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Friday 23 August 2013

Luke 4:31-44 - Preaching with Power

Jesus continued His ministry and taught the people of Capernaum on the Sabbath. His teaching amazed people. There are some who say that preaching is no longer relevant today, this is absolute nonsense. But there is enormous difference between "preaching" that is just the product of human minds, and real preaching which is based on the word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and the product of a life that knows God.
In the synagogue there was a man who was possessed by an evil spirit. Preaching is part of spiritual warfare and will stir things ups. Now look what happened here. The word of God was being preached (and in this case the word of God was preached by the Word of God). This stirred up trouble from a demonic force. The demon was dealt with, and the man was set free. The word will stir things up, it will lead to strongholds being broken, but people will be set free.
The preaching of Jesus had power, and Jesus had power. The authority of Jesus amazed the people for the evil spirits had to obey Him.
After this Jesus went to Simon's house. This was Simon-Peter, and his mother-in-law was ill. They asked for Jesus' help, He rebuked the illness and she was healed. Then she began to serve Jesus. When we invite Jesus into our lives He makes a difference to all sorts of events in life.
The people had heard and see of the things Jesus was doing and so brought all the sick people to Him. Jesus laid hands on all of them and they were healed.
Many demons were also cast out. The demons knew who He was, but Jesus rebuked them. Why did He do this? Because simply knowing the "fact" that Jesus was the Messiah would not help the people at this point. There conception of Messiah was deeply flawed, they saw freedom from the Romans as their greatest need and did not understand what the Messiah really needed to do. They did not understand that they needed to be set free from sin and to receive forgiveness.
Jesus tried to get away from the crowds. Note that the focus of His mission at this point was preaching the good news.

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