The Authority of the Son of God

Luke 4:31–44 ESV

And he went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. And he was teaching them on the Sabbath, and they were astonished at his teaching, for his word possessed authority. And in the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice, “Ha! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent and come out of him!” And when the demon had thrown him down in their midst, he came out of him, having done him no harm. And they were all amazed and said to one another, “What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!” And reports about him went out into every place in the surrounding region. And he arose and left the synagogue and entered Simon’s house. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was ill with a high fever, and they appealed to him on her behalf. And he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her, and immediately she rose and began to serve them. Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them. And demons also came out of many, crying, “You are the Son of God!” But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ. And when it was day, he departed and went into a desolate place. And the people sought him and came to him, and would have kept him from leaving them, but he said to them, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.” And he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea.

Introduction:

As a child we used to play this game called Simon Says. It was a good time when you were 8. Do kids even still play this game? You know how it worked right? Someone would stand at the front and give commands and you had to do what they said if they prefaced it with "Simon says." If they did not say "Simon says," and you moved, you'd be out of the game. Those words carried authority. Authority gets wielded in all sorts of ways around our culture, some good and some not so good. Authoritative words carry weight. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus exercises authority in His very words.

One of my aims as a pastor of a local church is that I will preach the whole council of God. I will preach expository messages through books of the Bible. I believe this should be the regular diet of the church when it comes to Sunday mornings. One of the benefits of doing this is that it teaches you how to read your Bibles. It helps you understand the context of what you're reading so that you're not just looking for a couple of quick faith boosts from a passage unconnected from everything else around it. You begin to see how it fits together and realize that the best interpreter of scripture is itself. Last week I covered Luke 4, verses 14 through 30 where Jesus stands in his hometown synagogue and reads from the prophet Isaiah. He then explains that He is the fulfillment of that scripture.

The passage from Isaiah 61, that Jesus reads in verses 18 and 19 gives us a lens through which to interpret what happens in verses 31 through 44 this morning.

Jesus, in Nazareth, claimed to be the anointed one of of God. He was making a claim to be the one sent, the Messiah, sent to proclaim good news to the oppressed and downtrodden of the earth. He also illustrated it in a way that suggested that the good news of the reign of God was not just for the Jews but also for the Gentiles, or non-Jewish. Jesus, the Messiah, is a King for the whole world.

Today we come to Capernaum where we see Jesus demonstrating that identity as Son of God through His authority. He's demonstrating that He is in fact, the Christ by the authority and power that he wields. He does this primarily in three ways in this passage:

1. Authority of His teaching

2. Authority over the spiritual world.

3. Authority over the physical world.

**Let's first pray and ask God to help us understand the Word and apply it to our lives.**

The first main point this morning is a focus on Jesus demonstrating His authority in His teaching.

1. Jesus demonstrates authority in teaching. (V. 31-32)

Immediately, based on the positioning of this account, we notice the wild difference in the response of the people in Nazareth, who wanted to kill him, and the response in Capernaum of the people who don't want him to leave. They have different reasons for these responses of course. The people in Nazareth wanted him dead because of his claims and teaching about the kingdom of God and the people of Capernaum are astonished at his teaching but they want to see him do more miracles.

They perceived that His teaching had authority. This was different than what they were used. They were used to their rabbis teaching what had been handed down to them by other teachers. One rabbi is recorded as saying, “I have never in my life said a thing which I did not hear from my teachers.” Their theology had come second hand. But here you had Jesus, teaching with words of authority because the teaching was coming from God Himself.

The things that Jesus taught were authoritative because they were coming straight from God, therefore, if someone ever says to you regarding some issue: Jesus never taught on this. That is a false way to argue for something not being a Biblical teaching because Jesus is God. The Father and the Son are one so if God said it or Jesus said it, it is authoritative from God Himself. They are in complete agreement.

The teaching that you receive at church will only carry authority as much as it is the teaching of the Word of God. That is where the power for life change comes from: the true teaching of the Word of God. It’s why I get so irritated when I hear people repeat something they have been taught at their church which may even sound good but is not the accurate teaching of the Word of God. Jesus’s Word has authority, not because of His being a gifted communicator or able to turn a phrase well. It had authority because it was from God. The teaching we have from God is right here in this book, the Bible. So measure any teaching you hear by the complete message of this book. Does it measure up? Jesus was the fulfillment of the promises in the Old Testament. The same thing that caused the people of Nazareth to want to kill Him caused the people of Capernaum to marvel because of the way He exercised authority with a simple Word.

After Jesus preached, He started doing miracles that showed his power over the spiritual world, specifically over demonic spirits and supernatural evil.

2. Jesus exercises authority over the spiritual world. (V. 33-35)

The people were amazed that Jesus could cast out a demon with a word.

Both the people and the demons are forced to acknowledge Jesus' power and authority to carry out His mission that we saw Him explain in the previous section. His mission was to proclaim the good news and here he was showing that he had the power and authority to do what He said He would. Everyone had to acknowledge that. They saw it with their own eyes.

In Martin Luther’s famous hymn “A Might Fortress is Our God” he wrote:

“The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo! his doom is sure; one little word shall fell him.”

Jesus had the authority as the Son of God to cast out an unclean spirit with a simple word. Notice the emphasis is not on the man who was possessed or the unclean spirit. The emphasis is squarely on the one who can with one word banish the demon from bothering the man ever again. The power, the authority belongs to Jesus as the Son of God.

A strange thing happens among these events, at least it seems strange to us. Jesus causes the demon to be quiet and not let people know that He is the Son of God. He doesn’t want it to come out in this particular way. Why wouldn’t Jesus want everyone to know immediately? Well, the first important point of this is to understand what we all know, you aren’t Jesus. We tend to think about how we would act in these situations but we are not God. God’s ways are different than ours because He knows the whole plan and sees the whole picture. It simply wasn’t time for people to learn this information. Secondly, this was not the way in which the people were to find this information out. Thirdly, the people were not prepared for this information. We saw the way the people in Nazareth responded to Jesus. These people liked the sensational events but were not prepared for the full blown truth of who Jesus was and all of the implications.

In this passage we have walked through Jesus’s authority in teaching, His authority over the spiritual world, and then lastly we see that He had authority as the Son of God over physical existence itself. He had authority over the physical world.

3. Jesus exercises authority over the physical world. (v. 36-44)

He's getting more well known, more famous.

A large crowd was waiting to be healed. This is a very busy day, accounted for here. You have Simon (Peter’s) house basically becoming a house of healing.

I love that in situations like this you really see a pastoral and caring heart in Jesus as He paid individual attention to each person. He laid hands on them And healed them.

Luke makes a distinction between those healed of physical ailments and those who had demons cast out of them. This illustrates for us that not all diseases have a demonic origin, though some do.

The miraculous works that Jesus did were purposed to aid in the preaching of the good news and not an end in and of themselves.

The point was not the physical healings or even the casing out of demons. Jesus's ultimate goal was not to only heal people physically. He ultimately came to heal spiritually and restore a people (the church) to God through his substitutionary sacrifice on the cross and resurrection from the dead, proving that God accepted His sacrifice as sufficient for the sins of man.

The ministry of Jesus creates such a sensation, understandably, that it actually threatens to overwhelm His God-given mission to preach all over the region. The people actually try to prevent Him from leaving and demons declare Him to be the Christ.

Jesus must move on to fulfill His mission.

He cannot allow the demons to declare and create a frenzy by giving information to the crowd that the people are not prepared to handle.

This was not the time nor the method by which the people were to learn about Jesus as the Christ of God.

So what does this mean for us?

Authority of Jesus - What He can do and has done… shows again who He is. Therefore we can:

Worship Him as the Son of God

Trust Him as the Son of God

Run to Him for protection

Pray for healing. He does not always heal. Sometimes our suffering through the sickness is doing more to make us more like Jesus than a miraculous healing would. We over use the word miracle in our society. Not everything that happens or every disease that we get over is a miracle. God most often works through doctors and medicine and ways that He has blessed our culture with being able to treat illness. It’s not miraculous but it’s no less a work of God. God may heal you immediately when you pray for healing or, and I would say, most often, He is using whatever is going on with you to mold you like a master potter, making you into the vessel that He has planned for you to be. So yes, we pray for healing but we also pray that God would help us walk well through suffering and trials.

Maybe you are someone here today and you would say you know who Jesus is but your life doesn’t actually reflect that you are following and serving Him.

Knowing who Jesus is, is not the same as trusting in and surrendering to Him. The demons knew who He was. But there is no gospel for them to be saved. They are destined to spend eternity in hell as enemies of God. Their response to Him in this passage was out of their terror. They were terrified of Him because He is the Son of God, the anointed one of God and they know their doom is sealed.

So simply knowing who Jesus is, can not be the same as trusting in Him and serving Him. Will you trust Him? Have you repented of your sins and truly believed the good news of the gospel that Jesus is all God and all man, lived a perfect life in your place, died on the cross as a sacrifice for your sin, and rose from the grave after three days?

- In Luke chapter four, we see Jesus operating or fulfilling three roles for His people. He is prophet, priest, and King. Here, in this passage our King excercieses His authority and the result is the blessing of the people. Our king excersises His authority and we are blessed by it. It’s the best thing for us that our King is in authority. We should rejoice over it.

- It is clear from Luke chapter four that Jesus is the annointed one sent by God to declare and implement God's kingdom, God's reign.

These events indicate that God's reign, God's kingdom, was breaking into the present time in a new and decisive way. Demoic forces were driven back and people were set free to serve God.

This is good news for the outcast! The oppressed were being set free! And Jesus continued preaching. He stayed on His mission.

What will you do with the freedom you have because Jesus is the authority as the Son of God? He is the King of the world. Will you serve Him? Will you rejoice in Him?

Let’s pray.

Pray