Day 14 - Mark 1:21-28

This is the story of the first exorcism. This can also be found in Luke 4:31-37.

I won't spend a lot of time on some of these verses. Capernaum was a fishing village on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee.

I think it's interesting, phrases like "He spoke with authority unlike the teachers of the law." So the priests and rabbis of the day didn't speak or teach with authority. Or maybe they did, but they didn't have a fraction of the authority that Jesus had. The word "author" comes from the same word as authority. It means ultimate control. An author has ultimate control over the words they write and the fictional world they create. The authority of God refers to Him being the Creator of the universe and the ultimate power He has. Jesus spoke with the same authority, power, and sovereignty that God has.  Authority in speech means the ability to influence those around you. Jesus had/has the power to change the hearts and minds of the people. Which is something a lot of people struggle with. Well, God can change our minds, so why doesn't He force us to obey Him? He has the power, but that's the beauty of God, he values us and respects us and wants us to make the decision on our own to believe and obey.

Onward to the rest of the passage, I hate using the word "exorcism" mainly because people think of modern exorcism and how it's used in culture and how the meaning of exorcism has been distorted. If you don't already know this, I'm a word nerd. I looked up the origin of the word exorcism. Exorcize (not exercise. And no, exercism is not a real word) comes from Greek ex (out) and Greek horkos (oath). Over time and translated a few times, it ended up as exorcise, originally meaning to conjure up or command an evil spirit. And of course -ism is to take a verb and make it into a noun. 

Cultures and religions worldwide have used "exorcisms" to control or drive out demons from a person or place for centuries. I have no idea if cultures and other religions were practicing exorcisms before Jesus' time or if they started doing them after. I tend to believe the latter. That the Good News was spread to all nations and when the priests of other religions heard it, they probably didn't believe Jesus was God. They probably figured, "if that rabbi can control an evil spirit, so can I". And I believe that the spirit was indeed "driven out" because the possessed person believed it would work. Power of the mind and all that. You probably are thinking, "Power of the mind? Not power of God?" Wait, I'm getting there. 

I believe that a demon can control you or Satan can influence you if you allow it. You make the decision to give in to temptation or to resist it. You have the power to fight back if Satan is trying to grab hold of you. So the only way that a demon is able to control someone is if they have given up fighting and allowed the demon to enter. But in comes in a priest who believes he can make the demon go away. And when you allow the exorcism, you believe the demon can go away too. Therefore, the exorcism "worked". So if what Jesus is doing in this passage have been "successfully" repeated over time, then why is it considered a miracle? Why is it in the bible? Why is it even special at all? It is a miracle because 1) this was the first exorcism. No one had done this before and only the Power of God could do it. 2) the man had allowed this demon in, or at least he had succumb to the demon and given up the fight, and the man didn't believe the demon could go away. But Jesus controlled the demon and made it go away. 

Remember that Jesus IS God in flesh form. Remember that God created Satan (Satan was good when he was created) and God also created all the demons. So remember when you feel like your life is surrounded by demons and you are fighting your hardest to keep them back, GOD IS IN CONTROL. God has power over every demon, big or small. 

The same astonishment that the crowd had when Jesus cast the demon out of the man is the same astonishment that still happens today when people can see the effect that Jesus has had in your life by casting out the darkness. 

Day 13 - Mark 1:14-20

I wanted to start of by apologizing for being SO late in this post. I didn't mean for my computer being with geek squad to mean 2 weeks away from my blog. 

Today, we'll only be covering 7 verses. I'm coming to find Mark has very short sections. I know I told you that a few posts ago, that Mark prefers action rather than dialogue and inner monologue. I guess I didn't realize how short it really is. This story is also found in Matthew 4:18-22, Luke 5:2-11, and John 1:35-42.

We don't know when John was put in prison, or what for, yet. I'm sure it is specified in a different or parallel passage. It probably was because John the Baptist was "disturbing the public" with his radical speeches. But after John had been put in prison, Jesus went out among the people and shared the same message that John had said, to repent their sins and open their hearts to accept the good news that the Kingdom of God was upon them, that Jesus brings the Kingdom of God to the people, and Jesus was there.

I see this scene as an old political ad, where they drive around with a megaphone, "Vote for Mayor for mayor!" (Powerpuff Girls reference there) So there's Jesus with his megaphone, walking all throughout the land, and he walks beside the sea and sees two fishermen, Simon and Andrew. He tells them to drop their nets and come be fishers of men. I'll come back to this phrase in a second.

Jesus went a little further and finds James and John with their father Zebedee. In enters "other John" along with the confusion of "is it John the Baptist or John the Disciple?" This comes up a lot in the scriptures. But they were two very different men. These guys were getting ready to fish and "without delay" (another action phrase of Mark's), meaning with no hesitation, Jesus calls them to follow. Jesus didn't get Simon and Andrew and walk off and then double-back, "Hey, you guys wanna come too?" No. He saw them, He knew the purpose He had for them and he called to them. Also without hesitation, they left their father in the boat with his hired workers. No hesitation means they didn't sit there and think, "Hmm, should we?" or "Dad, is it ok if we go?". They didn't even know who Jesus was, but they "knew" and they could feel the Holy Spirit's pull on them and they left.

Fishers of men. For the longest time, this phrase totally confused me. Maybe because I grew up a Christian so phrases like this were "normal" and used in daily conversation without explanation to what it really meant. To be a fisher is different from being a hunter. Fishers are patient and wait for their catch, as opposed to hunters who chase it. Fishers are passive, while hunters are aggressive. Notice Jesus didn't find hunters to be his disciples. 4 men, which means 1/3 of His disciples were fishers. Fishers were important to Jesus and he used His men to tell the Good News, the way that shepherds are used to tell stories in both the Old and New Testament. Fishers catch fish by laying down nets or baited lines and the fish come to them. Hunters attack their prey by surprise or long distance. When Jesus finds fishers and asks them to be fishers of men, he is asking them to a) leave their lifestyle, career, home and family and b) to lay down their life and their story to lead people to Christ. Jesus is not finding disciples to hunt down people and forcibly make them believe in Christ.

These same words apply to today. Here I am, writing this blog, laying down my time, energy, words, stories and life in the hopes of leading people to Christ. I can only hope that the people reading this are doing the same and leading others. I'm not pounding on doors and holding a gun to your head demanding you to repent to save your soul. That kind of person is a hunter, not a fisher. As you live your life and speaking to others about Christ, ask yourself if you are doing so as a fisher, or as a hunter.