F4F | Steven Furtick is Trapped in Nazareth

Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith here on YouTube. So, if you've ever been taught, either implicitly or explicitly, that the Bible's really about you, and see, what you need to do is read the Bible where you can see how these different people achieve their dream destinies, and so you can apply their life principles to your life so you can achieve your dream destiny.

You're thinking, what am I talking about? Then go ahead and hit the subscribe button below. You've been taught false doctrine. In fact, it has a name. We call it Narcissus here at Fighting for the Faith.

Steven Furtick's "Trapped in Nazareth" and Narcissistic Bible Reading

But let me go ahead and make my screen available. We're heading over to Elevation Church, and we're gonna be listening to Stephen Furtick and his recent message titled, Trapped in Nazareth. Apparently, you and I can be trapped in Nazareth the way Jesus himself was also trapped in Nazareth.

Not even sure what that means, but we're going to be taking a look at Mark chapter 6, see if we can find ourselves in that text, because that's apparently what Stephen Furtick has done. He's found himself in you and me in Mark chapter 6, which is a strange place to find us, if you ask me, because the Gospel of Mark is about, you know, Jesus.

So, let's tune in as Stephen Furtick tries to explain to us this principle of being trapped in Nazareth. Here we go. This message is trapped in Nazareth. Trapped in Nazareth. And on your way to your seat, look at the person next to you.

Sounds dangerous. Have you been trapped in Nazareth yet? Have you escaped? Escape from Nazareth! It'd be a great, you know, series or something, you know. Say, you seem stuck. Please be seated. Look at all those people there to be deceived.

That's a lot of people. Sometimes people think Jesus was from Bethlehem. He was born in Bethlehem. Oh little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie. But he was born in Bethlehem. He grew up in Nazareth.

That's where this passage takes place. Yes. Not where he was born, but where he was raised. In Nazareth. Not where he did most of his ministry. He didn't do most of his ministry in the place where he grew up, because sometimes in order to be used by God, you have to leave what is familiar.

I forgot to stretch before the segment, so, you know, I might have pulled something there. Wow, okay. Because, you know, sometimes you got to leave what's familiar before God can. This is nonsense. See, there's Jesus going, Dad, why can't I do anything yet?

Well, you haven't left what's familiar yet, son. Oh, okay. I'll move over to Capernaum. Yeah, this is just absurd. Okay, so let's talk about Narcissus for a second. All right, it basically takes two words, narcissism, which is the love of self, and eisegesis, which is the reading into the biblical text stuff that isn't there.

Let me show you the Wikipedia article on eisegesis, although Wikipedia is not a great theological resource. In this particular case, they get it right. Eisegesis is the process of interpreting a text or portion of a text in such a way that the process introduces one's own presuppositions, agendas, or biases into and onto the text.

This is commonly referred to as reading into the text. So Narcissus is the reading of yourself into the biblical text when you ain't there. I ain't there either. Let's take a look over at Mark chapter 6, by the way, the text in question, and see if we can find ourselves in this text.

Here's what it says. Mark 6, 1. Jesus went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, Where did this man get these things?

What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James, and Joses, and Judas, and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?

And they took offense at Jesus. Jesus said to them, A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown, and among his relatives, and in his own home, and his own household. So he could do no mighty works there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them.

And he marveled because of their unbelief, and he went about among the villages teaching. Unbelief about whom? You? Me? No, I'm not in this text. I wasn't there. This is a text telling me about Jesus, and Stephen Furtick thinks it's about you.

And so, so much so that, well, what's the reason why you might not do most of your ministry? You know, your destiny and stuff, you know, where you grew up. Well, because, you know, sometimes you have to leave what's familiar in order for God to be able to use you.

And this is, this is an arse of Jesus. The problem is Stephen Furtick has not found a biblical text that isn't about him yet, including all the ones about Jesus. So yeah, it's just weird, you know. That's an important point, and we'll cover it more fully, but I just want to tell you a little bit about Nazareth, which is 25 miles southwest of Capernaum.

That was his base. That's where he set up shop and moved around that Sea of Galilee to do miracles. That's where his fame was being published. When it says in verse 1, Jesus left there, he didn't leave the place where he was ministering and go back home because it wasn't working out.

He left his success to go back to where he started. Isn't that interesting? He didn't go back because he needed a room in Mary's basement, you know, or to sleep on the couch for a little while while they raised some funds for the ministry.

He wasn't GoFundMe and trying to get it off the ground. He was, in fact, going back home for a specific purpose, which we know because it says this important detail, that he took his disciples with him.

Now, why is it important that he took his squad, if I may call them a squad? Just to modernize the text a little bit, if the Bible were written today, it would say he went accompanied with his squad. He went….

Jesus had God's squad, the disciples, his squad, and probably had the security guy, just like Furtick does. I think Furtick's security guy was called Cupcake. …them, and he went back to the people who he grew up with, and he took them with him.

Now, that's important. Why? Because he's taking them as a part of their training. He is commissioning them to change the world, and…. No. See, no. Yeah, this is a big, common, false teaching today. The Great Commission, yeah, it….

The Great Commission Is to Make Disciples, Not Change the World

Let's take a look at it, because everyone's twisting it nowadays. You can find it in, you know, Matthew chapter 28, and we'll see exactly what the Great Commission says, and we're going to note that it doesn't say what he just said.

Yeah, see, Jesus wasn't teaching his disciples to change the world. No. So, Matthew 18, 16. Now, the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them, and when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted.

And Jesus came and said to them, are you ready? All authority in heaven on earth has been given to me. Go. Actually, this is not an imperative. As you are going, the pra-ru-amai here is a passive participle.

So, as you are going, therefore, here's your imperative. Make disciples, mate tuo, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and behold, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age.

So, notice it says, make disciples. It does not say make a difference or change the world, okay? Changing the world is God's job. We are about the task of making disciples and teaching all that Christ has commanded.

Where we find that, all of the Bible contains that from Genesis to the Book of Maps, so I just wanted to let you know that. Okay, so Furtick is already doing some weird twisting here. Then back, I'll never forget when I took Holly to Monk's Corner for the first time.

She was so bored, and she acted so interested, and I knew I found the woman I... This isn't about you taking your wife to Monk's Corner, which is where he grew up. Good night. Wanted, because she pretended like Monk's Corner was the most fascinating city in the United States of America.

Now, she had traveled by this point to 49 of the United States. She had seen many things, and so I know there was nothing special about Monk's Corner, but boy, she made me feel like she was interested in Sonic, where we hung out every Friday night.

Just different landmarks like this that were important to my development. Notice, he literally, by talking this way, is making it clear. Mark 6, the parallel in his life is when he took his wife back to Monk's Corner, meaning he thinks this text is about him.

Disciples home to show him around. He has a purpose. He's not making a detour. He's not even coming home for Thanksgiving. He's not checking in. It's not been a while. He's actually coming home for a purpose.

While he is there, he is invited to give the guest lecture in the synagogue on the Sabbath day. As he does that, as he stands up to teach, the people notice there is something about him they did not notice when he lived among them.

He had been there for a long time, but now that he has been gone for a while, they see him differently when he comes back. Since I already read the whole passage to you, we may as well talk about the fact that Jesus was rejected by those who were the closest to him.

He found wider acceptance among the sinners than he did the religious. A little bit of a note there. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. If by religious you mean those who are self-righteous who don't recognize they're sinners, you can kind of make that point, but that's really not the issue.

I mean, Jesus's point was not that they were self-righteous. Again, his point in this text, let me get back to it, Mark chapter 6, the punchline was a prophet is not without honor except for in his own hometown, among his relatives, and in his own household.

So, okay, yeah, see, the issue wasn't righteousness or self-righteousness. It had to do with familiarity in this particular case. One way that the prophet said it was he came unto his own and his own received him not.

Yeah, no, hang on a second. I thought that's John chapter 1. In the beginning was the word, and archai en halagas, kai halagas, proston theot. Right, and the word was with God, the word was God, kai theos en halagas.

He was in the beginning with God, and all things were made through him. Without him was not anything made. That was made in him was a life, and life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness.

The darkness does not overcome it. Okay, let's see. In verse 9, the true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world. The world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.

He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. Yeah, see, here's the thing, is that John 1 11 is not a cross-reference to Mark 6. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

Talking about, you know, Jesus is the creator of everything. Everything was made through him. He's the light of the world. He came to his own people, the children of Israel who claim to worship the God that Jesus is, and they didn't receive him.

So, yeah, he's twisting that text too. Yeah, he seems really good at Bible twisting. Not so good at rightly handling biblical texts, which pastors are required by God's Word to do. That's a very sad place to be, by the way, when the people closest to you don't appreciate you, don't support you, and don't express their love to you.

In fact, I have met grown men who are still trying to prove something to their dead dad who never said, I'm proud of you. There's something about when you wanted approval from somebody who was closest to you, and we all have these people in our lives that we really desperately crave for them to tell us that not only what we do matters to them, but that they admire us as a man.

Maybe it's a man thing. This text isn't about that at all. What are you doing? Get out of this text. This text isn't about you. It's not about me. It's about Jesus and what he has done for us to save us.

Get out of here. You don't belong in this text. If you can help me sort this out, whether this is a gender thing or whether it's across the board, I want to be admired by the people who really know me.

That means something to me because I'm sure it does. And I am like really creeped out by this. Why would a pastor talk this way during a sermon? I really want to be admired by the people who are closest to me.

I hope they're listening. Dude, this text isn't about you. Christians don't go to church to learn about Stephen Furtick. At least they shouldn't. They should go to church to learn about Jesus. I can fake everybody else out, but if the people who are closest to me and know me the most, if they don't think I'm full of crap, I'm doing something.

Talk to me. I love how y 'all look at me confused like you're not full of crap sometimes. You know how you're real nice to the server at the restaurant, but you yell at your wife like that. Okay. Wow.

Okay. That is like on the creep-o-meter. It buried the needle on the highest rank and the needle spun back around again. Whoa. Okay. Wow. We're no longer doing Bible study. We're doing psychology here, and I think he needs to get help.

Wow. Okay. Yeah. So I think you get the point. Narcissus is bad. You're not in the Bible text, and Stephen Furtick, he's the king of the narcissists, and probably so. Whatever you do, if you're close to him, make sure you let him know you appreciate him or else.

The Bible Is About Jesus From Beginning to End

Hope you found this helpful. If you did, please share this video with others, even if it's creepy, and of course, we could always use your support at Fighting for the Faith. All the information on how you can support us financially is below by a one-time contribution, becoming a member of our crew, or support us on Patreon.

All that information is below. Of course, if you'd like to get more of this kind of teaching on a regular basis, please visit our website, FightingfortheFaith .com, and subscribe to our podcast, and please share these resources with others so that they can learn what God's Word really does teach.

By the way, it's all about Jesus, and I mean that, like, from beginning to end. It's not about you, and when you discover that, oh boy, the Bible really comes alive. As long as you think it's about you, yeah, you missed the whole point.

Christ's Vicarious Death on the Cross

All right, until next time, may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ, his vicarious death on the cross, for all of your sins. Amen.