God’s Word for You
Mark 6:5-6a amazed at their unbelief
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, December 10, 2022
5 He could not do any miracles there apart from lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6 And he was amazed at their unbelief.
In Luke’s Gospel, this encounter in Nazareth ends with the townspeople taking Jesus outside the city intending to throw him off a cliff to kill him. Mark does not include that detail, and we might wonder: Which account is more telling? Which detail paints a worse picture of the people of the Lord’s hometown? Is it the act of a mob, or is it God’s bird’s-eye-view of their faith, which was no faith at all? The worse picture must be God’s judgment: They were unbelievers.
This is the snare of the devil. Here in the middle of the town, Jesus was willing to heal, to teach, to lead people in renewed faith in God and the forgiveness of their sins. But they rejected him based on the irrational coincidence that they knew him and knew his family. See how the devil lurks and skulks and chooses the weapons that will work best for his purpose? He could stand up and call people to murder and rape and abuse and steal, but people would rise up after a while and say, Wait a minute, this is forbidden by the Lord! But instead he gets them to doubt the perfect preaching of God’s Son because their hearts were covered in frost. Satan pretends to be their friend, the one watching out for their faith, by getting them to question the identity of the Messiah. But the devil is never your friend. He fights dirty. He throws dust in your eyes and distracts you with useless details and he turns the Word of God on its head so that people lose sight of what Christ truly came to do and what he truly said.
What could be more contradictory than to convince people that a gift God gives is something people have to earn or deserve? The devil knows that people will protest if he tries to lead them directly away from Christ, but when he makes them think that a little side-path, a pretty little detour, would be okay, then he uses it as a perfect moment to poison minds against salvation, forgiveness, justification, and the resurrection.
This suddenly brings doubt into people’s hearts, and unbelief follows doubt just as surely as a good loud belch follows a banquet. The devil prods and pokes and beckons and coaxes man to give up on faith in Christ and bow down to other gods: to reason, to opinion, to luxury, to easy living, to laziness. “Some,” Paul says, “have in fact already turned away to follow Satan” (1 Timothy 5:15) although the devil has on a costume and a mask and they don’t know it’s really him.
Unbelief blinds people even to the law and to conscience, so that they’re not even frightened of the punishment that’s coming. They don’t see death, and if Satan truly wins the day for himself, then people even stop believing in hell, which leads them to walk right in without knowing it. Satan is so crafty with mankind this way that he’s like the cleverest cook who gets the goose to turn on the stove, chop off its own head and jump into the pot.
But there, O Christian, stands Jesus, his hands stretched out, his arms open wide, to invite us back from unbelief to faith. How many times did God step back into his created world to make promises to men and women, to invite them back to faith, to draw them from death to life? He has taught us about the resurrection and eternal life, and he is always our friend, always on our side, always our Savior. Put your trust in Jesus, and give the devil a kick out the door.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.