Jesus in Capernaum (Part B)

Satan hates those he possesses. Satan hates those he lies to. He wants to see you doomed like him.

They're all in unity with this. All hell is joined with destroying humans. We face a violent and insane spiritual adversary and never forget it.

Stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Jesus in Capernaum is the title of Pastor Rick's message and he's teaching in Mark chapter 1. The worst thing that can happen to a human being is not death and it is not torture. It is eternal condemnation. The best thing that can happen to a human being is to be right with God. We call it salvation.

We use the phrase so much, maybe it's lost its emphasis with some. What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Did you come to destroy us? What an obnoxious, blasphemous being this is, speaking to God the Son, knowing who he's speaking to. He says, I know who you are. There again is a switch of pronouns. So at first the demon speaks as joined to the man and then he speaks as overruling the man. And that's what Satan will do if you just let him.

Very subtle. How did this demon recognize Christ? How could he make such a statement as this, I know who you are, unless he had some prior knowledge of him? Well, he knew Jesus because it was Jesus who created him to be something more and something better than what he now was.

There's a lot to think about in that. The demons knew who Jesus was, but how many people did not? The demons know. Satan knows who Christ is. How many human beings since Christ came have not cared to know? The devil says about Jesus, now when we say the devil and Satan the adversary, we're not necessarily speaking about Lucifer himself.

We don't have to be. He has enough evil spirits, unclean spirits, enough demons, enough monsters to do a lot of damage without him personally getting involved. We do see him personally involved.

For example, in the book of Daniel, of course, the revelation and in the temptation of Christ. But understand that the devil is a broad meaning. He is the slanderer. He is the one that talks bad about God and anybody else he can talk bad about.

And there are lies. The Holy One of God he calls Christ, a remarkable testimony to Christ from this unclean spirit. The Holy One of God is an expansion, this phrase of the Holy One of Israel found in the Old Testament. Psalm 16 verse 10, for you will not leave my soul in Sheol nor will you allow your Holy One to see corruption.

Well, we know that is a messianic prophecy in that Psalm speaking about Christ that his body would not perish in the grave. Psalm 71 verse 22, to you I will sing, O Holy One of Israel. Now remember the demon called him the Holy One of God, which is an expansion of the Holy One of Israel. Isaiah 54, for your maker is your husband. Yahweh of hosts is his name and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.

He is called the God of the whole earth, disrupting such blasphemous theologies as that found in Mormonism and with the Jehovah's Witnesses who deny that Jesus is God the Son equal with the Father in spite of a multitude of tsunami of verses that rebuke their folly. Verse 25, but Jesus rebuked him and said, Be quiet and come out of him. Sure, Jesus says, Shut your mouth. In the Greek, it's be muzzled.

That's pretty, you know, you gag him, put duct tape over his mouth, then staple it shut. That's a bit over the much, but it works for me because in the Old Testament, there was a great intolerance for hearing the voice of the devil in the promised land. Exodus 22, You shall not permit a sorceress to live. That's just one verse.

No nonsense. God says they have information that's wrong, and information is influence, and if you're influenced by wrong information, it will take your soul out. And so they were not permitted to testify. They were censored under the threat of capital punishment in Israel. And Jesus is saying, I don't want to hear you talk.

Today, we have activists who would gather to protest against Jesus, saying it's hate speech to call the devil what he is, a devil. We are to uphold every word of God. Man should not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And you know how important bread is.

Many of you don't want to go near a scale because you have demonstrated how important bread is. I mean food. And God says it's the word of God. It's like food. You've got to have it or you die. And man is not to live by just bread, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

How do you downsize that? It's not like just the Old Testament said it. Jesus is the one that brings it up again to Satan.

It is that important. Living by the word of God. Truth and love and grace and virtue and all these things that resist the devil and resist sin. So Jesus rebuked him and said, shut up. Be quiet. I don't want to hear your testimony.

We've got more to say about this. Verse 26, then the unclean spirit convulsed him and cried out with a loud voice and he came out of him. So the Lord, again, not receiving the testimony of the devil, even if that particular sound bite was true, knowing that Satan would use it to corrupt, gain favor and then corrupt. Here and when the unclean spirit had convulsed him.

That's a departing cheap shot. I thought that was your buddy. He was hosting you.

Is that any way to treat a host? Satan hates those he possesses. Satan hates those he lies to. He wants to see you doomed like him.

They're all in unity with this. All hell is joined with destroying humans. We face a violent and insane spiritual adversary and never forget it. And he cried out with a loud voice.

How eerie that must have been. Here you go to church. You hear a sermon. You're blown away by the sermon as you will be at the end of this service. It's just prophetic. You hear a sermon.

You're just blown away by it. And then there's this outburst. There's this exchange between the preacher and a congregant. The preacher cast out a devil from this man in front of everybody. But before it happens, there's this convulsion in the individual and this eerie sound. Here in front of Christ, the spirit made his departure painful and public.

As painful and public as he was able to. Classic marks of an unclean spirit. Invasive, abusive, and blasphemous.

They are destructive and there's nothing cute about them. And all they want to get you to do is not believe what God says. They can just get their nose in the tent. If you can just give them a little bit of your unbelief. You think this is a game. Satan's not playing a game. He wants you in hell. And if you think you are going to be okay in hell, you're a bigger fool now than you'll ever be again.

Because once you get there, you'll realize that God was not fooling around. His love was very serious. And here we see this demon had one more mean thing to do. It came out of him, we're told. He was defeated without chance and incantations, pretty much the same thing, without potions or elaborate ritual. Jesus did not violate this man, he restored him. He did not violate any natural laws, he restored them. He overcame broken laws with his holiness. It says he came out of him.

Thank God. Whenever God sends aid to his people to oppose deep evil, evil strikes back. So you believers who preach the word to your parents, to your children, to your co-workers, to anybody who can preach it, don't be surprised when you draw fire from hell and it's really bad.

Serious fire. They have burned us at the stake for preaching the word of God. We're seeing it today. We're living today. At a time when God defeated wicked Hillary Clinton, the most bitter woman alive.

Saved us from who knows what persecution would come our way. God is fighting the Bill Clinton and the Barack Obama administration's works through this president that we have. You Christians need to know where your pastor stands on these things.

I can't bring them up every Sunday, but I'm bringing them up this Sunday. Hell has countered attacking these moves. Hell has raised up these racist Black Lives Matter groups. They are racist, falsely accusing decent people of the evil they do. Fascist Antifa are fascists themselves.

Try to walk through their crowd and be free and have freedom of speech and watch what that gets you. There's the proof. These are the facts. What about the celebucooks that are everywhere? Because they can tell stories does not mean they tell true stories. Yet they're gobbled up.

Millionaire athletes, again, who cry racism, but they themselves are the racist. And it's exposed and it's dismissed by some. We should have a righteous indignation against this because this is the voice of Satan.

I'm not finished. There are others that we're dealing with today who are raising themselves up through Satan to falsely accuse good people of the evil they do. I don't care anything about skin color. I care about what's in the heart and what's in the head and what comes out of those two. That's what Isaiah was talking about in chapter 5, woeing to those who call evil good and good evil. We have anarchists. We have imperialist Islam. We have hateful communism, lying hordes of homosexual activists and their advocates.

These people are serious. They hate the guts of Jesus Christ and everybody who loves him. We're not supposed to hate them back. I may sound like I do. I'm not happy with them.

It comes out that way. We have hideous and treacherous groups that call themselves churches but are Jezebels because they're not interested in what God says. I don't agree with all churches, but many of them still do God's work and they're God's people. I don't care for Calvinists.

They're not very tasty. But many of them, a great many of them, they love the Lord. And because they got that wrong doesn't mean they're any less Christians.

Just making sure, any Calvinist supporters here, you're still loved and that's okay. Devilish haters of the Jews. And then there are the slaughterers of the unborn and now the just born.

They're out there. And these people want rights to stop the mouth of God. They want to say to Jesus Christ, Leave us alone.

What do we have to do with you? And Jesus, I have nothing to do with you, but I will not leave you alone. We must stand and resist them. So when Paul says, I'll get to how we resist them momentarily, but Paul says, We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places.

Well, it's not a theory, it's a fact. Well, how do these spiritual entities wrestle against us? Through human beings, messing with their head. And now the Tower of Babel is rebuilt in the internet and they come into your home and they're the body snatchers.

They are the soul snatchers. You young Christians especially, if you attend here regularly, you go to a church that has sounded the alarm, has blown the whistle, has served you notice. If you are going to be stupid enough to follow these people in the face of all their lies and their dishonesty, then your judgment will be just and you will have no one to blame but you. But we don't want that to happen.

So we invest in you. We must stand and resist them. Jude 23, But others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh. You young Christians who live in an age of the computer and the internet, you can look at it two ways. You can say it's a wonderful place to learn how the world does it or you can say, I live in an exciting time where I have an opportunity to preach the gospel unlike ever before. I've got so many people around me who go to the internet for their church and get their information. I have an opportunity to uphold Christ in their face with truth and love.

Or not. You can sit there and wring your fingers and say the age is so wicked these people are getting away with evil or you can look to preach Christ any chance you get. Verse 27, 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. Who could not obey him?

Who could not be wowed? Truth backed by a teacher in touch with God, that's again why they were all amazed. They were seeing it carried out in his life and dealing with this soul that was in torment. Timeless truth without tradition or the error within some tradition. Some traditions are good.

Others are just, they get in the way and they strip us down. But this is what the world today is waiting to see in the church. Evidence of Christ with us. Listen, you can't preach the gospel if you do not want to offend guilty people. If you're going to preach Christ, you can't save them if you can't hurt them with truth. If they're guilty and they're headed to hell and you withhold that information, then judgment be upon you possibly.

You don't want to do that. This is what Ezekiel dealt with. Son of man, if you see him messing up and you don't say anything, when God has opened the door for you to say something, then who's guilty in this picture?

So Satan puts a lot of effort into quieting you and keeping you from being obedient. And me too. Verse 28, And immediately his fame spread throughout all the region around Galilee. So Mark just puts that in. It did immediately again, this rapid pace. He says, because it's more going to happen, we'll get that in verse 29.

That's when it will really start spreading. So he inserts this sort of a coming attraction. Verse 29, Now as soon as they had come out of the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John.

This synagogue, again, that is the footprint of the original is still there with another synagogue built on top of it. Peter's house, the way Mark says it, as though Peter's house was very close, just a few steps away. Verse 30, Now but Simon's wife's mother lay sick with a fever, and they told him about her at once. Well, she evidently stayed home, missed a good sermon and an exorcism, a bad day not to be in church. So they get home, and he says, Mom's not joining us for dinner. She's got a fever.

Can you help her? Luke 4 38, And they made requests of him concerning her. Yeah, it would have been pretty bad, everybody in the other room just having a good time. Christ is right there.

He can do something, and he does not. Incidentally, Peter was married, of course. It tells of Simon's wife. And not only was he married, there were others. This goes against those who would say that those leading in the church should not take a wife. 1 Corinthians 9 5, Do we have no right to take along a believing wife, as do also the other apostles, the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas, which is Peter, of course.

That's just a side note there. Verse 31, So he came and took her by the hand, lifted her up, and immediately the fever left her, and she served them. She just went right to work. Gratitude. She wanted to express her gratitude by serving the Lord.

Who does it? When you come to Christ, don't you want to do something for Christ? And we see it acted out through this godly, unnamed mother of Peter's wife. Luke again gives us a little more insight. He says, So he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left.

Just like that. Verse 32, At evening, when the sun had set, they brought to him all who were sick and those who were demon-possessed. Sunset, he makes that mention because they dare not look for healing under rabbinical Judaism on the Sabbath day. And Jesus, of course, will become very provocative in this. He will provoke them to confrontations on the Sabbath by healing people as he just cast out a demon on the Sabbath. But with the sunset, the Jew, of course, their day went from sundown to sundown. Now it is, according to their calendar, our Sunday, but really our Saturday night, but to them it's the next day. So they bring those who are sick and demon-possessed, and the hypochondriacs came too. Special healing for that group. Anyway, in Acts, we read the apostles when, I don't have time to get into this too much, but of course when the church, when the Gentiles were flooding into the church, the Jews didn't know how to handle this.

I mean, they're bringing these habits in. And the apostles stood up and wanted to make sure that we weren't, they weren't making new converts, Gentile converts, essentially, you know, Jews. They wanted to keep them Gentiles in Christ. So why do you test God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? And in that statement, he is pointing out rabbinical Judaism and put so many laws on the people in Moses' name that it was just oppressive. Verse 33, and the whole city was gathered together at the door.

Well, Peter's house must have been either close to a field or the beach there at Capernaum to accommodate such a large gathering outside his house. That's how it reads. Verse 34, and he healed many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons, and he did not allow the demons to speak because they knew him. Now this, of course, healing included the physical as well as the mental. This great physician never lost a patient, never charged a fee.

And that might be, if you're searching for new health insurance, you might want to see if you can get an agreement like that. And did not allow the demons to speak. Again, intolerant of hearing the devil's voice. And that's why we try to shield our young ones from being exposed too quickly, especially to what the world has to say, about even Christ. We don't want devils to tell us about Christ because they lie. They try to win our trust and kill us. And so Christ says, the scripture says, he did not allow demons to speak, that we could learn to be intolerant of the devil's voice.

Because again, corrupted information is a bad influence. Because they knew him, it says here in verse 34. Well, they recognized him as the Messiah, as many humans refuse. But so what they knew him. That didn't give them the right to preach Christ because they were unclean still. And knowing about God without knowing God is not a benefit. Paul expresses this in Philippians chapter 3.

We don't have time. You can read it if you're not familiar with it. Let me read it, verses 10 and 11. That I may know him in the power of his resurrection, his fellowship of his suffering, being conformed to his death.

That I may know him. Never in history had the world seen what was going on here in Capernaum, and what will continue to go on until, of course, Christ ascends. In spite of all of this, he is rejected here in Capernaum, Matthew 11.

He began to rebuke the cities in which most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent. And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say to you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you.

That's pretty heavy duty. Jesus is saying, you saw the miracles and you rejected them and you're going to be judged. Others didn't see these miracles and they were judged. And what do you say when you read these things and you know they're true? What do you say to people? What do you say?

You ask, what about you? You're going to believe him? You're going to believe the world. You've got to make the choice. And when you make that choice, you need to understand it's not always one step back. You can leave Christ.

Don't think you're just going to come on back because, oh, you're free to. But it's not that easy. Because once you open the door for evil, it's pretty hard to get him out. You need to be.

You need all of us. We need to have a healthy fear of God. The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge. Without a reverent and sober fear of God, why should you obey anything? Why not just go riot?

There are no consequences. We're seeing this, are we not? Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the Book of Mark. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the Book of Mark, right here on Cross Reference Radio.