joy again.

What a roller coaster.

Palm Sunday and captures all of that.

It's the sadness of his betrayal.

It's the sadness of the people in Nazareth.

It's their hard hearts.

And yet it's the joy of knowing the gospel comes to those who put their faith in Christ, who turn from their sins and receive with open arms the free gift of God.

I mentioned earlier that this is a bracketed narrative here.

When you go back to Capernaum, do you remember why they rejected Jesus in Capernaum?

Because he kept making himself out to be God.

He said he was the Lord of the Sabbath, and that's what did it.

The Sabbath is supposed to point you to God.

He said he's the Lord of it, and they're done.

It strikes me that those in Nazareth reject him for the opposite reason.

They reject him because he's a man.

They reject him because of his humanity.

You see the two natures rolled up into one person.

Jesus, truly God, truly man, the only way for salvation.

Lord, we're thankful that you opened the doors of heaven-wide for those who would believe in the Son.

I pray for anyone here today that has never put their faith in you.

I pray today they would be humbled.

They would not just be dazzled by your teaching.

They wouldn't just be attracted by your power.

They would turn their lives to you.

Pray that you would work that in our hearts.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBC.church.

If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to TMS.edu.

Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.