FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Scripture Reference: Mark 1:14-45

This Is Why He Has Come – Continued

Please read Mark 1:29-39 for the background to this section.

Jesus had gone out to some quiet hillside to find solitude with God, that union with His Father that matters even more than catching up on His sleep. This is where He finds renewal and refocuses His vision after the clamor of the crowds. The divine Son of God is also that fragile man who needs to do that. Simon and company find Him . . . and they are not impressed. It’s morning now and when they find Him, they say, “Everyone is looking for you.” However, Jesus does not go back to Capernaum that day. Instead He moves on. There are other places, lots of them, that need to hear His words. The word here for “towns” suggests, not the tiny hamlets like Nazareth, but bigger places, small market towns. This part of Mark’s narrative concludes with the picture of Jesus pursuing this strategy, traveling between these centers, “preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.”

But now for the surprises. The first comes in verse 34; “He would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew Him.” Now, we could understand it if Mark had written, “He would not let the demons speak because they were telling lies about Him.” After all, Satan is called the “father of lies;” falsehood is his specialty. But in the presence of Jesus’ authority, the demons do not lie . . . or they can’t lie; like the one in the synagogue, they will blurt out His true identity as they depart the scene. Of all those who hear Him, they know Jesus’ identity more accurately than anyone. So we must ask the question, doesn’t He want to be known for who He truly is? Of course He does, but not like this, not with the terrified squeaks of an enemy. Jesus’ mission is not simply to get people to realize who He is, as if this were some kind of cosmic identity parade. His mission is to confront people with the decision they have to make: to recognize Him, yes; but then to acknowledge Him, follow Him, and love Him. Without that, the most complete knowledge about Jesus is useless. So, He silences the demons, proving again, just by the way, that He has total power over the forces of evil.

The demons’ theology is excellent. They know who their enemy is; they know He is going to win. When they see Jesus appear on the earth, the Son of God, they recognize Him as the One who will finally defeat them. They have only the haziest notion about how that will happen, and they don’t understand about the cross, but they do know that Jesus’ arrival spells their final defeat. They have a superb grasp of biblical theology. But do they have faith in Christ? Of course not. The demons, in fact, are a perfect illustration of the fact that simply believing in God is no good to anybody (James 2:19). We should never think that just because someone can say, “I believe in God,” they are thereby close to faith in Christ. The brutal truth is that unless you know Jesus Christ, in a very real and very personal relationship, unless you embrace Him and follow Him as the Son of God, you are no better off than these demons. They know all about God, but in the face of Jesus all they can do is scream and disappear for ever. Plenty of people say they believe in “God,” but only real, true Christians, disciples of Jesus, start with Jesus, being united, abiding with and in Him.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture Reference: Mark 1:14-45

This Is Why He Has Come

Please read Mark 1:29-39 for the background to this section.

That Sabbath evening, Jesus finds Himself surrounded by intense excitement. The next stage of the story contains two major surprises. The synagogue service is over and the people spill out, full of excitement with their news. But Jesus and His group of four go home with Simon and Andrew, very likely they are still in Capernaum, and in what follows we can hear Simon Peter’s voice as he sits down years later and recalls it all for Mark. This is clearly his own, eyewitness account:

“We went back to my place, the five of us. My mother-in-law was sick; she had had this fever for weeks. Normally she was so active, but she was just flat out. Well, of course we told Jesus, and you know what He did? He simply walked into the room, took hold of her hand and hoisted her to her feet! And that was that! The fever was gone! No trace of weakness, she insisted on sorting out the meal for us all then and there.”

So Peter’s mother-in-law is healed. But Jesus does not have peace for long after His lunch. As soon as the sun goes down and the Sabbath is over, the crowd starts to gather. There has been just long enough for everyone in Capernaum and the surrounding area to hear what happened in the synagogue this morning; it’s not hard to guess that in a densely packed village like Capernaum, news of the healing in the house has got around too. I doubt that there is an orderly queue outside Simon Peter’s house in Capernaum that night. There are at least dozens, maybe scores of sick, injured and demonized people outside the door. Some have brought themselves; others have been cajoled, carried or dragged here by their families. No matter, because Jesus heals them all. There is no illness, no condition that Jesus can’t tackle. There’s no demon that can resist His command. Such is His divine power; such is His authority.

Finally the crowd clears, the last straggler has gone and Jesus can rest. It had been dark for hours by this time. Surely He will need a good rest, but apparently that is not His priority. Again we hear Simon Peter’s voice behind Mark’s narrative:

“It was just getting light when we got up. We looked round for Jesus, but He was gone!”

So they go looking, and somehow they find him. Jesus is out praying in “a desolate place.” Literally, Mark is telling us that it was a “desert, a solitary, place.” That is odd, because the whole area was in fact thickly populated, with well-cultivated farmland among the towns and villages. But, as you can see back in the very beginning of the chapter, the desert is the place where people go in order to meet with God, to see spiritual realities more clearly.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture Reference: Mark 1:14-45

The Call You Can’t Resist – Continued

Please read Mark 1:16-28 for the background to this section.

If you remember, the beginning of the Gospels tell us that Jesus began His ministry by going out to confront Satan, the controlling power behind all demons. That wasn’t the end of it by any means, for even now the confrontation continues. Jesus’ presence flushes those spirits out of hiding; and here, in the synagogue, He has not gone looking for a demon, but His very presence has forced the demon to show itself. As far as we can tell, this man has been peacefully attending the synagogue all his life, which probably says something about the level of spiritual life in the synagogue. While the people sitting around may not be too clear who this new teacher is, the demon has no doubt at all. “Jesus of Nazareth?” it asks, yet there is nothing remarkable about his knowing Jesus’ home town, but probably the use of His name represents a futile attempt to control Him. “Have you come to destroy us?” That may well in fact be a statement; “You have come to destroy us!” The demon correctly identifies Jesus as God’s unique representative, “Holy One of God,”—set apart, the antithesis of all evil—and it recognizes that His coming spells the end, not just for one demon that Sabbath morning, but ultimately for all the powers of evil, because Jesus has come bearing all the authority of God!

How is it that a demon can recognize the Son of God for who He is, while the people, by and large, do not? The answer is that Satan blinds people to Jesus’ true identity (2 Corinthians 4:4). The demons are perfectly clear about who Jesus is, though the knowledge itself does them no good. However, soon comes the moment of truth. Literally, Jesus says, “Be silent.” In essence Jesus emphatically and authoritatively states, “Be muzzled,” as if He was dealing with a little, yapping dog. “Come out of him!” Dramatically, with a convulsion and a yell, the spirit is gone. For Jesus, there will be no more anonymity after this!

In Capernaum the people are astounded to see evil spirits banished with a word. This shows more clearly and dramatically than anything that Jesus is creating a space on earth where only God’s authority is recognized, only His decree runs. That is the Kingdom of God in action. The driving out of demons is a foretaste of the cross, where Jesus will achieve His decisive victory over Satan as His death sets people free from the power of sin and hell, breaks Satan’s power and establishes the Kingdom of God. Still today, the Kingdom is spreading and growing. The life and activity of each local church that follows the teaching of the Gospel is a small sign of God’s Kingdom on earth, a place where we acknowledge God’s right to rule, where we say, “Jesus is King. Jesus is Lord.”

The “call you can’t resist” forms a strange link between the disciples and the demons. For the disciples, it is a call to follow; for the demons, a call to be gone. In both cases, they recognize the authority of Jesus and they cannot resist the call.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture Reference: Mark 1:14-45

The Call You Can’t Resist – Continued

Please read Mark 1:16-28 for the background to this section.

From Last Lesson: Teaching was the scribes job, and how they taught! Their technique with any question was to go back and quote the experts, and the way the experts had quoted other experts.

For example:

“Rabbi Yohanan said that; Rabbi Eliezer said so-and-so; but Rabbi Yehuda’s opinion, according to Rabbi Ben-Ammi, was this . . . and so on and so forth.”

This was how they taught until in the end, a couple of centuries later, all this opinion-quoting was gathered into a shelf full of huge books called the Talmud (if you ever have the chance to see a copy, or to read it online, you’ll see what I mean!). What they did not have in their teaching was authority. Then one day Jesus gets up and says, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing . . . [and I am the one bringing it!]”

It doesn’t take long for people to notice the difference. This reaction is very interesting. They don’t say, “This man is crazy, or insufferably arrogant.” Rather, they are “astonished” and “amazed.” The words carry the sense of being overwhelmed with wonder; the people are disturbed by what He says. This is the second group who encounter Jesus’ authority. Many of them never fully understand who Jesus is, but they clearly see that He is different. Through His authoritative teaching He demands their attention.

Sitting among the people is someone who certainly does recognize who Jesus is, a third “group” if we can take the liberty to call it that. This man is under the controlling authority of “an unclean spirit”—literally, an “impure” or “evil” spirit, a demon. Some people try to explain away stories like this one. Many say, especially in our day and age, that they are the product of primitive cultures, and we as “civilized” people have moved beyond such naïve beliefs. The truth is that in most parts of the world people understand only too well that the spirit world is real. If you go to Africa, or to large parts of Asia or South America, you will find that people have no doubt about the reality of evil spirits. Muslims rightly understand the existence of demons, or “jinns” as they call them; they are a feature of everyday life; and it is where the concept of the “genie” comes from. It is only in the sophisticated West that we are foolish enough to stop believing in evil powers that can control people’s lives. Such fools we are, even many professing Christians, think we know better than the Bible in this modern age! The spiritual world is as real as anything you can touch, see or hear, and demons are the most pure and naked forms of evil that we should ever be truly concerned with.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.