Thank you. Welcome everyone. Those of you online, sorry we had too much fun and fellowship and so we're a little delayed. They're still coming in. You'll see the reflection on the glass behind me as they work their way in. But I've realized that's how the online people know who's here and who's not. They watch the reflection as they come in, right? Would you like me to stand off a little bit so you can see who comes in here in just a moment. But anyway, glad everybody's here and we did have nice food and fellowship. And let's see, we celebrated birthdays there Mariana. Sorry I got your eyes closed, but Mariana and Meadow had their sweet 16 birthday and that was good. For those of you online, you missed taco night at our beautiful tables and we had a good meal. Sorry that you missed it. But now we come to the Gospel of Mark after a couple of announcements. Let's see, we've got July the second. We're going to have a picnic in the afternoon at the Walker's house. That's Sunday afternoon, I don't know what time yet, but we'll figure out the time. Our 4 July picnic is on July 2, how's that? And we're having hamburgers, hot dogs, that kind of stuff. I know that. And you're bringing everything else. So mark that afternoon off to go out there and enjoy some picnic time and I think all the other stuff you all probably know about. So with that, let's have a word of prayer. We'll get started back into the Gospel of Mark. Heavenly Father, it's a joy to be here this evening. Thanks for the nice fellowship we've had for those who are here with us tonight and for the blessings of that fellowship around the tables now, fellowship in the word. Thanks for these who've joined us online as well, and the encouragement that they give. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen. So we have been four weeks now working our way through the Gospel of Mark. And now we come to all the way on our fifth week, we have made it to the 21st verse and we're going to make it down to verse 28 tonight. And take a look at let me get to the right spot here in Mark, chapter one, verse 21. So Jesus has gotten his ministry going and he was baptized. We had the temptation, we looked at all that. And now we come to begin to look at the actual ministry of Jesus, the Galilean portion of his ministry, and that's the the better, the bigger chunk of his ministry is going to be in Galilee. And so we're going to be in Galilee quite a ways. Here the first portion of it from here, chapter one, verse 21, going through all of the rest of chapter one, which is a pretty long chapter. And then chapter two, and then all of chapter three is all going to be Jesus performing various miracles in and around Capernium. All of the miracles are going to be to prove that Jesus is Messiah. And we'll talk about that just a little bit and what all that means and let's just do like we always do and give it verse by verse, piece by piece and you'll figure out what it means when we get to the end on what he does. So we'll take the slow road through the synagogue at Capernium. By the way, if you missed our virtual and biblical tour of Israel when we were in Capernium, you can go back and get that for supplemental material and see about the synagogue in Capernium that we talked about, a place that you can go to today and stand in and all that kind of stuff. But we'll skip that for now since we looked at that there. So they went to Capernium, which really became the headquarters of Jesus's ministry. He was kicked out of Nazareth. Mark doesn't mention it, but at least Matthew and maybe Luke also mention that Jesus was in Nazareth, his hometown, that's where he prayed. Excuse me, he read the scripture about release of the captives from Isaiah. And then he rolled up the scroll and said today this has been fulfilled in your hearing. And they said, we're done with you out of here. And they tried to throw him off the cliff that is there, the brow of the hill. We don't want you anymore in Nazareth. That's going to come up a little bit here, I think, tonight. But so Jesus leaves Nazareth, he goes to Capernium and it says straightway on the Sabbath day, he entered into the synagogue and taught. Let's break that apart a little bit because you couldn't just take that. As for basic what it says, right, he went into the synagogue and taught on the Sabbath. A couple of things we ought to look at that help us understand, I think, first century culture, first century Judaism that Jesus was living in. So he makes his way to the Sabbath. If Judaism then was like Judaism now, and that's a big if, it's hard telling because everything on Judaism now comes from about the second century Ad. Rabbinical Judaism. And so what was it like in Jesus's day? Is a little bit difficult for us to tell. But if it's like it was now, there was only a certain distance that you could walk on the Sabbath. You couldn't carry out your business, go see grandma in the next town, that kind of thing. But you could go a little bit of a distance to the synagogue. That interestingly, is one of the reasons why a lot of big towns you go to, like Houston have pockets of Judaism, pockets of Jews, a Jewish community, and it typically is because there is an Orthodox synagogue nearby and they walk to the synagogue and they can only walk so far on the Sabbath. So Capernium was a very small place anyway, it would not have reached that limit. But straightway on the Sabbath day he entered into the synagogue and taught shows his Judaism, obviously. But another couple of things this is the first time, if we take this as the first gospel written, which I think is good argument for this is the first mention of the synagogue then in the New Testament, and it presents synagogue as something that you know what it is. But in the Old Testament you never read about a synagogue. So this is a first which tells us that the readers of this understood the first century world that they were living in, they didn't need a definition of synagogue. And the word is actually soon agoge. Aren't you glad you know this now? Soon agoge, soon is together with it comes out soon. S-U-N-S-Y-N sometimes in English. SIM S-Y-M it's together. Like the symphony is bringing all the phonies together. Sympathy is to bring all the pathos together in one. All the SIM senson words in English come from this Greek together. It's some kind of together word, agoge synagogue is actually the word for leadership to lead them all together. Basically everybody comes together in the same place. Now, it actually is not an exclusively Jewish word like we might think of it, because the only time we would use the word synagogue is when Jews gathered together at their meeting house. It's called the synagogue, right? But the Greek word and in first century Greek, definitely synagogue was kind of like eclissia, which later became church. That is, it was just a word for people meeting together. And there are a couple of times when synagogue is used to speak of congregations and assemblies that may or may not be Jewish in the New Testament. And certainly you get out of Greek and the word was not just a Jewish out of Greek, out of the New Testament is what I meant, into other Greek classical writings. It was not a word that was exclusively Jewish. Now, the English word synagogue, that's a Jewish meeting house and we don't use it for anything else but the Greek word here, which is just transliterated, could have been anything, but obviously here it's the Sabbath, there's teaching going on, he enters into the synagogue, that's the Jewish meeting place, that's where he's at. So he comes into that very normal experience for a Jew in Capernium. He goes there and he teaches, I guess I should say something about that, he taught we have visitors that come here quite often, almost every Sunday from somewhere they come in and I can't remember the last time I just said hey, stranger from Strangeville, why don't you teach today? Right, we don't do that. I would have a heart attack. Really. Even they would have to be unbelievably special for me to say we're glad, Dr. Graham, that you're here this morning. Would you like to speak. If you have someone of such amazing credibility that you can't not offer them a speaking place, then maybe you would do it. If things then were like now, then I think this speaks some of the fame of Jesus, of the renown of Jesus that by this time he was already recognized as a teacher you wanted to listen to. Now, that could be wrong because maybe in the first century synagogue there was just maybe they just came together and like the Quakers, the Quakers just come together and say, who's got a word for us today? So maybe they were more Quakerish. And I'm reading too much into this, but even as a synagogue today, I know that you're not really put on the rostrum to speak unless you got something to say. And so I suspect here this says Jesus has something to say. It also says very likely he's 30 years old because that was the age at which now at twelve years old you could open the Torah. You could hold the Torah and open it and read it for yourself. But in a public setting, 30 years old was considered that age where now you are old enough to stand and read. We're making some exceptions for tranta from time to time. That's just some of the stuff you can read into there and learn a little bit about culture. So they, that is, the people in the synagogue were astonished at his doctrine for he taught them as one that had authority and not as the scribes. Well, first of all, the response of the crowd obviously is astonishment. They were astonished at his doctrine. Like synagogue, doctrine is a word that has taken on a little more meaning for us today than I think the Greek word actually means for our doctrine. If there are some people astonished at my doctrine, not always in a good way, but that's the philosophy, I guess, theological philosophy that a person holds. And I think that's certainly in here. But the word that is used could just it could be used of a mathematician. They're astonished at the things he was teaching. It could be used of a physician, it could you know, any number of things. It's not just a religious word like it would be like it's almost always used here. Now. So basically he was a good teacher, he had great content and they were astonished at this. And what really astonished them is he taught as one that had authority and not as the scribes. Now, if you happen to be a scribe, does that feel like you've been thrown under the bus a little bit? One is authority, not as describes. I wonder this is yet another one that I can't prove, but I wonder if this is not meant trying to think through my English here. You get negatives, you get in trouble. But I wonder if this is not meant to be throwing them under the bus. It's not meant to be a negative. Does that mean it's meant to be a positive? That let me explain what I mean. A scribe, the word is grammar. Well, you can probably figure out that has something to do with grammar, right? The grammaticians. Well, I happen to like grammar and grammaticians, so I want to defend the scribes just a little bit. But the grammaticians, if you will, even today, their authority, if you will, is in interpreting. This is what the words actually say. There's a sense in which a lawyer is a grammatician, right? I have to word this in such a way that it protects you, or I have to read this in such a way that we can make it not say what it actually says, okay? That's what a lawyer does, right? He works with all those letters and numbers and not numbers so much, but the letters and where the comma is and all that kind of stuff. And the authority of the lawyer really comes from he knows how to work with the words correctly in order to interpret the contract or the legislation or whatever it is. Now, the scribes were sometimes called lawyers, and so it's not that they were bad teachers and just taught up there without authority. They used to kind of joke about the preachers in preaching school where you go to learn something, and the joke was always like, if you don't have good content, then speak louder, you know, ladies and gentlemen, I'm telling you so sometimes your voice can give you authority. I don't think this is saying Jesus was such a phenomenal rhetorician that people just said, oh, wow, what authority he brings. He just brings a presence into the room. I don't think it was saying that at all, nor do I think it was saying that the scribes were very boring in their presentation. Rather, I think it's saying the scribes, when they came in, they could give you a good theoretical word study of what all this means. But scribes, in a sense, were just reporters. I'm telling you what it says. The reporter really has no authority, right? Let me put it this way. Jesus was the newsmaker, the scribes were the reporters. You'd rather talk to the newsmaker, right? Jesus was one that had authority. That is, he came saying, I have come from God and here's what he has to say. Where the scribes just said, let me tell you what Moses said. So both of them had their role. And I think that there's the possibility, again, that this is not so much described. It's not so much in order to tell you how poorly the scribes were at their communication or their teaching. It's just that now you've got someone coming in that really has ability to do something about it rather than just report on it. So he had authority, not as describes. I think, by the way, that word authority, one that had authority. John is, excuse me, Mark is deciding what he's going to put in his gospel and he weeds out a lot of stuff and doesn't even talk about it. So what he does decide he's got there for a reason. I think there's a lot of ways in which Mark presents the man of authority here's, messiah, the man of authority. And so not any surprise that the first thing he wants to do is say, let me tell you that the people recognized he had authority. And then let me show you. So we pick up in verse 23, there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit and he cried out, I'll stop right there. I think that this is a time in which the spiritual world, spiritual activity was at its highest, at its zenith, at its peak. And so a man with an unclean spirit, just from those words right there, you could say maybe he had mental illness or something like that. He had an unclean spirit just in a very general sense, maybe you could take it. But when you read the context here, it's clear that this unclean spirit is going to be cast out of him. And when you read it in Luke, which also records this story, luke says it's the unclean spirit of he uses the Greek word dimon. Dimon. Of course, we get the demons out of that. So this is clearly a demon that this guy is possessed with his unclean spirit. Now obviously almost every page of the gospels you run into somebody demon possessed or demonic activity is there all around. And for the most part you get that in the early chapters of the book of Acts as well. There's quite a bit of demon possession in the early book of Acts, but what I want to point out to you is really Matthew, Mark, Luke, you could for the most part skip John, because John's more about the teaching than the activity. So Matthew, Mark, Luke, and let's say the first eight chapters of Acts is where you find all this demonic activity. Outside of that, almost zero zilch, not a I mean, you might find a little example. Remember the Witch of Indoor, but there's a couple of ways you can interpret that. And who was it? Elisha fell down and no, he just brought somebody's bones back to life. I don't think there was any demons involved in the making of that story in Paul's Epistles. I don't know, does he talk about casting out demons or anything in there? I don't think there's not much. Anyway, in Ephesians, chapter six, there's a little bit about spiritual warfare we'll talk about here in a moment. But I think that sometimes we the general populace of Christendom overemphasize the demonic. Probably you and I have both been somewhere where someone said since there's just an evil spirit here, since he's possessed of a devil, I think that the devil's probably in the roundhouse in Santa Fe. Okay, maybe I want to rethink mine, but we see the Devil under every rock kind of in a lot of areas of Christianity. That's especially true in more charismatic circles, but it's even true in non charismatic circles. You find it a lot in Catholicism. Of course, the Catholics are well known for their exorcisms and certain priests that have the right holy water or whatever it is they need to do exorcisms. And here in northern New Mexico, it's a place that typically has been associated with a lot of that kind of, I don't know, spiritual activity. Let's just say I think that taking this as normative ignores the pattern of Scripture in which it was not normative that clear demonic activity took place. Matthew, Mark, Luke and the first eight chapters of acts. Outside of that, it was a rare occurrence. You could find it some I'm not saying it's nonexistent, but it was a rare occurrence. Now, what you do find outside of that is the work of evil. You might see an evil spirit, whether you're going to call that a demon or just an evil spirit that is there you see a lot of that paul does talk about in Ephesians, chapter six, what's his wording here? I think I put it on spiritual wickedness. Spiritual wickedness in high places. In Ephesians, chapter six, he talks about the wiles of the devil in Ephesians, chapter six, putting on the full armor of God. So certainly there is this thing of let's call it spiritual activity and spiritual wickedness and good versus bad, all that kind of stuff. I don't want to deny it all. I just think we ought to question is that actually the work of some minion of Satan going around and doing this, or is it just spiritual wickedness? I was talking to someone the other day about something. He asked me if I don't even remember the full context, but do you think this is demonic activity? And I said, I think somebody just let the cat out of the bag a long time ago, and mankind took over from there. All Satan had to do was give a few suggestions and then we took over. Satan, you can go on vacation. We'll handle it from here. And we humanity have done a pretty good job at promoting evil, right? And carrying evil out. So there's certainly evil in the world. I just think as a dispensationalist, there was a time of heightened spiritual activity that was in the physical realm rather than just in the spiritual realm, good versus evil kind of thing. There was the actual a lot of possession and oppression and all of the things that take place demonically. So I am not one and maybe I'll dig it out in one of these unlearned series sermons or something. I am not really one that is worried about a lot of demonic activity. Now, I did grow up in Espanola, and I remember all the stories my friends told and everybody it doesn't matter where you grew up. Probably even Lubbock had scary stories at night, right? And you think of all of these kind of things that go on. And I remember for a long time, I was scared to look in a mirror at night because somebody told me if you look in a mirror at night and there's a reflection coming back, it's got to be a demon, because you can't see a reflection from the mirror at night. And so I would just always not look in the mirror at night. Now, sometimes I just go in, just nanny, nanny, boo, boo, nothing there but me. Okay, I'm not a real how's this for a preacher? I'm not a real spiritual guy. I'm not a real spiritual meets the physical kind of guy. So here definitely this was the spiritual meeting the physical. This unclean spirit, I take this as a demon. He was not mentally ill or anything else. He had a demon, and he cried out. Okay, now, I am going to contend here this verse, the next verse, and one after that. I believe that he is going to be this man who is in the synagogue with the unclean spirit. So this man cried out. Now, you can interpret it as this unclean spirit cried out. You know, grammatically, we might go 50 50. Almost everybody takes the unclean spirit cried out. And that's why I'm going to take the opposite position. Well, it's always kind of fun to question the assumptions a little bit, but I think there's a decent case to say we're not going to hear from the unclean spirit here. We do hear from him sometimes, and I think it's clear in other places of scripture when the demonic are actually talking. And here I don't think it's so clear that the demonic are actually talking. So this man's got the unclean spirit. So with an unclean spirit is sort of a it's a clause. Speak grandma, grandmatus here. As a scribe, it's a clause, but it's the man who cried out, and the man was saying, let us alone. Now, let's just talk about that right there. Let us alone. You do notice that the pronoun us is italics, which means it's not translating anything. The translators put that in there, but it's definitely that that's it's got to be there. The we is is there. So us and we. That's the what first person plural? What have we to do with thee? The I don't know how to describe how to how to how to explain it as one with authority saying is in the first person singular. No, it was in the third person singular. He was saying is the only way you can translate it by grammar. So the man, he was saying, let us alone. Let us alone. What have we to do with thee? Now, your mind immediately tells you this is the demon speaking and there's a whole bunch of him in there, there's lots of demons. And so this one demon speaking on behalf of all of them in the man are saying let us alone, what have we to do with thee? And the reason you say that is because you read the story of the Gathering Demoniac. He was the one that was up in the cliffs over on the other side of Galilee. We'll get to him in chapter five probably in a week or so. And the Gathering Demoniac, if you go and read that story in Mark five, I'm not going to read all it's 20 verses, so we won't get there now. But if you go and check that out, it is very clear when the man speaks and when the demons speak and the demons, they say we are legion, that's the one where there's a whole bunch of them. I think we mix up stories here. I think this singular man here in the synagogue who's got this evil spirit, he is the one saying let us alone, what have we to do with thee, Jesus of Nazareth? But then the question becomes, well, why is one person saying let us alone, what have we to do with thee? A singular? You'd say Let me alone, what have I got to do with you? He doesn't say that. So we assume the we is the demons. But it's not the only thing that can fit. The we could be those of Capernium, those who gathered together in the synagogue, those who live there that day. So here Jesus is coming and he's teaching as one of with authority and the guy with the demonic spirit, with the demon comes in and he wants Jesus out of Copernium. And so he speaks in a sense on behalf of all Capernium and says let us alone, what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? Now to build that case grammatically it certainly works. The US and the we could be a group of demons, the US and the we could be those of Copernium. But to strengthen my case a little bit, I'll go with this statement right here thou Jesus, what of Nazareth? Why is he pointing out that you are Jesus of Nazareth? I think he's saying you don't belong here, we in Capernium were fine without you. You go back where you belong in Nazareth. Now of course I think the demon knows that they wanted to kill him in Nazareth. So it's a little bit like telling your neighbor why don't you go play in the highway, go out there, go jump off a bridge, something like that. I think that certainly this is a demonic desire. But I think the man is saying it the demon possessed man. Let us alone, let us in Capernium alone. What do we Caperniumites have to do with thee, Jesus? You belong in Nazareth, we're here. Goodbye, see you later. Probably hoping the demons, hoping the demon hoping that people will say, yeah, we got potluck lunch after this. Come on, get out of here. We don't have time for this, so get back home. Art thou come to destroy us? Well, that probably has to do with certainly the judgment that Messiah was to bring. And then it's kind of interesting. He doesn't say, we know thee who thou art. He says, I know thee who thou art. The Holy One of God. I know. Again, I think this is the man speaking. You do have a pronoun problem, and you know that this little thing right here be persnickety. I use especially for pronouns. You got to be persnickety on pronouns. Well, here in this passage, it is enough to make a guy pull his hair out because you got him and we and us and all of that. And then you switch from an us and a we to an I, and you're saying, what in the world is going on here? So what do we have to do with thee? I know who you are. Decide what it's going to be, I or we? I think it's one man talking and I might do this. Somebody comes in and wants to disrupt and I say, what do we have to do with you? You're from Espanola. Get on. See you all hit the door right there. I didn't mean you, Francesca. Out of here. Goodbye. And then I might say, I know who you are. It could be common language for that. Now, whichever it is, I'm going to say it's the man. And I'll add more to that a moment. I know who thou art. The Holy One of God. Holy One of God almost certainly is a messianic phrase. You are the Holy One of God. So you could interpret that. I know who you are. You're the messiah. But there's really not much evidence to prove holy One of God means Messiah. I just don't know what else it would mean. It seems kind of obvious to me this is a messianic phrase. We don't have it enough in the scripture to verify it. But I would again take this to say, the guy with the demonic spirit says, we don't need you here in Capernium. Go back to Nazareth where you belong. We're good without you. And I know who you are. You are the messiah. Audios. Don't let the door hit you on the way out is my interpretation of the passage. You know, it's kind of interesting that in Mark now we come to verse 24 here in verse 24, he started his letter Mark, his gospel, saying, I want to introduce you to the Son of God in verse one. And then John in this gospel doesn't really introduce him like he does in John. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the son of the world. That's not really in the Gospel. Of Mark. But when Jesus is baptized, the heavens open up and the voice of God comes, thou art my beloved son. So you've got two testimonies there who Jesus is, and I think that's by verse eleven. But both of them are not from a guy right there amongst us, so to speak. One's a voice from heaven and one's the guy writing the book. Here is the first time that we have one of the folk that are in the story expressing this is the Messiah, this is the Holy One of God. And isn't it kind of ironic that it happens to be the demon possessed man who's the first to spill the beans on the identity of Jesus? But that is how it goes. So Jesus rebuked him, saying, hold thy peace and come out of him. Now, this verse is a little bit harder for my contention that it's the demon possessed man doing all the talking, but it's not impossible. But it is the challenge. If I was going to debate myself, I would debate myself with this verse right here. So Jesus rebuked him. Who did Jesus rebuke, the man or the demon? Again, you could go either way here. I'm going with the man and said, hold thy peace. Now that is a euphemism for shut up. If you look at it in Greek, it says, shut the pie hole no more. Hold thy peace. So Jesus rebuked him. Hold thy peace and come out of him. Now that is honestly pretty hard to say. He's talking to the demon possessed man because you can't tell the demon possessed man come out of him. What are you talking about? You can tell the demon come out of him. You can't tell the guy come out of him. Seemingly challenging hill to climb to make this be about the man to do it the way you would climb that hill. There's actually two ways both of them work grammatically. You can say Jesus rebuked him, saying, hey, man, hold thy peace, and demon put the I don't have the red letter, but let's if this was a red letter edition, all of that in blue would be in red letters. Let's take the red off of the word. And Jesus said, hold thy peace. And Jesus said, come out of him. In which case Jesus is speaking to both. He tells the man, he tells the demon, come out. So in that little section right there, come out of him. I would say, okay, that most likely he's speaking to the demon. Come out of him. Now my argument gets better. I know it seems weak at this point, but my argument gets better as we continue on. But I mentioned two ways. There is another way and this one, that phrase come out of him. It actually does not have to be him. It can become out of him. Get out of him. Get out of it. sayanara so. He could be telling the demon possessed man no, we're done. Not having this discussion anymore. Get out. It actually does work in Greek. It's not the third grade reading. And I like the third grade reading. So I'll just be honest there with you. Let's pretend here for a moment. Jesus says just to him, the man, get out of here. Well, then the unclean spirit comes, gets upset when the unclean spirit had torn him. Let me ask you a question. Who's Him? The man. Who's Him? The man who's him? As you see, there's a little bit of challenge here is him, him, and him. I will say that every hymn that is obvious is the man. And so that's the hill you got to climb if you want to go the other way. The way I'm going well, if you want to go the way the normal crowd goes, then you have to say, why does Him always when it's obvious? And the rule is take the simple obvious explanation when it's obvious him is the man. So why don't we just make him the man all the way? Jesus rebuked the man, saying, Hold thy peace. Get out of it. Remember, that doesn't have to be him there grammatically. So when the unclean spirit had torn him and cried with a loud voice, he came out of him there. You say ha. I got you, bald headed preacher. Who is that? He the evil spirit. But do you know that the word spirit in Greek is neuter, not masculine? So why would you ever use the masculine hymn to speak of let's not blame it on the king. Actually, if you were reading the Greek, there is no masculine pronoun. They're referring to the spirit. And I think this is the biggest argument for Jesus is always talking to the man, because you really need a neuter pronoun to speak to spirit, because a spirit is an it, and the place where it uses the neuter is actually here. It reads do I have the literal on here? I think I do somewhere. What is that, verse 26? The literal is that the spirit cried out with a loud voice and came out of him. So you don't even have to have that. Okay, so the unclean spirit cried with a loud voice. Just put the word and came out of him. That's a more literal Greek. There actually is no pronoun in the Greek, either neuter or masculine. So you can't use that in your argument to say this or this. This him. What I'm saying is, if it's the masculine, it's got to be talking about the man. And all these hymns are the masculine, not the neuter. So grammatically, I think you have a hard time arguing this is the spirit, the evil spirit. I think we just have so much that it's the evil spirit in our mind that we have a hard time getting over this. The way we're reading it, we're having a hard time getting over it because we're thinking the story of the gathering demoniac and this is not that story. Now, let me just say there, and I got two verses in four minutes, but let me say there that you might look at that with your head spinning and say, Why? Why on a Wednesday night at 06:00 P.m., do we have to study grammar to that degree? And you might even rightly be saying, what difference does it make? Because theologically you can land on either side here and you're not going to come out with a different conclusion to the story or a different theological takeaway. It is what it is. Maybe confusing on the pronouns, but there was a guy there had an unclean spirit and by the end of the story, he didn't have an unclean spirit anymore. And Jesus expressed his authority there. That's the only conclusion you're going to come up with. So why bother talking about it? Because I think that there are places in the Bible in which when you really hone in on those pronouns, that's when all of a sudden some other places in the Bible come to life. And you're like, Ah, now I get it. That's what I mean. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons I am so persnickety about pronouns is because the reason I am not a Calvinist is because of the pronoun you I was leaning towards Calvinism, and then I learned my pronouns, and the one verse that was pushing me into Calvinism, I realized, oh, it's not even about me. That's about somebody else. So I think if you can just always, wherever you're studying, get in the habit of checking out those pronouns, that will make you a better lawyer and it will make you a better Bible student, just in case you ever need to be either one of those. Okay, now let's see the response. 27 and 28. They were all amazed in so much that they questioned among themselves saying, what thing is this? What new doctrine is this? For with authority, commandeth, he, even the unclean spirits, and they do obey him. So here you've got again the response to the crowd and the thing that they're astonished with. He put this at the beginning, he puts it at the end. The thing they're astonished with is his authority. Once again, I think the Gospel of Mark is about his authority. And here we see his authority over, I'll call it the spiritual world, the things of demons and all that kind of stuff. Next, in the next few verses next week, we'll see his authority over, I'll call it the physical world in terms of ailments. He's going to heal Peter's mother in law. And Mark is going to be filled with, let me show you the authority that Jesus has right here on earth. Demons, not a problem. Sickness, not a problem. Wind and waves, not a problem. Need to pay your taxes, not a problem. Governments, not a problem. It is about showing Jesus's authority to reign as Messiah. Because Messiah the messianic kingdom on Earth. This is what that guy needs to do. He needs to be able to have authority over all these I'll call them physical matters, but I think one of the things that Covenant Theology has done, and Evangelicalism is mostly completely bought into this, one of the things that therefore Evangelicalism has done is it made everything spiritual. So with everything spiritual, like the Kingdom of God is this thing going on in your heart. And with everything spiritual, there's not really a need for Jesus to prove that he can heal people, that he can cast out demons, that he can make waves go away. Because everything, if, if you listen to Covenant Theology Theology, everything Jesus came to do was to give you joy, joy, joy, joy down in your heart where thank you. It was all made into this spiritual thing, which I think causes a little bit of, I'll even say embarrassment if you push it very much. Because all of the miracles of Jesus under that Evangelical view that Jesus came to just save you and take you to Heaven, then honestly all these miracles that we're going to see Jesus do is kind of like Jesus saying, hey, let me show you what I can do. Come over here, I'll show you this. Now you want to see something? And that's not very Jesus like, is it? Hey, you want to see this? Watch me walk on water. I think you can do it. I can make you do. I even walk on water. All those miracles become sort of like cheap proofs that I'm better than the next guy or something. I think every one of them is proof that I'm everything that is promised to save and redeem this Earth, to restore this Earth, to fix this earth. And that's what he's coming about and that's the authority that is going to be displayed over and over is these physical kinds of things. Now can Jesus for us today give us eternal life and maybe even give us joy, joy, joy, joy down the heart and peace that passes understanding and all those kind of things? Yeah, no doubt about it. But we have to remember this is what Jesus is doing in the interim time before he comes to take care of the Antichrist and the beast and the false Prophet and all the demonic things happening at the end. Of time and overthrowing the Government and remodeling the Earth and restoring all things that he's proven himself in the first time, that he's actually going to be able to do all of that. So they're picking up on it. Yeah, he really can do these things. And so immediately his fame spread throughout all the region. Roundabouts Galilee. The word fame there is related to the Kuo, I believe is the word. It's related to acoustics. So the report about him, they heard about him immediately as fame spread throughout all the region around about Galilee. That tells us verse 28, I think is another little subtle reminder here that will come in helpful later on as we study the book of Mark. Remember that Mark is writing, I'm assuming Mark is the author, but we talked about that the first time. Mark is writing after the fact, which means Mark is going to interject from time to time things that he knows that weren't known then just to kind of keep us whole picture and the word forthwith. And verse 29, which will start next week, that's kind of like interpret that as meanwhile back at the ranch. So he's gone off, he's given us a commentary, now he's coming back. The commentary is, wow, you wouldn't believe how word spread about this. I mean, it was lickety split. It got out that Jesus has authority even over the demons, which was pretty good. If you're expecting a physical Messiah to reign on a physical earth, pretty good thing to say, hey, I can handle this, trust me. And word spread very quickly in the region round about Galilee and then he's just going to lay it on with these proofs that take place there and that runs us out of time on our series. I used to have a lady in the church, that when I came with more than a two page outline. Her word was always we're not finishing tonight. And I finished, Judy, I finished. More than a two page outline. Okay, let me lay this in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we're grateful for your love and watch care for us. We're grateful that Jesus the Messiah did come and display his authority here over the spiritual world, and not just evil, but the actual physical demons he's showing authority over. And whichever way we go on the pronouns dear Heavenly Father, we're grateful that we can just study and have really the luxury of spending some time looking at an issue that's not at all a life or death matter, but does help to expand our thinking and teach us some good study habits of the Word. So we're grateful for that. Pray that as we go from this place and come back again next time that you would watch over us and give us safety and we ask this in Jesus name, amen. Let me give a couple of announcements before you go. One is that the ladies are meeting tomorrow 09:00 at the farmhouse overland Sheep Farmhouse Cafe. Ladies. The ladies finally got jealous at us. Men. And so ladies, 09:00 A.m. At the farmhouse. Except they're not cooking. Yeah, or doing dishes. These women, they don't make them like they used to. But the men are having breakfast here at eight. We'll get up early and cook the biscuits from scratch and or maybe get them out of the can, I don't know. We'll have a good breakfast. So, men's breakfast tomorrow. Women's breakfast tomorrow. Sunday, I do part two of the spiritual gifts, and we're in the New Testament portion of Jerusalem on our virtual tour. And with that good to see. All of you, you are dismissed.