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Mark 6:1-6 - Jesus rejected at Nazareth

This accounts Jesus returning to His hometown of Nazareth.

When the people heard Him preaching, they were astonished and asked amongst themselves where He learnt all this, and how He does these works - remembering Him as the carpenter (His earthly father's trade), and as Mary's son (in remembrance that the father is not Joseph).

Jesus says in reply to their offensive behavior that only in a prophet's own hometown is he without honor.

The next sentence is intriguing. "He could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them."

Was Jesus really powerless?

My belief is that Jesus would not help those who had no faith - thus no mighty works were done. Not that Jesus cannot help them, but more of He will not.

And the next sentence as well - "And he marveled because of their unbelief".

That is to the extent that we have gone - so far that we cause God Himself to marvel at our unbelief and foolishness.

We are so far out, yet in our place Jesus still died. In our lack of faith He was crucified to the cross. In our unbelief we judged Him on worldly standards. And we still do today - our doubt in His works, His sovereignty - these are all our judgement passed on Him on worldly standards. e.g. "How can a dead man come back to life?", "How can it be that He touched the guy and the guy was well?"

We should be very careful to apply our standard of knowledge to Jesus. He calls for faith, not intellect. Not that we should try to be stupid, but importantly faith must overrule whatever knowledge we have.
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