KV21: Teaching in Capernaum on the Sabbath

Introduction

Currently, Christianity and the church is facing what many of us call a false movement that calls itself “Deliverance Ministry.” These are false teachers and false Christians that will tell you that they need to cast demons out of actual believers. Alongside that, with some troubling crossover at times, there are people who falsely say they can “heal” you of whatever sickness you may have at the moment. Normally, we would look at this individually and explore verse by verse what the Scriptures say about this, but here we get to do it all at once with this grouping of verses.

It also gives me an opportunity to do a little cross promotion of the book study series we are in now. On Fridays at the same time, 7:00 p.m. ET, we have been for 77 episodes now, been reading through he book by John MacArthur called Strange Fire, in which these ideas and related ones are being discussed as we read through and discuss the text. If you want to come and participate, then join us on the Official Berean Nation Rumble channel. Here is what you do: Go to this address: I’ll share it in the chat and leave it on the screen for you, but it is bereannation.substack.com, and sign up for the weekly email. We will send you the link to join us and share your thoughts over the new Rumble Studio phone-in function. You can chat with us directly. You can also email me at Pa*******@**********on.com and I can invite you to be onscreen with us, assuming you have a camera on your device. We’ve been talking about healing so-called “ministries” like the one run by Benny Hinn, and how they are not doing biblical healings, or in fact, healings of any kind. Come and join us. Sign up on Substack to get the email with the call-in link.

What we see in the false movement among people who are trying to imitate the sign/gift world today is not to be compared with the way it is done by our Lord Jesus in this passage this evening, or by His Apostles in the New Testament. We will discuss some of the reasons why that is.

I took verse 21 as my key verse to give a title to my study overall. Mark 1:21 reads, “They went into Capernaum; and immediately on the Sabbath He entered the synagogue and began to teach.” One of the things that the religious leaders of the day did was give Jesus trouble for doing this kind of thing on the Sabbath. Jesus, who is also fully God, knew exactly what would happen, and I think what began here was the Lord Himself trying to provoke the very reaction He got. We will se it fulfil itself, but He was provoking His own murder so that He could offer His own life in exchange for ours, the penitent sinner who would turn to Him when we finally realized it was all for us.

Having said that, there were reasons here, and information about other things, and we will look at those now to attempt to make sense of Jesus’ behaviour.

21-22: “Not Like the Pharisees,” but with Authority

The first thing that comes out in the Preaching and teaching of Jesus is that he didn’t just say things like some of the nonsensical commentaries of Rabbis who miss the entire point of their Scriptures. He spoke with authority, like He knew what He was talking about because He did. Let’s see it in the text.

21: They went into Capernaum; and immediately on the Sabbath He entered the synagogue and began to teach.

Here is a map, we can see Capernaum is on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. I’ve circled Capernaum in red to highlight it. We know from biblical history that Jesus was born in Bethlehem of David, in those days, a kind of suburb of Jerusalem to the south, it was about 5 or 6 miles to the south, and a couple of hours to walk it. Then His family fled the city to Egypt for a couple of years while Herod the not-so-great was trying to kill Him, and when His family returned to the Holy Land, they returned to Nazareth, about 90 miles to the north, and well away from Herod or anyone in Jerusalem wanting to cause Him harm. Capernaum is about a 40-mile walk, so about 2 day’s walk along what was known as Via Maris, or “the Way of the Sea,” which was a major trade route connecting Egypt with the Mediterranean Sea, and points of the Levant in a North Easterly direction. It was a vital artery through the area. Personally, I see this as a road that is central and easy to access everywhere else. Capernaum was connected with a prosperous commercial fishery at least. This became “Jesus’ own city,” as identified by Matthew after the people rejected Jesus in Nazareth (Matthew 4:13, “…and leaving Nazareth, He came and settled in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali.”) Capernaum became the center of Jesus’s ministry, and the place where He performed many miracles, some of which happened on this particular Sabbath. It was also the home of at least several of His disciples; Peter, Andrew, James and John, and Matthew (Levi) were all called in Capernaum. Later in chapter 2:1, Jesus Himself identifies it as His home (Mark 2:1 “When He had come back to Capernaum several days afterward, it was heard that He was at home.”). People came to look for Him here (John 6:24 “So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor His disciples, they themselves got into the small boats, and came to Capernaum seeking Jesus.”). This was, without a doubt, the place on Earth that Jesus chose to be and work during His stay here on Planet Earth.

He did many of His miracles on the Sabbath, something for which the leaders of Israel were very …well, anxious; it made them angry, but for no reason. What they saw incorrectly as violations of the Sabbath, were actually Jesus ceasing from His own works and doing the works of His Heavenly Father, the very thing for which the Sabbath was created. We saw a great deal of anger on numerous occasions about Jesus performing miracles on the Sabbath. This is something to notice whenever we come across it in the Gospels.

He entered the synagogue to teach. That word “begin” is in italics, which means that the translators included it to make the text readable, but I think it reads fine in this instance without it. Jesus’s purpose for entering the synagogue on the Sabbath was to teach. I find it interesting this was accepted practice. Surely there were more aged and respected local rabbis that could do the job, one would have thought. But here is that young upstart teacher blathering about how the kingdom of God has come and all that noise. 22: They were amazed at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

The people in the synagogue had simply never heard anything like this before. They were amazed at how He seemed to actually know what He was talking about, not just offering some mystical blather in the name of Jehovah and calling it commentary. He had real authority, not like the Scribes, the guys who could only read the words God had given them to read. This guy read them and spoke about them like He wrote them. He did, or at least inspired the men who did through His very own Spirit (the Holy Spirit).

What we have here, as we go on in the book, you will see, is really the perfect storm that is going to get that man, our Lord Jesus murdered by the elders of Israel by getting the Romans to crucify Him on that cross we talk about so much. What you have to remember is that Jesus was a real man; Josephus even talked about him, when speaking of His half-brother James (the writer of the book that bears James’s name). Here is the text: Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity [TO EXERCISE HIS AUTHORITY]. Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, [OR, SOME OF HIS COMPANIONS]; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned…(Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 20.9.1 (20.200)). That real man was also really God, come in the flesh, so to speak, to die for all of our sins. Don’t forget that, or none of the rest of this study will make sense. Next paragraph.

23-28: Jesus Expels a Real Demon

The modern calamity known as “deliverance ministries” cannot even come close to the authority of Jesus on this. By twisting the scriptures, they try to tell us that they are casting out all kinds of demons, of lust, of sex, of warts, or pimples, of cold sores, of disagreeing with them by saying they’re wrong, and other such nonsensical blather, they can talk a good fight, but when you look at the results of their “work,” you can see they cannot hold a candle to the Lord Jesus, or in fact any real Christian, like, say, Paul. Let’s get into the text, this is a bigger section that normal.23: Just then there was a man in their synagogue with an unclean spirit; and he cried out,

Here the man tormented by the unclean spirit identifies himself to the crowd with an outburst in the language everyone spoke, maybe Aramaic, probably Hebrew in the synagogue .All it says is that he was in the synagogue and he was a man with an unclean spirit here. What an unclean spirit was doing in a theoretical house of God, I will leave to the imagination, but I doubt there was a good reason. Next verse.24: saying, “What business do we have with each other, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us? I know who You are—the Holy One of God!”

This is undoubtedly the demon doing the speaking. The man, while he may have understood that Jesus was the Messiah, may not have agreed or believed at the time. However, the demon did know. What the demon is asking here is if the day of Judgment came early and that the demon himself would therefore face imminent destruction. See the question: Are you here to destroy us (the demons)? Note also the following expression—I know who you are! The Holy One of God! This is a reference to the Messiah, at least in my thinking. I think the two of them saw each other for who they truly were.25: And Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be quiet, and come out of him!”

Jesus wasn’t letting this evil bottom-dwelling creature speak and let everyone hear the truth before it was time for them to know. He said, “Be quiet and come out of Him.”

26: Throwing him into convulsions, the unclean spirit cried out with a loud voice and came out of him.

Of course, the demon has to do it with a protest, but he does it. He throws the man into convulsions. I’ve seen a medical case of that once, and it was a bad reaction to a drug given for medical reasons, but the demon cried out (maybe in frustration because he was being forced to obey Christ) and went out of the man. This raises several questions for me.

How many times did Jesus tell the demon to get out? I counted. It was once and once only. Compare, if you will, the jokers calling themselves deliverance ministers. They shout over and over at people demanding the demon leave in their best authoritative shouts. Sometimes, the demon leaves, sometimes it doesn’t.

Did the demon actually leave? Well, he did here. Compare our modern people doing this. They don’t always, or they leave and they come back. There are reasons for that we will get to in a moment.

Was the demon named here? I didn’t get a name from the text. That tells me that a bit of “demon lore” of our modern exorcists is not only unimportant but untrue. I have had these people who call themselves “exorcists” tell me it is essential to name the demon. Jesus didn’t. Why not? I have to conclude that it must be non-essential and unimportant in the exorcism. What is important is the presence of the actual Holy Spirit for the authority to cast out the wee beastie.

What about our modern demon slayer crowd? Well, the demons can be seen to NOT obey them. I am reminded of the seven sons of Sceva, who were reported to be Jewish exorcists. When they tried to use the name of Jesus who Paul preaches to make the demon leave (Acts 19:14), the demon replied, “Jesus I know, Paul, I know, but who are you?” The demon then proceeded to beat the seven of them so badly they fled without their clothes (v.16). Demons will not respond to people without the authority to actually make them. Beloved, there is only One with that authority, and that is the living God in any of His three persons. We certainly do not have that authority in ourselves. I have, however, noticed some things about these demon slayers so-called.

Many of the faces of the demon-possessed people are the same people from event to event. This suggests that the involved “possessed” people are in on the bit. Some are actors, some are friends, none of them are actually possessed, and it’s all a show in these cases. We have another word for that in English: Fraud.

What I find ironic about all of these people is that they invoke the name of Jesus like some kind of magic spell or ward and then start decreeing and declaring the demon has no more legal rights (they didn’t anyway, that’s a twisting of Scripture) and essentially casting them out immediately, and they never go. There are some things wrong with this. A) This is the reviling of angelic majesties referred to in Jude 8 (“Yet in the same way these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties.”) and 2 Peter 2:10–11 (“and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority. Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble when they revile angelic majesties, whereas angels who are greater in might and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord.”) Not even Michael would do that against Lucifer, his actual created equal, according to Jude. B) Sometimes, in fact often, the people that these demons are being cast out of are allegedly believers. We have learned that believers, when they believe God and are justified before God, have the Holy Spirit placed inside them by God. For the legalistic mind, this is related to the doctrine of the lesser magistrate. The lesser magistrate must always yield position and authority to the greater magistrate. The greatest Magistrate is God, and since God the Holy Spirit lives in all genuine Christians, no real Christian can ever be possessed by a demon in the first place. Any other doctrine on this is simply not supported in Scripture and is false teaching. C) Any Christian should therefore also have the authority to exorcise a demon in the authority of Christ. I’ve never participated in an exorcism, but I have friends who were ministers who did, and they have affirmed this. This suggests that if these people are attempting to use the authority of Christ to expel said demon and it is not leaving after repeated attempts, it suggests they are not actual Christians, but I would never say that. Oops, I just did.

My point with all the above logic is to show that these people are not real Christians, they have an incorrect view of the Holy Spirit, and they are really only in it to either gain status or money, and probably both. Yet, some of these people have very large internet ministries. I don’t feel the need to name them here, but I could. Moving on.

27: They were all amazed, so that they debated among themselves, saying, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey Him.”

Now if I had been standing there, I would have been picking my jaw off of the floor along with the rest of them. I think they had nothing with which to compare what had just happened in front of them. Instead, they proclaimed that this was new, because it was, and they directly attribute it to His authority, because of His command over the unclean spirits and how they obeyed Him. Even with His clear authority, the religious leaders still debated its source (see Matthew 12:24, which says, “But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul the ruler of the demons.”)28: Immediately the news about Him spread everywhere into all the surrounding district of Galilee.

This was so new, the news about Him could not be contained. Our text uses the word “immediately” in the context of how fast the news spread. I spent some time looking at the Greek for this text, learning as I went. Initially, I did not recognize the word for “immediately,” but I did find it: εὐθὺς. For those who need the nerdy reference stuff like I do, this is a critical text, not a so-called received text, and is the SBLGNT, or the Society of Biblical Literature Greek New Testament, the 2013 edition, cited as 2013-06-19, meaning it was published on June 19th of 2013. If you have been following for any length of time, you will already know I am not a fan of the “received text” because all the stuff about other manuscript variants from the Alexandrian region being corrupted has no actual proof to it. Besides, Athanasius, the man who stood firm and held the line for the first controvery the church ever had about the divinity of Christ against the heretical Arius who said Christ was not divine, was the bishop of Alexandria. The argument is both specious and suspect. I’ll stop with the geeky stuff, nobody wants to hear that, and I stink at debate, so I won’t do that here or anywhere else. Suffice it to say that the news about Jesus and His command of the supernatural being or beings over which He had command spread from that place at the speed of gossip.

It is clear to me that Christ has the authority over His own creation, and that all souls belong to Him (Ezekiel 18:4,“Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine. The soul who sins will die.”) When He commands, they will do what He says if they are not humans. He has given us the unique agency of free will, but He has made it so that we will want to obey His commands when He gives the.

It should also be noted that there is no identifying information of the man who had the demon cast out of him. Neither Mark nor Luke (the parallel account is in Luke 4) give any other information about him, but this should be no surprise. The main focus of the passage is Christ, not the demon-possessed guy. This is another thing that the demon-slayers don’t tend to think about, although I think some may, being deceived that they are actually saved and following Christ. I know that sounds harsh, but I’m using the language that Paul and Peter did in places. Moving on.

29-31: Jesus Legitimately Heals Real Sickness

This is also a very big deal, and many pretenders have confused this idea and twisted it for modern audiences (which is a problem to begin with, we shouldn’t have audiences, we should have witnesses) beyond recognition from what biblical healing looks like. Men like Ken Copeland, Benny Hinn, the late Ken Hagin, and many, many others move around the front of their stage areas (appropriate, since they are merely actors) and command the healing in a Charismatic way, touching the individual’s forehead and through the power of suggestion, knocking them to the floor. Copeland did that to a guy in a wheelchair! (see slides 4-6)

Here’s the explanation from the video at Protestia.com: “One slight touch from Copeland promptly sent him flying backward and crashing to the ground, a look of horror and ‘that wasn’t supposed to happen’ plastered across Copeland’s face, resulting in him getting stuck in a boot loop of ‘thank you Lord’ over and over again. Leaving his side, he swiftly moved on to the next person, telling the ushers to help the wheelchair-bound man.up and reassuring the crowd who caught it on the big screen ‘He’s not hurt! He’s not hurt!’” I’ve put the link on the bottom of the slides if you want to check it out yourself. Pause the video and type it out into the address bar of a browser. That’s about all I know how to do, or you can visit BereanNation.com and get the link from there. I’ll post it there for reference right in the notes for the study. https://protestia.com/2021/08/16/video-kenneth-copeland-sends-man-in-wheelchair-crashjing-backwards/

Some have promised healing in a convincing enough way that people have stopped their cancer treatments “in faith” and died of cancer. This doesn’t mean God is powerless, it means that these people that Peter and Jude warned us about were successful in their grift. Let’s look at the text and see how it actually worked in Scripture.

29: And immediately after they came out of the synagogue, they came into the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.

This looks to me like an after-church fellowship at the house of one of the saints, but before there was a church. They ended up going to Peter’s house, and Andrew lived with them, from the way this is worded. Maybe they owned it together, whatever the case, Peter’s wife had her mother living or staying there as well, as we will se momentarily. I get the impression that they lived very near the synagogue from the way the Greek reads: ἐξελθόντες ἦλθον, or to depart and then arrive. Mark uses the word εὐθὺς, which has the primary meaning of “immediately” in the New Testament. Out of the 59 uses of the term in the New Testament, Mark uses 41 of them, including the one I missed in verse 28 and here, and this info was gained in Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words on pages 353-354. It’s a complete version of what Vine was unable to complete before His death. At any rate, they came to the house as a group.

30: Now Simon’s mother-in-law was lying sick with a fever; and immediately they spoke to Jesus about her.

Peter would remember this as he related the story to John-Mark. Beloved, I have had a fever on occasion, and I hope you have not, but if you have, I can tell you it saps your energy. You literally have zero energy for any kind of effort, and if your fever is high enough (107 F or 41.7 C), it can be fatal. Mine gort that high once, and a cold bath helped. Now it might have been an error with the thermometer, because I still had my brain on my side, and I had the sense to call one of the married sisters with kids and ask what to do. I wonder if it was a medical threat because they spoke with Jesus about it, maybe to ask what to do or if He knew.

31: And He came to her and raised her up, taking her by the hand, and the fever left her, and she waited on them.

Apparently He did. Jesus took Peter’s wife’s mother’s hand, and the fever was gone. I don’t know how, and I cannot explain it, but she was healed of a potentially dangerous medical condition, and certainly one that was an inconvenience to here, and probably the members of the family living in the house. “Andrew, get me a drink.” “Peter, I’m hungry.” “What, fish again?” I know what I can be like when I’m sick, and I am aware of how irritating one can be when you’re off your feed.

Jesus took her hand and the fever was GONE. As in was no longer there, As in departed. Maybe He absorbed it into Himself, maybe it just ended itself. As I said, I do not know. I thought through all of the things that could have happened, and I could find no biological way this could happen so intantaneously. Star Trek is science fiction and doesn’t exist, and besides, this is the wrong era we’re studying. Jesus didn’t have a hypospray, He took her hand and whatever was causing the fever was no longer an issue. There are a number of things that cause a biological fever, like your body making antibodies to fight a virus or bacterial infection. Whatever the case, her body was returned to a normal state simply by Jesus taking her hand.

We can, in some contexts, think of sin as an infection or a virus. It certainly makes us sick in a way that can be fatal if left untreated. When Peter’s mother-in-law was in her sickness, Jesus came and “raised her up, taking her by the hand.” Jesus is waiting to do that for any who will call out to Him for help. Call out to Him, and then let Him take your hand. Make no mistake here, He takes your hand, not the other way around. But if you let Him, He will raise you up out of your metaphorical sickness of sin to renewed life in Him.

As Jesus raised her up and the fever left her body, she probably had renewed energy, and so she did the thing we should all do when Jesus lifts us out of sin-sickness: she served Him, and all those who were with Him. Beloved, God has not saved us to form a little holy huddle with Himself, we are His servants, and must serve Him.

As beautiful as this is, I will bring us back to the topic I brought up as we started this section. The logic is very similar to the so-called demon-slayer madness earlier. How many times did Jesus touch Peter’s mother-in-law? I read it – just the once. There are other differences here as well. Jesus did not say to the family of the sick individual that they had to bring her to some kind of healing revival down at the Capernaum Convention Center and bring her up on stage so He could swing His magic coat at her. He went to her, not the other way around. This is a genuine miracle of God that our Lord Jesus performed Himself to glorify God. The guys He was with had already seen miracles from Him and needed no convincing. The public at large did not witness this event, it was done in a room in a private residence. He didn’t do it for money either, unlike these seed-faith requests that these wolves (yes that is what they are) make upon people who are genuinely in real need. Jesus did not take one thing in return for this healing. These guys use the language of Scripture to present a disgusting and immoral sales pitch for your seed, which is universally their code for “give me your money” to demonstrate your faith. The bigger your “donation,” the better your miracle will be, according to their false promises.

What we see here is that Jesus performed the miracle. He does not explain how or even why other than His compassion for humanity. He asks for nothing, he simply does it, and never without your permission, which you signal by simply saying you want Him to do it. Compare that with these clouds without water that promise the rains of the showers of blessing but have nothing with which to give as a blessing or answer to your issue. No, indeed, I see a very stark contrast. In his book Strange Fire, the late John MacArthur noted that none of the healings of the New Testament were in any way dependent on the faith of the recipient of the miracle (p. 162). What it does ultimately depend on is the will of God. When I was eight years old, my paternal grandfather passed away. That was my first real experience with death (something else Jesus has provided the only answer to). I loved grampa, and I could not bear, at the age of eight, that I would never hear or see him again. I prayed for DAYS that God would raise him from the dead and give him back to us. I understood even then that God held all the authority in the universe and could do that if He wanted. Pause for a second. You’re in the room with eight-year-old me. Are you going to tell me that I don’t have enough faith and that God is not going to give him back to us? If you did, you would be one of the heartless monsters that say that if you didn’t get your miracle, you just didn’t have enough faith. These men already have enough to answer for. I’m not going to make it worse. Instead, I will call on them to repent and turn to Christ for real, for the first time in their miserable lives.

I can hear the critics already. You can’t say these things! Why not? Jesus informs me through His word that I am to pursue truth, not fables and stories made up with religious words that sound spiritual. In fact, not only did God NOT say that, He made it my actual job to stand people like this down and tell them that they are harming the most helpless among us, and that they need to stop doing that and turn to Christ for salvation, as opposed to stealing the money of the gullible or desperate. Reprove, rebuke, exhort, remember? Name names if you have to. Paul did. Peter did. John did. Clearly from this, we see the absolute need to know what the word says, so that the shysters who tell us what God says can be compared to what it really says in God’s word and exposed as the frauds they are. I like the principle: If you see something, say something. Make what you will from that, because I will not back out of this theological position. Too much rides on the faithfulness of God’s servants to bring this kind of shame to His holy name. Moving on.

32-34: Jesus Repeats Both Many Times

I tacked these verse onto the end of this study because we see Jesus repeating the legitimate miracles He legitimatelty performed infrom of witness over and over again. See waht the text says.

32: When evening came, after the sun had set, they began bringing to Him all who were ill and those who were demon-possessed.

We see here that word got around fast. I think we also see that you can’t really hide when you are serving the Lord. Someone will always find you to try to get the help they need. This alone has increased my compassion for people, which I admit, is not natural to me. Those of you who know me will not be surprised that I am an introvert. That does not speak to timidity or shyness, but rather how I recharge my own energy to be with and help people. It means I withdraw into myself to find the strength and energy to do the next thing. Others feed of the energy of the crowd, and I have done that as a stage performer in drama and music, but this is different and is not really the point.

The time of day is after sundown. The meal was being cleaned up, the dishers were done and maybe even dried and put away. Then there is a knock on the door. “My boy has a demon that tortures him. Can you help?” The unclean spirit is unceremonially dismissed, and the tea is served. Another knock on the door. Now there is a long line of people restraining loved ones who have the same problem that He had publicly handled in the synagogue. Men carrying loved ones who have sicknesses of many different kinds. They all gather around the door of Peter and Andrew’s home. (Oh no! They know where you live!) They are here for Jesus. He helps them all. More come. soon, we read in the text of Scripture, next verse.

33: And the whole city had gathered at the door.

I don’t know if this is literal or figurative, but it must have amounted to a large crowd. I’ve seen it before. When you help somebody and your help is effective, more will seek out help from you. I think this may be how real charities begin today. Next verse.

34: And He healed many who were ill with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and He was not permitting the demons to speak, because they knew who He was.

Are you beginning to sense the pattern here? Heal, bless, repeat. He healed multiple kinds of illness and disease. It also says that He cast out many more demons, and He didn’t ask them their names, or go through meaningless dialog with them. He wouldn’t even let them speak. He was protecting Himself a little there, because as I have already pointed out, when you help someone effectively, more people needing help, often of the same kind but not always, will seek you out. I’ve had it happen to me occasionally, and I am NOT the Lord Jesus. I have much less energy, and with all my medical issues, I have a great deal less than you think. It doesn’t mean I won’t help.

This is something we will see as we go on in Mark’s gospel. The Lord will tell people not to tell anyone what was done. No one ever listens, or at least very few. I can understand why, because He rescued me in the same way when He saved me. and brother, when He does, you just have to tell somebody! You’re not bragging, you didn’t do anything to brag about! You’re sharing the source of help you found so they can find help also! And there is nothing wrong with doing that, because it is then up to them to go and find the help from the Lord Jesus or not. We call that witnessing, by the way, or evangelizing. Not everyone will listen, and that’s okay, just move one. We’re here to tell people that want it. There are a good many less than those who don’t want it, it seems.

In the text, by His own actions concerning unclean spirits and His ability to deal with any illness He comes across, we are beginning to see how He was different than the rest of us. He was man, yes, but also God. We are not, and shouldn’t waste our energy trying. Instead, we should pay very close attention to whatever He did in Scripture, and then walk with Him in every aspect of our modern lives. To do this, we need to understand who God is (that’s called theology) and who we are (anthropology) as sinners (hamartiology). We need to learn everything He will teach us at the proper time. Personally, I am looking forward to this continuing into eternity, because I will never equal Him, and He has that much to teach us all. Let us follow Him and learn.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, we have seen the truth of Jesus this evening. We have seen how He has behaved, and how He has healed and cast evilness away from us as He did Your will on Earth as it is always done in Heaven. Lord, we pray that You would make us more like Him every day as we chooses to follow Him and learn from Him as His latest disciples. Fill us with your wonder as we walk with You. We ask in His loving and precious name, our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen and amen.

About Post Author