Location
4952 Edwards Rd,
Taylors, SC 29687
Service Times
2 Identical Services: 8:30 and 10:30 a.m.
Back in 2021, on Anniversary Sunday, I introduced my message with an image from Les McKeown’s book, Predictable Success. In this diagram, McKeown tracks the seven stages of growth and decline of a business. He warns that two out of three businesses never get out of bottom left, early struggle. He revealed interesting comparisons. For example, if you look up from “early struggle” to “fun,” “fun” as a business is experiencing a lot of growth with what he calls “underdeveloped systems.” Then if you go right across to “the big rut,” you’ll see the business experiencing decline with overdeveloped systems.
Some of that is really helpful. It’s true of business. We are a church, not a business. We function very differently. There are some interesting pearls of wisdom we can pick up from that. But as I was thinking about this life cycle of a business, it got me wondering if there is not something similar that could be said about the life cycle of a church member.
If you start at the bottom left, when we are wrestling with what we believe, how we can connect with other believers (i.e. “where do I fit in?”), then we begin to experience growth. We will inevitably come to what McKeown calls “white water.” I’m calling here “conflict.”
That conflict can come in a variety of forms. It could be an interpersonal conflict with another member or one of the leaders. It could be some other deep disappointment or personal catastrophe, like illness or loss.
Invariably, when we experience this conflict, we begin to think things we might not have been thinking before. Things like, “This isn’t working.” Things like, “I don’t really fit in here.” Or maybe even during singing, wondering, “Is any of this even true? Are these people crazy? Does God even care?”
Often, these struggles or conflicts or difficulties will lead us to a point of crisis. One thing I’ve noticed reading and listening to a lot of “deconstruction” stories, what many people experience in what is today often called “deconstruction,” the more I listen to and read these stories, the more I realize how familiar they are.
I’m not minimizing the struggles. But what I am saying is that the things these people are experiencing (in most cases, not all), in most cases, we all experience those things. They’re actually baked in to the process. That’s why I think it’s so important to understand a little of the life cycle of a church member, because we will all come, sooner or later, to a place of crisis.
That place of crisis could take a variety of forms. These are three common ones, not the only ones:
When we come to one of these places of crisis, we will either take on a posture of humility, seek the Lord and wise counsel, and find help. Then that will lead to a time of greater growth (that was the dotted lines going up). Or we will end up coasting and then entering more disappointment and decline.
We’ve focused on the first two of those common points of crisis — the unresolved and the unfulfilled expectations — a couple of times throughout our series in Matthew. Today I want to focus on that third one: unquestioned familiarity, how should we think about familiarity so that when we experience a crisis of faith, we are not shocked. But it can actually lead to a season of greater growth rather than decline. Let’s pray.
Father, it’s so easy for us to allow familiarity, thinking we know, to bring us to a point of crisis. We lose wonder. We no longer have curiosity. We’re not willing to risk. In place of those, we cling to our assumptions of what we think we know, and we’re not able or willing to have an open heart for what you want us to know and experience.
So we pray now as we open your Word that you would open our eyes that we may behold wondrous things from your law. Stir our hearts, we pray. Break us out of ruts so that we can hear your voice and say yes. Thank you that these points of crisis that feel so threatening are really evidences of your love. You’re drawing us to yourself. We thank you in Jesus’s name.
Let’s take just a few minutes to get our bearings. We’re journeying through the Gospel of Matthew. You can break the book down into these seven sections. You’ll notice on each one, as we “Behold the King,” there is a kind of show-and-tell, works and words, action / instruction. There’s an interplay all the way through the Gospel of Matthew between these two things because Matthew wants us to know more than what fills our heads. It actually transforms our lives.
We’re almost in the middle, in that section called “No Middle Ground,” which is that you can’t be neutral about Jesus. He will divide. We’ve come to the end of the Sermon on the Parables. Now how do we know each of these major sermons is a distinctive section in Matthew? Matthew gives us indications on each one. Let me show you the examples. Five major sermons in Matthew:
This repeated statement, “Jesus finished,” seems to be a mile marker throughout the Gospel of Matthew when we’ve come to one in Matthew 13:53:
“And when Jesus had finished these parables, he went away from there.”
Where’s there? He was teaching on the Sea of Galilee, and now we’re going to see a location change. Here, Matthew mentions two stories of rejection. First, today, his rejection at Nazareth. Then we’ll come back at the end of July, after Wisdomfest, and pick up on the second rejection, the rejection of John the Baptist. So today, Jesus’s ministry in Nazareth:
“…and coming to his hometown he taught them in their synagogue” (Matthew 13:54a).
The trip from Capernaum (on the top of the Sea of Galilee) down to Nazareth was about a 20-mile journey. It would have taken three to four days to walk. We don’t know if this is the first time he’s returned back to Nazareth or another one of his visits. Matthew doesn’t indicate that, but he does tell us three things about the people of Nazareth.
1. They are astonished. Verse 54b,
“so that they were astonished, and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works?’”
That word “astonished” means “to amaze.” It’s the Greek word “ekplesso,” which means to strike out, but it’s not a baseball term. It’s to strike out of one’s senses, to be stunned, shocked. They were astonished by Jesus’s mighty works and his wisdom. That astonishment collided with their assumptions and led to confusion.
2. They are confused. What are they confused about? They think they know Jesus. They reveal this with six questions, from the end of verse 54 to the end of verse 56. Look at those six questions:
“Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works?”
“Is not this the carpenter’s son?”
The word “carpenter” could be translated “craftsman.” It could refer to someone who works with wood or stone or masonry.
“Is not his mother called Mary?”
We know Mary. Look, there’s Mary right over there. She’s from our town.
“Are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?”
I wrestled them in high school. I know them.
“Are not all his sisters with us?”
Look at Elizabeth and Ruth, they’re here, we know them! And that leads them back to the very first question.
“Where then did this man get all these things?”
The two bookend questions—where did he get these things, the wisdom and the mighty works—communicates that they’re not denying his miracles. They’re not questioning his wisdom. They’re questioning the source.
It’s kind of like if you have a friend who works at McDonald’s part-time and he drives a brand new BMW, he lives in a brand new, big, nice house, and he’s going on exotic vacations. After a while, you’re going to think, okay, I’m not a finance guy, but something doesn’t add up. Either you’re in unimaginable debt, or you’re dealing drugs on the side, or you have a rich dad (you inherited something), but this can’t come from here. This has to come from somewhere else.
This is what the people of Nazareth are saying as well. There’s something else going on here that we can’t figure out. Craftsman plus Nazareth does not equal miracle-working scribe. Nazareth was a small, poor village, and people in small, poor villages are typically in survival mode. They’re thinking, “How do we get the next meal on the table?” They’re not planning for their retirement. They don’t have a 401k. They’re not saving for a beach house. They’re not planning to send their kids to Yale. They’re just trying to make ends meet.
About two centuries before Jesus, a scribe by the name of Sirach wrote The Book of Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus). It’s a collection of wisdom sayings that illustrates the assumptions of the day. It’s not Bible. Let me give you one example. Sirach writes this,
“The wisdom of the scribe depends on the opportunity of leisure; only the one who has little business can become wise” (Sir.38:24).
What is Sirach saying? He’s saying if a guy’s working with his hands all day as a craftsman in the hot sun, and he comes home exhausted, just trying to put food on the table, and he sits down to try to parse Chaldean, he’s going to fall asleep in a second. He’s not going to have any energy left to become, from a scribal perspective, a scholar. He’s not going to have the resources to travel widely, to read people who write from other places.
What the people of Nazareth are essentially saying to Jesus is, “You’re a villager like us. You’re one of us. Get back in your lane. Stop teaching the way you’re teaching or doing whatever you’re doing with the miracles you’re doing. Come back to Nazareth. It makes no sense for a person from Nazareth to say what you say and do what you do.” They’re astonished. They’re confused.
3. They’re offended.
“And they took offense at him” (Matthew 13:57a).
That word “take offense” is “skandalizo.” We’ve seen it a number of times throughout Matthew. It comes from the word “skandalon.” We get our word “scandal” from this word: to trip or trap, to offend. Here it means to offend in the sense of to cause someone to pull away or distrust someone who is trustworthy. It’s the opposite of belief.
Notice how Jesus responds to their offense.
He lamented their lack of honor. Verse 57,
“And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.’”
Jesus quotes what is most likely an ancient proverb. People are typically loved most in their own home unless they become famous or become a prophet. If they become famous, they will either be idolized or demonized. If they’ve become a prophet and have to preach messages the hometown doesn’t want to hear, they will be demonized. And that’s what’s happening with Jesus.
Secondly, Jesus refused to do many mighty works because of their unbelief.
Contrary to what many people teach today, Jesus’s power is not hindered by our lack of faith. He did a lot of miracles in the context of disbelief. Now most of his miracles are in the context of faith in response to people believing. Let me show you a few examples where there’s no evidence of faith, and Jesus still did spectacular works.
Lame man, healed (John 5:9).
Son of the widow of Nain, raised from the dead (Luke 7:14).
Healing of the demoniac (Matthew 8:32).
Giving sight to the man born blind (John 9:7). The man born blind didn’t even know who Jesus was.
Calming the storm (Mark 4:39). He even said to his disciples, “Have you still no faith?”
Most people who emphasize the fact that Jesus’s power is dependent on our faith are referring to passages like Mark 6:5, where it says, “He could do no mighty work” in Nazareth because of their disbelief. “He could do no mighty work.” But we have to remember, the “could not do” is not a could-not-do of power, it’s a could-not-do of purpose. Just like when Jesus was tempted by Satan, he could not turn the stones into bread, not for lack of power but lack of purpose. He had a different intention in that temptation. And so it is when Jesus refrains from doing miracles. Yes, he responds to faith, but at times, he has other reasons for doing or not doing a miracle.
You say, why are you making this point? I think it’s an important point not to minimize the role of faith, which is crucial, but to magnify the power of Jesus. Jesus is sovereign. He can do anything, anywhere, to anyone, at any time. He is Lord. We cannot put him in handcuffs. That being said, in Nazareth he chose to do very few miracles. Let me make two observations and then ask one question.
Observation number one. Notice Jesus was so ordinary for the first 30 years of his life that his family and neighbors viewed him as one of them. Yes, he was sinless. Yes, he would have won “Kindest Guy in the High School” awards, but he did not float around on a hovercraft with shiny rings around his head where everybody would have said, “Yeah, that’s got to be the Messiah. You see that guy with the shiny ring on his head?”
When he worked as a craftsman, he didn’t cut wood with his laser eyes (although that would be cool). He used a saw. He stubbed his toe. He got splinters. He sweated like a dog. He knew what it was like to get to the end of a week and have worked hard and not earned enough to put food on the table. He knew the struggle of day-to-day life in a poor, little, obscure village.
You say, why does that matter today? The author of Hebrews answers that question.
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:15-16).
He is compassionate, and he knows what it’s like to live with frustrating people, to experience hurt and disappointment and loss.
Second, the people of Nazareth allowed their assumptions about Jesus to blind them to Jesus, to who he really is. Remember, they had been truly astonished at his miracles and the wisdom of his teaching, and they knew it couldn’t come from here. But then they rejected him.
Some of us think if Jesus would just do one big miracle, an obvious miracle — like my bank account which is empty is suddenly full, or my body which is broken is suddenly perfect, healed — if he would just do that one time, I would never doubt him again. If we think that, we’re delusional because assumptions eat miracles for lunch.
Assumptions eat miracles for lunch.
The people of Nazareth were assuming that a poor person can’t be a good teacher, a person from Nazareth can’t be a person from God. Too ordinary. Therefore, it didn’t matter what miracles they saw or what wisdom they heard. They just wrote that off and continued to believe or not believe what they didn’t believe.
The problem is, when our hearts become bound by over-familiarity (thinking we know), we actually have to gouge out our eyes and clog our ears so that we can un-hear what we’ve heard and un-see what we’ve seen. Typically, for that to happen, it requires offense. Offense. We have to be offended about something to do something that illogical. That’s why you could say familiarity without humility breeds hostility.
Familiarity without humility breeds hostility.
In order to blind ourselves, we need to take offense. Hostility in the form of anger or resentment helps us unsee what we’ve seen and un-hear what we have heard. We forget about the good things God has done or the good people he has used and we can focus in only on what we’re rejecting.
Notice Jesus doesn’t kick the door down. Verse 58,
“And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.”
That is sobering, isn’t it? Overfamiliarity will blind us and make us deaf. We resist what God has for us and God says, “Okay.” That’s one of the scariest places to be. G.K. Chesterton wrote,
“The greatest of all illusions is the illusion of familiarity.”
We think we know. Brothers and sisters, if you have grown up in a Christian home and been going to church for a while, that is one of your greatest temptations: to be deluded by the illusion of familiarity. We think we know. Paul Tripp writes,
“The more you see something, the less you really see it. And the more you are around something, the less you really celebrate it.”
This is why we as human beings are so easily bored and why we can so quickly take our family for granted. The spouse we love, our parents, our dads, our friends. This is why we can get so used to going to church that we are blind to the presence and power of God and slip from Christianity into churchianity, and lose all sense of wonder, of the miraculous power of God to change our hearts and those around us.
Here’s the question: how do we question familiarity?
How do we push back? Resist? Break free? I’m going to mention a bunch of ways a little later, but for now, I want to mention one. That is, I want to illustrate it through a way to step out of ourselves.
Julia Galef retells the story of how the company Intel reversed its downward slide. They had dominated the memory chip business since 1984, but their Japanese competitors had learned how to make memory chips faster and better. So the company, Intel, their market share plummeted, and they didn’t know what to do.
Memory chips were their thing. That’s what they were familiar with. They couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Co-founders Andy Grove and Gordon Moore had hit a wall, a crisis. Grove explains what happened.
“Our mood was downbeat. I looked out the window at the Ferris wheel of the Great America amusement park revolving in the distance, then I turned back to Gordon, and I asked, ‘If we got kicked out, and the board brought in a new CEO, what do you think he would do?’
“Gordon answered without hesitation, ‘He would get us out of memories.’” [Memories being memory chips.] ‘I stared at him, numb, then said, ‘Why shouldn’t you and I walk out the door, come back, and do it ourselves?’”
What are they suggesting? How about we fire ourselves, leave, rehire ourselves — I’m not sure if you have the authority to do that once you’re fired, but anyway — rehire ourselves and do the thing we can’t do but need to do. You see what they’re doing? Get out of ourselves and then look back at ourselves as totally different leaders. What would they do? That’s exactly what got Intel into the microprocessor business, and the company flourished.
The exercise is known as the Outsider Test. It’s what someone who is not as blind and bound by familiarity do. What tends to blind and bind us? Assumptions that are faulty, comfort zones, unwillingness to change, predictability, fear, embarrassment (“people are going to think we did it all wrong before”), risk aversion, or the biggest one: identity crisis. Who will I be? That’s who I am. I can’t change.
The people from Nazareth are saying, we do and we say this. Jesus is doing and saying this. He’s got to be wrong. We’ve got to be right. Stick with what we’re familiar with.
There are other versions of this kind of test. One thing I like to do when I’m facing a really hard decision, or we as a church are facing a hard decision, is to tap into an older, mature version of myself (hopefully), go five or ten years in the future, and then look back. What would I wish I had done? How about we do that? But there are many other versions of this. I think this is related to what God is teaching us through this Sermon on the Parables that we’ve been in for several months.
The Spirit of God through the Word of God is giving us kingdom eyes to be able to see mustard seed kind of situations — very small, familiar, mundane things — through a kingdom vision so that what might seem really familiar suddenly comes ablaze with life. I think this is one of the reasons our Father so often calls us into seasons of crisis.
Will we humble our hearts to hear what he is saying to us so we can change and grow? The goal is not how long can we coast, which inevitably leads downward. Our Father loves us so much he puts us in a place of crisis because He knows some of us will never change without a crisis. He wakes us up and he brings us to that place. Will we change and grow? Or will we play it safe and keep coasting, keep blaming, keep excusing?
I asked our Saturday night prayer team last night, “How do you guys fight familiarity? How do you question familiarity?” Before we prayed (it was a beautiful prayer time), they gave a bunch of suggestions. I’ll sprinkle in some of mine, but let me share some of what they shared as well.
The big one that came out several times is feed on Scripture, because God’s word lifts us out of our own cultural context and, by the power of the Spirit, shows us the heart and mind and wisdom of God like nothing else.
Another one that came out in a couple different forms was take time to worship. Obviously on Sunday, but also throughout the week. That included not only listening and singing while you’re driving a car, but getting outside to recognize how big God’s creation is. It puts us into perspective.
One of our senior saints who’s followed the Lord for many decades described how she desires and pursues seeing Jesus with “fresh eyes.” I love that. Never allowing our hearts to grow stale, blind.
Others talked about how praying in the midst of mundane moments opens our eyes to what the Spirit is doing. They gave examples like even in traffic or, get this, at the DMV. Can you worship God at the DMV? Try it. Good luck. You can. You can.
Reading good stuff. Reading great biographies, especially of missionaries and followers of Jesus, gets us out of our culture and helps us see ourselves as we wouldn’t normally be able to see.
Someone else talked about the importance of getting to know people of other cultures, and worshiping with people of other cultures because that enables us to see the blind spots in our own context much more easily.
A big one was giving thanks. Never lose the wonder of waking up in the morning, of having God’s Word, of receiving the forgiveness of Jesus afresh each morning, and giving thanks for each sunrise, each rainstorm.
There are a bunch more — asking, listening. I know, for my heart, I have to remember on a regular basis the magnitude of my sin. I know some of you think, wow, that’s discouraging. I experience the opposite because it sends me to Jesus, and he always welcomes me and reminds me how much he has forgiven me.
There’s no way to be neutral or passive or overly familiar when you are revisiting the weight of sin. I should be in hell right now, and I’m not. I am swimming in the grace and goodness of God. You, too, if your faith is in Jesus. By reminding yourself — what I deserve apart from the grace of God — cultivates this fresh gratefulness for what he has given us.
As you continue to meditate on some of those — and I know there are many others — there may be specific ways in which the Spirit is stirring in your heart right now. You’re in a rut, and he’s saying, “I want you to do this. I know it sounds crazy. I want you to do this.” Pray into that now.
4952 Edwards Rd,
Taylors, SC 29687
2 Identical Services: 8:30 and 10:30 a.m.