How can I be sure not to miss out on God's best for my life? How can I avoid missing that door of opportunity which has been placed before me for me to walk through? How can I avoid limiting what God can do in my life, and thereby limiting what I can do through Christ?

None of us want to settle for second best. All of us, especially Christ followers, want to be all we can be in Jesus Christ. But there are attitudes which can either help or hinder us in that endeavor. A key turns both ways, to lock or unlock. We must discover those attitudes and responses which will unlock the opportunities and promises of God for us.

In our text today, we see a contrast being drawn. It is like a key, which turned one way, can unlock the power of God; but turned the other, can lock it up. Turned one way, it is faith. Turned the other, it is unbelief.

This is the story of Jesus going back to his home town. And unfortunately, it reveals the power of unbelief and wrong attitudes to limit the movement of God. The question for us to answer is, "Do we possess those same attitudes?

1 Then He went out from there and came to His own country, and His disciples followed Him. 2 And when the Sabbath had come, He began to teach in the synagogue. And many hearing Him were astonished, saying, “Where did this Man get these things? And what wisdom is this which is given to Him, that such mighty works are performed by His hands! 3 Is this not the carpenter, the Son of Mary, and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us?” So they were offended at Him.

4 But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house.” 5 Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. 6 And He marveled because of their unbelief. Then He went about the villages in a circuit, teaching. Mark 6:1-6

The message here is simple: unbelief limits the power of God.

Our text says that, "5 Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. 6 And He marveled because of their unbelief." (v. 5) In other words, because of their unbelief, Jesus was limited. The power of God working in their midst was turned back and they were the losers. Let's take a closer look at their unbelief.

There is always some underlying cause of unbelief. There are times when we have trouble believing people. We my struggle to believe a child or a friend or a politician. Underneath that doubt there will be some causes. Disbelief of a human is not uncommon but to doubt God is something that doesn’t make a lot of sense.

1. The Cause

What was the cause of their unbelief?

a. A limited view of Christ.

They were limited by what they could see, by what they could touch, by what they could understand. This event took place thirty years or so into the life of Christ. There were no Christian bookstores, no Christian churches, no bibles, no books, no videos, and no church signs with really cheesy messages. (Where would the world be without preachy and tacky church signs messages?)

What is your view of Christ? Do you just keep Him on the shelf of your life all week and pull Him out to bring to church with you? Do you understand that to be a Christ follower it means that it will affect every area of your life? Every decision you make will be viewed through the lens of His word.

A limited view of Christ will hinder you from believing at the times you need it most. A limited view of Christ will leave you cold and unconnected with the truth that can set you free.

A limited view of Christ will allow you to engage in activities that will seriously damage your relationship with Christ. A meaningful and rewarding relationship with Christ will only happen when we let him in to the secret places of our lives.

You may fool your parents, you may fool you wife or husband, you may fool your friends, your boss or everyone around you but you will never fool God. He knows and sees your every move. When you are moving toward Him He moves toward you and you will grow in your spiritual life.

Key word: obedience

b. Limited hearts.

These people did not want to believe. Jesus, after all, was one of them. They knew Him. He grew up in their community. They had a familiarity of Him and of His family. After all, didn't they know His father, and His mother, and His brothers and His sisters? They had watched Him grow up. How could this little boy who grew up in their neighborhood be anything more than they were? They not only couldn't see, they didn't want to see. They had limited hearts as well as limited vision. The Bible says that they were offended at Him. Their own egotistical pride would not allow them to accept that He was so much more than they were.

Jesus understood this. He said in verse 4, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house.” He knew, because of their pride, they would not receive Him as a prophet. Unfortunately, in order to receive a prophet's reward, you must receive a prophet as a prophet. Had they received Jesus as the Son of God, they would have been the recipients of His ministry. But because they received Him as a man of the flesh, they lost their opportunity to be touched by the power of God. You see, limited views mean limited lives. Unbelief locks up what could be for us.

There is an amazing verse in Jeremiah in the Old Testament that really speaks to this kind of unbelief. God had promised Israel to be there God, to keep them and provide for them. He never failed in these promises but somehow Israel always sought after a tangible god that they could see and touch. Listen to the words of God as recorded by Jeremiah:

"My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” Jeremiah 2:13

The cause of unbelief is often found in our willingness to take charge of our own life and try to run things with our own skills. It is as silly as someone turning from the source of living water to dig there own broken storage tank. In essence when we doubt God and turn to our own resources we create what G. Campbell Morgan calls the, “paralysis of omnipotence.”

2. The Consequences

What are the consequences of this unbelief?

a. The power of God is locked up. Notice that it says in verse 5 that, "He could do no mighty work there." It did not say that Jesus would not, it said He could not. Unbelief locks up the power of God. It limits what God can do for us and through us. God is no less powerful because of our unbelief. It is simply that He has designed that power to be used in response to faith. Just like there are natural laws in the universe, so there are spiritual laws. Things are designed to work in certain ways.

b. The provision is limited. Jesus came to this town with a desire to minister to them. Because of their unbelief, the provision that God had desired to give to them was limited.

There is provision to be found in God that can only be found when we put our trust in Him completely. That provision will be unleashed when we give our everything to God.

After World War II, the Allied armies provided food and shelter for many homeless children. They were put together in large camps where they received more than sufficient food and care. Surprisingly, these well-fed children did not sleep well at night. They appeared to be restless and afraid. To remedy the problem, a psychologist suggested that each child should be given a slice of bread to hold at night. If they were hungry, another piece of bread would be provided, but the single slice was to be held, not eaten. The results were astounding. The children began to rest peacefully. The sensation of holding the bread gave them a sense of security and hope. They began to experience the peace that David knew when he wrote, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” The Twenty-Third Psalm, Charles Allen, 1961, p. 15

c. The promises are lost. As believers, we are recipients of the promises of God. In fact, the Bible emphatically states that all of the promises of God are "yes" to us in Christ. In other words, God made His promises because He desired to give us His promises. Through faith, we receive the promises of God. But through unbelief, they are lost to us.

Hebrews 4 gives us a principle for receiving the promises of God. Listen to the words found in verses 1 and 2: "Therefore, let us fear lest, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it. For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard."

At the Lausanne Conference on evangelism several years ago, an evangelist from China was brought to the platform to address evangelists from around the world. He had been in arrested and kept in a filthy prison camp. His job was to spend all day every day cleaning out one of the camp cesspools that had been drained. It was full of filth and stench, but he would stand on a ladder and scrub the walls. When asked how he stood it each day, he told of singing this song over and over and enjoying the presence of God.

I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The son of God discloses

And He walks with me
And He talks with me
And He tells me I am His own
And the joy we share as we tarry there
None other has ever known

He speaks and the sound of His voice
Is so sweet that the birds hush their singing
And the melody that He gave to me
Within my heart is ringing

You and I ought to long for that kind of relationship with God. As a matter of fact we can have that kind of relationship with God when we long for Him and love Him with everything we have and are. This world and all its stinking habits and addictions, and garbage begins to lose its attraction.

3. The Cure

Finally, what is the cure for unbelief?
a. The cure for unbelief is faith. But what is faith, and how do we receive it? Well, faith is trust in Jesus. What I am talking about is not knowledge about Jesus, but trust in Him. It is the trust we have today for what Jesus can do in our lives. It is a trust born out of a relationship to Him. It is a trust which comes from knowing Him.

You see, rather than expressing limited views based on limited knowledge, we must be willing to adopt the attitude that God can and will work in our midst if we will only believe Him.

But how do we come to the place where we really believe Him, where we really trust Him, where we are willing to step beyond where we can see? There is an important biblical answer to that question. We talked about it last week and reminded you of the awesome privilege we have to do the one thing that Jesus taught is necessary. We connect to God in faith when we turn toward Him and let His word live in us.

The answer is found in Romans 10:17 where it says, "So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ." Faith grows as we give attention to what God is saying in His word. As we open the Bible and study it, as we seek God in prayer, for Him to reveal, by His Holy Spirit, the lessons this Book contains, then we will begin to have the eyes of our understanding enlightened. As we hide the word in our hearts, faith will grow. You see, faith must be nurtured. A believing heart does not simply happen, it is developed. As we come to understand and know Christ better through His word, we will also come to understand the faithfulness of God to keep His promises to us.

Thomas Linacre was king's physician to Henry VII and Henry VIII of England, founder of the Royal College of Physicians, and friend of the great Renaissance thinkers Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. Late in his life he took Catholic orders and was given a copy of the Gospels to read for the first time. The Bible, of course, was still the preserve of the clergy and not in the hands of ordinary people. And Linacre lived through the darkest of the church's dark hours: the papacy of Alexander VI, the Borgia pope whose bribery, corruption, incest, and murder plumbed new depths in the annals of Christian shame.

Reading the four Gospels for himself, Linacre was amazed and troubled. "Either these are not the Gospels," he said, "or we are not Christians." Citation: Os Guinness, The Call (Multnomah, 1998), pp. 109–110

A. W. Tozer eloquently described the unusual characteristics of a Christian who lives by faith. “A real Christian is an odd number anyway. He feels supreme love for one that he has never seen, talks familiarly every day to someone he cannot see, expects to go to heaven on the virtue of another, empties himself in order to be full, admits he is wrong so he can be declared right, goes down in order to get up, is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest, and happiest when he feels worst. He dies so he can live, forsakes in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible, and knows that which passes knowledge.” To live by faith means embracing a lifestyle that contradicts most of life. The Root of the Righteous, A.W. Tozer, 1986, p. 156

The most startling line in this story is the line that says, “He could do no mighty works there.”

Can God do mighty works in your life or have you allowed some things to cloud your thinking and your faith?

Are there some areas that you need to deal with today that only God may know but it is in effective tying His hands and keeping them from working for you?

I am going to invite you to talk to God this morning.

Lord,
I crawled across the barrenness to You with my empty cup uncertain in asking any small drop of refreshment.

If only I had known You better I’d have come running with a bucket. –Nancy Spiegelberg and Dorothy Purdy, Fanfare: A Celebration of Belief