Tag Archives: family

Demon-possessed?

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DEMON-POSSESSED?

Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that He and His disciples were not even able to eat. When His family heard about this, they went to take charge of Him, for they said, ‘He is out of His mind.’

And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He is possessed by Beelzebub! By the prince of demons He is driving out demons.’ (Mark 3: 20-22).

Crazy? Demon-possessed? What made people reach this conclusion about Jesus?

Does a demon-possessed man heal the sick and cast out devils? What symptoms did He show that they should call Him “demon-possessed”? Was He raving like a lunatic, cursing and foaming at the mouth? Was He crazy because people followed Him in droves when He brought relief to their suffering? Were they so used to being ill-treated by their religious leaders that anyone who came to them in mercy and treated with compassion was classed as mad?

Anyone with half a brain should have recognised that Jesus was the sanest person who ever lived. If sanity was gauged by the way He treated people, then no one on earth ever was or ever will be more “with it” than Jesus. What prompted His family to think that He has lost it? They had lived with Him for thirty years. His heavenly Father had affirmed Him at His baptism with an audible voice from heaven. Could there be better approval than that? Did His godly life so offend them that they classified Him as “out of His mind”? Even His mother sided with His siblings.

And what of the religious leaders? Wasn’t “possessed by Beelzebub” going a bit far? Of course their logic was illogical, as Jesus pointed out:

So Jesus called them over to Him and began to speak to them in parables. ‘How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house.’ (Mark 3: 23-27).

This statement is loaded! Logical, first of all, to show up the foolishness of the so-called educated ones. But also loaded with hints about who He really was, if they were wide awake enough to recognise the clues. What was He saying? Who was the “strong man” of whom He spoke? What was His mission? Of course He was telling them in cryptic language that He was the “strong man” who had come to “tie up” the strong man and plunder his house. Wasn’t He doing that right in front of their eyes? Wasn’t that why they called Him demon-possessed because they had never seen anything like that before?

‘Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.’ He said this because they were saying, ‘He has an impure spirit.’ (Mark 3: 28-30).

These men were skating very close to what Jesus called “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit”. What was that? According to Jesus, anyone who attributes the work of the Holy Spirit to the devil is cutting himself off from any possibility of the Holy Spirit’s work in his heart. Such a person is doomed because the Holy Spirit is the only one who can awaken a dead spirit to the things of God. When someone deliberately rejects the work of the Holy Spirit as demonic, he has no recourse to the power and the presence of God.

Believers are sometimes plagued with the fear that they have committed the unpardonable sin when they have done something or other which has driven them into guilt. First of all, the Holy Spirit is not the accuser. That is Satan’s title and Satan’s job. He can say nothing else because he is under divine judgment and he can only speak what he hears. Condemnation is his voice, not God’s voice.

Secondly, God does not tell us what we are as far as our past is concerned. He tells us what we are as far as His work is concerned. He has attributed the righteousness of Jesus to us and that is what we are (2 Cor. 5: 21). The Holy Spirit speaks to us of righteousness (John 16: 10), not of guilt. He does not drive us by guilt or fear. He draws us towards Jesus who is everything we are and everything we need.

To repudiate the work of the Holy Spirit and to speak blasphemy against Him takes a deliberate and considered choice and is a very serious move for anyone to make. Anyone who loves Jesus would never go that far, even in a moment of passion because he is held in the grip of His love.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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No Fear Of Death

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NO FEAR OF DEATH

Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. He says:

‘I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters; in the assembly I will sing your praises.’ And again, ‘I will put my trust in Him.’ And again He says, ‘Here I am and the children God has given me.’

Since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity so that by His death He might break the power of Him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. (Heb. 2: 11-15)

No fear of death! Wow!

Why does the believer in Jesus no longer need to fear death? Because he no longer fears punishment! Jesus shared our humanity and took our punishment so that we are free to come home to the Father and to His perfect love.

There is no fear in love. But perfect loves drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4: 18)

Death has lost its terror since Jesus faced death for us and overcame. Death was the devil’s trump card because he knew that death was final and sealed the fate of all humanity. There was no escape and no return from death. Jesus took death on the chin for us and came back in a resurrection body that can never die again to tell us that He conquered death once and for all.

The devil went one step too far by having the Son of God put to death. He thought he would destroy Him forever and the chance for mankind to be rescued from his clutches. Death is the penalty for sin, but Jesus did not sin. Therefore death could not hold Him forever. He passed through death and returned to declare that God’s estranged children were free to return home. The Father’s wrath against sin had been satisfied. Satan no longer had the power to hold us in death.

This was God’s final and most powerful act of perfect love. What seemed to be folly and weakness was the most powerful power in the universe – the power of love. Love accepted the worst that sinful people could do to an innocent man without retaliating. Jesus bore the injustice, the insults, the physical agony and even the horror of being abandoned by the Father with nothing but perfect love. He forgave in the midst of His pain and died without a murmur or a word of rebuke or a threat of revenge.

When they hurled their insults at Him, He did not retaliate; when He suffered, He made no threats. Instead, He entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly. (1 Peter 2: 23)

Everything Jesus accomplished through the cross culminated in one thing – God’s children are free to return home. The implications are huge. Home! That means back to the Father’s dwelling place where we are safe in the Father’s care and eligible to participate in all the benefits and blessings of family life together with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

God is a family. He made us to be part of His family. He gave us His name; we are free to live with Him in His home; we have an inheritance with the Son; we share in all the resources, privileges and blessings of life in the family of God and we have the responsibility of representing the Father to the unbelieving world by demonstrating what it is like to live in God’s kingdom.

How amazing that we are actually brothers and sisters of Jesus and, what’s more, He’s proud to call us His brothers and sisters! How can that be? Because, through His death He has made us holy! Holy? Yes, holy, set apart for and belonging to God. We have share in the nature of God (2 Peter 1: 4). We have the same nature as the Son. We are part of a new race made in the image of the last Adam, our elder brother Jesus.

And we are free! Free to live life to the full because we have no fear of punishment or death. When death comes, we go home to the Father’s house to dwell with Him forever. And we die in the hope of resurrection because our Brother, Jesus, rose from the dead – and He is the firstfuits of the resurrection and the guarantee that we, too, will rise again.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

You Are The Message!

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YOU ARE THE MESSAGE

“When you enter a home, greet the family, ‘Peace.’ If your greeting is received, then it’s a good place to stay. But if it’s not received, take it back and get out. Don’t impose yourself.

“Stay at one home, taking your meals there, for a worker deserves three square meals. Don’t move from house to house looking for the best cook in town.

When you enter a town and are received, eat what they set before you, heal anyone who is sick, and tell them, ‘God’s kingdom is right on your doorstep!'” Luke 10:5-9 (The Message).

As one reads Jesus’ instructions over and over, something begins to emerge about His strategy for infiltrating a community with the good news of God’s kingdom. The first thing one notices is His respect for people’s right to choose. He didn’t insist that His disciples bulldoze their way in and force the message on people whether they wanted to listen or not. Everyone had the right to choose whether they accepted or rejected the messengers and their message.

‘Test the water,’ He said. How were they to do that? They were to do it in the disposition of Messiah. ‘Say hello,’ He said but, at the same time, their “hello” conveyed something far deeper than just a causal “hi”. “Shalom”, translated “peace” was both a greeting and a prayer. Shalom is the essence of what God desires and does for those who believe in Him and entrust their lives to Him. His work of restoration produces an inner peace and a wholeness that He intended everyone to experience from the beginning when He created mankind.

If a family responded positively to their greeting, they were to stay there and share the life of that family for the duration of their stay. It was part of Hebrew culture to show hospitality to strangers. It was accepted that a friendly greeting would indicate an open door and a family’s generous attitude towards their guests.

Should the greeting not be returned, they were to move on without making a fuss. It was everyone’s right to choose, and they were not to react ungraciously by retaliating when they were refused hospitality.

They were to receive what was given to them as graciously as their hosts gave and not move on if they were not satisfied with the quality of the hospitality. Being in a home gave them opportunity to interact with the family and minister to their needs, including healing their sick and sharing the good news of God’s kingdom.

The overall impression one gets from Jesus’ instruction is that He was advocating personal interaction with the people of that community. He was not about setting up a big healing and preaching campaign, inviting people to a gathering in the village square. It was about spending time in people’s homes and entering into the family’s life for a while, infiltrating the community with more than just preaching. He was always about being the message, not just telling it.

One cannot dissociate the message from the messenger. Jesus’ way is so unlike the ways of the world, and especially the ways of religion which tries to impose and force its ideas on people whether they like to or not. The message and the messenger are inseparable. It was the message personified in the life of the messenger that would persuade people of the truth, not force it on reluctant or sceptical hearers.

Jesus illustrated the kingdom’s power to infiltrate and transform society in His story of the women who mixed yeast into a lump of dough. He didn’t tell His disciples to leave it to the suitably qualified “professionals” to preach the gospel. He sent all His followers out to spread the good news everywhere that God’s way is the best way to live.

It’s by both life and lip that God’s kingdom comes alive in a community and brings it closer to God’s original idea of a family living together in “shalom” — harmony and wholeness.

Are you doing that?