WWUTT 2023 Jesus Did No Miracles There (Matthew 13:53-58)

In Matthew 13, 58, we read that Jesus did not do many mighty miracles in his hometown of Nazareth because of the people's unbelief. This is a verse of much controversy, but it's not that hard to get when we understand the.

Text.

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Once again, it's Pastor Gabe.

Matthew 13:53-58 and the End of the Parables

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Matthew, we've been in chapter 13, reading the parables of Jesus, which we finished yesterday. But there's still one more section of chapter 13 to go, verses 53 to 58, which I'm reading here from the Legacy Standard Bible.

Hear the word of the Lord. Now it happened that when Jesus had finished these parables, he departed from there, and he came to his hometown and began teaching them in the synagogue, so that they were astonished and said, Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?

Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary, and his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? Where then did this man get all these things?

And they were taking offense at him. But Jesus said to them, A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and in his own household. And he did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief.

That's the statement that has been the source of much controversy, made here and also in Mark 6, where we have a similar telling of the story. So we'll talk about that here in a moment when we get there.

But first of all, notice that this is at the conclusion of Jesus' parables, and that ends the discourse. Remember, we have Matthew's gospel is made up of five discourses. And this latest discourse in chapter 13 was Jesus speaking to his disciples in parables.

Each of the discourses concludes with some statement like, after Jesus had said these things. And so we have, we know this is the conclusion of another discourse, because it's said in verse 53. Now it happened that when Jesus had finished these parables, he departed from there.

So the discourse ends at verse 52. Now this particular section we're looking at, 53 to 58, we can break it up into three parts. First of all, with Jesus coming to his hometown, 53 to 54, the people speaking about where did Jesus get all these miraculous powers, that's 54B through 56.

And then Jesus responds to what it is that they said in verses 57 to 58. Now this is a narrative, it's a story, so it's building to a particular point. And it's going to be there in verse 58 that we find the main point of the story.

Jesus did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief. And like I said, that's a statement that comes with a lot of controversy, and we'll see if we can't respond to some of the controversial takes regarding Matthew 1358.

Jesus' Hometown of Nazareth and the Unbelief of His Family

So back up to verse 53. Now it happened that when Jesus had finished these parables, he departed from there. We don't know the exact location where Jesus was speaking. We've seen him move from place to place up to here.

So this is the first time in quite a while that Matthew lets us know where exactly it is that Jesus went. He departed from there and he came to his hometown and began teaching them in their.

Synagogue.

Now this is the second time in Matthew's gospel that we've had a reference to Jesus' hometown, or maybe the second occasion, the second location, let's put it that way. So this is the second location that has been called Jesus' hometown.

The first one was Capernaum. Now Capernaum was the place where Jesus had presently been residing. So that's why it gets called Jesus' hometown. But his town where he grew up, where people considered that he originated from, was Nazareth.

It was back in Matthew 4 .13 where we read that Jesus left Nazareth and he came and lived in Capernaum, which is by the sea in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali. So there were people that recognized him, knew him there because that was where he resided.

But his hometown of, you know, where he grew up, where people would have known him in his young life, that was Nazareth. When Jesus was referred to by other people, Jesus of what would be the town that they said he came from, they wouldn't say Jesus of Capernaum.

They would say Jesus of Nazareth. So oftentimes a person would be known by either their father or the town that they came from. Peter, for example, is the son of Jonah, Simon bar Jonah, which means Simon son of Jonah.

Jesus is Jesus son of Joseph, but he also gets referred to as Jesus of Nazareth. So Jesus comes here to Nazareth. It doesn't say that that's where the town is. We didn't see anything in the narrative that said it was Nazareth, but we just assume because it's not the coastal city of Capernaum, so this must be a different location and therefore it would have to be Nazareth.

So he comes to his hometown, verse 54, and he began teaching them in their synagogue so that they were astonished. Just about every town had a synagogue where the teaching would take place. Not every town had a Sanhedrin, but every town had a synagogue.

The Sanhedrin was made up of both Sadducees and Pharisees. The synagogue would include scribes and Pharisees and they would be local to that particular area. You may have seen pictures of synagogues and maybe they were paintings or maybe there were depictions in shows or movies or something like that.

And they always seem to be rather dark temple sorts of places. They always also seem to be rather cavernous, like quite large and open space. In Nazareth, it would not have been that large an area, but it would have been large enough that there were a lot of people that came there to receive teaching, especially the men.

They would sit on the outside. Women would be more outside or they would have to sit outside. So the men would be on the interior. It would be kind of dark. There probably wouldn't be a lot of windows, but at least there would be enough light.

There would be candles that would be lit so that whoever was unrolling the scrolls would be able to read them. Jesus comes to the synagogue and that's where he teaches. Why does Jesus go to the synagogue and teach?

Because that's where the scriptures are. Now it may be that Jesus didn't have to use the scriptures. He is, after all, the son of God. Every word that he spoke was from scripture. But we do know that he unrolled scrolls and read them.

For when he comes to Nazareth, according to Luke's account, and he reads from Isaiah and says to the people, this prophecy has been fulfilled in your midst because he read a prophecy that was concerning himself.

He had gone up and read from a scroll and rolled it up and handed it back to the attendant. So Jesus did unroll scrolls and read them. That was probably why he was there in the synagogue. He's reading from the scriptures.

He is explaining the Old Testament to the people and how the Messiah who fulfills those things that had been prophesied had come. And as he's teaching there in the synagogue, the people respond and say, where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?

So he had been healing people around the region. That was word that got back to them. He had probably been healing people in Nazareth also. In fact, we know from Mark six that he had been healing people in Nazareth.

The people go on to say, is not this the carpenter's son? Is this not Joseph's son? Is not his mother called Mary and his brothers, James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? James, by the way, would have been the author of the book.

James, the half brother of Jesus. Judas would have been Jude. The brother of James, also a half brother of Jesus. And he would have been the author of the book Jude. So there we have two New Testament writers that are mentioned, James and Joseph, Simon and Judas.

Now, they did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah during the time of his earthly ministry. But we know by what Paul talks about in first Corinthians 15, and of course, the fact that James and Jude wrote New Testament books, that they did come to faith in their half brother as the Messiah after his resurrection.

Jesus had even appeared to James and most likely appeared to Judas or Jude as well. Now, Judas gets called Jude, I would think, for obvious reasons. Judas becomes a pretty infamous name after what Judas does in betraying the son of man.

So it's kind of like you wouldn't really want to name your kid Hitler. After all of that, no Jew who understood that Jesus was the Messiah, especially, would have wanted to name their child Judas. So Judas becomes a name that gets set off on its own.

He's the son of perdition. It becomes a name that is synonymous with betrayal and following Satan. So therefore, Judas, Jesus' half brother, doesn't sit on that name. He eventually goes by Jude. It's a good thing he didn't write a book called Judas, because, oh goodness, what would the arguments today have been like?

No, this was Judas who betrayed Jesus that wrote this particular book. I can surely see that. We would be having those debates all the time if that second to last book of the Bible had been called Judas instead of Jude.

There's already, what is it, the Gospel of Judas that was written hundreds of years after Judas had died, and we have to hear about this every Easter. It gets put in Newsweek and Time Magazine and stuff like that.

Somebody's always digging this up and saying Judas had written something or disciples of Judas or something like that. Why doesn't it get included in canon? There's a certain narrative that's being pushed on us, but we need to hear from even the man who had betrayed Jesus and all this other kind of stuff.

It's nonsense. So anyway, all that to say, Judas became pretty synonymous with something terrible. So therefore, Jesus' half brother, Judas, changes his name to Jude. Now, this little thing that Matthew does here, where he writes the names of Jesus' brothers and mentions his sisters.

We have his brothers, James and Joseph, Simon and Judas, and his sisters. Are they not with us? Where then did this man get all these things? The fact that Matthew writes down the names of Jesus' siblings proves to us, and by the way, that's right under Mary.

Is not his mother called Mary and his brothers, these names? Mary was not a perpetual virgin. No matter how much the Catholic Church wants to push it, the Eastern Orthodox Church wants.

To push it.

There are even some Protestants who want to insinuate that Mary was always a virgin. Jesus was virgin born. Mary remained a virgin. She never consummated her union with Joseph. One of the most famous Protestants that believed this was John Wesley, the founder of Methodism.

He said, quote, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who as well as after, as before she brought him forth, continued a pure and unspotted virgin, unquote. This troubling statement conveys two things. Number one, that a person who is not a virgin can't be pure and unspotted.

And then number two, that living as a virgin is a higher order than marriage. But the Apostle Paul said to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 7, because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.

The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time that you may devote yourselves to prayer, but then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Mary did not belong to herself. She belonged to Joseph. Likewise, Joseph did not belong to himself. He belonged to Mary. And so yes, they most definitely did consummate their marriage, or Mary, having abstained from her husband, would have been in sin.

So which is it, Catholic Church? You can't have both. Is Mary a perpetual virgin or is Mary without sin? Because they also claim that she never sinned. She was immaculately conceived, so she was without sin even from her own conception like Jesus was, which is partly why they worship her as the Queen of Heaven.

But anyway, going on from there. The whole idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary is nonsense. Scripture very clearly articulates, as we're reading right here, that Jesus did in fact have half-siblings.

Mary did have other children. And we read earlier in Matthew, in Matthew chapter 1, that Joseph kept Mary a virgin until Jesus was born. So he did not lie with her, he did not sleep with her until after she gave birth to the one who had been conceived in her by the Holy Spirit.

And that insinuates, Joseph keeping her a virgin until, that insinuates that they did consummate their marriage later on. And Jesus did have half-siblings, whose mother was Mary. James being the half-brother of Jesus, Jude being another half-brother.

So his sisters, also being mentioned here, are they not all with us? Where then did this man get all these things? Because they know Jesus and they know his family, therefore he cannot possibly be the kid that grew up around here.

Where did he get these miraculous powers? Have you ever seen anybody else in Nazareth come forth with these things? But they acknowledge here, he has incredible wisdom that is beyond anyone else that teaches in Nazareth or any surrounding area.

I mean, even the people in Jerusalem are astounded at Jesus' teaching. Where did he get this wisdom? And where did he get these miraculous powers? Again, they acknowledge that what Jesus does are miracles.

But they took offense at what he said. Because what he's preaching from the Old Testament, he's calling out their sin and their unbelief and telling them to repent before judgment were to come upon them.

So of course they're being offended by this. And Jesus responds and says, a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household. In other words, people are going to listen to a prophet and they will honor the word of a prophet.

But they won't listen to a prophet from his own hometown and from his own household. So that clues us in there that Jesus' own siblings didn't believe who he was. And we've read other occasions of that as well.

So they didn't believe that Jesus was the Messiah. Mary certainly did. Oh, she definitely did.

She knew.

She knew better than anybody on the planet who had ever come before her or who had ever come after her. Mary knew Jesus was virgin born. There was no one who knew that better than her. The only child in human history to have been virgin born.

And she knew it. So she knows he is the Messiah. Simply no question there. Every year at Christmas time, we sing that song, Mary, did you know? Yeah, she knew. She knew. But the brothers and the sisters did not believe.

But you just kind of have to wonder how much of a disrespect was that to their mom and probably also to their dad, Joseph. Surely he knew as well. We don't hear from Joseph again after Matthew 1 and 2 or in Luke's gospel in Luke 1 and.

2.

We never hear from Joseph again. But surely he had to know as well. I mean, he had an angel appear to him in a dream on more than one occasion. So anyway, as they take offense to Jesus and Jesus says a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.

And then it says in verse 58, he did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief. This past Friday on the Q &A, I started a series that I'm going to continue on here. If I don't do it this week, it'll be next week.

But I began a series responding to critics of the recent documentary, Cessationist. And those who are continuous, those who believe that the miraculous sign gifts that we see being performed with regularity in the book of Acts and mentioned in some of the epistles, those who believe that those miracles are still ongoing, they will look at this verse, Matthew 13, 58, and they will say, they will conclude, Jesus did not do many miracles because of their unbelief.

Jesus is incapable of performing miracles where people do not have faith. I've heard lots of people do this. Lots of charismatics say something just like that. And you've probably heard them too. If a person doesn't have belief, then nothing miraculous can be done for them.

And maybe the reason why you haven't seen a miraculous sign is because you don't believe hard enough. Maybe the reason why a miracle wasn't done for you. You weren't healed of your sickness. You didn't come out of your debt.

You didn't get that promotion or whatever else that you wanted. You didn't end up living in a place where you wanted to live. You didn't move up in your tax bracket and start making more money. Maybe the reason why that you didn't get these things is because you didn't have enough faith.

And a lot of these prosperity preachers will say exactly that, lying to people. They will lie to you. They will fool you. They will beat you down into the ground and make you doubt God, make you doubt yourself and doubt God.

You did not believe hard enough, and that's why God was not merciful to you. What a horrible, horrible lie, a damnable lie to tell people that you have to have faith that God will do a miracle in order for you to see a miracle.

That is not what this verse means. Now, Mark even takes it deeper in Mark chapter six. Matthew says Jesus did not do many miracles because of their unbelief. Mark says Jesus could not do any miracles because of their unbelief.

So if they believed, would Jesus have done more miracles? No, that is not the point. Remember, the people don't believe. They're doubting him. He's even doing miracles in their midst. But they're saying, where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?

This is the kid that grew up around here. His house was just down over there. He was a carpenter, used to come around here and help with making the rocks or cutting the wood or whatever else. Being a carpenter wasn't just making things out of wood, which is what we think of a carpenter.

Doing today.

Sometimes they made things out of stone and iron as well. So what Jesus would help doing around here with regard to carpentry work, we know who he is and now suddenly has these miraculous powers. Where did he get this wisdom from?

They doubt him. Nothing that Jesus could have done would have changed their minds. He would not have brought them to belief by performing any miracles. So that's what it means when it says he did not do many miracles there because of their.

Unbelief.

Their unbelief was so hard-hearted that no matter what Jesus did, they weren't going to believe in him. Even members of his own family, at least not yet. And so Jesus didn't do any miracles there. Now jumping to the parallel story in Mark 6, it says that Jesus could not do any miracles there except that he laid hands on a few of the sick and healed them.

So Jesus had compassion on the people there and he did heal some of the sick, but the people in Nazareth still did not believe in him. He did do some miraculous things. They saw him do some miraculous things, but he didn't go beyond that and continue to do miracles.

They would not have come to faith. And so it is with many that we share the gospel with. You would think that everything has been laid out perfectly for them. They should recognize their sin and need for a Savior and Christ is that Savior.

But no matter what you say to them, no matter what you do, they just simply do not believe. We do need to continue to pray for them. We should continue to share the gospel with them to a certain extent and hope that God will do that work in their hearts of transforming their hearts from darkness into light.

From that heart of stone to that heart of flesh, a soft heart that is willing and receptive to hear the word of God and believe it. Jesus is the one. He is the great Messiah who has come, who has wisdom beyond comprehension.

As we talked about earlier this week, going through the parables, Jesus is all the treasure of wisdom and knowledge. In Christ, everything we could ever want to know about God, we have in him. In him, all the fullness of deity dwells bodily, as said in the letter to the Colossians.

So like I said to you earlier this week, come before the Lord with those things and say, God, I want to believe. I want to make you my greatest passion, my highest joy. I want to pursue Christ with all that I am.

And you will be blessed by his spirit. And you will see God more fully, according to his word. Let's finish there with prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the faith that is given to us. As said in Romans 12, 3, that you have given to us a measure of faith by your grace.

And so in this faith, help us continue to stand strong, worship Christ, grow in him, read your word, pray, confess our sins, that we might be cleansed of our unrighteousness, that we might walk in sanctification and in holiness before you, convict our hearts that we would not go in any crooked or wicked way away from the righteousness that you have given to us in Christ.

But help us to grow in these things more and more fully. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Closing Prayer and Program Sign-Off

You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book.

On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an Old Testament study, When We Understand the Text.