Message Info:
- Text: Mark 1:21-28, NKJV
- Series: Mark (2021-2023), No. 4
- Date: Sunday evening, August 8, 2021
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Audio File: Open/Download
Listen Online:
Watch Online:
Transcript:
⟦Transcript⟧ I was listening to a history program this weekend, or this week, I don’t even know what day it is. Sunday, I’m assuming, since we’re all here together, right? I was listening to a history program last week that caused me to think about what they were talking about, and I realized that a lot of the biggest fights that we are having as a society right now are over the question of authority.
When you think about the arguments that have been had over the last year or so about things like mask mandates and lockdowns and vaccinations, a lot of it’s been a question of authority. Who says we have to do these things? Who can say we have to do these things?
Is it the federal government? Is it the states? Is it the municipalities?
Is it the businesses? Is it, you know, nobody and get off my lawn. It’s a question of authority.
Even issues like abortion are really being argued over authority. Nobody but the craziest, most radical voices are saying that abortion is a good thing. There are people out there now who are saying, oh, it’s a positive thing.
You should shout about it and be proud about it. I don’t get that at all. But the rest of the country is arguing over authority.
Who gets to decide when it’s okay to take a human life? Is it the government? Is it a woman and her doctor?
Is it God and our God-given rights? That’s where I would stand on it. But it’s a question of authority.
Who gets to make the decision? And this is nothing new. The reason I got into thinking about this, I was listening to this history program about things that were going on over 100 years ago where they were having the same arguments, just about different things.
As a matter of fact, you could go back even further. You go back to the Garden of Eden. Satan’s question, has God said?
It was really a question about God’s authority. But the story I was listening to was in the aftermath of the Civil War. And the laws were a little different at that time.
There were certain powers over the military that were given to the President and certain powers over the military that were given to the Secretary of War, who’s the precursor of our Secretary of Defense today. And that worked out real well during the Civil War and the beginning of Reconstruction when Abraham Lincoln was president and the Secretary of War was, I just drew a blank on his name, Edwin Stanton, somebody that he had appointed, somebody he had picked. They worked well together.
But Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. His vice president, Andrew Johnson, became the president. And I’m sorry if some of you are bored with history.
I tell my wife all the time because she says history is boring. I said, because you had a bad teacher then. because history is just stories of crazy things people did.
If you think it’s just dates and places, somebody taught you wrong. So once these two men who did not see eye to eye had to work together, it didn’t go so well, and they started getting into competitions about who really had the authority to run Reconstruction, who really had the authority over the military. And Johnson couldn’t just fire the Secretary of War.
And so he tried all these legal maneuvers to do everything short of firing, getting him out of the office. And it came to a point where one day a military officer shows up at Edwin Stanton’s office in the War Department and says, the President has not fired you, but he has appointed me interim war secretary, and he’s told me to come and take your office. And Stanton says, you can’t do that, I am the Secretary of War.
He says, well, I come with the President’s authority, and so you have to give the office to me. Stanton says, I’ve been appointed by the president and approved by the Congress, and as Secretary of War, I am also your boss, and I’m ordering you to stand down. So they have this pretty tense standoff that ends with them sitting down and having a drink together, and the military officer finally leaving and going back and telling Johnson that he couldn’t get Stanton out of the office.
Stanton holed up in the office. He decided to live in his office for months at a time, so Johnson couldn’t run him out until Johnson finally decided to fire him anyway and got impeached for it. Nearly tore the country apart.
Nearly tore the country apart. And it all came down to a question of who has the authority? Who gets to make the decision?
And that’s just the story I listened to and reacquainted myself with this week. There are hundreds of stories like that in the history of our country. There are thousands in the history of mankind that come down to this question of who really gets to make the decision.
And anytime there’s a question of who’s in authority, it can lead to that kind of confusion. It can lead to conflict. But there was a day 2,000 years ago when Jesus walked out of the synagogue in Capernaum where nobody who was there listening to Him and watching what happened had any question in their minds about who really was in authority.
After seeing and hearing Jesus, they knew. There was no argument. There was no debate.
They knew who was in authority. I’m going to ask you to turn with me tonight to Mark chapter 1. Mark chapter 1.
If you’re using your phone, there’s a link in our bulletin. Otherwise, it’ll be on the screen if you don’t have a copy in front of you. But if you would, let’s stand together if you’re able to do so without too much difficulty as we read from God’s Word together.
We’re going to start in verse 21 of Mark chapter 1, and we’re going to read through verse 28. It says, Then they went into Capernaum, Jesus and the disciples, and immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.
Now there was a man in their synagogue with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, saying, Let us alone. What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Did you come to destroy us?
I know who you are, the Holy One of God. But Jesus rebuked him, saying, Be quiet and come out of him. And when the unclean spirit had convulsed him and cried out with a loud voice, he came out of him.
Then they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, What is this? What new doctrine is this? For with authority he commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.
And immediately his fame spread throughout all the region around Galilee. And you may be seated. So when we read this together, Jesus and his new followers had gone to Capernaum, one of the large cities there in Galilee.
We know a lot about Nazareth, but Nazareth wasn’t a big town. Capernaum was sort of the center of the area. So they went to Capernaum, they went into the synagogue.
And I’m sure these men that were with Jesus, we talked last week about some of the men that he had called to come and follow him. And what a commitment that was that he was asking for. For them to basically uproot their lives and reorient everything around Jesus.
So Peter and Andrew and James and John came with Jesus. They went to Capernaum and they probably just thought they were going to the synagogue. They probably just thought, we’re going to church.
I know it wasn’t the same as the church. But kind of like us, we’re just going for a normal service. And Jesus stood up to teach.
That wasn’t all that unusual. They already knew Jesus was a teacher. He was a rabbi. It wasn’t unusual for even a visiting rabbi to stand up in their meetings and read a portion of the Scripture and begin to teach it.
But as Jesus began to teach, they had a front row seat to something that from the very beginning showed them that He was more than just an everyday teacher. And when I say everyday teacher, there are a lot of us. We stand up and we teach God’s Word, But we’re doing so on the authority of God’s Word, not because of my authority.
But Jesus did something different. As a matter of fact, it’s recorded in some of His messages, you’ve heard it said, but I say. And what Jesus was doing was not saying, God’s Word says this, but I tell you better.
He was correcting their misinterpretations of God’s Word. You’ve heard it said, this from the Old Testament, which you understood to mean something altogether different. And I, as the one who is responsible for that scripture, am telling you here’s what it means.
So Jesus, we know just from seeing it elsewhere recorded in the Gospels, that Jesus had this way of teaching that had authority that nobody else would have claimed. And the way he taught, it says in verse 22, astonished the people. Because he taught as one having authority, not as the scribes.
And we see right from the beginning, before he’d ever performed a miracle here, That just from his teaching, just from the way he taught, just from the things he said, that Jesus has greater authority than the religious elites. By the way, that was true in his day. That’s true in our day as well.
They were astonished at his teaching. Now typically when the scribes and other religious teachers taught, they would come to an issue or they would come to a passage and they would appeal to another person’s authority. They would say, well, on this subject, so-and-so says, And they would quote another teacher or cite his authority.
Now the issue with that is that guy had to get his authority from someplace else. And he’d say, well, so-and-so said this. And you go back and back and back until you realize you’re either looking at something that is God’s word or you’re looking at something that’s some man’s opinion.
And it doesn’t matter how many people have repeated it over the years. It doesn’t matter how many people with fancy doctorates and titles have repeated it over the years. If it’s not rooted in the Word of God, it’s just somebody’s opinion.
It may very well be a correct opinion, but it’s just an opinion. And so they would come and they would look to these other rabbis and these other scribes of previous generations for their authority. They would base their teachings on them.
There was this long backward chain, but none of these men had any real authority of their own. And it’s still true today. It is still true today.
If our teaching is not rooted in the Word of God, we’re just spouting our opinions. I know of a particular leader of a church. This is reading some things that were written today.
Talking about some of the things that Jesus said and taught and things that Jesus affirmed. Things where the Scriptures would be in conflict with today’s culture. Actually, that could be just about anything.
It said, well, you know, we really, in following Jesus, it’s all about love. And you can’t go by this, you can’t go by that. Now listen, Jesus taught us to love one another, but Jesus also taught us that what God’s Word said is true and has always been true and always will be true.
Now I know we want to get into debates today about, well, there’s things, that’s Old Testament thinking, okay? There are aspects of the Old Testament that apply to the nation of Israel and not to the church. I get that, I understand that.
But when Jesus did things like affirming Moses’ teaching on marriage, That meant that’s not just Old Testament for Israel. That means that’s God’s design for mankind. And we could go on and on and on through this.
I’m seeing more and more of these kinds of messages like I was looking at today that are just rooted in somebody’s opinion and what they want to be true instead of what Jesus said. Now they may argue Jesus was wrong. We can have that debate if you want to.
But be honest about it. That you’re saying Jesus is wrong and you’re right. if that’s really what you want to say.
I’m going to stick with what Jesus said. We’re either basing it on the authority of God’s Word or we’re just spouting our opinion. Jesus was different.
Because where these guys would come in and they really had those two options, explain what God’s Word says, explain what’s written down in front of you, or spout your own opinion, Jesus could bring teachings that were from Him and His own authority and it was also God’s Word. He taught like nobody that they had ever heard before.
he wasn’t telling them I bring you this message because brother so-and-so said it and because doctor so-and-so said it before him he said I tell you as far as Jesus was concerned that was good enough sort of like what what have we all done with our children when they’ve asked why at some point we have all said because what because I said so because I’m daddy because I’m mama and that’s the way it’s going to be I’m not saying that’s ideal in every circumstance as my kids get older, I want them to understand the why of the things I tell them to do, because someday they’re going to be over 18. At some point, they may be in their 30s, and they’ll be too big for me to paddle them anymore. And they’re going to need more to stand on than just, well, Daddy said so.
But at the same time, right now, Daddy said so, and I need that to be enough for right now. Jesus said so. He came and told them not only here, but as I mentioned before, we’ve seen it recorded elsewhere in the scriptures, I tell you, you’ve heard it said, you’ve heard all these teachers, all these rabbis, all these learned men, these scribes, you’ve heard all the religious elites say, but I say, what kind of person would stack up all the religious learning of all of mankind over here and say, but I say something different and that’s what matters.
You’re either pretty arrogant or you’re God. And he demonstrated himself to be God in numerous ways. His authority far eclipses any other religious leader or teacher.
So let me break that down for you real quick and put it in simpler terms for today. If anybody, I don’t care if it’s me, I don’t care if it’s some guy on TBN, I don’t care if it’s the well-meaning person posting on Facebook, if anybody claiming to be a religious leader or religious authority tells you something that is in contrast to what Jesus has said, which is, by the way, not just the red letters in Scripture, but Jesus affirmed all of it. He is the God of Scripture.
He is the Word. When any religious authority tells you something that runs contrary to what Jesus said, run the other way. If it’s me, call me out for it.
Now, knowing what I know about myself and my history, if I say something to you that’s contrary to what Jesus said, it’s probably a mistake or an oversight on my part, so please be gentle and I’ll correct it. But call them out. Run the other way.
No other teacher or religious leader has even a fraction of Jesus’ authority. And how dare they even claim to? The moment he opened his mouth to teach in Capernaum for the first time, they could tell there was something different about this man.
Jesus had greater authority than the religious elites. He also had greater authority than their superstitions. Now, I know superstitions probably don’t mean that much to us.
We kind of have them, but we don’t necessarily put great stock in them. For example, if you’re saying, I don’t have any superstitions. How many of us ate black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day?
How many of us ate them in 2020 and it didn’t work? How many of us had an extra scoop in 2021? Right?
Now, I eat black-eyed peas year-round, so I love that tradition. But it is kind of a superstition. We know it doesn’t really bring good luck, but it’s kind of ingrained into us.
Every culture has its superstitions. Every culture has its things. I don’t even know where he learned it, but my four-year-old is worried about stepping on a crack.
I don’t know what show he saw that on. It’s nothing we’ve ever discussed. Step on a crack, break your mama’s back.
We have these superstitions. In some cultures, they’re considered powerful. And if I think about it long and hard, we probably have some superstitions in our culture that people ascribe real power to.
But in cultures all around the world, they have superstitions, and they view them as powerful things. One thing that took place in this passage that is easy to miss, there was a superstition in that day and age in some of the more mystical ideas that floated around in this time, that you could potentially gain control over a person by using their name. And I’ve always wondered, why is it that Jesus says to the unclean spirit when he says, I know who you are, Jesus of Nazareth, holy one of God, that Jesus says, shut your mouth.
That’s the Jared paraphrase. Why is it that Jesus said that? Now I know that those who hold to a woke or progressive theology would tell us, well, it’s because Jesus was correcting him.
He knew he wasn’t the Messiah. He knew he wasn’t God. Okay, there are numerous places where he affirmed who he was throughout Scripture.
If anybody tells you that Jesus never claimed to be God in the Bible, They probably haven’t seen a Bible in its natural habitat. He did numerous places. The most glaring of all is when he said, before Abraham was, I am.
That cannot mean anything other than him identifying himself with the God of Israel. He didn’t shut the unclean spirit down because he was denying that he was the Holy One of God. He shut the unclean spirit down because there was this superstition in this day and age that if you use somebody’s name, you had a leg up, you had leverage, You had some kind of mystical, magical control over them.
And so it looks like the unclean spirit here just trying any last-ditch effort. Look, he knows who Jesus is. He knows his goose is cooked.
He knows Jesus has the authority. But he’s trying one last-ditch effort to try to negotiate his way out of here, get some kind of leverage over Jesus. And even this superstition, Jesus just brushed it right off.
Which, by the way, that’s an affirmation even from the unclean spirit of who Jesus was and who Jesus is. It’s Jesus of Nazareth, the Holy One of God. He is the Messiah.
He is the one God promised. He is the one that they’ve been looking for all this time. Satan knew it, and he knew his days were numbered.
And look at what he said in verses 23 through 25. Leave us alone. He cried out just at the presence of Jesus.
Going back for just a second to the issue of the authority of the religious leaders, how many religious leaders had taught in that synagogue over the years, and the devil wasn’t bothered a bit by what they had to say. But Jesus showed up and began speaking, and suddenly they’re crying out, Leave us alone! What have we have to do with you?
What have we done to you? It’s not time. Are you here to destroy us?
So they knew they couldn’t stand up in his presence. So this spirit may have been trying to negotiate some kind of exit here. We saw them do this in a day where a man was found to be inhabited by spirits who said their name was Legion, because they were many.
And they said, please let us go into that herd of swine over there. Do you remember this story? Jesus said, fine, get out, go.
They went into the herd of pigs. It drove the pigs insane, and they ran down a cliff into the water below and drowned themselves. They were trying to negotiate some way out.
And despite their superstition, despite their magic that they were trusting in, their mystical power, what they thought they could accomplish, Jesus’ answer was simply, zip it. This is the same man who was able to speak to the storm. And people said, what kind of person is this that even the winds and seas obey Him?
When Jesus showed up, He had greater authority than all their superstitions. Folks, we don’t need. And I’m not saying this because I think or know that anybody in here dabbles in it.
But folks, we don’t need horoscope charts. We don’t need that thing, whatever it is, the nine-pointed star with the different numbers. We don’t need that.
We don’t need the superstitions of this world. Jesus has the authority. He has greater authority than any of our superstitions, any of the superstitions of our culture ever could have.
And we see just as impressive as these other two. Jesus has greater authority than Satan himself. See, this man was possessed.
by the power of Satan. I’m not saying that this evil spirit was Satan himself, but he was one of his employees. He’s definitely on the payroll.
This unclean spirit was in him. And listen, if you or I said to an unclean spirit, get out, by the authority vested in me as Jared, get out. Really?
You think that’s going to go over? That barely works at home, okay? I’m daddy, now go to bed.
Don’t try that. There’s a story in the book of Acts where some people tried to throw out some evil spirits. And the spirits said, Jesus, I’m paraphrasing because I didn’t go back and look at the story, but believe it was Jesus I know and Paul I know, but who are you?
And they got hurt. So they were trying to act in their own authority. You and I don’t have the authority to cast out unclean spirits.
You and I don’t have the authority or the strength to tangle with Satan. But Jesus did. And this evil spirit knew from the get-go that he was defeated.
He knew that if Jesus was there to destroy him, he’d destroy him. So we know a couple things from this text. The spirit controlled the man, and the man was powerless to do anything about it.
So I think if he was powerless to do anything about it, he would have gotten rid of it. I’ve never heard anybody have any kind of experience with an evil spirit that said, you know what, that was a good experience. People get involved with the occult thinking it’s going to be great.
You know, Satan promises a lot. He promises a lot of good-sounding things, and he delivers something else. Adam and Eve found that out.
So the Spirit controlled the man. The man was powerless to do anything about it. And we also know that the Spirit did not want to come out of the man.
He was hunkered down in there, and he was desperate to stay. But when the Spirit faced off against Jesus, its power and its will did not make a difference. All that mattered was what Jesus said because of who Jesus is.
Now ultimately, when Jesus said to do something, the spirit could throw a fit, it could scream, it could protest, it could stomp its little feet on the way out, which it did. It says it convulsed the man. But when Jesus said to get out, even this evil spirit, even this servant of Satan, had no choice but to do what Jesus said.
And that has not changed either. When all the forces of hell are lined up on one side, and it looks like the darkness is about to win, all it takes is the authority of Jesus. And Jesus one day will tell Satan to drop dead.
He will one day throw Satan into the lake of fire for all eternity. And he won’t have a word to say about it. And he gave them a glimpse of this that day.
When Jesus said, get out of the man, the Spirit had no choice. And the people who saw this, they were amazed. Verse 27 says.
They were amazed. They were astonished. They couldn’t believe what they were saying.
What kind of man is this? What are we seeing? What kind of teaching is this?
The things He teaches and the things that He does, even the evil spirits obey Him. They couldn’t believe what they were seeing. This demonic power had sat in their midst, for we don’t know how long, unbothered, unfazed by their religious activities and their religious experts, but Jesus showed up and confronted it and threw it out.
Because nobody matches the authority of Jesus. And He showed that from the very beginning of His ministry. I’m also puzzled by these people who say, Jesus kind of grew into this role as the Son of God.
Listen, one of the attributes of God is that He’s eternal. If a being could ever not be God, He could never be God. Does that make sense at all? Because to be God, you have to eternally be God or you’re not God.
So if you could step in and out of being God, you can’t ever be God. I know, we’re getting into deep theology here. Jesus didn’t grow into the role of Son of God over time.
He was the Son of God from eternity past. and when he showed up on earth and when he began his ministry, he had that power as the Son of God. He had that authority and he was showing it here from day one. So they were all amazed.
They questioned among themselves saying, what is this? What new doctrine is this? For with authority, he commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.
Jesus showed through his teaching. He showed through his power that he’s the ultimate authority. We don’t have to have the squabbles that the world has about who gets to say, Who gets to decide?
Who gets to make the plan? It’s real simple. It’s Jesus.
It’s Jesus. He showed us from the beginning. He has the authority.
He’s the authority among His people. He’s the authority within the church. He’s the authority in all of creation, even if all of creation does not yet recognize it, they will one day.
He has showed Himself to be everything that that unclean spirit was forced to admit. Jesus of Nazareth had the authority He had because He was and is the Holy One of God. And because of that, He’s the one that we serve.
He’s the one that we worship. He’s the one that we follow. Not the newest teachings, not the most charismatic religious leader, Jesus, and what He said and what He affirmed.
We serve Him, we worship Him, and we obey Him because nobody matches His authority.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download