Part 27 – Rejected In His Hometown – Matthew 13:53-58
November 3, 2019Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Speaker: Jerry Cisar
Over the past 2,000 years, people have considered that Jesus is either too human to be God, or too Divine to be human. In our day, people more often stumble over the humanity of Jesus—how could this human be God? The “Enlightenment” taught us to think from the ground up rather than from God’s revelation down, so to speak. Therefore, people start with Jesus’ humanity and can’t get to heaven (or past the ceiling in some cases). Why? Because they stumble over his humanity.
During the 1st centuries of the church, the errors that prevented true belief in Jesus came because many couldn’t believe Jesus was human. Given the evidence for his Divinity (i.e. being God), people stumbled to think he could be human. He must, they thought, have only appeared to be human.
Our text shows that during Jesus’ lifetime, the problem was more like it is today: because Jesus lived among them, they started from the ground up and were offended at his humanity… his ever so ordinary existence.