It's fashionable these days for people to claim agnosticism when it comes to belief in God. It's ironic. It's the most important topic there is, and yet it's the one thing educated people take pride in not knowing. They figure a person can't be expected to know everything. That's certainly true. You can't be faulted for that. But at what point is it your fault when you remain ignorant about something? Welcome to the Food for Your Soul podcast, where we apply the Word of God to the hearts of men and women to stoke the fires of your delight in Christ. Here's your host, Dr. Dean Richard Ferguson. Now he's going to his hometown, Nazareth. How is this going to go? Verse 1. His disciples accompanied him. He wants them to witness this, and you're going to see at the end why that is, why they need to be there. And they arrive at this tiny little hamlet carved into this rocky hillside. And when I say tiny, I'm talking no more than 500 yards by 500 yards. That's the whole town. It was a nothing town. It's never mentioned anywhere in the Old Testament. Josephus never mentions it. It's not in the Talmud, in the Mishnah. Nobody talks about it. Most of the people back then probably never even heard of it. Tiny, tiny little hamlet. Verse 2, When the Sabbath came, Jesus began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard Him were amazed. There's that again. That's predictable. We see that every single time. No matter where Jesus goes, everyone's always amazed at His teaching. And all through Mark, we found that that amazement is not necessarily a good thing. You would think that would be a great response, but in and of itself, amazement is not an adequate response to Jesus. We've seen that again and again, and today we're going to find out why that is. What's wrong with that response? In their amazement, the people of Nazareth ask themselves a flurry of questions. In verses 2 and 3, it's just a whole bunch of questions. Verse 2 and verse 3 are different. The questions in verse 2 are all positive. The ones in verse 3 are all negative. So verse 2 is all the evidence in favor of Jesus, and verse 3 is all the counter-evidence against Jesus. And so the people are in a state of confusion, and ambivalence, and mixed feelings. They don't know what to make of Jesus, because they've got the good side and the bad side. On the one hand, they've got the plus side, verse 2. Where did this man get these things, they ask? What's this wisdom that has been given him and such miraculous powers being done by his hands? Jesus' astonishing teaching, His wisdom, His power to do miracles, they want to know, where did He get that? Where did it come from? One thing they know for sure, it was given. They don't say, what is this wisdom He has? They say, what is this wisdom that's been given Him? They could tell. This isn't the kind of wisdom that a man could just get from hitting the books. doing some studying. This is not natural, it is not normal, it's not humanly attainable. It's coming from some other source. It had to be something greater than a human mind that's the source of this wisdom. They could tell that much. In John 7, 46, the temple guards went to arrest Jesus and then they come away empty-handed and when they asked for an explanation they said, nobody ever spoke like this man. And these are his enemies. Nobody ever spoke like this man. There have been some great communicators throughout history, but you take the best of the best, Shakespeare, Homer, and you put their writings alongside the Sermon on the Mount, it's not even in the same ballpark. There's no comparison. I don't know how anyone could read the words of Jesus and think, oh, that's just a normal human being. I don't know how anybody in their right mind could ever do that. 2,000 years later, Jesus' words, every single one of them that we have recorded, is studied constantly by the most brilliant scholars, and they're still learning. No one in history has ever had wisdom like that. You can't compare it to anything. And so these people are blown away when they hear it. And not only that, but they know Jesus has no theological training. He doesn't have any credentials. And yet the most educated men of that day, the most brilliant minds of the day, tried to stump Him. They thought up their best questions to stump Him, and off the top of His head, Jesus gave answers that confounded and humiliated all of them every time. He was never at a loss for words. You can search every action, every word Jesus spoke, every decision Jesus ever made, and all you'll ever find is Wisdom. Wisdom. And that even includes things that he said when he was dead tired, running on no sleep. Still, nothing foolish. Even when he's been beaten up, accused, lied about, whatever, it didn't matter. He never spoke or acted foolishly. He was wisdom personified. When he spoke to people, he changed their lives. The discouraged went away encouraged, the feeble went away strengthened, the hopeless went away full of hope, the despised went away loved, the broken went away restored, the lowly went away honored, the ignorant went away instructed, the proud went away humbled, and the unbelieving went away rebuked. Perfect wisdom. Perfect wisdom. And not only supernatural wisdom, but also power. Look at verse 2. What is this wisdom that's been given Him and such miraculous powers being done by His hands? There is absolutely no doubt in these people's minds that Jesus' miracles were real. No doubt. Modern critics today try to deny Jesus' miracles just because now we're so many years removed that it's easier for them to ignore the evidence. But back then, you couldn't ignore it. Even His enemies didn't try to deny the miracles. Everyone knew for a fact that he was doing the miracles. The question was, how? Where is this power coming from? You take all the greatest miracle workers in the Old Testament, not one of them holds a candle to Jesus. He healed shriveled limbs, fever, internal bleeding, leprosy, insanity, deformities, edema, deafness, blindness, paralysis, every kind of disease. at will, instantly, perfectly. He drove out demons by the thousands effortlessly. He restored broken, ruined lives. He read people's thoughts. He knew what was in people's hearts. He fed the multitude, turned water into wine, commanded the wind and the waves, walked on water, controlled fish, made them avoid the nets, then he made them jump into the nets, made them have coins in their mouths, made them feed a multitude. He could do anything with a fish. He cursed a tree, made it wither in a matter of hours. He prophesied the details of His death and His burial and His resurrection, got it right on the money. At Jesus' arrest, He flattened an entire detachment of soldiers and police, just knocked them flat on their backs by saying a word. He raised the dead, including Himself. Jesus Christ raised Himself from the dead. Then He ascended into heaven. And that's just a summary of His miraculous power. To list all of His miracles would fill up every book in the world, according to John. Nobody living in Israel at that time was so detached from reality that they even tried to deny Jesus' miracles. There was just no denying them. So this is our question. We see the supernatural power. We know He's God. Our question, where does it come from? How does He get it? Now, let me ask you this. Is that an honest question? Did they really want an answer to this question? No. Now, if they really wanted to know where Jesus got His wisdom and His power, they could have just drawn the obvious conclusion that Nicodemus drew in John 3, verse 2, when he came to Jesus and said, Rabbi, we know that you're a teacher who has come from God, because no one could perform the miraculous signs that you're doing if God were not with him. Obviously, you're from God. Obviously, this power is from God. Where did this power come from? God, clearly. Where else could it come from? That's the only possible answer. So why can't they see it? Why can't they see the obvious? Or why don't they at least ask Jesus? They don't ask, they can't see it, and they don't ask because they don't want an answer. There's only one possible answer, and it's an answer that they're not ready to accept. They don't want to know the answer. Why not? Because there's an obstacle in their way back. You say, what's the obstacle? What's keeping them from believing? Look at verse 3. Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us? And they hit the obstacle. On one side of the scale, you have the evidence of Jesus' supernatural wisdom like the world has never seen, and supernatural power, miracles the world has never seen. that could only come from God. That's on the evidence side. That's pretty strong evidence, right? That's pretty strong evidence. But on the other side of the scale, you have the counter-evidence. What kind of counter-evidence could be so powerful and compelling that it would overcome all this evidence of His miracles and wisdom? Three things. One, He's a carpenter. Two, He's Mary's son. And three, His siblings are here in Nazareth with us. Is it just me, or does that make no sense? Jesus has omnipotent, miraculous power, the likes of which the world has never seen, greater miracle worker than Moses, Elijah, Elisha, all the prophets all put together, but that evidence is all overturned because He's a carpenter? His wisdom makes King Solomon look like a second grader, but He can't be from God because His sisters are in town and we know His mom? What kind of logic is that? It's not logic. It's emotion. See, all their lives, these people had a picture of what they thought the Messiah was going to be like. And they look at Jesus, they got that picture, they look at Jesus and think, I'm not feeling it. No way. Too ordinary. He's too plain. You know, Jesus back then was just a regular-looking person. Today in the movies, you can always spot Jesus, right? Because he's got that Jesus look. So right away, it's like, oh yeah, there's Jesus. Which is handy in art, so you don't have to put a name tag on him every time, you know, when you've got a certain look. But understand, there was no Jesus look back then. When he showed up with Peter, James, and John at Jairus' house, they would have said, okay, which one is Jesus? That one. Oh, that one. I guess I didn't think he'd be so short. I didn't really expect a huge nose, but alright, whatever. He was just a regular guy. And the name Jesus wasn't anything special back then. In fact, it was one of the most common names there were in that day. It'd be like, Mike. Jim. Here's Jimmy. He thinks he's a Messiah. Just a regular person. He's just way too ordinary, and you can hear that in their language. Even in verse 2, when it says, where did this man get these things? Literally, the word man and things aren't even in the Greek. Literally, it's just, where did this get that? It's just like, this? He's an ordinary guy, ordinary name, and an ordinary job. Verse 3, isn't this the carpenter? Now the word carpenter is a little bit broader than our word carpenter. It's more than just woodworking. Literally it means builder. This is the word for builder, and it would include building with wood, stone, tile, metal, all of that. And Jesus, so basically Jesus was a construction worker. And they're like, Messiah, a construction worker? With wisdom? I don't know. And in a town this size, for sure less than 500 people, Jesus probably would have been the only one in town. He'd have a wide variety of skills to fix whatever needed fixing or building in that town. Basically he's a handyman. He was the town handyman. So he'd probably done work for most of these people over the years. Yeah, there's Jimmy the Handyman. A couple of years ago I hired him to fix my shutters. I remember he kept smacking his thumb with the hammer. Just an ordinary-looking guy with an ordinary name, ordinary job, and an ordinary family. Verse 3, Isn't this Mary's son? And the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us? Evidently, Mary's a widow by this time, and they look at Mary, and she's just such a plain, ordinary woman. How could one of her kids be anything special? In fact, I think this is funny. Remember Nathanael's response when he first heard about Jesus? Can anything good come from Nazareth? Now, that was other people's attitude about Nazareth. That's the Nazarene's attitude. Ironically, these people who live there have the same attitude themselves. They're like, how could a hometown boy from Nazareth be anything? Just like today, in order to be an expert, you've got to be from out of town. So that's the obstacle. The fact that Jesus was just a lowly, low-born, common peasant. He just looked so insignificant, kind of like, say, I don't know, a mustard seed. And it was so unimpressive to look at, that mustard seed was so small, they had incontrovertible proof who Jesus was, but when they looked at him, they just had a bad feeling about it. And so it didn't strike them quite right, they didn't feel quite right about it, so they didn't believe. So what do you do when the facts point one way and your feelings point the opposite way? What do you do? What most people do is they go with their feelings and pretend they're going by facts. We all want to pretend we're going by facts. Either that or they just go with their feelings believe whatever they want to believe, and then you ask them, what about the facts? And you know what their answer is? Oh, I'm agnostic about that. I'm agnostic. And that's the direction these people go. They're agnostics. They don't come down hard against Jesus like the scribes did earlier. They don't say, oh, your power's from the devil, you know, and all that. They don't do that. They don't do that. They're just asking questions. We don't know. Where did he get all this stuff? We don't know. Where did he get this power? We don't know. What about the fact that he's a handyman? How could a Messiah be a local boy? What about this? What about that? We just don't know. A whole bunch of questions that they don't want answers to. They don't care about the answers. They just use these questions as an excuse to not have to acknowledge who Jesus is. When you don't want to believe, almost any excuse will do. And if you want proof of that, their lame excuse is, oh, He can't be the Messiah because we know where He's from. He's from here. What if they did know where He is? What if they didn't know? What if Jesus dropped out of heaven? What if He just came out of the blue and they didn't know where He was from? Then would they have believed? No. In fact, listen to the excuse the people in John 9 use. John 9.29, We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don't even know where he comes from. So like, He can't be the Messiah, we don't know where He's from! And then the Nazarenes are like, He can't be the Messiah, we know where He's from! See, any excuse will do. If you don't want to believe, any excuse will do. When you want to put off making a decision about Jesus, any excuse will do. But putting that decision off is a decision. That's the thing we need to understand from the Gospels. It's a decision not to believe. And it's such an extreme decision not to believe. Verse 6, look at the end, "...and Jesus was amazed at their unbelief." Agnosticism is one of the most popular ways that people use to disguise their unbelief and excuse their unbelief. Because usually agnostics think of themselves as being intellectual. Haven't you seen that? You find them in universities. Educated people say, oh, I'm an agnostic when it comes to religion. Like it's some kind of badge of honor. You know what the word agnostic means? It's a compound word. Gnosis, that means knowledge, understanding. Ah, in front of it, the A in front of it, puts it in the negative. It means no understanding, no knowledge. That's what the word means. Another word synonym is ignoramus. An agnostic is someone who says, when it comes to the most important truths of the universe and life, I am an ignoramus. Now, when someone tells me that, I don't argue with them. I'm sure it's true. The amazing thing to me, though, is I've never once met an agnostic who's willing to take responsibility for his ignorance about God. In fact, the whole point of agnosticism is to escape culpability for not knowing God. See, that's the whole point of it. I don't know God, I don't seek Him, I don't want to seek Him, I don't want to be held responsible for my ignorance about Him, and so I'm going to sign up on a philosophy that says it's impossible for anybody to know about God, because if it's impossible to know Him, then it's not my fault that I don't know Him, and I can go on my merry way and live the way I want. That's the whole point. But escaping responsibility isn't that easy because if someone has authority over you, ignorance is not an excuse for disobedience. If you get pulled over for driving 90 miles an hour through a school zone and you claim ignorance, sorry officer, I didn't know. Is he going to say, oh well then fine, sorry to bother you? No. You're required to know the law, aren't you? If you rob a bank, if you murder somebody, and you say, well, I didn't know, I'm agnostic about all those legal matters, you're still going to jail, right? Because you have a responsibility to know the laws that are binding on you. And if you have a responsibility to know the laws of the land, you have infinitely more responsibility to know the law of God, your Creator. Ignorance will not be an excuse on judgment day. And the law of God is this, you must put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You must. God demands it. You must repent, follow Christ. If Jesus is all He claimed to be, then all of your allegiance belongs to Him. Your life belongs to Him. Your body belongs to Him. Your heart and soul are His. You're free to be ignorant about almost everything in life. If you don't want to study microbiology, that's your choice, that's fine. But no one has the right to remain ignorant about the Lord Jesus Christ. No one. And it is exceedingly foolish to ignore the evidence and the facts based on your feelings and impressions, like, ah, that doesn't seem right to me. That is foolish. So many things that an eternal, omniscient, perfect, holy God does. So many of the things that a God like that will do are going to be the opposite of what a limited, sinful human being like me would expect, obviously. And so, of course He's going to confound me lots of times. Of course a lot of the stuff He's going to do isn't going to sit right with me. That should be expected. Don't go by your gut feelings. Don't go by your gut feelings. The Word of God is infinitely more reliable. than your gut feelings and your common sense. When you struggle with doubts about God's Word, and you start to have those days where you think, is this even really true? It's just stories. When that happens, when you struggle with doubts, isn't it because you're starting to go by feelings? You're starting to live by feelings? Something in the Bible doesn't match up with your experiences and so it gives you a bad feeling, or some pain or some big disappointment or some major loss in your life makes you not want to believe because you're angry or you're upset, so you just don't want to believe, and you're going by feelings. Few things will destroy your faith more than going by feelings. Trust His words. As Christians, we know that nobody gets a pass on ignorance about God because God has made the truth about His divine power and eternal nature clear to everyone through the creation so that no one has an excuse. But what about you? You know about God, but you don't know everything in the Bible. You never will in this life. But is it possible there are some things in the Bible that you really ought to have a better handle on by now than you do? Of all the topics in scripture, which one do you think is most urgent that you start going deeper? Thank you for listening. If you found today's episode edifying, why not share it with a friend? A simple post on social media can change a person's day. This season, the Food for Your Soul podcast features excerpts from our sermon series on the Gospel of Mark. Over 130 expository sermons covering every verse. You can find those and hundreds of other sermons for free download on drichardferguson.com. Until next time, rejoice in the Lord always, and set your mind on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.