Mark 6:6 And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching
Do you know anyone who is easily impressed? Maybe their favorite word is “wow.” They are always saying, “Wow.” Are they really amazed or do they not have anything else to say? Their automatic response to almost everything is wow. On the other hand, you have people who are almost never impressed, and if they are, they won’t show it. If they are, it somehow diminishes their personhood to say, “Wow, good job!” or “Wow, that is commendable.” They are never impressed.
In Mark 6 we find Jesus seemingly impressed. Now, how would you impress God? How would you impress God the Son, the One Who spoke the worlds into existence? What would you have to do to impress such a person? I would just give it up. I don’t know if it is possible, yet many times in the gospels you find that Jesus marveled. If it wasn’t exactly “wow,” something made an impression on Him. What you find consistently is that when Jesus marveled it wasn’t at something someone had done, it was in whom they trusted. He marveled either at their faith or their lack of faith. Faith is what amazes the Lord.
In Mark 6 it says that Jesus was in the synagogue in His own country on the Sabbath. The people who heard Him were just close enough to know of His earthly background, but just far enough away to not know who Jesus really is. They said, “How does this man know all these things? Isn’t this the carpenter’s son and don’t we know His mom and His brothers?” It was a stumbling block to them. They tripped all over Him because they didn’t realize Who He was. Jesus famously said, “A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country,” and the Bible said, “He could there do no mighty work.” But, notice verse 6 where it says, “He marvelled.” He marveled because of their unbelief.
Sometimes we say, “Faith isn’t believing that the Lord can, but that the Lord will.” No, those are two kinds of faith. I should know that the Lord can, but I have to be honest, most of my prayers are about things I know the Lord can do but I don’t know if He will and I’m asking Him that He will. It may be that my will needs to change, but I won’t know until I start asking. So, the Lord can, and in the last couple of verses of this chapter the disciples were amazed at something He had done because “their heart was hardened.” They did not consider the miracles of the past. How could Jesus surprise them when they had already seen what He had done? It was because their hearts were hard.
Sometimes we might wonder if the Lord will. We doubt whether He will or not. One man was healed by asking the Lord in an offhand way, “If you will, you can.” He knew the Lord could; he just wasn’t sure if the Lord would. Jesus said, “I will. Be thou healed.” What these people doubted was not that the Lord could or that He would; they doubted that the Lord was. They didn’t even recognize Who Jesus is. A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country. That is the point that we find here.
Faith is first and foremost an estimation of the Lord’s character, not His capability. What He can do comes from who He is in the first place. A valid faith begins with knowledge of Who the Lord is. These people knew what He could do. They had seen what He could do. That was not their doubt. Their doubt was Who He is. The Bible tells us that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. So, the more I know God’s Word, the more I know God. The more I know the character of God, the more I know how I should ask and what might be likely to occur. I don’t always know what God wants or what He will do, but I can always begin by knowing Who God is. That is the beginning of the kind of faith that moves mountains.