Matthew 13:57

‘And they were offended in him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honour, except in his own country, and in his own house.”

And the result was that they ‘were offended in Him'. That is they were ‘caused to stumble' by Him. They were put off by the very fact of His familiarity, which had bred contempt, and they were upset by His attitude. The point here is that they are not of the ‘blessed' (Matthew 11:6). They were so short sighted that they could not see what was before their eyes. Here was a mirror image of what John says in the introduction to his Gospel, ‘He came to His own home, and His own people did not receive Him' (John 1:11).

Jesus' reply was to cite a well known proverb. His view was that this was to be expected. “A prophet is not without honour, except in his own country, and in his own house.” For no one was seen as special by his familiars when it came to questions about God. The older ones would think that they must know more than he did, while the younger ones would fail to see where he could have obtained the information from, from the sources available, and why He should claim to be better than them when He had grown up with them. Note the clear implication that He is a prophet. Matthew in fact lays great emphasis on prophets, both true and false, and it has already been made clear by Jesus that He is greater than previous prophets (Matthew 12:41). This is a time of prophetic expectations (compare Matthew 14:5) as Jesus is making clear.