Book of Luke - Ch. 4, Vs. 23-44 (02/09/2003)

Park Meadows Church

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It looks like I've got verse 30 marked. Luke chapter 4, verse 30 is where we ended last time.

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So I'm going to begin with verse 23, of course. He didn't cover it very well, so I'm going to go back over it.

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He does that to me every Sunday, just about. Brother Mitchell did a good job, and I'm going to teach you what it really says now.

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Now I just want to use this as introduction. There's some remarks in this passage that I'm afraid we might miss some of the context if we don't look at it.

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So let's start all the way back with Luke chapter 4, verse 23. Let's pray and we'll begin.

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Father, we thank you for our day together. Thank you so much that you ordained a time when we would come together as a local body and assemble in your presence.

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Thank you that because of your Holy Spirit dwelling within us, that you're here with us in an intimate way, different than even the very apostles that walked with you.

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You can have and you can dwell us, and we thank you for that. May you teach us as we study this passage in Jesus.

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Luke chapter 4, verse 23, and he said unto them, ye will surely say unto me this proverb, physician, heal thyself.

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Whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country. And he said, verily

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I say unto you, no prophet is accepted in his own country. I think the tone is being set here for us to see that there was a lack of faith among the people, especially in and around the area where Jesus grew up, where they knew about his earthly parents, his brothers and sisters, and his life, and his dad, who they thought was his dad, was the carpenter, and oh, we know his father, they said.

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And I don't, haven't you ever wondered what they, they all were looking for a Messiah.

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They all were looking for that prophet. How did they think he was going to get here, you know?

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We know his mother and father, it can't be him. Well, any prophet they ever had was going to have mother and father.

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So it's strange the way it is, but we see that Jesus teaches a principle here about no prophet is accepted in his own country.

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And he finds himself in this place, and it starts off with a lack of faith on the part of the people that are in the, well,

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I won't say congregation, but that are here in his presence. So he begins to tell them this story, and I want you to look at the response to this story.

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And then I want you to think for a moment, what does the story teach? It seems unrelated to what

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Jesus is doing, because he's about to heal a lot of people at one time.

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I don't mean in one time, but I mean in one day, a lot of many people come to him. And what does this have to do with it?

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Well, but I tell you a truth in verse 25. Many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias or Elijah.

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Now they're going there, he's going to stop and talk about miracles for just a moment.

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When the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land.

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But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, the city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow.

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Now he points out that there were thousands and tens of thousands of people starving, but God only sent this prophet to one woman.

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Now, what's he getting at? And he goes on to the next one, but unto none of them, okay, we did that. Verse 27, he gives another story.

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And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elias, I don't know why it's spelled that way in the

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New Testament, the prophet. And none of them were cleansed, saving

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Naaman, the Syrian. So he says there were a lot of lepers, but God did not heal them all, he saved one, he healed one.

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Now look at their response, I mean, what do you think, what do you think they were thinking

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Jesus would talk to them about, and then he says this, and look at the response. And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath.

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Interesting response. And they rose up and thrust him out of the city and led him onto the brow of the hill whereon the city was built, that they might cast him down headlong to kill him.

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But he passing through the midst of them went away, and I've heard people point this out before, how many times have you seen people wanting to escape and turn and go right through the midst of the people chasing them, but that's what he did.

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And he just walked away from them. They could not throw him over the hill, but isn't it an interesting response?

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And he came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and taught them on the Sabbath days, and they were astonished at his doctrine, for his word was with power.

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Now this is beginning to set up what we're about to study, but let me stop and ask you, why were they angry?

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What made them angry? If you hadn't looked at this passage in a while, then it just hits you this afternoon.

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You might not have an opinion because it's an odd passage. Why would it make them angry if he pointed out there were many starving and God saved one, and there were many lepers and God only healed one?

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Well these were, oh, okay, well we know, we certainly know one of them was,

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I don't believe the widow was an outsider, unless you mean outside of the religious people. She wasn't a

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Pharisee, obviously, it's a good thought, okay?

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Well, so you would then say that as an example that the physical healing, remember we're still an

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Old Testament economy, even though we're in the New Testament, that confuses people, but that's just the way it is. Are you saying that the physical healing of the people was going to also teach a spiritual truth, and that when he said, but they weren't all healed, that was saying to them, you're not all saved, just because you're a

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Jew or just because you're a Pharisee. All right, you're getting very warm, and your answer was, certainly one of these was not even a

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Jew. Well, what is that kind of picturing in the spiritual realm, would you say?

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Don't you think that picture is that Gentiles can be saved, where Jesus is saying, we're going through a stage in history where it is about to be revealed to you that God will save a

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Gentile. They don't like that. All of those are good answers, and I think what we see here is people get angry, or got angry, almost 2 ,000 years ago at the same things they get angry about doctrinally today.

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If you teach certain doctrines, it makes people angry, it makes them get emotional. If you teach a doctrine that not everybody's going to be saved, it makes people angry.

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If you teach a doctrine that God is sovereign, and he chooses who he's going to heal, both physically and spiritually, that makes people angry, because people want to believe just anybody can be healed, anybody can be saved.

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Go preach the gospel, and everybody will get saved. It's never been that way. Go touch people on the forehead, and they'll all be healed.

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It never was that way in the Bible. It made them angry then, and it makes them angry today. So as we go into a section on healing,

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I think it's important that Jesus start out by pointing out that there's never been a time, even in Bible history, if you take all of the pages of the whole

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Bible, where miracles were the norm. And yet today we have whole groups of people who their whole doctrinal background is based on saying we're going to have miracles every day.

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These are available. We need to have them. It's not necessarily so. It's not necessarily so that even as you study the whole

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Old Testament and the entire biblical history, if you look at all of the thousands of years of history, the numbers of what we would call miracles are relatively few.

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And what's interesting is often they are separated by as many as 300 years of time or more, and then you see another group of miraculous things happen.

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And most of the time they happen around either when God is authenticating a prophet, the office of the prophet, or when he's authenticating a new dispensation, such as with Moses and the law, and all of a sudden you see

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Moses and Aaron being able to do miraculous things as God actually does it through them, to be accurate, that's how we should say it.

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When you see the first advent of Jesus Christ and the apostles to authenticate the

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New Testament message, there were miracles because the Jew requires a sign. They're not really for the

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Gentiles. Gentiles want knowledge. They're not into that. But the Jewish mind has to see something to believe

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God's in it. And so miracles, when you find them in the Bible, many times are clustered around times in the

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Bible when a dispensation is about to change and go into a new way that God deals with people, or when an office, the spokesman of God, needs to be authenticated, such as the prophetic office and things like that.

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Check it out. You'll see that that's true. So Jesus is pointing out, I think, that miracles are never going to be an everyday occurrence if what you think a miracle is is a physical phenomenon that defies nature.

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Because as we, what Jesus is beginning to prepare all the Jew and the Gentile in his time is you're about to go into an era which we theologians call it the church age, and I don't know, it's not a bad thing to call it,

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I guess. But you're going to go into an age of time that roughly is equivalent to from Pentecost to the second coming.

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That is going to be different in many aspects to the time prior to that, or the times prior to that, the dispensations before it.

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And he's beginning to prepare them for that. We live in a faith dispensation.

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We were talking about that yesterday. You said, well, I've had people tell me they hear voices, but he said, I don't hear

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God's voice, he just moves me. He moves me through circumstances, through my heart. I may be misquoting slightly, but that was the idea.

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And I agreed with that idea. We don't live in a dispensation when God speaks through a burning bush.

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Now let me be quick to say this. God's not limited. If he wanted to speak to you through a burning bush, he'll do it this afternoon.

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And it will scare you to death. But generally, the way he deals with his people is different now than it was in Old Testament times, so that makes it different than the book of Acts.

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Makes it different than the apostolic era, because they were Old Testament. People don't think that way, but it's the truth.

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But yet, they were preparing us for the way it would soon be. And you're going to see a lot of that in this teaching.

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And what's interesting is the groups today that are into physical healing, where it's how they make their money, basically.

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They get their membership by teaching the fact that spiritual healing is the main thing, rather than doctrinal teaching and learning and walking with God being the main thing.

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The spiritual, the things you can see with the eye are the main thing. Now Jesus prepared people in his day for that when they asked, show us something.

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Show us you're the Messiah and we'll believe. When he was on the cross, they said, come down from there and we'll believe. What did he always answer them?

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He said, you evil generation, you adulterous generation, you require a sign. You won't get one, he said, except for the sign of Jonah.

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What's the sign of Jonah? We have it in here today. You're resurrected. You look at your own life, at the way you were when you were a lost sheep.

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You might as well have been a goat for all you knew. You didn't love God. You didn't know God. You didn't like church.

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You didn't like the Bible. You didn't want anything to do with it. And if you're sitting in here today, whether you're a child or a young person or some of the rest of us young people, and you don't love those things, you need to check out your salvation.

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Because when God saves you, the same power that brought Jesus out of the grave, that resurrection power is in you and me today.

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And we can live and walk in it all day today, all day Monday. You can go back to work around the whole world and its whole system.

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You have resurrection power. That is the sign he said he would give us at this age.

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Why are we looking for me to be able to walk up and slap some of you on the forehead and heal you physically? If I could have healed anyone,

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I would have healed Brother Rocky. I would have healed Charlotte's mother. My mom's hand would not have required surgery.

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Now maybe it's just I don't have the gift. And I'm not mocking that. I'm saying maybe I don't. But why don't any of my brothers that love me come and do that for my mom on my behalf if they have it?

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I'm just saying. It's a faith time. But you know what?

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God, I don't know how he did it. I don't know if he was in the car or if he delegated it to his angels.

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But my mom will tell you next Sunday morning that God did save her life and did in fact heal her because he permitted it.

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So God can heal. That is not the issue. And duh, any time anyone is healed,

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God did it. The question is, is there such a thing as an apostolic gift where I, as the pastor, you pay me money for me to hit you on the forehead and heal you?

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I think it's strange that the ones who believe in that the most build hospitals and things like that. Why'd he build a hospital?

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So he could go door to door and heal them all and they could go home and charge them money maybe. I don't know. It just doesn't fit, you guys.

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Now Jesus, huh? They all have insurance too. And they all die. But the thing is, it's those kinds of signs were for a purpose.

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And if you'll study the Bible, instead of believing every book you read down at the Ark, study what the

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Bible says. You're going to find that those kinds of miracles couldn't even be done at the will of those who could do them.

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Only when God willed it could they do it. Such as Peter saying, rise up and walk. He didn't go down the street and do that with everybody.

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There was a purpose behind it. And the purpose is to authenticate God's message, primarily, and his messenger, and the whole

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New Testament concept that they were teaching. Because it was, you picture yourself being a Jew. What did they accuse

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Stephen of in Sunday school this morning? Who can remember? Hmm?

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What was he doing that was so terrible? Specifically, what was he doing that they listed?

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He was talking negative about a couple of things. What was it? And a person.

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Who was the person? Moses. Jesus was going to destroy.

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He was talking bad about Moses and the temple. Now what is that, what are they getting at?

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He doesn't like our religion. We've got God in a box and he's saying, no, God's out here.

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He's not in your box. You've never known everything about God. Jesus was revealing this.

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They hated it. Especially the old Pharisee Jew. Now there's plenty of Gentiles and Gentile churches that are

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Pharisees just like that. If you try to step, if you show them one verse in here that differs from their neat little packaged

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God in a box, they'll take it emotionally and personally. And they will not fellowship with you.

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They won't be around you because you've got itching ears or whatever. So, people haven't changed that much.

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Now, Jesus is setting the stage and showing them face front.

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Healing was not about just healing. Healing is a physical picture for a spiritual truth that's far more important than you being physically healed.

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Because I'll tell you this, Paul had things wrong with his body that no one healed and so did

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Timothy. And Paul had the gift of healing. He had the apostolic gift of healing. He laid his body on a dead person once and they rose up, came back to life.

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But he had a problem physically in his life. Prayed three times and God wouldn't heal him.

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Why is that? If he had the gift of healing, why couldn't he just go loose? Oh, man, I'm better. To himself.

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And Timothy, you know, he had a stomach problem. Why didn't you tell him to drink a little wine for your stomach's sake?

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Why didn't he touch him, literally? I'm not trying to really be funny. I'm saying, why didn't Paul heal

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Timothy? Because it's all under a sovereign God's rulership.

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It never was about man. And the biggest problem we have in the church today is not that there are groups of people that believe in what we call faith healing.

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It's that they believe they are sovereign in it. It's Arminianism at its worst.

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It's humanism. Man's not in control of this thing, Paul.

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Never has been, never will be. God is sovereign. Jesus points this out.

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That's what they hated the most. Really what Jesus is teaching them is the sovereignty of God.

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Why do you have all these people with leprosy? God sent a person for one man. Made them furious.

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See, they're humanists. They're Arminians. They believe you should be able to rub this little bottle and God comes out and says, what may

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I do for you? Now that, we think that's new theology. But it's not, is it?

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2 ,000 years ago they had it. That's why they got angry. It is new, though. There's been a huge uprising in it since the 1900s.

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From 1900 until today. I can't believe it's 100 years of that now because when

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I first started studying these things in the 70s, I thought, well, it's just been a few 50 years since this stuff started.

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Now it's been over 100. And now it's ingrained in our theology. The Arminian humanistic beliefs that man is in control of God and that God is there just to provide your needs and make you successful, make you happy.

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All of that should be just a byproduct of what Jesus did for the father. Jesus died for God the father.

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We studied it this morning. To satisfy him. We gain the benefit of it.

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And he did die for us, too. That's the reconciliation side. But never leave

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God out. And Jesus is teaching them that when it comes to healing, you better remember these things.

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So he comes down into this passage and you'll see now that they were very angry.

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They tried to kill him. And he comes to Capernaum and he begins to teach. And the emphasis is on that he taught with power.

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See in verse 30? They were astonished at his doctrine. I want you to think about this now. When you talk about Jesus, you talk about the apostles and you see healings and signs and wonders.

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It's all around the gospel. Why? The gospel was something the Jew could not receive.

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The gospel was a new message. The gospel in their mind was a cut at Moses.

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And their religion. How could they possibly ever any of them ever believe any of it if the

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Jew didn't see a sign or the power of God accompanying the message. And so that's what you see.

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The first thing you see is the doctrine. You see the new message, the new gospel. You see the word.

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The word is with power. Why did they think it was with power? Well let's read on. And in the synagogue there was a man which had a spirit of an unclean devil and he cried out with a loud voice.

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So he had a demoniac right in the synagogue. Now why did they think Jesus' word was with power?

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Just because he was eloquent? A good speaker? No. Because verse 34 says they cried out loud out of this person and said let us alone what have we to do with thee thou

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Jesus of Nazareth art thou come to destroy us. Now look at this and you'll get goosebumps right here.

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I know thee who thou art the holy one of God.

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The demon knew he was the Messiah the Jews did not. But he

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God used a demon to give a testimony about Jesus' authority.

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Now it doesn't stop there and in the synagogue there was a man which had a spirit.

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Where am I? I already read that. Verse 35 Jesus rebuked him saying hold thy peace and come out of him.

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And when the devil had thrown him in the midst he came out of him and heard him not. And they were all amazed and spake among themselves saying what a word is this.

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Now why is it now they call this a word? You know why are they saying this doctrine is amazing?

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He goes on and says for with authority and power he commanded the unclean spirits and they came out.

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And the fame of him went out into every place of the country round about and he rose out of the synagogue entered into Simon's house.

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Simon's mother -in -law was taken with a great fever and they besought him to her on her behalf and he stood over her and he rebuked the fever and it left her and immediately she arose and ministered unto them.

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What a beautiful picture. What a beautiful physical picture of the proper immediate response of a saved person.

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When you get healed spiritually and all of a sudden you're walking around as lost as a goat and the

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Holy Spirit does his work and you look up and you see Jesus face for the first time and you say Lord what did you have me to do?

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That's your salvation experience. You've just been healed and immediately you should begin to minister.

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And it's pictured here by her in a physical sense. She arose. She was ill on the bed with a fever.

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He healed her. She got up and began to minister to them. Saved person will begin to want to know what he can do.

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What can I do? Is there anything I can do in the church? Now when the sun was setting all they that had any sick with diverse diseases brought them unto him and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them and devils also came out of many crying out and saying thou art

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Christ the Son of God and he rebuked them allowed them not to speak for they knew that he was

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Christ. Why did he rebuke them? He did not want their testimony because what if all of Israel had received him as the

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Messiah? What would have happened? Would there have ever been a cross? Would he have ever died for even their sins?

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It couldn't have happened that way. The demons were trying to make it happen that way by telling the

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Jews you better listen he's who he says he is. They were doing it out of God's will. They were witnessing but out of God's will and so Jesus rebuked them and said shut up you're not allowed to say this it's not the right time yet for them to know this it's amazing

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I mean this is amazing I mean this is the sovereignty of God meeting the will of man in time and space and it's all happening here and isn't it phenomenal that these demons all knew who he was and said out loud who he was and when it was day he departed and went into a desert place and the people saw him came unto him and stayed him that he should not depart from them now look at this he said to them

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I must preach the kingdom of God. What was Jesus emphasis? Healing all these people?

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What was his purpose? When he came to tell him what his purpose in life was what did he say? I cannot stay with you

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I would like my heart as a man he's the God man as a man I'd like to stay here and heal all the rest of the sick people that you could bring tomorrow and the next day but I cannot because it is not my purpose my purpose is to preach the kingdom of God because spiritual salvation is far more important than physical healing spiritual salvation deals with the destiny of the soul physical healing is temporary they can get sick again after this

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I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also now look at this phrase for therefore am

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I sent Jesus tells us his mission I am sent to preach it's all about doctrine ladies and gentlemen it's all about the word it's all about God revealing himself to us on the inside is far more important than our physical bodies though God is interested in that my mom will tell that to you next

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Sunday and that's beautiful but it's not the main purpose it's not the main thing it's all part of his grace and mercy and love and tender care and all of that but our main job my mom's main job was not just to survive that automobile accident why did she survive she's going to be a testimony for Jesus for a few more days it's all about the doctrine therefore am

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I sent and he preached in the synagogues of Galilee in chapter 5 verse 1 says and it came to pass that as the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God he stood by the lake of Genesaret Luke 19 9 says and Jesus said to them this day is salvation come to this house for so much as he also is the son of Abraham for the son of man is come to seek and save that which is lost you can't do that without the gospel good doctrine

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I was at a big Bible conference and there was a black man from South Africa up in the there was a huge church up in the balcony and that preacher was up there preaching his heart out and that guy about every 10 minutes said good doctrine good doctrine

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I've had that in my mind ever since for years but it's about the good doctrine ladies and gentlemen the healings authenticated the good doctrine otherwise he would have healed every single human it wasn't about healing that was a benefit it was also a physical picture of the spiritual healing that takes place when a person is born again he's literally brought from death a walking dead person is brought alive you can see it in your own eyes you can see it in other people's eyes look at some old photographs of yourself before you were born again see if you see deadness you'll see it well we don't have time to continue but it's an interesting passage we left off with chapter 5 verse 1 brother

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Otis for next time so I know what you'll do you'll get me back and you'll go back and cover some of this passage let's pray father thank you for your word today for teaching us for revealing yourself your heart your mind to us thank you for all that you've revealed about your son