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Could we turn in God's Word,
please, to Mark's Gospel, chapter 1? Mark's Gospel, chapter 1, and
we'll break into the chapter at verse 14, and we'll read through
to verse 28. Mark's Gospel, chapter 1, and
we'll commence reading at verse 14 through to verse 28. Let us hear the word of the Lord.
Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee
preaching the kingdom of God and saying, repent, the time
is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent ye
and believe the gospel. Now as he walked by the sea of
Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into
the sea for they were fishers. And Jesus said unto them, come
ye after me and I will make you to become fishers of men. And
straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him. And when
he had gone a little further thence, he saw James the son
of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the ship mending
their nets. And straightway he called them,
and they left their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants,
and went after him. And they went into Capernaum,
and straightway on the Sabbath day he entered into the synagogue
and taught. And they were astonished at his
doctrine, for he taught them as one that had authority and
not as his scribes. And there was in the synagogue
a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, Let us alone! What have we to do with thee,
thou Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to destroy us?
I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked
him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when
the unclean spirit had torn him, and cried with a loud voice,
he came out of him. And they were all amazed, insomuch
that they questioned among themselves, saying, What thing is this? And
what new doctrine is this? For with authority commandeth
he even the unclean spirits, and they do obey him. And immediately
his fame spread abroad throughout all the region round about Galilee. Amen. We'll have a word of prayer
and we'll look to the Lord to bless the preaching of His truth
as we seek to give the sense of Holy Scripture. Let's pray
and ask His blessing. Our Father in heaven, we thank
Thee that we come to a word that is truth. We thank Thee, Father,
O God, for the blessing of it. to our hearts and for the privilege
that we have had of hearing it read in our ears, in our own
mother tongue. Lord, we think of the many unreached
people groups of this world who haven't even a verse of the Scripture,
Lord, in their language. And yet, Lord, we're so blessed
we have the complete and full revelation of God. And God, we
pray now as we come to preaching, thy truth, Lord and Father in
heaven. I ask that you would empty me
of sin and self and cleanse me in the blood of the Lamb. Take
from me any self-sufficiency or any confidence in the flesh.
and fill me with the Holy Ghost and with power. This is a dying
need of this hour, O God, that we have Holy Ghost preaching.
We pray, Father, that the Spirit of the Lord would come, that
He would superintend the preaching of the Word, that the divine
author of Scripture would be the divine teacher and the illuminator
of it, O God. We pray, O God, that He will
come and open our hearts to the Word and open the Word to our
hearts. O God, we pray for every heart
that is gathered. Lord, I know us to need. You
know Thine own children, seeking to learn, seeking to be edified,
seeking to grow in grace and the knowledge of their Lord and
Savior, Jesus Christ. Feed them this morning, I pray.
You know those that are cold in heart. We pray that they would
know the experience of their heart burning again within them,
as Christ would talk with them by the way. Remember those that
are outside of Jesus Christ. We pray that you'll captivate
them this morning, that you'll grab their attention, that you'll
solemnize this place. Lord, take from our hearts and
our minds that we're just playing church, that we're just here
to fulfill a responsibility, to tick a box. Oh God, help us
to realize that we are in the presence of the almighty triune
God. O God, come down upon us. Solemnize
this atmosphere. Give us a sense of Thy presence,
we ask of Thee. For we pray this in Jesus' name
and for our Savior's everlasting glory. Amen. Now the Savior having
been baptized by John and anointed by the Holy Ghost, and proved
impeccable by his temptations, and summed up his message with
those two words, repent and believe, and then called four unknown,
unlearned, untrained fishermen to follow him, the Lord Jesus
Christ begins his public ministry in earnest. We read there in
verse 21. He didn't come to hide his light.
He didn't come to hide it under a bushel, but he got to the work
straight away. There was no dilly-dallying with
the Lord Jesus Christ, but he came to do the will of his Father
that sent him. You look at verse 21, and there
we read, And they went into Capernaum, and straightway on the Sabbath
day he entered into the synagogue and taught. Now Capernaum became
the base of the Lord Jesus Christ's ministry while he was in the
region of Galilee. We learn this in Luke chapter
4 when he speaks about his own ministry and he said that no
prophet is accepted in his own country. And he spoke that when
he was in Capernaum. Capernaum was a little town.
It was situated on the western shores of the Sea of Galilee,
near its head. Though it was small, it was busy,
it was thriving. It was a bustling market town,
and in that town, there was produce from the surrounding farmland
and vineyards, and the sea were all brought there and sold in
that little village. Coming into Capernaum, the Savior,
He enters into the synagogue. And the origin of the synagogue,
it takes us back to the time of the Babylonian captivity.
The Jews had been removed from the sacrificial system of the
temple. But it didn't stop them from
wanting to hear the word of the Lord and praising the Lord, and
so they gathered themselves together and they started to build little
meeting houses for their assemblies, that they would hear the reading
of the law and they would offer prayer and praise unto God. Now
when they returned, And even though the statelier institution
of the temple was restored, these little houses, these little meeting
houses, they remained. And they were established in
villages and towns around the land of Israel. In fact, Ezra,
Ezra is a man that is accredited with establishing the synagogue
network system in the land of Israel. He is the one who instituted
the 120 men of which he was president. It was the precursor of the Sanhedrin. And Ezra is a man that is associated
with the institution of the synagogues. Now this synagogue was of particular
interest because this synagogue, it was raised, it was built at
the expense of a Roman soldier, a large-hearted man. whom when
they came to the Lord Jesus Christ and asked the Savior to heal
this man's servant, they said of him that he loveth our nation
and he hath built us a synagogue. So this was the synagogue that
that Roman centurion had built. And in verse 21, we see that
the Lord Jesus Christ, he entered into the synagogue on the Sabbath
day. Now in the Greek there it tells
us that the Savior entered in on the Sabbath day, but it really
comes through more when we look at the original, for there it
says, on the Sabbath days. And even though we have one particular
day in focus here and one particular event, in the original it suggests
to us and it conveys to us that this was the Savior's habit to
attend the house of God on the Lord's day. It was His practice,
it was His custom. He was a regular attender at
the house of God. I wonder, can that be said of
you? Are you a regular attender at the house of God? This is
what the Savior did. This is the one whom you profess
to follow. He regularly attended the house
of God, the means of grace, where the law was read and prayer was
offered. Will you be in your seat tonight?
Will you be a regular attender at God's house? Is this your
practice? Is this your habit? Or are you
here one week, and not the next, here for two weeks and gone for
a few weeks. Well, that was not the Savior.
See, the Savior, He didn't come to destroy the law, but to fulfill
it. How many times have you and I
dishonored the Lord's day, and yet here's the Savior, and He's
just going about His ministry, the will of the Father, and He's
fulfilling all righteousness for us. There's none of us will
be able to keep the Sabbath day perfectly. at all times throughout
her life, but Christ did. And He was fulfilling all righteousness
for us. Well, this sets the context for
what we want to consider this morning. And this morning I want
to think about simply Christ in the synagogue at Capernaum.
Christ in the synagogue at Capernaum, and we're going to look at three
headings. We're going to look at the expounding of the doctrine.
and then the exorcism of the demon, and then the effect of
the deed. So the first thing we're going
to consider is the expounding of doctrine. When Christ came
into Capernaum, He straightway applied Himself to His work. He took the first opportunity
that was afforded to Him to preach the gospel. Now mark here, He
refers to Christ preaching and teaching frequently. But Mark
doesn't record much of the Savior's discourses. See, Mark is really
the evangelist. He is the one that records the
Savior's deeds. But here he takes opportunity
right at the very beginning of the Savior's ministry to speak
and to record the Savior's preaching. You see, Mark wanted to emphasize,
he wanted to emphasize the great difference, the great difference
that would strike Christ's hearers and the hearers of others. You
see, the worship in synagogues, it wasn't instituted by Moses.
And it was comparatively free and conventional and sometimes
a stranger would come in and men would be of note. They would
look like men of importance and they would be afforded a place
to speak. You could think of Paul in Acts chapter 13. There
was other times that men would present themselves to speak in
the synagogue and we read that the Savior does this in the synagogue
at Nazareth in Luke chapter 4. The synagogue typically had no
set teachers. They had a ruler which would
have set out what needed to be read on a certain day, but they
had no set teacher. And this gave men the opportunity
to make use of a custom that was called the freedom of the
synagogue. And this gave Christ an opportunity
to preach, and he took it. He took the opportunity that
was given to him to preach and to teach. How often do you and
I let opportunities pass us by to speak for Christ? And here's the freedom of the
synagogue, it's opened up, and Christ, He steps forward and
He begins to teach the people. And how often do you and I let
opportunities among our neighbors, among our friends, our families,
our work colleagues, how often do we let little opportunities
pass by? What were you doing yesterday?
Well, I don't really do much on the Lord's Day. Well, how
about we take the opportunity and say I was in the house of
God? And the man of God was preaching on such and such, and you begin
to teach and speak to those around you. No social issues arise and
we stay silent. We hear people blaspheme the
name of Christ and take the name of the Lord in vain and we stay
silent. No, I'm not saying we stand up
and hammer them and beat the desk and do whatever else, but
we have an opportunity to say, excuse me, You know, that's my
Lord and Savior. I wonder how many opportunities
that we have let pass by us this week that has passed. And I want
to ask another question, and I ask it to my own heart. I wonder
how many times we have prayed for opportunities to speak a
word for Jesus Christ. Christ, He took the opportunity.
The hymn writer said, speak just a word for Jesus. Tell of his
love for man, someone distressed may listen, willing to trust
him then. See, not only did the Savior
preach exerting man and woman, but he taught instructing man
and woman. He taught them. He entered into
Capernaum on the Sabbath day in the synagogue. He taught the
men. He gave them instruction through the Word of God. And
it is the entrance of God's Word that gives men light. It's God's
words that matter. They're words of pure wisdom.
There's so much ignorance in the world today. There's so much
foolishness in the world today. PC has gone completely mad. And
a lot of their arguments are illogical. But God's Word It's
a word we can trust. It's a word we can depend upon. The feature of Christ preaching
that Mark, he wants to emphasize, the feature that astounded the
villagers and amazed them that day was that it came with authority. They said, Mark, he doesn't record
the content of what Christ taught, but he does record the reaction
of the individuals because Christ taught them as one that had authority
and not as the scribes. There's a great contrast with
Christ's teaching and that of the scribes. They were professional
but not powerful. They were intellectual but not
effectual. And we need men today in the
pulpit that are not just brain boxes. We need men in the pulpit
today that are filled with the Holy Ghost and with power. And
I prayed in the prayer meeting, and we can go to these places
and other churches for funerals and weddings, whatever, and all
these men have lovely constructed sermons, and they speak with
this patronizing voice, and have a head full of knowledge, but
their heart is cold and indifferent, and they haven't the power of
God. There's a great difference here.
Christ had authority because he was sent from God, and we
need men that are sent from God, and you need a man in this pulpit
that is not chosen by men, but is sent from God. That's what
you need. See, the call. The call is the
need. The need is not the call. You
need a pastor. You need a minister. But that is not the call of God.
You need a man that has been sent from God because he will
have authority in the pulpit. And Christ, he had authority.
He was a sent man. He came with a message from God.
He was the message. Christ believed what he taught. And when you believe what you
speak about, What you teach, it'll come across with authority
to your hearers. Now, child of God, do you believe? Really believe what you profess? Are you speaking to someone in
a half-felt, half-peddled truth? It'll not come with authority.
Oh, we're almost apologetic today in our Christian life. In the church of Jesus Christ
needs men and women and young people and individuals that know
what they believe. Because then they'll have authority
and weight. This was just another example
of the Savior's authority. He had authority over the wild
beasts in the wilderness when he was tempted. He had authority
calling His four disciples from the seashore. And as we'll see
in a moment, He had authority over the demons. He has authority
because He's Lord. He is Lord of all. This man from
Nazareth, Jesus Christ, is Lord of all. And have you submitted
to Him? Have you submitted to His keenly
authority? Have you bowed the knee to Him?
because he cannot be your savior if he is not your Lord. The expounding
of doctrine, but secondly we have the exorcism of the demon. Christ's teaching was backed
up by a miracle, by the casting out of the demon. who Christ
claimed He was and what He taught was backed up with signs and
wonders. Why do we not have signs and wonders today? Because God
has said all, all that He needs to say. The revelation of God was vindicated,
was attested by miracles, signs and wonders. Verse 23 it says,
And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit,
and he cried out. As Christ taught, there was a
man in the congregation and he came out with an outburst. He
was under the influence of a demonic spirit. And I thought about this
coming down the road this morning. There was a devil among the congregation. We came in that morning, and
no one said, you're not allowed in here. This is the house of
God. He deceived those around him. And he sat among them with an
unclean spirit. And I wonder as I look across
this congregation of people, is there an individual It is not the Holy Spirit indwelling
them, but they have another spirit, and they're among the congregation
of God's people. Now, there is an interesting
thought which comes across in the Greek Because this man was
with an unclean spirit, and this word with, it's a preposition,
it means in. And this statement, a man with
an unclean spirit, it's the same idiom that the apostle Paul uses
when he speaks of being in Christ and in the Lord. You and I, we
speak of being in love or in a fever, and we could say that
this man was in the demon and this demon was in the man. It
had wholly encapsulated him. It had possessed him. Christ lives in believers by
the Spirit and indwells them, so too the unbeliever can be
indwelt by an unclean spirit if the invitation is extended
either consciously or unconsciously. And that's why it's dangerous
to dabble in anything that is occultic. Spiritism, astrology,
mysticism, drugs, alcohol, because it opens a door to an unclean
spirit, either consciously or unconsciously, and an unclean
spirit can come in. These are doors that you and
I are better to leave unopened. Sinner, don't dabble in such
things. You invite trouble to yourself.
He tells us this man, he cried out, or rather the unclean spirit
cried out because the spirit had possessed his organs and
used his voice to cry out, disrupting the service. And I wonder, do
you disrupt the service? Do you chat? Do you poke the
person beside you? Take them away from the hearing
of the law. And here was the devil at his work, distracting
the law as was read and expounded, even the very Son of God as he
preached. In verse 24 we have the words
of the demon. He says, let us alone. What have
we to do with thee? And how often sinners cry out
the same cry, let us alone. Don't tell us about heaven. Don't
tell us about hell. Don't tell us about our sin.
Don't tell us about Jesus Christ. Just live and let live. Don't
tell me about Jesus Christ. That is the spirit. The spirit
that now worketh in the children of disobedience. And sinners don't know. and realize
that they're under the influence and control of another. Satan
is their master. Satan is their lord. Satan is
their father. Those that reject the gospel, they're not at liberty. They're
in bondage. The unclean spirit goes on to
say, what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? And Matthew Henry, he points
out here that with these comments, the unclean spirit designed to
possess the minds of people with low thoughts of Christ, because
no good thing came out of Nazareth. You see, the scribes would have
known that the Messiah was to come out of Bethlehem. And here
the unclean spirit seeks to undermine the person of Jesus Christ, seeks
to portray Him as a deceiver. This man's not the Messiah, this
man's not the sent of God, this man's just from Nazareth, and
we all know nothing good comes out of there. That's what the cults seek to do. They undermine the
person of Christ. They don't call him God. They
maybe say he's some special creation of God, even the first creation
of God, but that's what they do. It's a spirit of wickedness. The devil always seeks to undermine
the person and work of Jesus Christ. It has to be said, a
confession is drawn forth out of this spirit, this unclean
spirit. For he says, I know thee who
thou art, the Holy One of God. The demon had to admit that the
temptations in the wilderness did not stain Jesus Christ. He is the impeccable one. The
one who is not able to sin. The one who overcame sin. and
the one who was unable to be overcome by it. He had to say,
Thou art the Holy One of God. But in verse 25 we have the words
of the Deliverer. Christ, he says, hold thy peace
and come out of him. Christ rebuked the demon. Christ
refused to receive testimony from such a one. He commanded
the Spirit to be quiet. The Spirit was muzzled. Christ's
authority was demonstrated. See, there were all our exorcists
that worked at the time of Jesus Christ. Read of that in Matthew
12, 27 and Acts 19, 13. And they used long, fanciful
rituals and elaborate superstitions and all this enchantment and
ceremonies and they often failed, but Christ never failed with
a word he spoke. And that's what we see in verse
26, the works of deliverance. Or the work of deliverance, and
when the unclean spirit had torn him and cried with a loud voice,
he came out. Christ delivers men from the
bondage of sin and slavery of Satan with a word. He came to set men free. And
although it tells us here in Mark that the unclean spirit
tore him, It tells us in Luke, in the parallel account, that
the Spirit did not hurt him. We tried. The demon tried to
hold this man back. The demon tried to inflict pain
and sorrow on this man. The Spirit had to be submissive
to Jesus Christ. He had to submit to the lordship
of Christ. He could do no other. And even though sinners today
are unworthy to submit to the Lordship of Christ, there is
coming a day that they will. And they'll bow the knee, and
they will proclaim Him as Lord. The exposition of doctrine, the
exorcism of the demon, but finally the effect of the deed. In verses
27 and 28 we see the effect that this miracle had upon the people.
They were all amazed. It was evident what had happened.
He was a man clearly possessed of the devil who lay down in
the middle of them with convulsions and they had heard a loud voice
crying out. And yet they had seen the authority
of Christ telling the demon to depart and come out. And so the spectators, they drew
the proper inference from what had happened. Here was a new
power before them which implied there was a new revelation. See, miracles. Miracles, they
attended God's special redemptive revelation. And as I said earlier,
that's why you see all these churches that are proclaiming
miracles and healings and tongues speaking and all these different
supernatural signs, they're lying. Because miracles were given to
attest to special revelation of God. So if that's still happening,
you know what that means? God's still revealing His redemptive
revelation, and that makes your Bible incomplete, and that makes
Revelation 22, 18 a lie. God's Word does not lie. And
God's Word is complete. These people realized there was
someone profound among them, someone who had great power and
authority, able to cast out unclean spirits. Only a miracle could produce
this effect. These men began to think and
reason for themselves. They didn't ask the scribes.
They were already shown to be charlatans, pretenders. Men with no authority. But it
tells us here that the people, they questioned among themselves,
saying, what thing is this? What new doctrine is this? They
needed answers. They needed to get to the bottom
of this. They debated among themselves. They didn't go to these pretenders. They talked over what they had
saw. Christianity is a thinking man's
religion. It's not some archaic philosophy. It's not some sort of ancient
brainwashing where men don't think for themselves and bury
themselves in the sand. But Christianity, true Christianity,
yea true repentance, is when men begin to think for themselves,
begin to reason for themselves, begin to question what things
are all about. But people don't want to do that
today. They don't want to think for themselves. They're the ones
that are brainwashed. They swallow hook, line, and
sinker the big bang. And yet a quick reasoning, a
quick questioning of that false theory would soon make it crumble
to the ground. How can life spontaneously proceed
from non-life? It cannot happen. Life can never
come from non-life. But God is life. And so it's natural and reasonable
for us to understand that life comes from Him who is life. But they had liked to think that
everything just came from nothing. Now it must be noted that even
though these people were amazed, we don't read of anyone being
converted. You read that here. To be confounded is not to be
converted. And this again shows us that
men and women are converted alone by sovereign grace, not by signs
and wonders. These people were content to
let their excitement die out with any change of life. They
had no devotion to the new teacher that was before them and his
doctrine. They were willing to just get
up and go out from the synagogue with no real change. Oh, but they went and they talked.
Their tongues were not silent. They went out and spread around
the synagogue about what had just happened. In verse 28, we
read the word immediately. And this rumor spread with swift
speed around the district. The fame of Christ was spread
abroad. countryside was talking about Christ. Wouldn't that be
great? Wouldn't that be great if the
countryside was talking about Jesus Christ? But I must confess
that we want people to be talking about Christ. We want people
to be interested in Jesus Christ. We want people to be interested
in the things of God. And yet, how little we speak
about Christ ourselves. How can we expect others to show
an interest in Jesus Christ if we ourselves do not talk freely
and openly and lovingly about Him? The hymn writer said, break
our tongues, such guilty silence. How often we're quiet and we
don't speak. for the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ in the synagogue at Capernaum. He thought about his expounding
of doctrine, his exposition. And never a man spake like this
man, and grace was poured into his lips, and from his lips comes
forth these gracious words. That he came to set men at liberty,
whom the Son sets free. They are free indeed. He thought
about the exorcism of the demon, Jesus' name high over all on
earth, in hell or sky, angels and men before him fall, and
devils fear and fly." Have you thought about the effect of this
deed? Men started to think for themselves. The fame of Christ
was spread abroad, and we'll see in God's will later on tonight
the effect of that. the outworking of that. As Christ's
name gets put out into the community and His person and His work is
spread abroad, we see the effect of that in the following verses. But I wonder, I wonder is there
a devil among us this morning? I wonder is there someone that
is deceiving those around You have not the Spirit of Christ.
No man can say that Jesus is Lord but by the Spirit. And He's not Lord of your life.
He doesn't lead your life. You're not subjected to Him in
life. You don't make decisions based
on His Word. If that's not you, you have not
the Spirit of Christ. You are of another spirit. And
I wonder, is there someone among us this morning like that? Christ
has come. Christ has come in his power
over every unclean spirit, unclean thought, unclean deed. Jesus
Christ and his blood can forgive, and he can set you at liberty
this morning. I wonder, is there an individual that is willing
to submit to Christ and to call upon Him while He is near. Let's
bow for a word of prayer and commit the preaching of God's
Word to our hearts. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we thank Thee for Thy truth. We thank Thee for our Savior
who took every opportunity to preach the Gospel. We thank Thee
that He Himself is the Gospel and the message of salvation.
God, we live in dark days. We must confess with the words
In Ephesians, that we wrestle not against flesh and blood,
but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of darkness
and spiritual wickedness in high places. Lord, we wrestle against
these things. And yet, Lord, we thank Thee
that we can say greater is He. that is in us than he that is
in the world. We thank you that there is one
that is greater than Satan. We thank you that Satan to Jesus
must bow. We thank thee with the word spoken,
with that word of authority, that the unclean spirit can be
cast out. O God, that men and women can
be made vessels, Lord, that can be filled with the Holy Ghost
and with power. And we pray, Lord, for such in
the meeting this morning that are under the bondage of sin
and Satan, who are saying unto Christ, let us alone. What have
we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? We pray, Father,
that men and women and young people and boys and girls, God,
will submit to Christ. God, help us as your children
to take every opportunity. Help us to speak a word for Christ.
and help us to believe what we really speak and not peddle some
half-felt, half-known truth. O God, bless us as we sing our
closing hymn. We ask this in Jesus' name and
for His sake. Amen.
CHRIST In The Synagogue
| Sermon ID | 10418431372 |
| Duration | 38:05 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Language | English |
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