Life of Christ #3 – Jesus Bound the Strong Man | Understanding Christ’s Authority

What does that tell you? It says something to me. I am sure you may not have thought of this; I may not have either. Does that tell you anything? Well, this is what it tells me: Jesus Christ lived a very unimpressive life for His first 30 years. Well, perhaps that’s true. They didn’t want their name associated with this madman. But they’re shocked. They do not say, “Well, I always knew he would.” They do not say, “Well, of course that’s our brother, that’s this mystic that’s lived with us all these years.” He lived 30 years with His kinfolks, and nobody was particularly impressed with this carpenter, this boy, or this kid. The family is horrified and thinks He has lost His mind. They are surprised that this kin of theirs has gone out and has shaken the rafters.

Who do you think these men are who were saying these others said? Well, the bottom of the page tells us his whole family showed up, and they actually try to lay hands on Him and take Him out of there. It includes His mother. His mother and His brothers, and His sisters—the whole family. His mother appears on the scene with his brothers, and they try to get Him out of there and take Him home and lock him up. We’re talking about His immediate family. Let’s even grant it that it was other people who were saying it. They’re still shocked. They have the very definite impression that He needs to be stopped from what He’s doing.

Ah, well, now then, the Baptist preachers arrive, and forgive me, folks, if you’re a Baptist, but I am a Baptist, and I understand this following passage. A scribe…here is classroom training, Mike. Here are the results of classroom training. Here is theology. Here is the knowledge of God in the frontal lobe. Here is: ‘God is this; he is not this. God is not this, and he is this. The scripture is this, that, and the other.’ Here is theology. Here is Jerusalem. And there came from Jerusalem…a scribe. It is almost impossible to tell you how well-educated a scribe is. It boggles the mind how much those men knew. They would put to shame any theologian today.

When you hear the term “rulers of the Jews,” this is either referring to men in the Sanhedrin, or he’s referring to a scribe. They were the government because they knew the Bible.  Israel was more or less a theocracy, in that it was the religious people who ran the nation. A ruler of the Jews could mean both a scribe and the Sanhedrin, because the entire Sanhedrin was probably made up of only three things: Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees, maybe with a few priests thrown in. They were the rulers of their towns. They were the rulers of Jerusalem. They were rulers of the Senate – the Sanhedrin – and they were rulers based on their mental knowledge of the Scripture. The same thing we have today, when we fully grasp Scripture.

The scribes come; they have never seen this man. They have obviously heard rumors. They’re checking him out. They see tens of thousands of people around. They see this man. “Hey, what happened to you? Come here.” And they look at one another. Someone else comes up. These people are ecstatic. They’re hollering, yelling, praising the Lord, jumping up and down. They hear a bloody scream. Someone says, “He cast out another demon.” Someone comes out of the crowd, and He’s perfectly whole. He’s got scratches on Him where he used to tear His body. Then maybe they catch a few of His words. They get in close enough. Maybe the crowd opens for them because they’re religious leaders. They see people pressing in on Him. They hear His words. They watch Him heal someone—a leg that’s lame is no longer lame, an arm is healed, an eye is healed, a sore drops down off the face. Someone bent over stands up straight. It’s incredible.

There is no sense of glorifying God. It is put on the lowest possible level it can be put on. “This is the power of Baal. Here is the ruler of the house of Baal ordering a demon, ordering his own demons. Here is the head demon ordering demons.” And that’s where it’s put. “Well, Gene, we surely wouldn’t do that today.” No, we would just attack a man’s theology and call him a heretic, and if we got really worked up about his theology, we’d finally say that man is a heretic, and therefore he is a servant of the devil.” This happens all the time. We who know a mental thing of the scripture have a way of consigning everything we do not understand to the works of hell.

What we are seeing here is typical of men who know the Bible. Forgive me, but there are two ways to know Scripture. The best and safest way is to first know Him. They are saying not that He has a demon— It’s worse than that. They’re saying He has Beelzebub himself. They are saying we are in the presence of the head demon. The lord of demon-dom, and the Lord Jesus said to the scribes, “Come here.”

He talks to them in analogy, and he tells them this interesting thing. He says, “If a home is divided and is fighting itself, it can’t stand. “If a house or an order declares war upon itself, it cannot stand. If a demon is casting a demon out—not calling them in, but casting them out—and men are coming away sane, if demons are casting out demons, and if the head demon is casting his own demons out, then his house is divided. There’s a war going on, and the house of Satan will fall—or has fallen. Such a house divided cannot stand.”

Ah, and then he tells a parable. And the parable—I call this a parable—is about the adversary. I really prefer the word adversary, Tom, I really do, over the word Satan, because the word Satan, as you said, conjures up too many Greek mythological ideas. Satan is a transliteration here. We call it Satan. The word should be translated here. It should be “the adversary.” Beelzebub? He is the head demon among the order of Baal. Baal was the god of the Philistines. There was an order of a house of Baal.

The Israelites saw Baal as…you know, the Lord Jesus is called Lord of Lords and King of Kings. He is—there’s also “God of Gods” in the Old Testament. Well, here is the god of the non-gods. The head non-god who rules all the other non-gods. In the worship of idols that are not gods, there are demons, evil forces who put themselves off to those who worship the idol. And they, because they have some power, pose themselves as a god. They’re not a god; they’re a demon. Therefore, there is an order of non-gods, and there is a head non-god, the adversary, and this is called a house, an order. It is the house of Beelzebub.

And these scribes are seeing so much power here…this can’t be some pithy little demon doing this. This has got to be Beelzebub himself, the head demon, the head god of the non-gods, within the Lord Jesus, doing this thing. Of course, this is a reprehensible and horrible and hideous indictment against the Lord. And he says, “Beelzebub’s house cannot be divided and still be a powerful house.” The adversary does not cast himself out in the healing and the freeing and the delivering of men and women.

Now I’m going to try to tell the story. We’re here to see things from the unseen realm. I don’t know how well I’m going to do this, but I’m going to give it a shot, okay? I want you to see the Lord at about the time He begins His ministry. Perhaps a little before, and perhaps a little after. This may not have happened until He began casting out demons, which was only recently. I hope you have read The Divine Romance. You will understand how I am trying to communicate through an illustration.