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.
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