Preached at Christ Church, Billericay 28/01/2024 @10:00
Authoritative Teachers – Moses
At Horeb, the Israelites have asked God to make Moses His spokesman.
For this is what you asked
of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you
said, “Let us not hear the voice of the LORD our God nor see this
great fire anymore, or we will die.”
It became Moses role to become the first prophet. It is his job, and his alone, to speak with God and to take what God says and pass it on to the Israelites. Anyone who doesn’t listen to Moses will be answerable to God. Moses became God’s authority for the Israelites.
There will be other prophets to follow Moses, and this is the way that God will now use to speak to his people for generations to come. Kings may be appointed, but even the best kings will still rely on a prophet to know what God wants in any particular situation. The worst kings would ignore, or even try to kill the prophets, and that is always followed by disastrous results.
Life of a prophet
Life as a prophet is dangerous, you must be careful only to speak what God gives you. Anything else is asking for trouble. If you get it wrong, or deliberately speak in the name of other gods, the penalty is death.
“The prophet”
While this passage talks about prophets who will follow Moses, it also looks forward to the ‘One Prophet’. Someone who will be as close to God as Moses was, or even closer. Someone who will speak with the Authority of God, just as Moses did.
NT Reading
By the time we get to the period where the New Testament reading is set, the expectation of the arrival of that ‘One Prophet’ had reached fever pitch. This may have something to do with God not having spoken to His people for hundreds of years.
Mark Chapter 1
In Mark Chapter one, we are right at the start of Jesus’s recorded ministry. He and a few disciples have gone to Capernaum. This is Peter’s home town. Jesus was allowed to teach in the synagogue there.
Synagogues
A synagogue was not only a place of worship, but also the administrative centre of the town or village, it was where people gathered to make decisions about how their town should run. It was also the primary place of education, where the children and adults were taught about the Jewish faith.
The building was quite simple, and similar to our traditional churches. Not like this building at all. This looks more like a gym or a bus garage than a church. A synagogue would typically be an oblong building with two rows of columns, about 3 meters apart, with a door at one end and a place for storing the scrolls of the Torah and other scriptures at the other.
Just like our word church, a synagogue is both the people and the building. Originally synagogue referred to the people, just as church did, but over time both came to refer to the building as well.
Who can speak
Perhaps because of its multiple uses, it may have been organised with people facing each other, so that debate was easier. On the sabbath, though, not just anyone could turn up and speak. There was a convention known as “The freedom of the synagogue” which meant that the leader could invite visiting speakers, who appeared in the area, to preach on a particular sabbath. These invitees would have to be known for their theological capabilities and their ability to speak.
This suggests that Jesus would already have spoken at Nazareth and that he already had a reputation as a good speaker. Remember that Jesus had spent time in the temple at the age of 12 listening to the teachers and asking them questions. Luke tells us “They were amazed at His answers”.
What He said here, is not recorded anywhere, but it seems unlikely that he would have been invited to speak in a village that wasn’t his home unless he had some experience.
What happened when he spoke.
The assembled synagogue were in for a surprise. A normal sermon would have taught based on the scriptures and referencing different scrolls and the notes that had been made in the margins and the thoughts of various rabbis that the speaker had heard. In many ways, it was very similar to our sermons here. Jesus was different. He spoke directly from God. His teaching was all His own. It clearly made sense, even though none of it is recorded for our benefit, but more than that, it sounded fresh and relevant. They easily recognised Jesus’s authority. The synagogue were already impressed.
Demon (possession)
Then the demon spoke up.
“What do you want with us,
Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you
are—the Holy One of God!”
Demon possession is not widely believed today. It is largely written off as a psychological disorder, or sometimes epilepsy.
Science, though, is only partly responsible for our dis-belief. Horror films also share the blame, they have dulled our senses to the reality of these things to the point where it becomes difficult, to see any reality in them at all. This is one of Satans strategies.
Demon possession is real
There are some, though, that do believe that demon possession is real. Dr. Richard Gallagher, is a catholic and a psychiatrist who teaches at Columbia University and New York Medical College. He says possession is real but rare. He has been involved in many exorcisms and is sometimes called by the Catholic Church to help out.
There are also theologians who will say that while Jesus was on earth the devil was given a little more latitude, so possessions were more common at that time.
Our Response?
I wonder how we would respond if something like that were to happen here?
Well, I would urge extreme caution before labelling any incident you might encounter as demon possession. Just as the church is very careful to document miracles, so it must be very careful about labelling an incident like this as demon possession.
In the first century, though, it was all they knew.
Jesus’s response.
Jesus, of course, knew exactly what to do and immediately told the demon to “Be quiet.”. You may think that is an odd response. I don’t think it was.
Why not let the demon speak the truth?
Satan is known as the father of lies. I hope you remember that Jesus has already had a long encounter with him in the wilderness, and knows very well how he operates. That means Satan also knows exactly who Jesus is. So, although he’s speaking the truth, Jesus is the holy one of God, I think he’s hoping that it will be thought of as a lie. A kind of double bluff. Either that or he’s trying to conceal that Jesus is the messiah, and God incarnate, to downgrade Jesus a little.
Whatever you believe about that, Jesus is the Holy one of God, and is also God incarnate, so he has God’s authority, and His command must be obeyed. The demon is unable to say any more. He knows his time is up. This is what John says in 1 John 3:8
8 The one who does what is
sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the
beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the
devil’s work.
That’s what is starting to happen here, right at the start of Jesus’s ministry, the works of Satan are being torn apart.
Called Out
The demon, is then called out of the man. This makes the man well again, and presumably he goes on his way, as we don’t hear any more about him.
Fame
This little drama means that Jesus’s fame spreads quickly across the whole area. News travels fast, even without the internet, or the Billericay discussion page.
Jesus is now a celebrity, whether He likes it or not.
Authority
We have seen two types of Authority in these readings. One is the authority of command – Jesus gives an order and the demons obey. The other is the authority of the experts – like our scientists, who have a deep understanding of their field of knowledge. The scribes, those who normally preached, would fall into this category – they really knew their scriptures. Jesus takes this type of authority a step further. After all, the most authoritative person on me is me, and Jesus is God, so knows His father better than anyone.
Our Authority
If we know Jesus; if we pray and study our bibles and if we listen carefully to the Holy Spirit, we too can have authority. Here are a few verses that remind us of that:
John 14:12
“Very
truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have
been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because
I am going to the Father.”
2 Peter 1:3
His divine power has given
us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him
who called us by his own glory and goodness.
Luke 9:1
When Jesus had called the
Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all
demons and to cure diseases
The power and authority to exorcise demons is not everyone’s ministry, but we have all been given some authority, and we should all be able to talk authoritatively about Jesus, His death and resurrection, and His gift of Eternal life.
End with a prayer?
“As we speak in God’s name” – protection and courage, love.
References
https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/jesus-and-early-synagogues
http://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/21399/ddg#21402
https://askgramps.org/preaching-synagogues/
https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2021-01-25/mark-121-28-3/
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/04/health/exorcism-doctor/index.html
No comments:
Post a Comment