Last week we looked at more of Jesus’ parables. We got to see this beautiful picture of just how much Jesus values saving His people. He compared us to a treasure or to an incredible pearl with both of these things being extremely expensive. This price tag was so high on these things that the only thing valuable enough to pay for them was His blood. But the truth that Jesus was relating through these parables was that My people are worth that to Me!
And so, He stepped out of Heaven, He gave up everything, He paid that extremely high price in death to cover our sins, but He did that because our salvation meant that much to Him. Because we were worth it to Him. Not because we’re so special, but because His love is so great that His love valued us.
Our own mind might try to devalue us, people around us may try to tear us down, the world might not look at us with any significance, but none of that even matters when we come to find out that God the Son says that you were worth everything to me to come save you and bring you home.
Like we talked about last week, forget everything else. Our value, our purpose, our future, our absolutely everything should be rooted in Jesus Christ.
And we’re really going to need that to deal with our passage today, because if we aren’t rooted in Him, then the hard things are going to shake things up too much.
Read Matthew 13:53-58
We see that Jesus had just finished teaching these parables and He took off from where He had been teaching and started traveling back towards His hometown of Nazareth.
Read Matthew 13:54
He gets back to His hometown, He starts teaching in the local synagogue, which for us would be like the local church. And it says that people were astonished and said, “Where did this Man get this wisdom and these mighty works?” Apparently, they saw something in Him, they saw something that they couldn’t account for, they couldn’t quite connect the dots as to how and why this Guy could talk about and do the things that He was doing.
And even though this is a kind of an unfortunate moment that is going to be happening, I kind of love this moment at the same time, because it really grounds Jesus in relatability. These people, they’re hearing the message, they’re seeing the works, and their first train of thought as a result of these things comes in verses 55 and 56.
Read Matthew 13:55-56
Isn’t this just the carpenter’s son? Isn’t His mom just Mary? Aren’t His brothers, James, Joses, Simon, and Judas? Aren’t His sisters here too? You get to see a really distinct I guess “normalness” to Jesus’ life in this town before this point. It seems like Jesus just grew up in a small town, where it sounds like everyone pretty much knew everyone. He had brothers and sisters. His dad Joseph owned a woodshop, and Jesus being the oldest Son probably helped out in the shop. For all we know, some of these people here talking might have tools or furniture or something that Jesus made with Joseph. Which for me that likes woodworking is just kind of crazy to think about. Imagine having some woodworking project crafted by Jesus? They knew all of His younger brothers by name, they knew His mom, they knew His family.
There are various estimates that place the population of Nazareth in Jesus’ time at anywhere from 200 to 2000. And either end of that spread would still qualify as a pretty small town. These people thought they knew all they needed to know about the carpenter’s Son, and so they come out with “Where then did this Man get all these things?”.
You know they never answered that question, but right from there they leapt to verse 57, which says: “So they were offended at Him.”
They couldn’t understand how this small-town Guy, that they all knew, could teach and do these things. They probably didn’t like His message, they probably didn’t like what He was doing, they probably didn’t like that they couldn’t explain all of these things. And apparently, that offended them. So, Jesus responds and says essentially that a prophet should be honored, being a prophet of God is a big deal, obviously Jesus was even more than that, but they didn’t see it, but apparently for Him, He’s not honored in His own country, even His own town, and even in His own house. His own hometown and even some of His own household didn’t get it and so they rejected Him.
And we see in verse 58 that as a result of this rejection, Jesus doesn’t do that many mighty works in this area. These people didn’t want to see the light, so Jesus took the light to shine elsewhere.
But I think we should take the opportunity here to deal with something.
We see Jesus here going through things, even being rejected by His own towns people. And I think a passage like this and definitely the passage that we are going to read in a few minutes might clash pretty hard with some of the “Christian” messages being put out there.
Look, there’s a lot of people out there that will tell you to come to Jesus and everything will just be better, everything will be easier, He will make you rich, He will take care of all of your problems, He will give you everything that you ask for, it will be all sunny days and rainbows with Jesus. But the unfortunate reality, is that this sort of messaging is coming from people that either have no idea what this book actually says or they are actively lying about what it says for some other reasons.
I’m not saying that life with Jesus isn’t amazing, because it absolutely is. But to say it’s all easy and that you’re going to get every worldly thing that you want is far from the truth. I really want us to understand here what the Bible actually says, so that our expectations in life can be a based on the truth, and so that we can walk forward without stumbling over the lies and the nonsense that is being spread around at times. I want to look at a passage in 1 Timothy together.
Read 1 Timothy 6:3-5
This goes all the way back to just a few decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection. This problem isn’t new or original in our time and in our society. There has always been people teaching crazy stuff. Teaching things that don’t line up with the words of Jesus and the teachings of real godliness. This passage talked about proud people, people that don’t actually know anything, yet they are still happy to argue over all of the different words and the teachings, but they’re obviously coming from a really bad place. Paul told Timothy here that these people have corrupt minds and that the truth is not in them. So then why do they do these things? Why do they put on this Christian charade? Why would they do this when they don’t actually believe what it’s all about? Well Paul gives us the answer for that near the end of verse 5.
He says that they “suppose that godliness is a means of gain”. Or in easier terms, these people think that Christianity and Jesus is just a means to make them rich. And that works for a lot of people, it’s been working ever since Paul’s day.
Many people have turned basic idea of the “church” into a get rich quick pyramid scheme which is usually built on top of their own idea of this Jesus who will make everything in your life easier and make you rich messaging. But that’s not what the Bible says at all and so Paul tells Timothy and ultimately everyone else reading this essentially:
GET AWAY FROM THESE PEOPLE. He says, from such people withdraw yourself, or get away from them.
The Bible is full of incredible promises and benefits for following Jesus, but it’s not this shallow stuff that people are peddling to try to get followers and get rich from it. If those things were the case, wouldn’t Jesus and His disciples be saying those things too? Why would He lead with so many of these other more challenging things, if His main message was as easy as just saying, Hey! Follow Me everyone and I’ll make everything easy and make you rich! That would be a pretty easy message for people to get behind, but it’s not the truth.
I mean we ended last week running right into one of Jesus’s hard reality checks. In these parables He has talked about the reality of Hell and judgement for people that deny Him, but He has contrasted that with His people being gathered to safety.
If Jesus just wanted to make you rich and make everything easy, why wouldn’t He just lead with that?
But it’s because He is the real deal, it’s because His message is the truth and not just what people want to hear, it’s because He actually is God come down to save, it’s because sometimes the truth is hard and not just this sugarcoated junk, it’s because of all of these things and more that Jesus offends people, like He did in Nazareth.
There’s plenty of people that will tell other people what they want to hear, but what we need is more people spreading Jesus’ truth, people that love others enough to tell them the truth straight from the Bible with love, empathy, compassion, and grace.
And the truth is that Jesus never said that following Him was going to make for an easier life. Jesus just got rejected in Nazareth, and as we are about to see, His cousin was about to be put to death in a horrible way. These types of things should really cut off the false messaging, but unfortunately, many don’t pay any attention to it. Let’s read this next passage.
Read Matthew 14:1-12
What a terrible situation. John the Baptist was Jesus’ cousin. We heard that he had been thrown in prison way back in Matthew chapter 4 and he has been sitting in there ever since. And to understand why this situation is going down the way that it is, we need to know that this girl’s mother was part of what happened that landed John in prison. John had called out some sin in the King and it involved this woman. So, this isn’t just some random violent act, this is revenge, this is premeditated, this is absolutely horrible parenting to have this probably teenage girl dancing the way that she is, which probably wasn’t in anyway modest, and then to use her as bait really, to get this opportunity to kill John.
It’s crazy, it’s a horrible situation on all fronts, and it’s a terrible end for this great prophet of God. We don’t really need to dwell on the details of the violence, but what can we learn here?
What can we take away from Jesus’ and John’s stories in these passages?
I think we can walk away with a little bit clearer expectations and understanding for our own lives. Maybe we won’t ever be put in a life and death situation for the sake of Jesus. But we’re all going to go through some things at some point. I’m sure we’ve all been through some things already. Maybe you’re going through some things right now. Maybe the questions lately have been: why me? why does this have to be so hard? when is this going to end?
And I just want you to know, that it’s not just you. Jesus Himself went through A LOT and the Bible makes a wonderful point talking about how great it is to have Him, because He understands what we go through, because He’s been there Himself. It’s not just you, because we see John going through it all the way to a horrible death here. It’s not just you, because the Bible has plenty of accounts of hard lives and the hard life of really following Jesus. It’s not just you, because the people around you right now in this room have probably been there too. Maybe not the same exact situation, but we’ve probably all been to the brink, to the breaking point, to the place where the only way back is Jesus’ outstretched hand to pull us back from the edge.
We talked last week about how much Jesus values us, that He stepped out of Heaven, that He left everything, that He gave up everything, to humble Himself as one of us, to come save us. He valued us that much. So, I want to put a question before us this morning. Actually, a couple of questions:
Will we value Jesus enough to never take our eyes off of Him? Will we value Jesus enough to hold on to Him through the storm? Will we value Jesus enough to make sacrifices in this life for His benefit and for His Kingdom? Will we deny ourselves and follow Jesus? Because that’s what He calls us to. He’s not calling us to just like Him. He’s not trying to win us over with riches and an easy life. He’s not leaving out the hard stuff to be more appealing. He is Who He is, and He is the God Who came to save us from our sin. That doesn’t need to be sugarcoated, because there is nothing better than that.
And even though things may get hard. Actually, forget the “may”, things will get hard. But that’s why we started this year with the goal of abiding in Jesus. Or staying with Jesus no matter what and not running away or going anywhere else.
We need to get rid of these lies that Jesus is just about your health, wealth, and an easy life. But that doesn’t at all mean that life isn’t absolutely better when we know Him. There’s a reason why even in the face of hardship and death that we see so many people in the New Testament that are completely devoted to Jesus all the way to the end. Because the truth is, that even though the hard will come, that in Jesus there is a JOY that can completely overwhelm the difficulty. The difficulty doesn’t necessarily go away in a moment, but the JOY of Jesus changes our outlook. Because I’m not going to be shaken, I’m not going to be destroyed, I’m not going to lose myself over whatever the issue might be, BECAUSE I HAVE JESUS.
That doesn’t mean that times aren’t hard, that doesn’t mean that we don’t struggle, that doesn’t mean that we have to put on the fake happy face. We need to understand that real Joy and happiness aren’t the same thing.
Listen, happiness is usually based on circumstances, I feel happy, I’m smiling because of what is happening right now. But real Joy, is completely different. Real Joy is only rooted in Jesus and the salvation that He brings. Real Joy is a constant. Real Joy is knowing that I am saved in Jesus Christ and no matter what happens in this world that nothing can change that. Real Joy is the anchor for my soul, so let the wind come, let the waves crash, but I’m not moving away from Jesus. Because I’m anchored, and He bought me with His blood, and Romans 8 says:
37 Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. 38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, can separate us from the love of God. There’s no trial, there’s no difficulty, there’s no person, there’s no life event, there’s no mistake I can make, there’s no words that can be said to me, there’s nothing that can be done to me, in the past, in the present, or in the future, that can pull me away from Him.
It’s an anchor, its joy, it’s Jesus, and Paul told the Romans that we can overcome all of this other stuff, BECAUSE OF HIM.
Life wasn’t easy for Jesus, it wasn’t easy for John, it hasn’t been easy for God’s people all throughout history, it breaks my heart to see what people go through all throughout the world, I know there are very real and challenging situations even in this room right now.
But I know, with complete confidence, that the only anchor that is going to hold to you steady is the joy of salvation in Jesus Christ. If you don’t know Him, He wants you to know Him, He died so that you might know Him. And I mean know Him in real relationship, not just know about Him. We’re always here to talk about it if you want to.