Mark 3:20-30 20 And He came home, and the crowd gathered again, to such an extent that they could not even eat a meal. 21 When His own people heard of this, they went out to take custody of Him; for they were saying, “He has lost His senses.” 22 The scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “He casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons.” 23 And He called them to Himself and began speaking to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26 If Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but [l]he is finished! 27 But no one can enter the strong man’s house and plunder his property unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house. 28 “Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— 30 because they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”
Jesus has declared war on an established kingdom. He is healing the sick, bringing new authority and teachings, forgiving sins, breaking the oral tradition, "working" on the sabbath, overcoming temptation, and opposing the Jewish/religious leaders of his time. However, it is not the kingdom of Israel or the Jewish religion that is under attack but the Kingdom of Darkness. Jesus says in Matthew 5:17 that "He has not come to abolish the law and prophets but to fulfill them," but He says no such thing about the realm of Satan. In fact, He is in open opposition and has begun to attack this kingdom. It started in the desert when Jesus resisted the devil's temptations and continues as we see Jesus exert his power and authority over the demon possessed. In this passage we see Jesus’ power and authority come into question by two different groups in two different ways. It reminds me of a C.S. Lewis quote from Mere Christianity, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” This is exactly what we see play out in the passage and Jesus leaves the Pharisees with a very stern warning about the road they are headed down. Questions to consider:
5 Comments
Jesse Dominguez
5/17/2021 09:02:06 am
I think there will always be opposition to Jesus because of the hardness of people's hearts and the continual work of the enemy to plant seeds of doubt in the deity of Christ. Also, practicing religious acts and following denominations that openly deny the power of Christ to save and heal results in a frog in the kettle scenario that also hardens one's heart to who Jesus is and said He is. Pride is another reason why the multitudes could not see themselves conform to His teachings and subject themselves to His authority. I am praying for those close to me that need to hear from God and be reconciled to Him.
Reply
Travis Cunningham
5/17/2021 10:36:19 am
I think you bring up a great point and revelation about how Jesus approaches the kingdom of Satan compared to His approach to the Jewish system and cultures of the day. Jesus in fact did come to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8), but He came to fulfill or complete the law of God. Jesus does not play around with Satan’s kingdom, which speaks to me personally. Light has no place for darkness. He opposed it, exposed it and continuously and finally destroyed it when He died and rose again.
Reply
Matthew Frank
5/17/2021 06:59:34 pm
The reality is that humanity is in constant opposition towards Jesus because of our enharent sin nature. Jesus perfect nature opposes our sinful hearts and as Jesse stated, pride (used by the enemy) separates and blinds us to the love of Jesus. As Christians, we are now able to see through that glass darkly seeing clearly with the love of Christ. However, we also have to understand that as the world hated Jesus to the point of death, we too will eventually face this persecution.
Reply
Shanin Macaluso
5/17/2021 09:26:18 pm
I think people today try to discredit Jesus today by shifting His principles of righteousness (i.e. sexual morality) and calling it hate to suit their own moral code.
Reply
Daniel Macaluso
5/17/2021 09:35:56 pm
Shanin’s right on. The big way people discredit Jesus and his followers is to simply redefine words like “righteousness” and “truth” and “justice” to all mean “hate.” It all gets so twisted up. Sadly, and ironically, they call love hate and fight against it with true hate. They cry for “tolerance”, which really means no one needs to be held accountable, except those who have differing—biblically based, or even biologically based— viewpoints and then they fully sanction intolerance against those opposing views. And this is done for their own selfish and sinful “gain” and their fear of facing the reality of their (or others’) sin and deception and, ultimately, their need to surrender their false sense of control and admit they are sinners in need of a savior.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
September 2022
Categories
All
|