Review: A King, a Kingdom and a citizenry. Matthew presents the testimony of:
John the BaptistThe Father (at Jesus’ baptism)The OT propheciesChrist HimselfThe Holy Spirit’s authenticating miraclesAll these were rejected by the spiritual leaders of Israel!
A man was brought to Jesus on the Sabbath: [Verse 22a]He was demon-possessedHe was blindHe was mute = Kophos = “Deaf and dumb”Now the act of casting out demons was itself not all that unusual in that day and age. Even the Pharisees, and the Rabbis, and their disciples were practicing the casting out of demons. But the Pharisees carried out a ritual that had three basic steps:
First of all he would have to establish communication with the demon. When the demon speaks he uses the vocal chords of the person he controls.Secondly, after establishing communication with the demon he would have to find out the demon’s name.Thirdly, once he knew what the demon’s name was he could use the name to command the demon to go out.These were the three steps of the ancient Jewish procedure. On another occasion, in Mark 5, Jesus used the standard Jewish approach. He asked the demon, “What is your name?” and the answer was, “My name is Legion”. Because of this three step procedure there was one kind of demon they could do nothing about: the kind of demon that caused the person controlled to be a mute so he could not speak. And because the person could not speak, there was no way of establishing communication with this kind of a demon, no way of finding out the demon’s name, and so in the framework of Judaism it was reckoned impossible to cast this kind of a demon out. But the common teaching was that whenever the Messiah comes he will cast out dumb demons.
When demons possess people, they manifest physically in a variety of ways:
Demons make people mute (Matt. 9:32), deaf (Mark 9:25), or blind (Matt. 12:22).Demons can make some people lunatics (Matt. 17:5) who scream constantly (Mark 5:5), cutting themselves (Mark 5:5) and tearing off their clothes (Mark 5:15).They attack the bodies they are in, seizing them (Luke 8:29) with convulsions (Mark 1:26), slamming their bodies down onto the ground (Luke 9:42), or sometimes into painful or dangerous places like fire and water (Matt. 17:15)The demon-possessed turn on other people, becoming violent (Matt. 8:28) and attacking innocent bystanders (Acts 19:16). This is exceptionally dangerous, since the demons are able to give them superhuman strength to do things like break chains (Mark 5:4).And if all this isn’t bad enough, some people have multiple demons living inside of them (Matt. 12:45, Luke 8:30).May God bless you through this message!
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