The Power of Familiarity

I once read a sermon illustration from one of those books of sermon illustrations, and it talked about a guy who had a long-term life sentence in prison, and he was in solitary confinement, and he had been given a Bible.

And he read this Bible every day, and then it came to the point where he died towards the end of his sentence, and one of the guards was fascinated to find out what he had written in his journal, and that there was writings all over the prison cell walls.

But what had he learned from all these many years of reflecting on the Bible?

And in his journal, this is what was found.

Luke has 24 chapters.

There are 7,957 verses in the New Testament.

There are 23,145 verses in the Old Testament.

I have no idea if there's any truth to that sermon illustration, but I think there's truth to the idea it conveys.

You can spend a whole lot of time close to the truth without seeing it.

Amen?

You can spend a whole lot of time close to the truth, but remain blind.

You can spend time with amazing people, and yet what is often said can be true.

Familiarity breeds contempt.

I think as I reflect on it, this passage of Scripture is one of the more sad passages.

When Jesus goes back to his hometown, and they don't recognize him for who he is, even his own family and his community that he grew up in have become over familiar with the Son of God in their midst, and they don't even see God when he's amongst them.

Today's message is entitled, The Power of Familiarity, and I know we've been using that word, power, in a lot of sermon titles recently.

But today we're talking about the power of familiarity.

I asked ChatGPT for a joke about familiarity, and this is what I got.

Why did the scarecrow win an award?

Because he was outstanding in his field.

But as he became more familiar, the crows started to find him corny.

I thought, wow, this is AI.

This is the best you can give me.

Just in case you're wondering, I didn't ask, give me a sermon on Mark 6, 1-6.

I promise, I have written this myself.

The power of familiarity.

Today's message, I think, shows us that familiarity breeds blindness.

Familiarity breeds, or seeds, unbelief.

And familiarity concedes to apathy.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

We'll see that familiarity can create deep and robust relationships, enriched by gratitude and appreciation.

Firstly, familiarity breeds blindness.

Mark 6, 1 to 3.

The text says, Jesus left there, Capernaum, and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples.

When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and that is the place where he often would teach, as did the Apostle Paul.

It's where the Jews would gather and hear teaching from the Scriptures, and even worship the Lord.

And many who heard him were amazed.

Where did this man get these things, they asked.

What's this wisdom that has been given him?

What are these remarkable miracles he is performing?

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 took a fence at him.

So Jesus has been ministering a little bit east, about 50 ks east, around the Sea of Galilee.

Certainly a lot of his time is spent at the top left corner, the top northwestern edge of the Sea of Galilee.

But now he has shifted 50 ks across towards Mediterranean to the west, and he is at his hometown of Nazareth.

And it clearly is teaching in a way that surprises people.

There's a sense of wisdom, and he's doing some miracles such that they are, we're told, amazed.

Excuse me.

And they ask, where did Jesus get these things?

And it sounds like Mark 3, where they were asking the same thing, but they drew a conclusion that maybe he's getting his power from Beelzebub, if you remember back in Mark chapter 3.

That's not what they say here, but they're just skeptical, and they say, isn't he just the carpenter?

So clearly, this is an interesting point, he didn't do wonders as a teenager, right?

Clearly, Jesus didn't sort of zap people with the power of God in his 20s.

They all, the people in his community all thought, this is that normal bloke who's the brother of a bunch of normal people.

Isn't he that one who is the son of Mary?

We don't know what they mean by this son of Mary, but you know, you can't help but wonder, are they sort of saying that son in this community who was conceived out of wedlock?

Or maybe commentators say Joseph has died because it would be unusual to refer to someone in this context as the son of the mother rather than the son of the father.

So maybe the father Joseph has already died.

But we don't know, however these questions play out, the situation is sad.

Jesus, as we know with hindsight, is the son of God.

Jesus, as Mark knows, is the son of God.

In fact, it's what he uses as a title to describe what the whole Gospel of Mark is about.

If you remember in chapter one, verse one, the Gospel of Mark begins with the beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, and who is he?

The son of God, but not here.

Not in Jesus' hometown, not amongst his family.

They don't understand who he is.

He's the son of Mary, and he is very, very normal.

As they say, familiarity breeds contempt, and here we see that familiarity breeds blindness.

I think we could all agree, as human beings, you can become so familiar with some thing or some one that you fail to see it anymore.

Would you agree?

Did anyone remember that the manhole up there was falling down for months?

No one.

One day I saw it and I thought, I should fix that.

And I didn't fix it for months, and no one ever mentioned, and I got a long pole and fixed it.

But it's like that about habits with people, isn't it?

You just get used to stuff that you see a lot.

We can become blind to things that we get overly familiar with.

Imagine this could be a scenario.

Imagine on a Sunday, when people gather around this country, all over the states of Australia, there are people gathering like this in churches.

Imagine they were gathering because they were celebrating that there was a God in heaven who had fixed the problem of sin.

Imagine.

Imagine people gathered all over this country, in fact the world, on this day, the Lord's Day, a Sunday, and they came together to celebrate that not just sin, but the power of injustice has been conquered because God fixed the problem with Jesus through the shedding of his blood.

Imagine that on a Sunday people gathered all over this country to give honour to someone that wasn't just a Saviour who died 2,000 years ago, but who rose from the grave conquering death and lives exalted with a new body in heaven and he runs and rules the universe.

And that Jesus, imagine there was a group of people that believed that that Jesus not only conquered sin, but has made a way for everyone who would faith in his work, his finished work, for them to be inhabited by his spirit, the Holy Spirit.

And that spirit would teach us how to live in a way that mirrors his life and brings glory to God by doing the good that God wants us to do.

And that those people could relax their whole life because they knew they were gonna live forever.

Imagine that.

Yeah.

Of course, that is the good news.

But gee, it's possible to come to church and get pretty used to it.

Get pretty used to it.

We can become blind to the reality of the extraordinary nature of who God is, what he has done in the Gospel, the story of the Bible, the practice of worship.

We just had a beautiful time of worship.

Did you connect with the Lord?

Did you offer appreciation to him?

Or was your mind distracted?

Familiarity certainly breathes blindness.

It did back then in Nazareth, and it can today.

And familiarity seeds unbelief.

Verse 4, Jesus said to them, A prophet is not without honour, except in his own town, among his relatives, and in his own home.

Clearly more is going on than is revealed to us.

We only get six verses about this little vignette of his life.

You imagine that Jesus probably read a room well.

Who thinks so?

That might be the case.

I think he could read a room well.

And I get the idea that he's looking at these wise people, stroking their beards and being sceptical, looking back at him.

And he sees this group who are wondering, who is this character who thinks he knows truth?

Well, that's what prophets speak, isn't it?

Prophets speak truth.

And unbelief does not believe what is true.

There's a prophet in their midst, and they're not believing him.

Familiarity seeds unbelief.

This is the first time that Mark reveals to us that Jesus is a prophet, as well as the Son of God.

And I think there's this, in a microcosm, here we see the picture of what the prophet Jesus will experience as a prophet of God.

The prophets come and they speak God's truth, and the people reject them.

And that's what happens to John the Baptist.

That's what happens to all the prophets.

They speak truth and people reject them.

And so here we have a picture of what actually happens in the whole life of Jesus.

He comes to die for the whole world, and the world rejects him.

He dies for his people, and these people reject him.

The very people who should know and believe are blind and unbelieving.

Mark highlights the ridiculous situation that this reveals.

The people who know him respond in unbelief, but the demons, the fallen angels, they respond in belief.

Think about the Gospel of Mark.

Throughout Mark, he has gone to lengths to actually describe very clearly chapter 124, the demon says, I know who you are, the Holy One of God.

In 134, he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.

Chapter 311, you are the Son of God.

Chapter 5 verse 7, what do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?

Good timing, hey, when you talk about demons.

In contrast, his own hometown respond with unbelief, familiarity seeds unbelief.

We saw in chapter 4, if you remember, with the parable of the sower, that hearts, human hearts, respond to things that are sown in them.

And over time, belief or unbelief grows.

Let me ask you a sort of a probing question.

It's not likely that this room is filled with people growing in belief.

It's far more likely that some of us have been hurt by unanswered prayer.

We've been affected by the challenges of this life, the worries of the world, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desire for things.

And what is growing in our heart is unbelief.

I wonder if that's the case for you.

And familiarity is not helping.

It's all something that you've become very used to.

Don't be fooled if you stop recognizing Jesus as the teacher of prophetic truth, a person who is worthy of allowing to direct our lives.

Where that leads is unbelief.

Familiarity breeds blindness, seeds unbelief that takes time to grow in our hearts.

And familiarity concedes to apathy.

To concede is to give in, isn't it?

To surrender.

Verse 5 says, He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.

He was amazed in his hometown at their lack of faith.

Now, I wonder how we understand this passage.

Over the years, I think I have thought that, okay, Mark's telling us that Jesus went to his hometown, and he sort of shot off the power of God, and he misfired because he needs faith to empower his power.

Does anyone sort of think that?

Yeah, like, he couldn't do many miracles there because he can only do miracles where faith empowers his power.

But when you read it again, I think what it's actually saying is he couldn't do many miracles there.

Why?

Because not many people asked him to.

Isn't that poignant?

There wasn't much faith in Nazareth.

Everywhere else he went, people would reach out to touch his cloak and just beg him to heal them.

In Nazareth, whatever, thinks he's the son of God.

Whatever.

What's for lunch?

Familiarity concedes to apathy.

And sometimes we can have the same attitude, I think.

We just get apathetic about that which is worthy of so much more.

The presence of the living God in our midst, who can change us, and who is worthy of our best.

When I was a young pastor in my twenties, I remember talking to a guy in his seventies, and that felt like a really long way off.

Now it's much closer.

But this guy in his seventies said, John, when you get older, mate, the highs aren't so high and the lows aren't so low.

And I thought, I hope it's not all like that.

I can appreciate as I get older.

Yeah, there's truth to what he said, but I think there's a real problem if your faith is like that.

Wouldn't you agree?

That just following God through Jesus and by His Spirit, you know, the highs aren't so high anymore and the lows aren't so low.

It's just, you know, you go through the motions and you get, no, no, in Jesus' name.

May that not be the case.

We do not have to do that with our lives.

I think I've noticed over the years, there's a brand of Christianity, and I'm careful in saying this because I don't want to be judgemental.

I really don't.

But there seems to be this brand of Christianity where people get really used to the stories of the Bible, and they've done lots of Bible studies, and they've led lots of Bible studies, and they've been in leadership positions in churches all over the place.

But it doesn't tend to stir their heart anymore.

It doesn't sort of stir them because it's...

I know the stories, and some of those people aren't walking with the Lord anymore because they got bored because it does seed unbelief, and familiarity can concede to apathy.

What is the antidote to this?

I feel pretty confident that we could all go, yeah, there's truth in what you're suggesting.

What's the antidote to this idea that familiarity breeds blindness, familiarity seeds unbelief, familiarity concedes to apathy?

What is the antidote to this?

I think it's one word, appreciation.

It might sound simple, but familiarity can cause you to become so accustomed to something or someone that you just stop appreciating them.

Let me prove this from a couple of scriptures.

David said it well in Psalm 103.

He said, Praise the Lord, my soul.

I love the way he speaks to his soul.

He's saying, Soul, don't you go down that path of apathy.

Don't you get too over familiar with the God who does so much for you and is so worthy of our praise.

Soul, praise the Lord, my soul.

All my inmost being, praise his holy name.

Praise the Lord, my soul.

And forget not all his benefits.

Stay appreciative, soul.

He forgives all your sins and heals your diseases and redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.

Forget not, oh my soul, appreciate the goodness of God, the glory of God, the grace of God.

And this is pre-Jesus, I think, he's saying all these things.

The Apostle Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5, rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances for this is God's will for your life in Christ Jesus.

Give thanks out of appreciation.

Appreciate God's mercy and love.

When I went looking for examples of appreciation, you know, you can't go past this poignant story.

Luke 17, are you familiar with the lepers?

On his way to Jerusalem, Jesus travelled along the border between Samaria and Galilee.

As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him.

They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, Jesus, Master, have pity on us.

When he saw them, he said, go show yourselves to the priests.

And as they went, they were cleansed.

Power, healing power.

One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice.

He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him.

And he was a Samaritan.

Remember, Samaritans are the hated ones.

They're not the people of God, as it were.

Jesus asked, were not all ten cleansed?

Where are the other nine?

Isn't that just an amazing insight into the life of Jesus?

I thought I healed ten.

One?

Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?

Talk about blindness, familiarity, from a prophet, for the people of God.

A healer.

Then he said to him, rise and go, your faith has made you well.

You know what I take from that?

Manners count to God.

Amen?

As odd as that sounds, manners count.

They're free, you know.

Manners count.

Our thanks does not earn his grace.

He's gracious to us anyway.

We don't earn it.

But he wants humanity to show appreciation for his goodness, his grace, his greatness.

Amen?

Three wants, and of course, there's that amazing story that we've already looked at this year of Mark 14, where the woman pours out a year's wages on Jesus and the disciples, they don't appreciate the cost, the worship involved in offering all that she had.

She pours out perfume and Jesus said, she's done a beautiful thing.

She's preparing me for my death because she appreciates the worth in that moment of the Son of God in her midst.

She was not over familiar with his identity.

Isn't that a beautiful story?

When you think back, do you remember the text at all in Mark 14?

A sinful woman came and poured out perfume.

Appreciation.

Those who have been loved much, love much.

This man, Jesus, is the Son of God.

She wasn't blind to that truth, unbelieving of the truth, apathetic about that truth.

When we underappreciate the glory, goodness and grace of God, it will lead us to over familiarity.

And that can breed blindness, unbelief and apathy.

But what can familiarity do?

Think about it.

Isn't familiarity like a good thing?

Familiarity is a wonderful thing.

It's the foundation of loving communion.

Familiarity.

We know each other really well.

When you spend time in solitude and silence and in the Scriptures and understanding who God is, what He's done, who I am, what Jesus has done for me, who the Holy Spirit is, what the Spirit wants to do through me, amongst us, that is a wonderful thing.

That's community.

That's the body of Christ.

It comes from familiarity.

It's what the psalmist experienced when he was meditating on the laws of God, on the presence of the living God.

Familiarity didn't go to unbelief.

It was a beautiful thing.

It drew out passion and commitment.

Isn't familiarity the bedrock of community, of knowing and being known?

It's what we find in our small groups, in life hubs and in other small gatherings.

I can know what's going on in your life because you know what's going on in mine because of the familiarity.

You can love me, I can love you.

I can celebrate what's going on in your life.

How?

Through familiarity.

And you can celebrate what's going on in my life.

I can serve you and you can serve me.

How?

Why?

Because of familiarity.

Amen?

It's what is the beautiful foundation of Christian community.

It's what loving relationships are all about.

Can you see that familiarity is not a bad thing?

It's a great thing that sometimes goes off.

Let me leave us with three blessings.

Rather than blindness, by God's grace, may familiarity breed revelation upon revelation for you as you are transformed from glory to glory, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3.

We all who are with unveiled faces can contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His image with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

The more time we're spending with the Lord, it's revelation upon revelation that can come.

And that's our prayer, isn't it?

Rather than unbelief through familiarity, by God's grace, may familiarity seed belief in the faithfulness of God as we learn to agree with the Apostle Paul who said, and we looked at it a few weeks ago in 2 Timothy 1, that is why I am suffering as I am, yet this is no cause for shame, because I know, I don't have unbelief from familiarity, I have belief, I know whom I have believed and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him on that day.

Rather than apathy, by God's grace, may familiarity concede to joyful allegiance, so that you can agree, and I can agree with Paul, that as we come to the end of our life, rather than flattening out and becoming a little bit apathetic, we can say, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

May we become more and more familiar with Jesus and learn the power of familiarity.

Amen.

Lord, that's our prayer.

We thank you that you heard those requests for blessing.

And Lord, I pray, Lord Holy Spirit, that that's what you would do in our hearts.

Protect us from blindness, but give us revelation.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Protect us from unbelief, but fill our hearts with belief in your faithfulness, in Jesus' name.

And protect our hearts from conceding to apathy, but fill us with a passion to run the race to the very end, because we know that you are worth it.

Amen.

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