Seeing Jesus Rightly

1: Jesus Encounters An Impure Spirit.

Mark 1:21–28 (ESV)

And they went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and was teaching. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes. And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, “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 the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying out with a loud voice, came out of him. And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” And at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee.

We see that, after calling His first disciples, they went to the city of Capernaum. Here Jesus went into a synagogue to teach.

The people were amazed by His teaching - unlike the scribes, and the teachers that they were used to, He taught with authority. He did not speak as one who merely knew the scriptures - like the pharisees - He spoke as the very Author of Creation, the one who wrote the Book.

While He was preaching something incredible happened. A man with an impure spirit shouted out: “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!”

In reading this verse - verse 24 - I took pause.

The demons confession is a powerful one: “Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are - the Holy One of God!”

Half A Gospel

In the last few years the term ‘seeker-sensitive’ has come up a lot more than usual.

Even though it is a term that has been around for a very long time, it has seen even more of a resurgence, especially in the light of the LGBT+ movement.

The idea is that churches should make their Sunday services more inclusive - attractive to the unchurched - we should put up lights and smoke machines, we should preach short, motivational messages, and play music that everyone likes. Church should be fun and leave you feeling good - so that you will come back for more.

We should be careful not to offend anyone - staying away from hard topics like sin, repentance and sanctification. We should stick to the feel-good topics of love, grace, mercy and prosperity.

Our message is ‘Come as you are!’ and that is where the seeker-sensitive message stops.

As Christians we have become willing to flirt with - even compromise with - sin, unrighteousness, injustice and evil, all in the name of ‘love and inclusiveness’.

“We are saved by grace, and not by works!” or even “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ” are often quoted Bible passages, and while they are undeniably true, they’re only a part of the truth.

Have many of our churches have been preaching only half a Gospel?

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not simply to come as you are - we leave out an important part of God’s plan when we say this. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is ‘come as you are and be changed!’

We come as we are but we can, by no means, stay as we are - the Christian life is about transformation, it is about restoration, it is about revival, renewal and lasting change.

And it starts with seeing Jesus rightly.

It is easy to acknowledge only the parts of Jesus that we like. The love, the grace and the mercy of God - the God that picks us up when we fall down, always ready to forgive, always ready to dust us off.

And while this is true, many believers have rendered the Gospel powerless and ineffective because we do not acknowledge the ‘Holiness’ of Jesus. Where is the fear of God? Where is our reverent awe and admiration?

We slip into temptation so easily, because ‘we are saved by grace, and not by works… there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ!”

But James says the following, in James 2:14–17 “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

And even though James is using our material needs as an example, the fundamental truth - the fact that faith, by itself, is dead - can be applied to every area of our lives.

Even our salvation.

There is a doctrine out there that says that if we are saved, by faith, we will always be saved. We make this mistake often, especially at evangelistic outreaches where we ask people to put up their hands and say a sinners prayer, telling them that we will now see them, one day, in Heaven - but that prayer, even in faith, will not mean much without the very real work of discipleship and spiritual discipline.

Living Holy

Do I believe that you can lose your salvation?

Yes.

We are saved by grace, but we have to work to maintain it.

We cannot work to be saved - this is a gift from God - but we need to take care of that gift. We need to protect that gift, we need to treasure that gift.

We see this in Hebrews 6:1–8 “Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits. For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.”

The elementary doctrine of Christ is that we are saved through His death upon the Cross - through His grace and not our works.

But the author of Hebrews urges us to go on to maturity.

He defines maturity in Hebrews 5:11–14 “About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”

Verse 14 says that a mature Christian is one who is skilled in the word of righteousness. One who has trained his powers of discernment by constant practice. Work.

Chapter 6:7 tells us that a land that drinks the rain will either be a blessing - if it produces a useful crop - or buried and accursed, if it produces thorns and thistles.

We need to make sure that the ground of our hearts, the land that the rain of His love and mercy has fallen upon, produces a consecrated, holy, useful, good and blessed crop - for if our hearts, the land that the rain of His mercy and grace has fallen upon - produces thistles and thorns instead, it will be buried.

If we do not work at living out and maintaining the righteousness that Christ payed for upon the cross, we run the risk of falling away.

The word used to describe ‘falling away’ in the Greek - here in verse 6 - is ‘parapipto’ which is translated as ‘to commit apostasy’. Apostasy is to renounce, to give up your faith completely.

So, do I believe that you can lose your salvation?

Yes - if we compromise with sin enough, the more we slip into sin and depravity as Christians, the closer we edge towards renouncing our faith altogether.

And it starts with compromise. It starts with the smallest thing. A little gossip, a white lie, a look where you shouldn’t be looking.

To compromise with sin is to be compromised. To be compromised is to be in danger.

And sometimes compromise has less to do with the things we do, but rather with the things we allow to happen around us, the truth we leave unsaid, the souls we leave unreached.

Friday evening we had an outreach at a local golf estate. While the kids of the estate are ‘trick or treating’, celebrating Halloween, we set up a sound system, we do live worship, we pray for the kids and the community - and we fight the good fight. We stand up for what we believe because there can be no compromise.

Even Kailie, a week ago, was with one of her clients, and had to supervise them as they celebrated Halloween - but she did not celebrate with them. If asked whether or not she celebrates it, her answer would be clear - “It is against what we believe.”

When asked whether or not we believe in abortion our answer is a clear no.

When asked whether or not we support gay marriage - our answer is no - because the Bible is clear about what marriage is and what it is not.

When asked whether or not we support this whole movement of people identifying as a woman when they were clearly born a man - or vice versa - our answer, my house, says no. How can we, when the Bible says that we are lovingly formed in the womb by our Father’s hand? God doesn’t make mistakes! If you were born a boy, you were meant to be a boy!

We are in the world, we are not of it. And I am not suggesting that we go around judging and telling everyone exactly how wrong they are - we do not go looking for conflict, we do not seek out these discussions, but at the same time, we are surrounded by these discussions. In our own lives we can have no compromise. We stand up for what we believe.

It is of the utmost importance that we move ever closer to Jesus through worship, through study of His Word, through prayer, and fellowship - coming to church and being a part of His Body - so that we might become strong in the Lord, to stand against the works of the enemy, in our own lives and in our communities. The gates of hell will not prevail against His church!

We need to make sure that we are fully and completely anchored in Him - and this takes more than just faith. It takes hard work. More than that it means seeing Jesus rightly in the light of Scripture.

Jesus is very much the very embodiment of God’s love, grace and mercy. He is the Lamb of God, our meek and gentle saviour! The lover of our souls! Always ready to forgive, always ready to restore! But He is also very much still the Lion of Judah, who tore death to pieces, who hates sin and injustice - and who will One Day come again upon the clouds to pour out the wrath and final reckoning of God.

He is Holy! Holy! Holy!

And just as He is Holy, we too must strive to be Holy.

We cannot cheapen the grace or ever play with the goodness of God.

A Call To Repentance

The impure spirit in Mark 1, there in Capernaum, asked Jesus if He had come to destroy them.

The answer is yes.

1 John 3:8 “Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.”

When we see Jesus rightly, we understand that He is God wrapped up, enrobed in human flesh. Sinless, spotless, pure and holy - without fault or flaw - and He willingly gave Himself for us to purchase our redemption - to make us new again and to destroy the works of the adversary.

God’s plan for the new creation, now that we have been reclaimed from the pits of sin and despair, is for us to be restored to our proper place of dominion as we are conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.

Paul admonishes us, in Ephesians 5:1, to be imitators of Christ. If our work is to imitate Christ - if our work here on earth, is to work towards being more like Jesus, we need to make sure that we abhor what is evil, and that we cling to what is good.

It means that we work to eradicate - to eliminate - to remove all sin and temptation from our lives. It means that the things we used to do, we will do them no more, striving to live a life worthy of the life Jesus gave for us.

In doing this we close the points of entrance that the enemy has into our lives!

This is the beginning of repentance.

A lot of us grew up being taught that repentance is to do a 180 degree turn away from sin - but it’s not just sin that we are turning away from.

The Greek word, metanoia, implies way more than a sense of regret or remorse over past behaviour - it implies a forward-moving change of mind. It is not simply a turning away from sin, but a complete change of direction - it’s not about what we put behind us, our bad choices and mistakes - but rather what we then set our eyes upon - Christ, the Holy One, and His Kingdom.

There can be no revival without repentance. To repent is to give over to the glorious, sovereign rule of God in our lives.

In getting rid of habitual sin and avoiding temptation, in casting away every other influence and distraction we might have in our lives, the voices of guilt and shame start to quiet down. The constant torrent of insecurity, those waves of fear and anxiety melt away into nothing and are replaced by rivers of true joy and peace - when we give God the highest place, the holiest place in our lives.

When we live holy lives we step out of the noise and distraction of this world and into His courts.

When we are holy unto Him - consecrated and set apart for His purposes - when we delight in Him above all else, He delights in us.

When we set aside selfish ambition and crucify ego, and set our eyes on Christ and His Kingdom things start happening in our lives and the lives of those around us.

When we start pulling down demonic strongholds and the altars and idols of our fleshly desires - those things that we have given place above the Lord our God - when we start casting them into the fire of His righteousness - we will start to hear His voice clearly. And His voice will guide us - in paths of righteousness and peace!

His voice will lead us deeper into the Secret Place of prayer, worship and the Word - His voice will lead us deeper into that place where we truly have communion with Him. That place where we can hear the very whisper of His heart.

When we dedicate our time, our strength and our hearts to the Lord - fully giving Him our YES - no excuses, no distractions - and we seek first the Righteousness of His Kingdom, we will see lives transformed - our own and the lives of those around us!

The Holiness of God dries us to love the sinner but abhor, despise and hate the sin. The Holiness of God leads us to speak truth in a world filled with lies.

And we need to be beacons of His love, mercy, grace, goodness - and His purity and holiness in the world.

In doing this we will see miracles never thought possible.

I have seen the chains of addiction fall off, in my own life and in the lives of others, I have seen families restored, diseases healed, mental illness stilled - all through an experience with God, an experience in which myself and others have learned to see Jesus rightly.

Jesus is not just the love of God, He is also the Holy One of God - the Righteousness of God - we must seek Him with all our hearts. When we do this we will see Heaven invade our lives.

When we open our eyes - when the eyes of our heart are opened - and we see Jesus for who He truly is - The Holiness of God - we start to realize that no darkness can dwell in His glorious light!

Let us draw close to God - let us do what it takes to eliminate distraction and sin from our lives - let us draw near to the Father’s heart!

To step into the Holy Place of God - that place where the Holy One of God, Jesus, is seated on the throne, is to step out of our situation of sin, out of our circumstances, out of the noise of the world - into that place where we can hear Him speak clearly.

That place where we can hear the Author of Creation and Salvation speak healing, freedom and newness into our lives! That place where God speaks life!

Let us step out of the noise of sin and distraction, and into that place where we can see Jesus - as He is - glorified, exalted, lifted high - the Name above every name - that place where the walls of guilt and shame, fear and insecurity cannot come between us, that place where we can experience God all the more in the fullness of Jesus Christ.