God’s Guide to a Well-Lived Life: Jesus is More Powerful than Satan (Mark 3:20-30)

March 7, 2021 in God's Guide to a Life Well-Lived: A Study of Mark

Transcript

God's Guide to a Well-Lived Life
Jesus is More Powerful Than Satan
Mark 3:20-30

INTRODUCTION:
Last Lord’s day, our sermon began by asking you how often you tell yourself: “I can’t continue like this!” Or “Where am I going to find the strength to carry on?”

Satan wins the battle for our souls if he ever gets us focused on our own strength instead of relying on God’s strength. In the first temptation in the Garden of Eden, Satan told Eve, “If you’ll eat of this fruit, you will be like God!” In essence, Satan was telling Eve, “You can be like God without having to obey God!”

So Satan throws many things at us to get us distracted from obeying God and get us focused on trying to live our lives by our own strength:

Sins for which we find it hard to forgive ourselves
Drug addictions
Alcohol addictions
Adultery
Outbursts of anger
Bitterness
Disobedience to the Word of God
Abusive behaviors
Envy & jealousy
Fear
Anxiety
Homosexual urges
Wasting money
Perfectionism, from ourselves or from others
Pornography
Prejudice
Premarital sex
Workaholism
Worry

These are just a few of the behaviors and mental attitudes that we struggle with in our fight against Satan.

But Jesus came to give us the answers, the solutions, to this battle. Jesus came to give to us God’s guide to a well-lived life. That is our focus for 2021, as we walk with Jesus through the Gospel of Mark. Today, we meditate on Mark 3:20-30.

This event is still early in Jesus’ ministry but He has already aroused the anger of the Pharisees, 3:6, who have decided they want to destroy Jesus. Let’s look at this event from the life of Jesus and learn a few lessons that will help us with a life well-lived.

SOME PEOPLE WILL MAKE FALSE ACCUSATIONS - 3:20-22:
When verse 20 says that Jesus “came home,” Mark is saying that Jesus returned to the city of Capernaum. He is working in the area of the Sea of Galilee and His “home” is Capernaum (2:1). But He had gone up into a mountain to choose and appoint a dozen men to be His apostles, His specially-chosen followers whose guidance by the Holy Spirit would be the foundation of the church of Christ when the kingdom was established on the day of Pentecost.

So after Jesus returned home, to Capernaum, a crowd assembled around the house so much that they could not even enjoy a meal! I don’t know if the people had actually come inside the house or if they were simply such a distraction that they could not eat.

But, I want you to observe verse 21. “His own people” are not His physical family, or at least not His immediate family, because they show up down at verse 31. “His own people” might be folks from Nazareth (30 miles away) who were perhaps working in the area of Capernaum. It might have been some of His extended family. But notice that they want to take Jesus into custody, because they were saying “He has lost His senses!”

Can you believe that someone would accuse Jesus of being out of His mind? Nobody makes that type of accusation today, not about Jesus. He does not give any indication that He did not have complete control of His mental abilities! C. S. Lewis once made a very powerful argument for the deity of Jesus and it is very powerful and very logical:

1. Either Jesus is a liar - That is, He knew He was not the Son of God but He told people He was anyway;
2. Or, Jesus was a lunatic - He did not know that He was not the Son of God but He claimed to be, anyway. C. S. Lewis wrote that in this case, Jesus was on the same mental level as a man who thinks he is a poached egg!
3. Or, Jesus was and is the Lord - He knew He was the Son of God, He claimed to be the Son of God, and He proved Himself to be the Son of God! This is the only option that makes sense.

But these people are making false accusations against Jesus. Despite all the good that He had done, despite all the clear biblical teaching He had given, despite His clear and accurate handling of the OT, despite all of that, some people were still willing to accuse Jesus of being out of His mind!

Family, you will enjoy a life well-lived when you recognize that you can’t please all the people all the time. There will be people who will make false accusations about you, despite all the good you do. There will be people, as there was with Jesus, who will tell lies against you, despite all the good you do. That’s just the way Satan uses and manipulates some people!

The apostle Paul nearly got a severe lashing in Acts 21 because of false accusations. He had been arrested because the Jews falsely accused Paul of taking a Gentile into the temple in Jerusalem - which was a lie - but at the end of the chapter, Paul begins a conversation with a Roman soldier, the commander in charge, and Paul speaks Greek to him. That puzzles the commander who says to Paul that he thought Paul was an Egyptian who had stirred up a revolt and led four thousand men into the wilderness to make plans for an assassination.

Paul said, “Uh, no. I am a Jew, from Tarsus, and I want to just speak to my Jewish people” (Acts 21:37-40). People can and will make false accusations; you can try to correct those misunderstandings, as Paul did with the commander here (and it worked). But sometimes, they are so prejudiced in their hearts, so manipulated by Satan to get you distracted from living the life well-lived, that they will follow through with those false accusations and treat you on the basis of something that is clearly false. That’s exactly what they did to Jesus.

Just a few chapters later, Paul is standing in front of the governor, Festus, who heard Paul talk about the resurrection of the dead and Governor Festus accused Paul of being out of his mind (Acts 26:24)!

Now, back to Mark 3… Being accused of losing His senses was not the only false accusation these people make against Jesus.

In verse 23, some scribes, who knew the Law of Moses (it was their responsibility to make copies of the Law to share with various synagogues or others who were wealthy enough to pay for such copies), they came from Jerusalem and were accusing Jesus of being possessed by Beelzebul. Beelzebul, or Baalzebul, was a false god mentioned in 2 Kings 1:2. By the time of Jesus, it had become a designation for Satan.

Another accusation made against Jesus that was false which will lead into my second point, is that they accused Jesus of casting out demons by the ruler of the demons. Now, on the face of it, on the surface of it, that accusation just sounds ludicrous. Again, how can Jesus be guilty of operating by the power of Satan when all that He did was good and done to glorify God? Everything He taught was true to the OT; He never did or taught anything that violated the OT! The very accusation was simply idiotic!

And that sets us up for our next major lesson we learn from this event from the life of Jesus. If you want to enjoy the life well-lived, then don’t forget that Jesus has more power than the devil!

JESUS IS STRONGER THAN SATAN - 3:23-27:
I had a whole sermon on the person of Satan last fall; I encourage you to go to our website and watch that sermon if you would like (the manuscript for the sermon is on the website too). Here, I want to simply point out that God has allowed Satan a great deal of power and influence in this world. For example, in 2 Corinthians 4:4, Paul says Satan is the “god of this world who has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

In Ephesians 2:2, Paul says that Satan is the “prince of the power of the air, the spirit working in the sons of disobedience.” Again, in John 12:31, Jesus says Satan is the “ruler of this world.”

So God has given a great deal of power and influence to Satan in this world. But, the book of Job teaches us clearly that God controls what Satan can do. Satan is in a box and he is limited in his freedom by the power and wisdom of God.

God allowed evil angels to come into the visible world, from the unseen world, for the express purpose of allowing Jesus to show His power over Satan and his minions.

Exorcisms, as we typically call casting out evil spirits, are done so that Jesus could show definitively that He was power over Satan. Let’s look at what Jesus says in Mark 3…

1. Verse 23 - Jesus shows that it is illogical for Satan to cast out Satan.
2. Verse 24 - The nature of the case is that if a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. We all recognize that the United States of America can withstand any invading force from outside our borders; but when we start fighting among ourselves, we are vulnerable to destruction.
3. Verse 25 - The family is the same way. Rachel and I can keep evil forces outside of our home but if she or I allow Satan to control our hearts and minds, then our home is destroyed. If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.
4. Verse 26 - If Satan rises up against himself, that is, if he is casting his own servants out of men, then Satan cannot remain in his power. He cannot stand. He is finished!

The point of this passage, and (again), the point of God allowing demon possession in the first century is stated in verse 27. No one can enter the house of a strong man and steal his belongings unless he first binds and subdues that man. Then he is able to steal his property. The point is this: If Jesus, by His very words, can cast a demon, an evil spirit, out of a man, then clearly Jesus is more powerful than Satan. Jesus has more power than Satan does.

There is no concern about Jesus being able to help us conquer and control sins in our lives or sinful attitudes in our lives. He has more power than Satan does!

Do we believe that?

THE UNPARDONABLE SIN - 3:28-30:
In this passage, Jesus mentions a sin which cannot be forgiven and it has puzzled Bible students ever since Jesus first stated it. How can any sin not be forgiven?

Jesus says that if one speaks against (blasphemes) the Holy Spirit, that person will never have forgiveness. He has committed what Jesus calls “an eternal sin.” This phrase “eternal sin” is not used anywhere else in Scripture. It is a sin, however, with grave eternal consequences.

Now, verse 30 is the key, the solution to understanding what Jesus is talking about. He stated this “because they were saying, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’” The verb tense “they were saying” (imperfect) shows that the scribes were saying this statement over and over and over again. They kept saying it. It was a false accusation which they continued to make. “He has an unclean spirit.”

So, Jesus told them they were close to committing an unforgivable sin. When Jesus was baptized, God the Holy Spirit came down from heaven and the Spirit empowered Jesus to perform the miracles He did, including casting out evil spirits (Luke 4:14). The source of Jesus’ miraculous power, His exorcisms, was the Holy Spirit. If the scribes were so hardhearted that they would attribute the source of Jesus’ miraculous power, not to the Holy Spirit, but to an evil spirit, there would be no hope for them. That’s why Jesus so frequently said if the Jews would not believe His teaching, they should at least believe His works, His miraculous works! Because those works proved that the Holy Spirit was the power behind Jesus’ message, which would prove His message.

If Jesus had simply said, as He did in 2:10, “I have authority on earth to forgiven sins,” nobody would have believed Him. There would have been no reason to believe Him. But, when He, by the power of the Holy Spirit, healed a man who was paralyzed, then the audience had a reason to believe His message. They could see and experience with their senses the miracles Jesus had performed.

I have not seen or read anyone in modern times who actually tries to make the claim that Jesus performed His miracles through evil spirits or the Evil Spirit, Satan. But there certainly can be no forgiveness if someone will not accept the source of Jesus’ miracles as being from the Spirit of God.

CONCLUSION:
Satan throws many things at us to get us distracted from obeying God and get us focused on trying to live our lives by our own strength. Which of these sins or attitudes do you struggle with?

Jesus has proven that He has the power to break Satan’s stranglehold over us. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). You and I need to access that power, on a daily, even hourly basis, in order to control the power of Satan’s temptations in our lives.

Take home message: We can be victorious over Satan in his temptations, if we’ll go to the One who has power over Satan: Jesus Christ.