“JESUS CHRIST - A MAN APPROVED
OF GOD (Acts 2:22)”
Miracle #3-
Christ’s first two miracles occur outside of the synagogue … miracles
to the world you could say. This one addressed specifically to Israel.
1st miracle … power over creation
2nd miracle … power over death
3rd miracle … power over devils … and a foretaste of Christ on the cross
where Satan is defeated (Romans 16:20)
As we see, Christ had already astonished with his doctrine before this
3rd miracle, going right back to the time when he was twelve years old with the
doctors in the temple (Luke 2:42,46) … about seventeen years earlier.
His first miracle establishes Christ as creator with power over
material things, in changing the water into good wine, while his second shows
his power over death.
His third, explained here, has Christ not only showing his authority in
word and doctrine, but also power over devils (Luke 4:36). Christ was chalk and cheese from the
scribes, as he spoke, not only with authority, but with power.
This third miracle is also drawing his Jewish hearers further to
himself, before he expounds his Sermon on
the Mount with the kingdom of heaven doctrine. In other words,
he is laying a good platform through wonders, signs and miracles before
explaining to them his purpose on earth.
The two accounts in Mark and Luke do not contradict, with the former
having a single spirit of a devil, doing the talking. Luke’s account makes it
clear there is more than one of these spirits. Mark’s account does not mention
a devil, and so it is the spirit that tears the man.
Luke’s account has the devil direct one of his spirits to do the
tearing, but the devil leaves the man unhurt. Ah yes, the devil threw the man
down in Luke’s account, but a spirit tore him in Mark’s account. A bit
complicated, Dear Reader, but as always there are no contradictions in
the King James Bible … unlike other ‘bibles’ and their accounts.
Now this third miracle has to remind Israel, as Christ is now in the
synagogue, that their history tells them that God also has power over devils,
with the account in Isaiah of Lucifer saying his five “I wills” (Isaiah 14: 12-15).
Christ is on earth to demonstrate that Christ is God manifest in the
flesh (1Timothy 3:16) and so
re-enacts the demonstration of the power of God in the Old Testament.
Christ’s fame spreads throughout the land with people saying “What a word is this!” (Luke 4:36) … little knowing that Christ is the word not
just a word.
Christ had
created Lucifer, so it was nothing for Christ to have power over this devil, an
underling of Lucifer, with a simple “…Hold thy peace…” (Luke 4:35).
It is by no accident that the power of Christ’s miracles are displayed
in this order … creation, death, Satan.
Harley Hitchcock
This
website’s front page is:
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“JESUS
CHRIST - A MAN APPROVED OF GOD
(Acts 2:22)”
Miracle #4-
Luke 4:38-39)
