Day 9: Called a Nazarene

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Reading

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
    and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.

Isaiah 11:1

He was despised and rejected by men,
    a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
    he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Isaiah 53:3

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
    Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your king is coming to you;
    righteous and having salvation is he,
humble and mounted on a donkey,
    on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
10 I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
    and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
    and he shall speak peace to the nations;
his rule shall be from sea to sea,
    and from the River to the ends of the earth.

Zechariah 9:9-10

And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene.

Matthew 2:23

Devotional

Only once does Matthew use the plural for “prophet” when describing the fulfillment of prophecies, and yet not once does Old Testament Scripture ever say that Jesus would be called a “Nazarene.” What is it that Matthew is trying to say? It gets lost a bit in our culture today, two thousand years later, but “Nazarene” was a slur that meant trashy, lowly esteemed, or despised. In John 1:46 we see that Nathanael is shocked that Jesus could be from Nazareth, because nothing good could possibly come from there.

Why was it important for Jesus to be despised and rejected by men? Because too often we look to charismatic, rich, and influential people naturally. Just as the Israelites chose Saul to lead them, we choose people that look good at a distance to be our leaders too. But Saul failed, and God appointed a lowly shepherd to take his place. That shepherd, David became the greatest king in Israelite history. Jesus continues to upset this trend. He’s not one we would naturally choose to lead us, and that just shows only God could have accomplished the events of His life. Only God could make someone so despised be followed by crowds of thousands in a time before social media even existed.

It’s also important that Jesus was so lowly esteemed as it makes Him relatable when we feel lonely, despised, and rejected. We did not care about Him, and yet He still lived faithfully to honor and glorify the Father. He still lived honorably to pursue us in our sin and love us, while we hated Him.

Take a Moment

Praise God for making Jesus to be a mold-breaker and relatable High Priest (Hebrews 4:15).

Pray that He would reveal the ways in which you despise Jesus by keeping areas of your life to yourself. Pray that He would help humble you and so that you would submit those areas to Him.

Check back each day for a new advent devotion on the Messianic Prophecies. A summary of all the advent devotions can be found here.