Called Out to Messy Transformation

[This message was shared with the people of Friendship Church during our worship celebrations on January 28 and 29. The three key significant things mentioned here, while reflecting the way my own thinking has developed over the course of the week, are taken from a message by Pastor David Stark.]

Mark 1:21-28

There are three things that I want you to notice about this passage.

The first is the power of Jesus’ teaching. The people in the synagogue there in Capernaum were “astounded.” The original New Testament Greek says literally that they “were blown out of their minds.” The reason for their reaction, our lesson says, is that Jesus taught with “authority.” That word in Greek is exousia, which can also be translated as power. There was power and authority in Jesus’ teaching.

The telephone call came, as happens so often in crisis situations, in the middle of the night. This was in my former parish. “Pastor,” the person on the other end of the line said, “we’re here in Toledo. We had to bring Mike to the hospital. Could you come up?”

I wasn’t surprised. Mike’s life was a mess. I’d been counseling with him for some time and it seemed as though we were getting nowhere. He had so many problems. He was abusing alcohol and several different sorts of drugs. He was harming himself in other ways. During the course of our discussions, he also revealed that he had been repeatedly savagely abused as a child.

My experience through the years has been that people who abuse alcohol and drugs are usually among the most sensitive souls you'll ever meet, beautiful people whose lives have been so drenched in pain that they anesthetize themselves against life. The same was true, I suspected with Mike. You could tell that there was another person buried beneath his hurts, but the Mike I usually saw was an emotionless walking wound.

I arrived at the hospital that night just in time for his interview with an emergency room intake physician. The doc went through a series of boiler plate questions with Mike. Had Mike been in the situation before or been more on his guard, he might not have been as forthright with his answers as he was that night. “Have you ever contemplated suicide?” the doctor asked. “Yes.” That was it! Under those circumstances, the doctor was obligated to admit Mike, even against his will.

Folks, if I live to be a hundred-and-twenty, I will never forget the venom that spewed from Mike’s mouth at that. He was like a cornered animal. It wasn’t just what he said, it was how he said it. There was menace in his posture, as though at any moment, he might pounce on any one of us. I prayed frantically under my breath while the doctor and an assistant subdued Mike.

He was admitted to the hospital for treatment and I know that all the counseling that he received in subsequent weeks helped him. But what helped most was a little devotional booklet that a friend gave to him. Every day, Mike read the booklet and the Biblical passage on which it was based. He had become desperate enough to read God’s Word.

One scholar theorized (and I think that he was right) that the teaching the synagogue heard from Jesus that day in Capernaum was probably the same thing Jesus told people at the very beginning of His ministry, which we talked about last week: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

That’s so simple. Where’s the Wow Factor? What would cause the crowd to be “blown out of their minds”? Here’s the cause: Jesus is God. His every word is imbued with the power of the One Who made the universe. His words and every word that truly reflects His identity and will reflect the pure, underived power of God Almighty!

Jesus’ Word has so much clout, in fact, that as Mike heard it and read it and thought about it, a transformation began to happen in his life. It’s been sometime since I’ve heard from him, but the last time I did, he was doing well. He was freed of all his demons. There’s power in Jesus’ teaching.

This brings up the second thing that I want you to see about this passage: Jesus’ teaching has the capacity to call whatever prevents us from experiencing God’s wholeness, whatever keeps us from living life with God, out of our lives. That’s what happened in the synagogue in Capernaum. In the middle of Jesus’ teaching there, a man filled with a demon, a spiritual agent of the devil, showed up, disrupting everything. Apparently referring to his demon buddies, the demon, speaking through the man he possessed, asked Jesus if He had come to get all of them. “I know who you, Jesus: the Holy One of God.”

Jesus was not about to let a demon teach people at worship in a synagogue about His identity as God in the flesh. That’s something all of us must come to by faith as we get to know Jesus for ourselves.

Besides, when Satan tells us about Jesus, he always does it with a spin designed to undermine our faith. He tries to say that Jesus isn’t really God. Or that He can’t help you. Or He didn’t really rise from the dead. Or He wasn’t sinless. He tries to tell these lies even though the experiences of billions of people who have gotten to know Jesus down through the centuries disproves everyone of them.

That’s why Jesus called out to the demon, “Be silent! Come out of him!” In other words, Jesus called the thing that was enslaving that man out, so that he could be free. That’s what He did for Mike.

And whatever it is that’s enslaving you, Christ can do the same thing for you. He can silence and remove the all that enslaves you.

• Young people, the Savior Who went to a cross and rose from the dead for you can give you a healthy self-esteem.
• Middle age folks, caught in a rut, He can help you live with contentment and joy.
• Older folks, dogged by a sense of your limitations, He can overcome your self-doubts and help you use your wisdom and experience for good.

Jesus and His Word have authority. Jesus and His Word can call the worst from out of us and set us free to be with Him now and forever. But here’s the third thing to remember: When Jesus works in our lives, it won’t always be easy. In fact, at times it will be downright messy.

Martin Luther once said that the believer in Jesus Christ is the Holy Spirit's workshop. I've never been in a carpentry shop yet that wasn't messy during the time the carpenter was building. Wood shavings from the lathe and dust from the table saw are on the floor. As Jesus works on us, removing what separates us from God's goodness and forging and shaping our characters, things can get messy.

When Jesus called the demon out of the man at the Capernaum synagogue, it convulsed and cried and yelped. The evil in that man wouldn't give up without a messy fight!

Sinful habits and compulsions, just like all habits and compulsions, are hard to break. That’s because, as somebody has said, we form our habits and after a while, our habits form us. They get a grip on us.

A man came to see me once. “I’m having an affair,” he told me, “and I know it’s wrong. But I can’t stop.” So far as I know, he never did. You see he had heard Jesus call out the evil into which he’d sunk, but he was unwilling to let it go. It would have been too messy to try.

I always loved baseball. But I pretty much stopped playing it when I was in junior high school. Then, years later, after I was married, a couple of buddies asked me to be on a rec league softball team. It was an intimidating thing. I was about the only member of the team who hadn’t played high school or college baseball. Two of my friends of whom you’ve heard me speak before, Tom and Jerry (really!), worked with me a couple of nights a week before our first season started.

A particular problem was my swing. You see, if you’re a right-handed batter, you need to allow your left hand to pull your swing through the ball, push off with your right foot, and extend with your left foot. My swing was all wrong. I rested my weight on both feet, for one thing. Worse, I pushed my swing through with my right hand, rather than pulling it with my left. All of that meant that I wasn’t striding into my swing or backing it with any power.

Those hours my friends spent working with me on my hitting skills weren’t perfect. But they paid off. For four of the seven years we played, I had the highest batting average on our team!

The point is that getting rid of a bad habit is messy. But the messiness pays off if we'll submit to proper instruction! No one is a better instructor than the Savior, Jesus.

Seminary professor Howard Hendricks was once told by a student, “You know, I haven’t been bothered by the temptation to sin in about three years.” Hendricks told the shocked student, “That’s about the worst thing I think you could say.” The student was dumbfounded and asked, “Why?” Because, Hendricks explained, if evil isn’t making a struggle for you, it means you’re probably not even in the game. It meant, you see, that that young man wasn’t cooperating with Jesus Christ in calling out the worst in him to help him to become a passionate, effective agent of His love and power in the world, which is what each of us can become.

She had drifted along spiritually for awhile, but came to a point where she felt a need for God. She began to attend church, not getting much out of it, when one Sunday, the pastor showed how Jesus and His Word could impact her life. It was as though he was speaking directly to her. Jesus always speaks to us through His Word, if we let Him.

• Jesus' Word has authority.
• It can call out of us everything that isn’t from God.
• And when we let Him in, that Word can bring the messiness of positive change to our lives.

May the messiness that goes with Jesus’ forever freedom be a central element of your life every single day!

[The stories I tell about personal experiences really are personal experiences, no James Freyism here. The story of the student and Howard Hendricks is one I've read in several places through the years. The story of the woman at the end of the message is akin to something I've observed countless times through the years, but specifically was told by Pastor Stark.]

[The Bible lesson around which next weekend's worship will be built is Mark 1:29-39.]