If you don't have a Bible, you can find the text in your order of worship. I said, you hear the word of God. And they went into cappernum and immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and was teaching. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority and not as the scribes. And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit and he cried out, what have you to do with us Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. But Jesus rebuked him saying, be silent and come out of him. And the unclean spirit convulsing him and crying out with the loud voice came out of him. And they were all amazed so that they questioned among themselves saying, what is this? A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him. And at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee. Let us pray. Father, I pray that as we are, consider this text this morning and as people marvel at the personal work of Jesus that we in fact would marvel as well. I pray that you would open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf. I pray also that you would be in my head and in my thinking, in my heart and in my understanding and in my mouth and in my speaking. Christ's name, we pray these things, amen, amen. You know, several years ago, it seems like several years ago, four or five years ago when I worked with Eli Lilly, they had a practice that was basically reserved for two kinds of people. You see, if you are a sales rep and you are really struggling, oftentimes your manager would call in a national sales trainer from headquarters to come and work with you. Or if you are a sales rep and you are really sort of like a shining star, she also might call a national training rep to come and ride with you and work with you. And at some point in my Lilly career, I got a call and my manager said, Tommy, national sales trainer is coming to ride with you. I never asked, why? Figure ignorance is bliss. And the national sales trainer came and he came to our house and we talked for quite a while before we went out for ride and in the process we discovered that we were both Christians, we both believed and we shared some stuff about where we went to church and that kind of stuff. We went to get in my car to leave to go out for a day of visiting psychiatrists around Washington. And as we were getting in the car, I was getting in the driver's side and he was getting in the passenger side and right before we got in, I said, Matt, and he said, wait one second. I said, but when we go out to ride today and visit my doctors, I said, do me a favor. I said, don't be a Mexican missionary. And he said, what are you talking about? And I said, you know how people like, maybe they live in Kent or Renton or something and they really never talk to people about Jesus, but then maybe they go on a short term mission trip to like Mexico or someplace like that and they're really bold because they don't have to live there after they leave. I said, I gotta live with these doctors after you leave. So you can watch me sell and critique me after, but I don't want you to say a word. And he looked over and he said, Tommy, who's supposed to be training home here? As I'm just saying, right? You see, it's one thing to be bold somewhere else, but it's quite a different thing to be bold with the people that you live around all the time, is it not? So we're going to look at the text today and really we're going to look at two things. We're going to look at first the problem of religion. And the second thing we're going to look at is the power of Jesus. But before we do that, we have to look at the context which has to do with the hometown of Peter James and John or Peter James John and Andrew. And by the way, just as a side note, some people that's still about the third service is that a different sermon is that what's going on there with the sermons? And it is normally a different sermon from the same text that I used this morning. And what I'm going to do tonight is something I've never tried before in my whole ministry career from this text. And in the first service, people were walking out and they said, I didn't catch what, what was that, what were you going to do? And I said, you got to come see. So there's your teaser for tonight. But what's the context here? Notice, let me read to you the first couple of verses here. Verse 21 and 22, it says, and they went into Copernum and immediately on the Sabbath, they entered the synagogue and was teaching. And they were astonished at his teaching. Free taught them is one who had authority and not as describes. You remember we looked at last week, Jesus called his first four disciples, Peter and Andrew and James and John. And then it's that very next, he says, I will make you fishers of men. And we don't know how much time transpired between those things on one hand. On the other hand, they had to be horrified or at least a little bit anxious when Jesus said to them, all right boys, here's where we're going first, your hometown. Copernum is their hometown. You see, it probably sounded pretty cool. We're going to follow Jesus. We'll follow you wherever you want to go. We're going home. So on one hand, they probably felt a little nervous. I would have been. You see, it's one thing that's to take the national sales trainer. It's another thing to take Jesus, right? He almost is by definition going to make some people uncomfortable. On the other hand, remember, he said he was going to call them to be fishers of men. And the most logical place to go if you're a fisherman is where, where the fish are. When I was in college, the guy who discipled me taught us this concept of fishing pools and fishing pools is basically the people that you know, they're the easiest people to talk to about Jesus. So that's what Jesus does. He takes them straight back to their hometown in Copernum. And he goes to the synagogue and you know that might have been a little bit uncomfortable for them as well. We're not sure. And another side note, I always wondered too if Peter and Andrew were competitors of James and John in business. They're all fishermen, but that they have competing businesses. So you have business competitors following Jesus into their hometown. They don't know what's going on. And he takes them to church, which we're guessing they probably weren't that comfortable with. He goes right into the synagogue and teaches. Now, that was pretty common for an itinerant rabbi to be invited into a synagogue. First you have to understand what was the purpose of the synagogue. Basically, the easiest way to understand the synagogue is synagogues were sort of like satellite campuses of the temple. After the temple was destroyed and the Israel was taken into exile and Babylon, Israel thought the elders thought we have to have some place to still worship, even though we don't have a temple. And so they set up synagogues wherever they were. So wherever even to this day, wherever there are Jewish people live, there are synagogues. And that's the place where they worship. They don't do the sacrifices and things, but they worship and they receive teaching from their rabbis. And so Jesus goes into the synagogue pretty typical itinerant rabbi teaches typical everything's copacetic until he begins really to talk. And it says as he taught, the people were amazed because he taught as one who has authority not like the scribes and the Pharisees. Or I think this text just says the scribes. The way to understand how dissonant that would have made them feel is to understand what a scribe did. Most of us when you think of a scribe, you think of someone who just copies manuscripts and they did some of that, but really in the New Testament times, the scribes were more, they would be more akin to what we would call lawyers or law professors even. And they basically had three functions as scribes is besides studying the law, they would adjudicate oftentimes. So they would give people advice about this matter of the law or that matter of the law. Also, they taught students of the law. And the third thing they did was they would function, say it was a big case that had gone before the elder, something they might function as maybe expert witnesses. But what defined their teaching is their teaching was always derivative. In other words, it always came from someplace else. If you asked the scribe, imagine it was very frustrating. If you walked up to a scribe and you had some portion of the book of Moses, of the law, anything and said, so scribe, what does this mean when it says thou shalt not kill? A scribe would not have given you a straight answer. Almost by definition, a scribe would have said, well, Rabbi Hillel says that it means this or Rabbi Gamaliel says that it means this or Rabbi Allen says that it means this, but he wouldn't say, oh, that means you just shouldn't kill. He would always give you someone else's opinion and that he would there were masters of the traditions and the traditions of the commentaries on the law. So no matter what you talked about with the scribe, they would always their teaching would be derivative. They wouldn't just give you what they thought. Now the difference, of course, is Jesus. Jesus comes in and Jesus doesn't teach them according to what other rabbis have taught, but instead Jesus teaches them and says, here's what it means. And they'd say, what do you care what the other rabbis think? And Jesus practically speaking would say, no, I know what it means and here's what it means. The most perfect example of Jesus teaching this way or the one you're probably most familiar with is the sermon on the Mount. Remember in the sermon on the Mount, you hear over and over again a pattern where Jesus said, you've heard it said, don't commit adultery. But I say, if you've even thought about it, you're guilty. You've heard it said, don't kill. But I say, if you've even become angry at your brother, if you've even said you fool, you're guilty enough for the fires of hell. In other words, Jesus didn't appeal to other people. Jesus just simply spoke what the text meant. And you can imagine that would frustrate people because they'd be sitting around going, who's he thinking, wrote it or something? Right? He did. But it's bigger than that. You see, because when the scribes taught, their teaching wasn't authoritative because you could always had a way out. Because if they said Rabbi Hillel says this, you could say, well, you know what, this week I'm going to go with Rabbi Allen's interpretation, because that's a little bit easier. There was always a way to escape authority. But when Jesus teaches with authority, the problem there is is someone who teaches with utter authority, it demands a response. It demands obedience. In other words, you either had to embrace what Jesus taught as true, or you had to reject it as false, but you simply could not ignore it. And that was the problem. Mary told you that over and over again, Jesus says, love me or hate me. But for God's sake, just don't like me. You can't ignore him. And so Jesus teaches with authority and people are amazed at that. He leads to the problem of religion. Jesus sort of roots it out with the first utterance. Notice in verses 23. It says, he taught us with authority and not as a scribes in verse 23. And immediately, there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit and he cried out, what have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. As a side note, you know, Mark, what's interesting about Mark, I say he's sort of the patron saint of those of us with ADHD. Mark isn't concerned so much with the subject of the substance of Jesus teaching here. Mark's more concerned with the reaction to it. He's more concerned with seeing how people respond to what Jesus, so we don't know exactly what Jesus taught. But in that one verse, you see all the problems of religion are sort of summed up and you can miss it if you're not thinking carefully. So Jesus is teaching with authority and in their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit, that's a Jewish technical term for demon who became agitated all of a sudden. Now, what's the problem with religion? Well, if you think about it for a while, the guy with the unclean spirit, the demon possessed guy, had been sitting in the synagogue for we don't know how long, whether it was 30 years, 20 years, 10 years, 10 years. But what we do know is that until Jesus came, everything was cool. In other words, the guy had been going to church, maybe his whole life and not until Jesus confronted him, did anyone know that he had a problem? You ever think about that? The guy sitting in church possessed by a demon and no one knew it. What's the problem with religion? You see, the problem with religion and the problem with going through the motions is it can't help you. The best thing religion can do for you is it can mask, it can point to the truth, maybe, but ultimately it tends to mask the truth rather than to reveal it. So, this guy, I'm going to assume, let's just take an out and say he's been in the synagogue for only a few days or a few weeks. He was able to go there and go through the motions and everyone looked at him and thought, well, look at that guy. He's cool. He goes through the motions, he sings well, he prays well, everything must be okay with him. Because religion, it might mask your problem, but it can't help them. The other thing is religion really is just a coping mechanism for sin. Do you feel better when you go to church? Is it make you feel like somehow God is happier with you? If that's the reason for coming, he's not. You see, religion at some level, going through the motions, being a good person without actually having a relationship with Jesus, it's like taking cold medicine. Cold and flu season comes and you're always, at least with me, especially if you have to talk in front of people, you're caught between, you know, do you take the one that makes you want to fall asleep and forget about your problem or do you take the other one that actually makes you're able to breathe, but then you feel loopy. You're not, you're not right, it masks the symptoms, but it doesn't heal the disease that underlies your problem. You see, this man who knows how long he'd been sitting there, but not until Jesus was in there addressing him, did anyone know there was a problem? Jesus had to talk with him, so Jesus begins speaking, he's teaching, and the man cries out, and it's interesting what the man tries to do here, or the demon, at least in the man. It's totally in keeping with all everything we know about the ancient Near East. If you remember in the book of Genesis, chapter 32, remember Jacob, the story of Jacob wrestling the angel, if you're not familiar with it, you can read it later. And there's this sort of little go-around between Jacob and the angel, because the angel says, tell me your name, Jacob, tell me your name, I'm not going to tell you my name. And they want, what's your name, I'm not going to tell you, what's your name, I'm not going to tell you, why did they want to know their name? Because in the ancient Near East, they thought if you knew someone's true name, you could control them. And so if you knew someone's name, and if you remember those of you in the men's ministry who came and watched the movie Hellboy, I know that was supposed to be our secret, but... You watch it, remember the way the villain at the end constrained the hero, as he knew his true name, and he wrote it on shackles and clamped it, because he knew his true name he had control over him. And so the demon here, he throws everything he has in Jesus' last resort, the first thing he says is, what do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth, he says his human name. Jesus is fully human and fully God, and he says, well I'll start with the bottom and work my way up. Jesus of Nazareth, what have you to do with us? And we know from later there's only one demon, but apparently he's speaking for all the forces of darkness. What do you do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? That doesn't work, apparently. So he says, I know who you are, holy one of God, nothing. You see, he states Jesus names, maybe we think in an attempt to gain control over him and it doesn't do a thing. Instead, Jesus replies back, and you've got to love the way Jesus just avoids chit chat here. The demon says, I know who you are, holy one of God. And Jesus says, shut up. That's a valid interpretation of that or valid translation. He says, be silent and come out. Come out of him. Did you notice how the demon responded to that? They bantered a little bit, right? And he said, well, maybe what about I want to come out? He didn't say that. He read it to you. He says, Jesus rebuked him, saying, be silent and come out, and the unclean spirit come bolst him and crying out with a loud voice came out of him. You see, the problem with religion is that it can't heal you, it can't help you, it can't save you. It can't deliver you from your deepest, darkest problems on the flip side. The power of Jesus is able to do anything. Jesus says to this demon, be silent and come out and the response immediately is he was silent, he convulsed, cried out, and he came out as simple as that. And the people looked at Jesus and they were amazed and said, what is this new teaching and with authority, they couldn't believe it. And the point of Mark's whole gospel, the whole thing, from the first sentence to the very end, is Mark saying to us, believe it, believe it. In other words, some of you have been sitting in church 20 or 30 years and you wonder, I don't feel much better. Or some of you, I know just from the way you act, you wonder, has Jesus ever confronted you? Have you ever dealt with Jesus? Or some of you come here this morning, you're completely broken. If you took 20 minutes and took any person in the congregation and just listened to their story, I guarantee you you would either cry or laugh or both. And if you took an hour, I guarantee you would, because every person in here has besetting sins in their lives, they have things that they've been dealing with, their whole lives, their abuse and most people's backgrounds. All of these hard things and the question is, is Jesus powerful enough and does he have the authority to deal with it? And what Mark wants us to believe from texts like this is believe it. Here's a man who's possessed by a demon and Jesus simply says to him, come out and he does. Are you sick? Very next passage. Peter's mother-in-law is sick and dying with a fever. Jesus heals her. Are you having trouble? Any trouble? Mark goes over and over again and he says, Jesus can take care of that. Jesus can take care of all of these things. Jesus has the power, does he? That's the question you have to ask yourself, do you really believe that? If you're a Christian, do you really believe that? Do you really believe Jesus has the power to help you overcome whatever besetting sin or besetting issue that you have in your life? Do you? Most of the time we don't, I don't. And yet you look at Jesus and you say, here's Jesus who can take someone who's a horrible rotten sinner and turn them into a pastor. Here's someone who can take someone who felt hopeless and helpless as a mother and turn them into someone who the community is an ideal for the community, for his sake, not for hers. And a father who thinks he doesn't know what he's doing, all of these things is Jesus able to do it. What Mark wants us to believe is, yes, look at this. Look at what he's done with this man with a demon. He simply spoke and it happened. Is it guarantee he will? Absolutely not. But you never know until you go to him. Are you trusting Jesus? What are the issues in your life? I guarantee if we just had a line of people come down, you could just make lists that would make you weep. What are these issues? And the question is, is Jesus big enough to deal with them? Think about that. Let me pray. Father, I pray that you would done. You would give us faith. I pray that you would give us hope. I pray that as we consider Jesus that we like the people in this text would be amazed. And yet we wouldn't be amazed because it's something new. We'd be amazed because it's something that we have known all the time and yet have never embraced. So may this with our own faith, Father, give us faith. In Christ's name we pray these things. Amen. Amen.