Text:  Mark 1:21-28                                                                                        W 4^th Sunday after Epiphany

Just Words

            In the name of him who teaches his church with authority, dear friends in Christ:  Last week when we met for worship, the Scripture readings we heard had much to say about the power of God’s spoken Word.  That is to say, when the Lord speaks his Word – or when someone else, and especially his designated spokesmen speak them – those words have the power to affect changes in things, in people, in whatever it is he speaks to—changes that would not or could not happen apart from the power of God’s Word.

            For example, we looked at how God called the prophet Jonah to speak his words of impending judgment to the people of Nineveh. Nineveh was in Jonah’s day what Rome was in the days of Jesus’ ministry:  the center of all earthly power and glory.  And mind you, the Ninevites were pagan people with their own pantheon full of gods to whom they attributed all their great success.  They didn’t know the Lord; and even if they did, they weren’t too worried about him seeing as how they had so handily conquered his people in the nation of Israel. They figured if he were much of a God at all, he wouldn’t have allowed it.  So, along comes Jonah to tell them that they’d better repent and quick because if they failed to, the God of Israel would wipe them out.  Now, you’d think that it would have sounded to them like a joke of some kind; sort of like what would happen if some Caribbean island nation like Jamaica declared war on the United States. “Ooh, we’re scared.  What are you going to do?  Throw coconuts at us?  Broadcast reggae music at us until we can’t take it anymore?  Go ahead.  Do your worse.”  That’s how you’d expect the Ninevites to respond to Jonah; but they didn’t.  The city’s whole population, from the greatest to the least of them, trembled at the Word of the Lord and repented in sackcloth and ashes.  Their response was absolutely amazing—a compelling demonstration of the power of God’s Word to change the hearts of sinful people.

The other example we saw last week had to do with Jesus gathering some of his first disciples.  We remember that he finds them at work, busily going about their daily duties and thinking about all the things they have to do to take care of their families, raise their kids, pay the bills, and so forth. Suddenly Jesus walks up and says, “C’mon.  Follow me.” And they do it.  They just stop work, and follow him away.  They don’t know where their going, they don’t know for how long; but just that fast, they turn their backs on everything they know and worked for and they enroll in Jesus Seminary.  And the thing to understand is that the story is not about their remarkable willingness to follow Jesus; but rather about the power of the call of Jesus that overcomes their natural objections and compels them to get up and follow wherever he leads.  And we experience in our lives that same divine power when we hear or read the Word of God.  Through the Word the Holy Spirit called us to repentance and gave us the gift of faith, and through the Word he continues to cleanse our lives and build us up in spiritual virtues – which is why we want to continue to subject ourselves to the Word:  so that God’s powerful work in us will be made complete.

Now, expanding a bit on the idea of the power of God’s Word, some of today’s readings highlight its authority.  The two concepts are related and naturally go together; but they are not the same thing. Power speaks of having the necessary force to influence things and make changes. Authority has to do with legitimacy.  It brings to the table such ideas as truthfulness, correctness, integrity, and the right to exercise power and make changes.

            By way of illustration, I could go down to the county jailhouse and order the deputy on duty to release the all prisoners in his custody; but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t do it.  Why? Because I haven’t got the authority to give that order and he knows it.  My orders would be just words, empty words.  But if I then pulled a gun on him and said, “If you don’t release the prisoners, I’m going to shoot you” I’d probably get more of a response.  That’s because the gun and the threat to use it give a certain power of influence to my words.  The trouble is that it’s an illegitimate power.  Even though I have the power to make him do what I want, I still haven’t got the authority.  So, with my power I might make a change; but that change wouldn’t last.  After we got away they’d simply round up the prisoners again and put me in there with them.  Then I would have neither authority nor power.  But if, on the other hand, at the very first, I were to have come to the deputy with a court order to release the prisoners signed by the judge who had oversight for such matters, there would have been no problem. Why?  It’s because the judge’s position and office give his words the proper authority to exercise the power to direct confinement and release.

            The point to be made is that God’s Word has both power and authority. Power, because through it he exercises his creative force and controlling design over all things; ah, but its authority comes from who he is:  the Lord and King of creation; and for us, our God and Father.  We say that the Word of God stands forever; and it’s true. But it isn’t on account of its power that it stands; rather, it is because of the authority of the One who speaks it.

 Now, with all this in mind, we turn our focus to this morning’s Gospel lesson in which we find Jesus teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. This was standard procedure for Jesus during his earthly ministry:  to go to the synagogues where the people gathered on the Sabbath and be the guest speaker for the day.  He’d read a passage of God’s Word from the Scriptures and then explain what it meant; that is, he’d preach a sermon.  And we’re told that the people were amazed at what he had to say because he taught not as the other teachers of his time, but as one with authority.

You see, back then a lot of the teaching you were likely to hear at a synagogue was anything but authoritative.  I mean, if you had a theological question and went to your resident Rabbi to get it answered, what he’d likely tell you is that the famous Rabbi so-and-so once said this, and that Rabbi what’s-his-face of blessed memory said that, and so it would go for some time as you got a lot of contradicting opinions that you were pretty much left to sort out for yourself.  Now, it’s likely that your Rabbi would indicate his leaning in the matter; but he would probably avoid making any definitive statements.  The same thing happened when the Rabbis and Scribes got together to discuss teachings and doctrines.  They’d quibble and argue and muster quotations from their favorite teachers of the past, they’d express their own pious opinions perhaps; but they’d never really settle anything.  And every subject imaginable was up for grabs.  Take a simple question like the resurrection of the dead on the Last Day. Some Rabbis said yes, there would definitely be a resurrection; others said no.  And if they couldn’t get a simple one like that straight, you can imagine how confused their answers for more complicated and controversial questions were.  And the net effect of all of this was that God’s powerful and authoritative Word was overlaid by a thick layer of human opinions and arguments and traditions that carried the pretence of spirituality because they made allusions here and there to what was written in Scripture.  But all that accumulated verbiage and so-called wisdom were just words, just empty, human words that robbed God’s Word and the people who heard it of its true meaning and power.

That’s what made the teaching of Jesus so startlingly and refreshingly different.  He didn’t weigh in with the various opinions of the Rabbis about what this or that passage meant.  He kept his teaching direct and simple.  Now, our text doesn’t tell us exactly from which Scriptures Jesus was preaching on this particular day, nor does it tell us precisely what he said.  Fortunately, we have a good example of Jesus’ preaching style recorded for us in the Sermon on the Mount.  And there we see Jesus repeatedly using this formula, “You have heard it said (whatever) … but I tell you this.  For example, he’ll say, “You have heard it said, ‘Don’t murder’, but I tell you that being angry with your brother is the same as murdering him.”  Or, “You have heard it said, ‘Don’t commit adultery’; but I tell you that to look at someone with lust in your heart is adultery.”  Or “You have heard it said, ‘Love your friends and hate your enemies’; but I tell you to love our enemies and do good to those who hurt and despise you for by so doing you show yourselves to be children of your Father in heaven who causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on both the wicked and the righteous.” That’s how Jesus taught.   And you can see that by speaking in this way, Jesus cut straight through all that clutter and confusion of just words that obscured the true intent and meaning of God’s Word.  He spoke with authority:  his own authority.  And he could do it because in a very real sense, he is the very Word of God.  In preaching the Word of God, Jesus was talking about himself.

And we see what the affect of such authoritative preaching is:  an unclean spirit that dwells within a man who’s listening to Jesus becomes unsettled and begins to cry out in fear.  And you should know that what’s cast in the text as a question is more likely a statement of fact.  The spirit says, “You have come to destroy us.  I know who you are – the Holy One of God.”  And what’s so intriguing about this story is that the unclean spirit is there at all.  Here we’ve got a guy who’s apparently a regular Sabbath attendee, and yet he is possessed by a demon.  You’d think that a synagogue or church is the last place you’d expect to find this guy. Having a demon as he does, you’d think he’d be far away from here, out in dark, evil places.  But that’s wrong.  In truth, the place where God’s people assemble is one of the best places for unclean spirits to hide.  This is especially the case when the messages typically proclaimed there are just words:  lots of theological fluff and drivel with no clear answers about anything.  In such environments unclean spirits can thrive because there is no threat to them.  The Words of God are obscured and so are emptied of their power.

But not today:  the authoritative and hard hitting message of Jesus that calls sin what it is without waffling or equivocation and that shines the bright and white hot divine light on what’s concealed in the dark hearts of men gives the unclean spirit no place to hide.  And when it cries out, Jesus orders the spirit to be silent and to leave – which it must do, for the words of Jesus carry the power and the authority to condemn and to set free, to bless and to curse.  With just his word, he can do it all.

And that is good news for us, because even after 2000 years his words have lost none of their power or authority – so long as we keep them just his words without adding or subtracting from them.  I mean, here we sit in the assembly of God’s people to hear the words of Jesus.  And the truth is that there are at least as many unclean spirits here today as there are people present.  No, I’m not saying that we’re all demon possessed; I’m speaking of the unclean spirits of the sinful natures that inhabit each of us.  These are what must be upset, revealed, driven out, and destroyed by the clear and authoritative teaching of Jesus.

And it’s here that we have to be careful.  The demon in the story doesn’t want to go. It cries out and makes lots of loud horrible noises as it resists.  And so does the sinful nature in each of us.  It wants to stay.  It wants to be comfortable and unchallenged and go on living within us even while outwardly we go through the motions of living the Christian life.  And to do this it must water down, distort, or discredit the authority of God’s Word.  Or it must mound up steaming piles of human wisdom on top of the Word that cover its truth and obscure it.  That’s what the Rabbis had done in Jesus’ day.  And that’s goes on today as well.  It’s what the Battle for the Bible that was fought in our church body back in the sixties and seventies was about.  When all is said and done, it was an effort by some to undermine the authority of God’s Word so that we, mere humans, could be ourselves the final judges of truth and error, and of right and wrong.  The trouble is we don’t have that authority.  It belongs to God alone. 

And the battle goes on.  We see evidence of it wherever people in the church are resisting the truth and authority of God’s Word.  We see it where the clear, hard-hitting teaching of Jesus has been replaced by sermons with lots of emotional fluff and chicken-soup-for-the-soul stories that can make people laugh or cry; but that never really address the problem of the sin in our hearts.  We see it in the kind of Bible studies that encourage the participants to share their experiences and answer questions like, “What does this passage mean to you?  How does it make you feel?”  (Who cares how you feel about it?  The question should be, “What is God saying to us here?”)  We see it in the gospel of self-esteem messages proclaimed by such popular preachers as Joel Osteen and Robert Schuller, who teach us to love ourselves because we’re basically good and we deserve it, and the messages of churches that proclaim the “come as you are gospel” which says “We accept everyone no matter what sin your involved in.  Don’t worry:  you won’t be challenged, your sin won’t be condemned, your false gods won’t be expelled.  Just come and be part of our family.  (Okay, but then whose family is it?  Where the authority of his Word is denied, it is certainly not God’s.)

No, we can be thankful that we belong to a church and tradition that upholds the absolute authority of Jesus’ teaching and God’s Word, where, as painful as it is, we are constantly confronted by the unpleasant truth of the uncleanness and darkness that dwells within us.  We can be thankful too that Jesus continues to speak to us today with authority to reveal the sin in our hearts.  It’s good for us, because with the same authority he has to declare what’s wrong with us, he also declares us to be righteous for his sake.  If he had no authority, we could never be sure of where we stood with God.  But the same Jesus who condemns the unclean spirit in us assures us with absolute authority that he died for us – that his death for sin is reckoned as our own.  That’s what destroys the unclean spirit and gives life and strength to the new, clean, godly nature that through his powerful and authoritative word he is even now creating and growing within us.  That’s what gives me as a called spokesman for Christ the ability to say with his authority, “Your sins are forgiven” and “This is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus, given and shed for the forgiveness of your sins.”   They are just words; but they are the words of Christ with the power and authority of God himself and by which you can be sure that he counts you as just and righteous in his sight.

Our text says that when they heard him, people were amazed at the authority exercised by Jesus – as well they should have been.  And we too ought to be amazed, for it is by the authority of his words of grace and forgiveness that we are saved, and for which we owe him our thanks and praise forever. Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!