“Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?” (Matt. 13:55)
Some people enjoy spreading rumors, lies about other people in either an attempt to defame them and that for various reasons, or to lift up themselves. It is a branch from the tree of envy, in jealousy it is planted, and pride is what it grows in.
The Lord Jesus Christ, as much as we can presume without adding to the Scriptures, did not fit in when He was younger, He did not flirt with the young women of the town, He did not go on dates, and so, as it is today it has always been, rumors were spread about Him. “And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see.” (John 1:46)
From this we can infer that Nazareth was not the type of place that one would care to move to or even to visit unless it was necessary. Perhaps crime was higher there, perhaps unrighteousness flourished in that village, we do not know, but either the words of Nathanael were true, or the rumors of that place had been spread for so long that, as many rumors do, they became truth in the mind of those that heard them.
He was to all that knew Him in Nazareth as nothing more than the carpenter’s son, there was nothing special about Him save perhaps that the work He performed was of exceptional quality.
“For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (2nd Cor. 5:21)
Jesus our Lord never once took a sacrifice to the temple for an offering of sin, not once. This alone would place Him in an extremely low position in the eyes of those who knew this truth. The rumors would abound of His self-righteousness, His vainglory, His “better than attitude,” and this would further alienate and ostracize Him from the community. The man of sorrows and grief knew that burden long before He began His public ministry.
I do not believe that He ever placed one coin in the offering for the temple, but on this I could be mistaken, He who offered His life as a ransom for all men knew the financial needs of the temple, and so He may have. The Lord Jesus Christ was an outcast from the day He was born, He was nothing like the other children, He was not like the other young men of His town, He did not reveal Himself to those He “grew up” around, or they would have seen Him as more than just the carpenter’s son.
Joseph must have died before He left, or Mary would not have been traveling with the apostles. I have always wanted to hear the conversation between our Lord and Joseph as he lay there dying, many wonders may have been revealed to him in those last moments.
Nothing more than the carpenter’s son, just a strange young man who kept to Himself, who had no desire for marriage, who left and then came back professing to be sent from God. The rumors abounded.
“He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” (Isaiah 53:3)
People still do, to most He is nothing more than a fairy tale, at best a historical figure that may or may not have had some type of magical powers, and we who have trusted Him for the salvation of our souls are seen as weak-minded, as deceived, as believers of nothing more than rumors.
The just live by faith my friends, faith dispels all the rumors.
