What is Your Nazareth?

“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked. “Come and see,” said Philip (John 1:46).

Nazareth was Jesus’ boyhood home.

When you visit the town today, there is a place called “Nazareth Village” that captures the way life would have been when Jesus was a child. You see a goat herder, a Joseph-like carpenter making tools, and a woman weaving rugs. You imagine little Jesus scampering down the hill to play in the park. It is pleasant enough, but in Jesus’ day Nazareth, located in the district of Galilee, was not highly regarded.

 

Archaeologist James Strange estimates that the (almost entirely Jewish) population of Nazareth, around Jesus’ time of birth, was “a maximum of about 480.”  Scholars believe the city was small, ridden with filth, and plagued with unsophisticated, backwoods people. According to the John MacArthur Bible Commentary, “While Galileans themselves were despised by Judeans, Galileans themselves despised people from Nazareth.” The commentary adds, “Nazareth was an insignificant village, without seeming prophetic importance.”

No wonder Nathanael reacted the way he did when Philip told him about Jesus. How could the Messiah, the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote, hail from Nazareth? “Can anything good come from there?”

But it did.

Because God likes to turn things upside down.

He likes to have the younger serve the older.

He takes the least likely, and uses them mightily.

He planted his Son in a dumpy little town that no one cared for.

Why?

Because he is a God of transformation, and that is where glory resides.

Perhaps you are stuck in your Nazareth. Maybe you think, “How could anything good come from me?”

Does your past prevent you from serving? Do you think you have nothing to offer? Then you are perfect for the job, because God loves to use the castaways, and knows how to clean up our filthy past. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

When Peter addressed the masses at Pentecost, he referred to Jesus as Jesus of Nazareth.

When Peter and John healed a man, lame from birth, he commanded him, “In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, walk.”

Jesus appeared to Paul on the Damascus Road, Paul asked him who he was, and Jesus identified himself as “Jesus of Nazareth.”

Why didn’t Jesus just drop the Nazareth part? Didn’t it carry a bad connotation?

But that is where Jesus came from, and look at how God used him!

What is your Nazareth?

A depressed childhood?

An abusive marriage?

“Personal failure?”

God doesn’t want us to be ashamed of our Nazareths. He asks us to hand them all over to him, because he can work with them. God desires our transparency so he can resurrect our lives, and change the world.

He certainly did it with his Son….from Nazareth.

“But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen! He is not here” (Mark 16:6).