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

He saw 12 men, maybe 18, maybe 20. He saw three women, and we can begin calling them sisters at this point and know what we’re saying. He looked around the room and saw an old gentleman who had followed Him to 15 villages and 12 big towns and was still there, probably having lost 10 pounds in the process. He saw some lady sitting there who had been with them for now 2 or 3 weeks. He saw some grateful soul who was sitting at His feet, who had just a day or two before been healed. Perhaps He saw a young child there, who had just that morning been delivered from a fever, a deadly fever.

But He also looked and saw inside of them, or in realms unseen; He knew that they had been chosen before the foundation of the ages, and they had a kinship with Him that preceded His physical kinship with His brothers and His mother, that He was kin to them on the basis of life and Fatherhood. That they all had a common Father, and they all had a common life form. Each of them had, or would have after the resurrection, the very life of God, the highest form of life in the universe, inside them. He looked around the room, and then outside it, and He saw that He was kin to these people. That they were literally His brothers, because they had a common Father and a common form of life. He was not playing. He said, “Look about you here in this room. That is my brother. That is my sister. That is my mother. Here are my real kinfolks.”

He was making the point that those who have an indwelling God, an indwelling Father, and for us an indwelling Son and Father, an indwelling Holy Spirit — that we have a higher order of relationship than with our own blood kin. I would not point out that fact as much as I would point out the fact that the Lord knew that, by either some deep internal sense or by His ability to see the unseen.

Well, brothers and sisters, do you know who the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ are? It’s those who sit around Him. It is those who sit around Him. I wish I could say that to every Christian who wants to come here. It’s those who sit around Him. It’s also those who have the power to hear His word. In this case, they were hearing it with their ears.  In a very short time — three years from now — they will be hearing that word inside them. It is those who sit around Him and who hear Him speaking within their being, and they obey what they hear. Those are the evidences of another life inside us.

We sit around the Lord; we hear His Word. We not only hear it, but we do it. These are His kinfolks. They are the ones who have some sense that God our Father is in other realms, and from this realm, they are following the God of the other realm. That’s a little bit different than perhaps our first instinctive reaction as to who the brothers and sisters of the Lord are.

I will repeat it. They follow Him. They sit around Him. They hear His voice, and they do it. And in so doing, they do the will of God the Father, who lives in other realms.