Sermon Notes: Mark 6:1-6

Mark 6:1-6 | July 19, 2026 | Marco Zuniga

What does this text say?

1.     Ask…  

a.  Who is the author? 

a       John Mark

b.  Who is the author’s audience? 

a       Gentiles who are being told the good news of the kingdom of Jesus. Followers of Jesus who are growing up into maturity in Christ and learning how to live under the rule of his increasing kingdom on earth as is in heaven.

c.  What is the occasion for the author writing to the audience? 

a       Mark as Peter’s missionary helper, is writing a gospel “tract” for use on the field as they preach the good news to Gentiles.

d.  What is the genre of writing?

a       Historical biography

2.  Key words and phrases:

a       Hometown/ Sabbath/ synagogue/ - all words that provide the setting of this passage.

b      Disciples – Who Jesus will work through after experiencing the faithlessness of his towns people.

c        Teach - The action that sparked the response of the people.

d      Astonished/ wisdom given/ mighty works done/ carpenter/ son of Mary/ took offense – The people reaction to Jesus as they work to discredit and belittle Jesus through their unbelief.

e       Prophet without honor/ could not do mighty work there/ laid hands and healed/ marveled at unbelief/ went to the villages teaching – The response of Jesus after seeing the deep faithlessness of the people he spent so many years living amongst.

3.  Lists:

a       V. 3 – “son of Mary and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon?”

b      V. 4 – “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his relatives, and in his own household.”

4.  Contrasts and comparisons: 

a       Compare – Nazareth’s lack of honor toward Jesus compared to the lack of honor of the old prophets.

b      Compare – Jesus marveling at their unbelief compared to our unbelief.

c       Contrast – the surrounding areas astonishment of his works and teachings with the offense of the people of Nazareth after his teaching in the synagogue.

d      Contrast – The identity the people give to him (lowly, uneducated, carpenter, son of Mary) with his true identity as the Son of God.

e       Contrast – Jesus marveling at their unbelief with marveling at the faith of others (centurion and woman with discharge of blood)

f       Contrast – not being able to do mighty work there with doing mighty work everywhere else. 

5.  Expressions of time: 

a       V. 2 “on the Sabbath” – telling us specifically what day of the week this event happened which was on the Jewish day of rest. This began Friday before sunset and ended the following evening.

6.  Terms of conclusion/purpose clauses:

a       None. 

7. What does the text say: 

 Jesus along with his disciples head back to his hometown of Nazareth and starts to teach in the synagogue. After teaching them, the people began to question his status and his authority by discrediting and belittling him. They accuse Jesus of his occupation, family lineage, and even his legitimacy. Jesus responds by referring to the OT prophets saying that there is no honor in a prophet's hometown or household. Therefore, because of the people’s unbelief, Jesus withholds doing mighty work there as he marvels at the unbelief of his hometown. Jesus then continued to heal some of the sick people there but went away to the surrounding villages to preach and to heal. 

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Observations and Applications:

1.     Jesus orchestrates the setting and the events that are about to happen in his own hometown of Nazareth.

a.     This is still early on in Jesus’ ministry, but he has already exercised his authority and power over the physical and spiritual chaos that is present in the region. But now we see that Jesus, along with his disciples, make their way toward his hometown during the Sabbath. 

b.     Let's paint ourselves the picture of the setting here. Jesus was baptized by JTB, went in the wilderness to be tempted, then started his work of preaching the good news, healing the sick, and casting out demons. Word has gone around of this prophet from Nazareth, performing all of these wonderful things. Of course, it eventually makes its way to Nazareth that the people become eager to witness these same miracles in their own backyard. So, Jesus sets out to the local synagogue in Nazareth prepared for what is about to happen.

            i.     NOTE: Nazareth itself was a very small village. The area of the town was somewhere around 60 acres and there were most likely less than 500 people in the town. This meant that the people were very familiar with Jesus and of course Jesus was very familiar with them.

c.     Now that we have the setting, we need to know who the audience is. Since this is Jesus’ hometown, it is safe to say that the people who are eager to meet Jesus are some of his family, friends, neighbors, acquaintances, basically people that have known Jesus for a long time. This meant the crowd waiting to hear from Jesus, all knew him in some sort of way.

d.     Now we have to ask ourselves the question, “Why does Mark not tell us what Jesus is teaching?” 

            i.     Mark deliberately leaves out what Jesus taught from that led to such a response from the people. However, the point isn’t what Jesus taught from. Mark is wanting us to focus on the reactions and eventual faithlessness of the people. It is important for us to see that Mark’s intention isn’t to see Jesus on trial but to see the people’s lack of faith on trial. We’ll dive into this a little more in a few moments but know that this is something that should sit heavy on us and should cause us to question and think more outside of this sermon. 

2.     The familiarity the towns people had of Jesus bred in themselves dishonor and unbelief.

a.     After hearing Jesus’ teaching, the people start to question the whole situation. We see that there are 3 main questions that the people bring up in order to discredit Jesus altogether.

b.     First, they question the source of his wisdom by asking where he gets these things and what is this wisdom given to him? 

         i.     Again, Mark does not tell us where Jesus taught from but is highlighting the response of the people. And we see that after their initial shock they begin to question his wisdom. The people were in disbelief of whatever powerful wisdom Jesus provided because they believed he wasn’t qualified. They are choosing unbelief because they lack faith in Jesus’ endless wisdom.

c.     Then they question the source of his power and authority by asking how he’s able to do these mighty works by his hands? 

          i.     This should immediately remind us of what the Pharisees said earlier in Mark 3:22 when they accused Jesus of casting demons out by the prince of demons. They were accusing Jesus that his authority was given by Beelzebul and not by his Father. We are further witnessing the unbelief of the people as they question Jesus’ authority. These people refuse to believe that this man has any authority at all let alone authority to perform miracles and cast out demons. 

d.     Next, they question his qualifications to teach and lead in the synagogue. They ask, “Is not this the carpenter?”  

          i.     What they’re doing is belittling Jesus’ status to just a lowly blue collar, uneducated, handy man that should have no right to teach from the word of God. In the people’s eyes, Jesus was just some lowly builder. Back in those days, builders did not have any sort of high social status, and because of that, they did not see Jesus as a credible teacher thus further fueling their faithlessness in him.

e.     Finally, they go for Jesus’ legitimacy by crediting him as Mary’s son. Why is this significant? 

          i.     Notice that the people never mentioned Joseph’s name. They specifically accredit Jesus to Mary as her son. During this time, it was common practice to affiliate yourself as the son or daughter of your father. Most likely, Joseph had already died at this point, but that shouldn’t discredit Jesus being the son of Joseph. Nevertheless, the people purposefully affiliated Jesus with his mother, not his father. This mentioning wasn’t to lift Mary’s status in any way. The intent of the people was to count Jesus as the illegitimate child of Mary who was pregnant out of wedlock. This was a very low blow. No doubt, the people did not believe in the immaculate virgin birth of Christ, rather they believed that Jesus is just the illegitimate child of an unfaithful woman.

3.     Jesus responds to the people’s accusations by mentioning how a prophet has no honor in his own hometown and household.

a.     After the crowd took offense at what Jesus taught, he responds by quoting from the prophets to set the tone of the situation. I am sure that you have heard the saying “If we don’t learn from history, then it’s bound to repeat itself.” That is what’s coming to fruition here. Jesus mentioning the prophets at this moment is affirming at least these 2 things.

            i.     First, Jesus is aligning himself with the prophets of old that experienced the same type of faithless rejection from their own people. However, in Jesus’ case, he is not just another prophet that carries the word of God. He is that very word made flesh. This makes him superior over all prophets before him. He is not another messenger, he the message itself.

            ii.     Second, Jesus is using the people’s unbelief as a launching pad to reach far past the borders of his hometown. I did not say this originally, but Jesus is using the rejection as a redirection. We see the beginning of this in verse 6 and will dive deeper into it next week. This will also help us to understand the meaning of verse 5 when we get to it in a few moments.

b.     Therefore, Jesus’ response is to take this attempt to halt his ministry as a means to catapult the word into the areas around Nazareth and beyond. 

4.     Jesus could not do any mighty works there except for healing a few of the sick that were present.

a.     This section is going to be a little bit tricky, so I want to preface it with this; Jesus’ sovereignty is not the issue here. We should know that our faith or lack thereof does not limit Jesus’ almighty power. However, what Mark is wanting us to see is that there are instances where our faith is instrumental in some things Jesus does in and through us. 

           i.     Take David for example in 1 Samuel 23. He inquires of the Lord before going down to Keilah to see if Saul would come down on the city and if the men of Keilah would give him into Saul’s hands.    God answered David by saying that these things would happen. Because of this response, David decides, in faith, not to go down to Keilah and avoid Saul altogether. We see that David was presented a situation, about which he inquired of the Lord, and once he received God’s warning, he avoided the city to evade Saul’s hands. David acted in faith when he decided not to go to Keilah because God knew what would have happened even though it had not happened yet. Thus, proving that there are times where our faith is instrumental for Jesus to work through.

b.     In the case of the Nazarenes, their responses through their lack of faith led to Jesus not being able to do mighty work there. It was because of their unbelief that Jesus could do no miracles – this is not an issue of Jesus’ sovereignty.

c.     This is supposed to sit and hang in the air for us wrestle with. I’m not going to sit up here and give you a nice, neat answer wrapped up in a bow. We’re not letting the people off the hook here for their faithless response because we shouldn’t let ourselves off the hook either. 

d.     Jesus is allowing us to make a choice to act in faith or act without it and then Jesus will work through our responses. I am leaving this open ended on purpose for you all to talk about it in your RL groups so we can tackle this together rather than me give you a cheap answer. 

5.     Now, Jesus sits and marvels at their unbelief. 

a.     Another interesting point of this passage is the fact that Jesus marvels at the crowd's blatant unbelief. The Greek word for “marvel” here is “thaumazo” which is used about 46 other times in the Scriptures. A couple of those times were when he marveled at the faith of the centurion and at the faith of the woman with a discharge of blood. 

b.     Both examples show Jesus marveling at faithfulness rather than faithlessness. He marvels at the centurion because he demonstrated great faith when he says in Luke 7:8-9;

          i.     “[8] For I too am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me: and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” [9] When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”

           ii.     Jesus witnesses this Gentile’s faith and makes it a point to turn to his followers and say ain’t none of you have done something like that. Again, Jesus is emphasizing that proximity alone does not lead to faith.

c.     The same thing goes for the woman where she believed that all she had to do was touch Jesus’ garments and she would be made well. Her faith in Jesus led to him working through her so that she could be healed. 

d.     The faithlessness of the people placed them on a side contrary to the 2 examples we just mentioned. The faith of the centurion and the woman led them to experience healing, but the faithlessness of the people led them to the opposite. Jesus healed a couple of people there but ultimately left the people to live with their faithlessness.

e.     Mark is placing a lot of focus on faith in his gospel account, and we are just scratching the surface of what Hebrews talks about in Hebrews 11:6.

           i.     “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”

           ii.     Jesus rewarded the woman and the centurion for their faith. He would even reward the father of the boy with the unclean spirit after he cried out “I believe. Help my unbelief.” But for the Nazarenes there was no such faith in Jesus. There was no reward to be had because though the people were near to Jesus they did not believe in him. 

6.     Jesus leaves Nazareth and continues to teach and heal in the surrounding villages along with the disciples.

a.     What we’re seeing come to fruition in this passage is what Jesus taught earlier in Mark 4.

          i.     “Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain.”

           ii.     The word was sewn among the town of Nazareth and as it grew with them; the people failed to believe. The thorns of the world and familiarity led to their faithlessness that redirected Jesus’ focus to the surrounding towns. There was nothing else for Jesus to do there because of their decisions. 

b.     With Jesus’ focus now fixed away from his hometown, he begins to work yet another lesson of faith but this time through his disciples.

c.     Next week, we will dive into the redirection of Jesus ministry as he preps his disciples to go and do the very work he has done. However, he will do this requiring of them an incredible amount of faith.

Gospel Connection: (How does this text lead us to see the person and work of Jesus?)

Jesus is calling us to live by faith through him. There is healing and reward to be had for those who live out their faith till the end. However, Jesus will allow those who reject him to live with their faithlessness. The word became flesh and has dwelt among us so that he can heal the sick and cast out the darkness from this world. You know what’s the cool part? We have a part to play in that. After Jesus offered up his perfect life to die in our place for our sin, he descended to defeat the kingdom of darkness and rose victorious as the one true God. Then after appearing to his disciples for a little while he says this to them in Matthew 28.

            “All authority in Heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing then in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

The disciples would soon show great unwavering faith up to the point of their eventual deaths. This is the type of faithfulness all believers should strive for, not the faithlessness shown by the people of Nazareth. I pray that we let the seed of the word sow deep into our souls and produce a steadfast faith that is worthy for our Lord to not only work through but also to marvel at.