This transcript has been automatically generated, and therefore may not be 100% accurate.

Thank you, Helen. Do please keep your bibles open if you have one, if you do need one, then do stick up your hand and we can deliver one to you free of shame. Wonderful. Yeah. One over here.

Thank you. We're thinking this morning about the question, can I trust Jesus teaching? Can I trust Jesus teaching? I'm really tempted to say this morning, yes, and sit down, because that will be the answer. But we're going to get there, hopefully a little bit of a more helpful way.

But as we do, let's pray.

Father, we thank you for your word, and we do pray that you would help us to understand by your spirit this morning. We pray that we wouldn't hear human words and human voices, but that we would hear your voice, your authentication of your truth. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen. When we talk about Jesus teaching, trusting his teaching, we could really say, trusting Jesus promises, can we trust his promises?

Because his teaching doesn't come to us simply as timeless truths that are just immediately obvious when you hear them. Too many cooks spoil the broth now. Okay, wow. That's true. But it doesn't matter who said it, does it?

Where promise is different, it matters who says the promise, doesn't it?

I was thinking about this this week, and I got two letters through my letterboxdehenous. In quick succession, they both involved a promise, they both involved money. The first one was a little leaflet saying, congratulations, you've won a hundred pounds of wine. Well, I threw it away straight away. I've had it before.

It was a business card, you know, trying to make me sign up for something. I didn't trust it at all. The second one was a letter from the Inland Revenue.

Needless to say, I threw that one away straight away. No, I didn't. It's normally bad news, but on this occasion, and try not to be too jealous here, it was good news. I opened it up with trepidation and it said, you've overpaid on your taxes. I thought, let me just clean my glasses and cheque that again.

Yes, that's what it said. You've overpaid on your taxes. That is good news, isn't it? So, two different letters, two promises that looked quite similar. They both came through the letterbox, they both needed opening, they both involved money.

One was true and one wasn't. The difference is the person who said it, isn't it? See, this morning, as we think about Jesus teaching, the really key thing is not to focus on his teaching, per se, but on who it is that says it. It's trustworthy because of who said it. This is what Luke will show us.

You may remember last week, if you were here, we were with Jesus in Nazareth in the synagogue at the beginning of Luke, chapter four. And Luke stood up to read the reading for that week. He unrolled the Isaiah scroll and he read from Isaiah, chapter 61, these amazing words. The spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.

And Jesus said, this promise from 800 years ago, that's happening now. That's happening now. I'm the one who's proclaiming the year of the Lord's favour. I'm the one who's setting prisoners free. This is all happening in me.

Well, you might think, Jesus. Thats big words, isnt it? Thats big words. Thats a serious manifesto to give out for your ministry. Can it be true?

That is what those in Nazareth certainly thought. They thought, no, this cannot be true. So they kicked him out. They kicked him out. Luke knows that question is in our mind.

Can we trust this manifesto? And so he gives us three stories today, each of which show us something of the person of Christ. And because of that person, he shows us we can trust what he says. Those three stories show us that Jesus has the right to speak, shows us that he's got the might to speak. He's got the power to do what he says, and he's got the presence to act.

Might, right and presence. Let's look at our first scene in verses 31 to 37. We know this is a new scene. Often in the Gospels, a change in geography shows us a new scene. And jesus has moved from Nazareth to Capernaum.

It says, goes down. This is actually north, but I think it might be downhill. So maybe he goes down. He goes down into Capernaum and he enters the synagogue there just as he was in the synagogue in Nazareth. He teaches there just as he taught in Nazareth.

And the people were amazed there, just as the people were amazed. Nazareth. But something else happens after his teaching has amazed the people in Nazareth. They said, that was amazing. It can't be true, and kicked him out here.

Jesus has a confrontation with a demon possessed man. Now, perhaps in the 21st century, your mind says, well, that can't be a demon possessed man, can it? Because we know better than that. Or maybe some sort of doubt like that. But actually, jesus knew all about the difference between demon possession and physical healing.

He's going to go and heal somebody in the next story. Neither is he confusing mental illness and demon possession. He knows all about mental illness and anguish.

It doesn't confuse that. The Bible doesn't confuse that. The Bible talks of all sorts of difficult situations, mentally and emotionally. And think of the psalms. Nowhere in the psalms is there confusion.

That mental anguish is demon possession. So jesus knows the difference. And so what's happening here is to be taken at face value. Jesus really did deal with the spiritual realm. There really is a spiritual battle going on here.

And this is really important because it helps us get to the bottom of what this story means. Because on one level it's obvious, isn't it? Jesus casts out a demon. That is incredible. But there's more to it than that.

You see, the demon speaks to jesus, doesn't he? If you read in verse 34, go away, says the demon, what do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?

Or you could translate the what do you want with us? What is there between me and you? What is there to you and to me? There is nothing in common between us, if you will. And the reason the demon is saying that is because he says, you're in my sphere now, Jesus.

You've got your area over there. That's for you. This is my area. Don't act in my sphere. I'm in control here.

Go away. Get off my land. He says, this is a debate, a battle about jurisdiction. Who has authority to act here?

Well, Jesus doesn't get off his land, does he? Jesus says to the demon, be quiet. Verse 35, be quiet. Come out of him.

And in that simple act, Jesus shows that his authority, his right to speak, isn't limited to some sphere over there. There's no boundaries, there are no borders that Jesus cannot cross in the spiritual realm. The demons don't run it over here and Jesus runs it over here. Jesus has the right to speak everywhere. These sort of border disputes in jurisdiction are quite common, aren't they?

They're quite familiar to us, actually. When we read the news, we hear quite a lot about it. If you think of Internet companies, you know, they operate in one country, but they're available everywhere. So who has the right to manage them? Who has the right to tell them what to do?

We often hear in the news, don't we? TikTok versus America or Elon Musk versus the Eu? You know, these things are in our news, and they're jurisdiction disputes. Who has the right to speak in such and such an area. Well, what Luke says is we can trust Jesus teaching everywhere because he has the right to speak everywhere.

There is no jurisdiction disputes with Jesus. This is important for us to see because we're thinking in this series about the universal Christ, that Jesus is for everybody. His authority doesn't reach down to the end of England, but not cross the channel, or it doesn't end at the end of Europe and nothing go over. His jurisdiction is everywhere in the whole world.

But for us personally, it also means that his jurisdiction is in every sphere of our lives. And this is perhaps more challenging because we might want to see Jesus as having authority in moral matters and spiritual matters. But how about matters of work and family life, matters of friendships and finance?

That's much more difficult, isn't it? But there are no borders. Jesus teaching has the right everywhere. Well, let's look at our next title. Jesus has the might to act.

And we see this in verse 38, verses 38 to 41. And here we have a healing of Simon's mother in law. Another change in geography. Here Jesus stays in Capernaum, but a new scene is indicated by a change in geography. And I actually have a picture of capernaum just for us to be able to picture where Jesus was.

Do we have that? Peter, look at this. So on the bottom left, you are looking at the synagogue, the Capernaum synagogue. The synagogue Jesus would have walked around in is actually the rubble underneath this one. This was built on top of the first century synagogue.

But that's the exact spot Jesus did cast out the demon. At the top right, you see a sort of tenty looking metal thing. It's not a ufo or something like that. It's a covering for the ruins, for Simon's house. So of course you don't want them to be weather beaten.

So Jesus had just gone round the corner. Now you can picture where he is in Simon's house, just around the corner from the synagogue. Thank you, Peter. So he's there, and when he's there, he meets Simon's mother in law. This scene is amazing.

And not just amazing because Jesus is nice to mother in laws, but amazing because he shows major authority. You see this woman is suffering from a fever, and what does jesus do? You almost miss it if you blink. It's so brief, isn't it? Verse 39, he bent over her and rebuked the fever.

I mean, amazing, amazing, actually, for what it doesn't say, really, when you think about that. If you stop and think about that, Jesus didn't say, okay, I'll write you out a prescription for such and such, okay? We'll get an MRI to be sure he doesn't start incanting a magic spell. He doesn't even start praying. He doesn't even do anything like that.

He just speaks. Why? Because his authority is not dependent. His power is not dependent on anyone else. He doesn't draw his strength from elsewhere.

He simply has the power to act. He has the might to do what he says off his own back. No intermediaries, nothing in between, just straight power.

And that's worth thinking about, isn't it? As I was thinking about this, it came to mind that Covid was quite an incredible time in lots of ways. And one of the things that was amazing about it was the way that humanity drew together just for a short time, because we had a common enemy. You know, we all wanted to beat Covid wherever we were in the world. You know, we weren't thinking, I want to fix it in England, but not somewhere else, were we?

We wanted to fix this problem worldwide. There was actually an agreement that the human race wanted to fix this problem, which is not all that common, is it? So the human race put its mind together. We got our brightest and best, we threw our money at it, and the outcome of all our best efforts added up. Every single human being alive amounted to nothing.

We couldn't do anything about it, could we? Not really, not in the end. And it's quite amazing to think, isn't it, that we may know that we're powerless individually, but actually, even as a race, even as every single one of us acted together, we still couldn't beat, we still couldn't beat a virus. It's quite humbling, isn't it? And it's important to think about when we compare that Jesus just stood there by himself, spoke with a word, just a word.

He rebuked the favour and it was gone. You see, Jesus speaks and we can trust what he says because he has the might to do it.

I wonder whether some of us sometimes feel as though we believe Jesus wants to help us, but sometimes he just, things just get a bit away from him. Maybe, you know, we think, oh, it's a shame that happened. And we have a picture of Jesus sitting there thinking, I wish that had gone a different way. If only I could have done something about that.

That doesn't happen, that does not happen to him, because he has the might to act on everything that he says he is able, while finally he is present. Verses 42 to 44. At the very end in these verses, we have another change of scene. Jesus moves out to a solitary place and the people try to stop him going. They of course have a man who's there healing, and no one wants to lose a healer, so they want him to stay.

Well, you might say, you've just said that Jesus presence is important, and here he is going away. That's the opposite of what he's saying. But notice this, he says in verse 43, I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sentence. So his going away from Capernaum is not because he doesnt want to be with them, its because he wants to spread it even further. He wants to be with everybody.

And of course we follow the story out of the gospel and into acts, and we find that Jesus ascends into heaven, and through acts hes present from Samaria, Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth, isnt he? By his spirit?

So Jesus wanted to be present then and he's present now. In fact, we're in a much better place after the ascension. Sometimes we might think, I wish he was here bodily. Much better for us that he's ascended on high, because at the right hand of the father he is everywhere with us, all of us, all of the time. And this is another essential ingredient to why we can trust Jesus teaching, because he not only has the right and the might, but he is also present to do it.

There's no good having the right and the power to speak if you're not there, is there? No point at all.

Think about Superman for a minute. Got Superman in your mind? Wonderful picture of Superman. He's so cool, isn't he, Superman? And what's amazing about Superman is he has the right.

You know, the police say, yes, you can go and help all of these crimes, okay. He has the might, doesn't he? Not many people can have bullets ping off their chest, but Superman can do that. He's really powerful. But there is a major flaw for Superman.

I'm not just talking about kryptonite, there's a major flaw, and that is he can't be at two places at once. It's all very well that if Lois Lane falls off a building, he can whiz there and catch her. But as Lex Luthor discovers, when he wants to make a good plan, if he makes two things happen at the same time, Superman has to choose. Will he stop the bank robbery or will he save Lois Lane? Can't be both at once.

He may have the right and the might. But not being there is an issue, isn't it? But with Jesus, he is present. He came to be present.

So why can we trust Jesus? We can trust Jesus teaching not because, as we said at the beginning, not because it's timeless truths. Much of what Jesus says is timelessly true, but much of it really isn't. A much of it is things that would be ridiculous said by anybody that wasn't him. I've come to set the captives free to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.

That's not simply a timeless truth, is it? That takes Jesus to say it. That takes one who is God to declare that.

So we don't trust Jesus teaching because we sit down and we think it's plausible. There's very little that's plausible about it from a human perspective. If you take the Bible by itself and weigh it all up without seeing it as spoken from God, you're going to come to a conclusion that it's probably not true. Because if God didn't speak it, it isn't. But he did.

And it is because the one who speaks is the one that matters. Can we trust the Bible? Yes. Yes. Because Jesus has the right to speak.

His teaching has the right everywhere, in all spheres, because he's the one who is able to do these impossible things. The impossible is possible with him. And because he is present with us, he doesn't miss opportunities, is present with us all. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for sending your son. We thank you that his promises are true, that they are trustworthy. Thank you. That he has authority to speak to them, that he has the power to do them, and that he is with us even now by his spirit. We pray, Father, that we might trust him this week.

Amen.