The Authority of the Kingdom

There is a war going on right now. It is not a foreign war, off in Israel or Ukraine, but right here. It is fought right in our midst, every day of our lives. It is fought in our church, in our families, in our schools, and in our communities. Every day, there is great damage caused by this war. Children are abused because of it. Marriages dissolve. Friendships are broken. Families are divided. Churches split. Governments enforce unjust laws. Every day, there are casualties in this war. Men and women are deceived into believing the lies of the enemy. They are prevented from hearing the truth by wicked governments. Or, they never hear because good people are too distracted by their own cares to tell them.

This war isn’t just a modern struggle. It goes all the way back to the beginning of time. We find the first battle in this war in Genesis 3. There we find the king and queen of God’s good creation, Adam and Eve. Placed in a Garden Temple and given everything that their hearts could desire, God charged them with having dominion. He also charged them to seek wisdom, not by taking it from the tree of knowledge, but by walking with him. But, one day, while walking in the garden, the Queen of Earth, Eve, was deceived by a serpent to take and eat of the fruit of knowledge. Her king, Adam, watched this serpent spew his deceptions at his wife and did nothing. Actually, he did worse than nothing, as he took the fruit and ate, too. This fruit was so appealing, not because they were hungry (for they had every possible fruit available to them), but because the serpent said it would make them like God. It was a shortcut to power. Instead of walking with God, instead of pursuing wisdom in God’s time and in God’s way, they could gain it in an instant by listening to the wisdom of the serpent. It certainly gave them wisdom, but not the kind they wanted. They certainly now understood evil, like a cancer patient understands cancer. We call this moment in history “The Fall”, because in that moment, Adam and Eve fell from their position as king and queen of earth, and they handed it over to the serpent, Satan. 

This story, in and of itself, isn’t a war, though. The war is introduced a bit later. In their shame, Adam and Eve hid from God, but God found them out. He confronts them and pronounces curses on all involved in this catastrophe. He starts his curses with the serpent. In Genesis 3:15, he tells the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” There it is – the beginning of this war. From this point on, the course of the history of the universe will be defined by a struggle between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. Satan would crouch at the door so that he might rule over Cain, and in his anger, Cain would kill his righteous brother, Abel. The ancient rulers of the first cities would seek wisdom from fallen angels and give their daughters to them to gain power through their offspring, the Nephilim. Through this, the world would become so violent and disordered that God would judge the world with a flood. After the flood, God divided the nations among the “Sons of God”, as we are told in Deut. 32:8-9, giving heavenly beings (some fallen), charge over mankind. But, in dividing the nations, God chose a people for himself. Well, actually, he chose one childless man, Abram. From this one man he made a nation. He delivered this nation, Israel, from the clutches of Egypt and led them into the land he’d promised. They conquered the land, driving out the idolatrous nations that filled it. In that land, he called them to be a light to the nations. They were to exemplify pure worship, and through their worship and wisdom, they were to draw the nations to God.

But, they failed. Instead of influencing the nations around them, the nations influenced Israel. They imported the gods of foreign lands, worshipping the creation rather than the creator. So, God gave them over to the nations. Israel and Judah were conquered and scattered. Even when they were restored to their promised land, as God had promised, the nations were still among them with all of their pagan rituals and practices. And, the demonic forces behind these practices came with them. You see, the promised land was supposed to be a land of blessing. God promised, in Exodus 23:25, “You shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you. None shall miscarry or be barren in your land.” But, they had brought in the idolatry of the nations, and with it their demons. So, the land was no longer a blessing but a curse, and the people of God were besieged by the seed of the serpent.

I tell you all of this because of a common mistake we can make when coming to a passage like we have before us today. In our text from Mark 1:21-28, we are going to witness Jesus casting out a demon. There are two mistakes we could make in reading this. On the one hand, we could be good rationalists and assume that demons don’t really exist and whatever Jesus was dealing with was just a mental illness. Here me clearly – demons are real. They are as much a part of the fabric of this world as this desk from which I preach. Pretending like they don’t exist will only hamper us from rightly dealing with them. Second, we could make the mistake of thinking that, because demons are real, we are outmanned and outgunned in this war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. We might think that we have no power or authority to fight the demons that wage war against us. We’d be wrong to think that as well. So, with all of that understood, let’s read our text. From this passage I want you to see one central point today: Jesus, as the Son of God, has the full authority of the kingdom of God. And, we see that authority in two ways – his preaching and his power.

First, see the authority of Jesus in his preaching. In verses 21 and 22, Jesus comes into the city of Capernaum on the Sabbath. Capernaum was a major city in Galilee along an important trading route. People from every walk of life and every nation would have been represented there, along with their false idols. Because it is the Sabbath, Jesus went to the local synagogue to worship, and as was the custom, he was invited to preach because he was already recognized as a Rabbi. We aren’t told what Jesus said, but we are told that it was powerful. We are told that the crowd was astonished, and it’s important to recognize why. They say, “he taught as one who had authority and not as the scribes.” In other words, when Jesus preached, he didn’t quote a bunch of commentary or appeal to the ancient fathers of Judaism or argue from some stuffy philosophy. Jesus spoke by his own authority, as though he were speaking directly for God. We see what this would have looked like from the sermon on the mount in Matt. 5. There, Jesus pronounced, “you have heard it said… but I say.” He didn’t quote chapter and verse of a Scripture to support his claim. He didn’t even say, “thus saith the Lord.” He just said, with the full authority of God, “I say do this.”

Second, see the authority of Jesus in his power from verses 23-28. As Jesus is preaching, a man in the crowd begins to cry out. Just imagine if this were to happen today! Imagine that, as I’m preaching, someone begins to scream, “What have you to do with us?!” I think half of yall wouldn’t be here in the next second! But this man yells out, not because he is mentally unstable, but because the power of Jesus’s preaching drew out the demon that had possessed him. In fact, it isn’t even the man who cried out, but the demon who recognized Jesus for who he was. This demon is fearful that Jesus has come to “destroy” him. Notice how Jesus deals with this demon. He doesn’t tell the disciples to take hold of him. He doesn’t get out holy water or make the sign of the cross. He doesn’t use a talisman or some herb. He just simply speaks. He rebukes him and commands him to come out. In response, the demon convulses, screams, and leaves.

This experience isn’t the only story we will see of demon possession. Throughout Jesus’s ministry, he confronted and cast out demons. It happens so often, we have to ask why? To understand why demons are so prevalent in Jesus’s ministry, we have to recognize an important aspect of why Jesus came in the first place. Jesus is the seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent. Jesus came to destroy the power of Satan. He came to take back the nations from those evil spiritual beings that ruled over them. Col. 1:13 says that he has delivered us from the “domain” or “authority” of darkness and transferred us into his kingdom. Eph. 1:21 says that through his resurrection, Jesus has been placed far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, and all things have been put under his feet. In his death and resurrection, Jesus defeated the power of Satan over mankind. He crushed the head of the serpent. This is why demons seemed to come out the woodwork during his ministry. They recognized that their time was up. Their hold on humanity was ending. The war was about to be won.

But, it doesn’t feel like it has been won. Christians still face temptations. Churches still fight. The lost are still deceived. We might mistakenly think that, after the resurrection, Jesus left us to win the war on our own. But that is not the case at all. First of all, Jesus has given his full authority to his church. In Matt. 28:18, he says, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth, therefore go.” When we share the gospel and make disciples, we do so with the full authority of Jesus. We preach the message that makes the demons scream, and by the power of that message, people are set free from bondage to Satan.

We are also prepared for the battle by the armor of God. In Eph. 6:11, Paul tells us, “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” God has not left us defenseless and helpless. He has given us truth, righteousness, the Gospel of peace, faith, salvation, His Spirit, and the Word. And, if we will take up these things, we can stand firm and extinguish the flaming arrows of Satan.

We can fight in this war, not only with the confidence of the armor of God, but with the assurance that the victory is sure. Rev. 12:10 says, “Now the salvation and power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down.” So may we go from this place ready to wage war against Satan, knowing that we have the final victory in Christ, because he has the authority and power.