Sun.’s Devo - The Stronger Man

Read: Leviticus 6:1-7:27; Mark 3:7-30; Psalm 37:1-11; Proverbs 10:3-4
Jesus told the Pharisees that the greatest commandment was to love the Lord with everything you have and the second greatest was to love your neighbor as yourself. Yesterday, we read about what we are to do if we sin against God, but today we are reading about what to do if we sin against people.
If we lie, cheat, steal or find someones lost property we are to return it. We are to give them a fifth of its worth if we are guilty in any way. Then a guilt offering was to be made to be forgiven of God for defrauding one of God’s people.
The different offerings represent different prayers we pray to God. The sin offering is a prayer of salvation. When we pray this prayer our sins are removed as far as the east is from the west. The guilt offering is a prayer of repentance we pray as we struggle against the strongholds and sinful patterns in our lives. The fellowship offering is our prayers of relationship with God. It is when we just talk to him and listen. We enter into God’s presence with praise and thanksgiving. A freewill offering or a vow is a promise we make to the Lord which he does not take lightly. It is important that we do what we tell the Lord we will do.
One thing they were told repeatedly was to not eat meat with blood in it. That would mean that the sacrifice was still alive. I think that it means if you are offering something to the Lord, it can not still have strings attached to you. It must be dead to you and something you totally give with no regrets. Lot’s wife is a great example of this. Sodom was not dead in her heart so it was hard for her to leave. She proved this when she could not just walk away from it. When we offer something to the Lord, we have to be able to walk away and not return to it.
In Mark, Jesus is in his most popular part of his ministry. The only way he could get away from the crowd was to launch out in a small boat and preach from there. It was worse than a Beatle’s concert in the sixties. He and his disciples couldn’t even go to someone’s house and eat because of the crowd. When his family saw this they said he was crazy and when the teachers of the law saw this they said he was possessed by Beelzebub.
This is so true about people who become sold out to the Lord. First, their family thinks they are crazy and going off the deep end. Then the “religious” church attributes it to confusion and Satan.
Jesus didn’t address his family, but he did address the religious leaders. He explained that a kingdom can not be divided against himself. Then he said, “No one can enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man.” What he was saying was that he was the stronger man who had entered Satan’s territory where Satan had stricken people with sickness, pain and filled them with his spirit, Jesus was now coming in and tying Satan up and taking sickness, pain and demons from them. Then they are ready to receive forgiveness and be spiritually saved.
Jesus was the super hero who everyone called the villain.
Lord, help us to have discernment to know what is evil and what is of you. Thank you for all the rejection you went through to set us free from the lies of the devil.