Mark 6:1-5 And he went out from thence, and came into his own country; and his disciples follow him. 2 And when the sabbath day was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands? 3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him. 4 But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. 5 And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them.

Humans can be very peculiar individuals. For instance, why is it so hard for us to accept truth, when we see it or it is presented to us? I guess we have learned from our original father and mother, Adam and Eve, to make excuses. You remember when Eve was deceived into eating the fruit of the tree. She then gave it to her husband, and he also ate the fruit. When God called them out on this, Eve blamed the devil. Adam took it a step further by blaming Eve and God, for it was God who gave Eve to Adam.

Mankind has been looking for excuses ever since. We try to explain away that which would cause us to have to change the way that we think, which would lead us to change the way in which we live. We don't like that. So, we try to find reasons or loopholes that we can use to justify in our own minds why we can reject what we have heard or seen. W. C. Fields, an entertainer from many decades ago, lay on his deathbed. He asked someone to bring him a Bible. He was not a believer. As he was looking through the Bible, one of his friends asked him what he was doing. He replied, “I'm looking for a loophole.”

This is kind of what we see in our story. Jesus is returning to his own country, the place of His upbringing. As He was teaching, the people were astonished at what He said. They also noticed the mighty works that He did. They did understand that something significant was going on. That was a correct assessment. The problem came in how they reacted to what they heard from Jesus and what they saw Him do.

They responded to their correct assessment, with a wrong conclusion. Instead of hearing the truth that He taught, backed up by the work that He did, they looked for an out. They sought a loophole—a reason to not listen to what He said and to not be touched by what He did. They conveniently found one in the fact that they knew Him and His family intimately. They used the familiarity they had with His family as an excuse to reconcile what He did with who He really was, thus allowing them a perceived escape from following and obeying Him.

We can see this in the lives of unbelievers. You can share the gospel with them, share the truth of the Bible with them, and instead of responding to that truth, many will find a reason to ignore it. Making it harder, Satan will be right there to help them in their wrong conclusions. That is why it is vitally important that we trust in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the truth of the gospel to work in their hearts without which they will never trust Christ.

But this isn't about unbelievers, for Christians are just as guilty, if not more so in finding reasons to evade the truth presented in the Bible, or through the preaching of the Bible. They will try to find their own interpretations of the truth, or listen to somebody who will tickle their ears and explain away the truth of the scriptures. They look at the truth of the Bible and try to find a way to soften its assessment of their lives.

If anybody on this earth should be open to the truth of the Scripture, without any desire to explain it away, or make it fit within the confines of the lifestyle which they choose to live, it ought to be God's people. God wants His people to come to His truth in simple faith with a passion to live what they hear. Let us not look for reasons to explain it away or apply it only to someone else’s life.  I once heard the statement, “A man's morality will dictate his theology.” In other words, what he chooses to believe about God will be based on the style of life he desires to live. But really the opposite should be true, our theology ought to dictate our morality. We should simply accept what God says and live it without looking for a reason to bypass it by some illegitimate excuse.

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