Bible Studies

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One of the marked features of Jesus’ miracles was His power over evil spirits. Many times Jesus commanded these evil spirits to depart from the person they were possessing. For example, we have the two demon-possessed men from the region of Gadarenes (Mt 8:28-33/Mk 5:1-20/Lk 8:26-39); a father’s son who was possessed by a demon, causing him to throw himself into fire or water (Mt 17:14-21); the man in the Capernaum synagogue possessed of an impure Spirit (Mk 1:21-28/Lk 4:31-37). Then we have the time (Mt 12:22-29/Mk 3:23-27/Lk 11:17-22) when Jesus commanded an evil Spirit to leave a man who was mute because of the demon’s influence on his life. The people around Him (probably Pharisees) exclaimed the Jesus was driving out the demons by the power of Satan, in which Jesus proclaims that Satan could never throw out Satan because it would mean that his kingdom was divided against itself and could never stand. This is another reason why Jesus came to earth: to show all of those fallen angels that God is still stronger than their master, Satan, and that they would not be allowed to continue hampering God’s people for very much longer. Jesus’ first coming was the switch that turn off the power of Satan’s demons and turned on the timer to their eventual demise.

Like most people, the disciples started out knowing Jesus the man. Like the rest of us, it took some time for them to realize that Jesus was more than a man, but was and is in fact God in the flesh. Through the miracles that Jesus did, they, like us, slowly gained an understanding that Jesus was something more than a man, for who could do the things that He was doing. In the calming of the storm, Jesus showed them that He even had command over the weather; even then they didn’t quite understand who Jesus was. It wasn’t until Jesus returned from the dead in the upper room, and on the shore, that the disciples finally got who Jesus was, and that was only after He opened their minds to what the scriptures had said about Him. When the Holy Spirit came upon them at Pentecost, the disciples finally and fully understood their mission for Jesus and set out to proclaim Jesus Christ in power and with boldness they did not have before.

Today, a lot of people are the same as the disciples were: they won’t, or can’t, believe until they have seen the evidence with their own eyes. If they can’t touch it or see it, it doesn’t exist. The disciples of Jesus had three physical years in Jesus’ physical presence to learn about who He was and what He had come to earth to do. As Jesus said, it is greater to not see and believe than it is to see and believe. Today, we can’t “see” Jesus around us I the flesh, but we can see Him spiritually in our lives, and even physically in what He has done in them. For all of us who have not seen and still believe, the power of Christ runs through our veins in the power of the Holy Spirit, who makes disciples out of all of those who proclaim Jesus Lord. Then, like today, the Holy Spirit of God gives us the understanding of the scriptures and the truth of the Gospel message we have been entrusted to proclaim to the world as the disciples did once the “got it.” Thankfully, the disciples did “get it” and through them, and today through believers everywhere, the world has never been the same.

References

Guthrie, D. (1970). A shorter life of christ. Grand Rapids, MI: Academie Books.

All Scripture quotations are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved."

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