There is a school of thought that is prevalent in some people’s religious beliefs that in the universe there is a battle between good and evil, and that the two sides are relatively equal or balanced in strength and power. They hold to the belief in a good god or deity, and an evil one. Sometimes one god or side may get the upper hand for a little while, and then the other one does. This belief is even held by some Christians. They believe that God, or Yahweh, is on the good side, while Satan is on the evil side, and that Jesus and Satan have more or less equal power. As we look into our Scripture passage from the Gospel of Mark today, we’ll clearly see that this is not so.
As our passage begins, Jesus and some of His disciples came to the village of Capernaum, and on the Sabbath, He went to the synagogue to worship. As was the custom of the day, any visitor was invited to speak and bring a message or teaching, so Jesus began to speak and bring the people His message (vs. 21). The congregation was amazed at His teaching, as it was so unlike what they were used to hearing from their own rabbi and from the scribes. Scribes in the Bible, were men who were experts in the Jewish religious and secular law, yet the teaching that Jesus gave that Sabbath was one with authority, so different from the messages that the scribes and rabbis gave (vs. 22). Why was that, considering that the rabbis and scribes should have been well-educated?
The authority that Jesus taught with came from the Word of God. His messages were with the authority of the Scriptures. The scribes and other religious leaders who taught in any of the synagogues based their authority largely on that of other rabbis' opinions and thoughts, particularly those rabbis from the past, which were contained in the Talmud. They taught out of those books, which was man’s word, rather than out of the Scriptures, which was God’s Word. We need to look at where we are getting our spiritual food. Is it coming from God’s Word the Bible, or is our spiritual diet coming from other religious books, which would be man’s word. Jesus taught from the Holy Scriptures.
While teaching the people in the synagogue, a man who was possessed by an evil spirit, a demon, came in and cried out, disturbing the religious service (vs. 23-24). Satan doesn’t like it when people are being fed God’s Word, and will often try to disrupt that. One thing that we notice in this passage is that the demon immediately acknowledged exactly who Jesus was. He knew and acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God. He acknowledged Jesus’ sinlessness and deity, which many people denied then, and still do today.
Jesus immediately rebuked the demon (vs. 25). He did not rebuke the man. Rather, He rebuked the man’s oppressor, the demon. Jesus did not want any testimony to the truth coming from the demonic realm. One reason for that would be that He did not want to fuel any charges from His enemies that He was in league with Satan, a charge that some of the Pharisees and religious leaders of the day were already saying.
Satan and his demons have been opposing God right from the start. Yet this was not, nor has it ever been, a battle of equal strength, equal power. God and Satan are not two equal powers, battling out between good and evil. Satan and his demons opposed Jesus every step of the way, which culminated at the Cross. However, Jesus always triumphed, with the ultimate victory at the Resurrection.
When Jesus spoke to the demons who possessed this man, they immediately had to obey. Jesus commanded them to come out of this man, and they immediately did (vs. 26-27). Satan’s power is completely nullified in the presence of Jesus. When Jesus speaks, the demons are silenced. They must obey His every word. When we come against any force of evil, we need to turn to the One who holds all power over the evil one, and that is the Lord Jesus. At His Name, all powers in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, must bow the knee (Philippians 2:9-11). They have no choice but to obey His every Word.
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