“Have you ever been in a really dark place?” I asked God’s people as I began a sermon on Mark 1:21–28 this morning. Struggling with darkness might include those who have suffered abuse at the hands of family members or church figures, those who are wrestling with serious illness, and even those who may be struggling with sinful temptation. You have hope even in dark places, for Mark points you to the first miracle he records Jesus performing.
On a Sabbath, probably the first one after calling four fishermen to follow him, they enter the synagogue at Capernaum, and Jesus begins to teach with an authority that amazes the crowd. The reverence of the synagogue service is shattered by the piercing confrontation between a man possessed by an unclean spirit and Jesus. Satan the great imitator, responds to the incarnation by having his followers take over various human beings. Although demon possessions seem to have clustered during the time of Christ’s earthly ministry, Satan and his fallen angels continue to seek to harm God’s people today. There are dark places.
“When Christ appeared on earth, this ‘prince’ [Satan] concentrated his power against him, not only by assaulting him personally and persecuting him relentlessly, but also by surrounding him on all sides with demonic forces in order to thus break down and resist this work. The (demon-)possessed in the New Testament were not ordinary sick folk, even though symptoms of illness—deafness, muteness, epilepsy, dementia—also occurred among them…. Satan mimics everything: God reveals himself in theophany (incarnation), prophecy, and miracle; the demonic caricature of these three, accordingly, is obsession, mantic, and magic.”
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 3, pages 189–190
Mark spends relatively little space quoting the teaching of Jesus — he reveals his character by describing what he does. Throughout his short Gospel he repeatedly recounts the Messiah and his disciples casting out demons. His focus is not on procedures of exorcism, but on the power and authority of the Savior. Here, near the beginning of his Gospel, the first miracle recorded is Jesus commanding the unclean spirit to leave the man — and he does. This Gospel (1:12–13) has recorded a strikingly brief account of the temptation of Jesus, mentioning wilderness and wild beasts, culminating in angels providing for their Lord. That initial battle is resumed in the synagogue service.
An aspect that is not discussed in the commentaries I used in preparation is why this first miracle, this casting out of a satanic spirit, took place on the Sabbath. I suggest we need to look at the very first Sabbath, recorded in Genesis 2:1–3. Following six days of creating activity, the Creator rested on the seventh. He entered his rest (there is no “and it was evening and morning, the _____ day” formula for this seventh day), a rest which continues, as Jesus suggests when he is accused of violating the Sabbath by healing a lame man, “My Father is working until now, and I am working,” John 5:17. God rested, not because he was weary, but because, having created mankind, male and female, in his image, the goal was apparently for them to enter his rest, after a time of testing in the Garden of Eden.
Psalm 95:11, after describing the unbelieving rebellion of Israel in the desert, records God’s dreadful oath, “They shall not enter my rest.” Hebrews 3:7–4:11, the only place in the New Testament to deal with either Genesis 2:1–3 or Psalm 95:11, takes up both passages, making the point that the church, like Old Testament Israel, still awaits consummate rest, and in the meantime, there remains for her a sabbath-keeping or sabbathing for the people of God, Hebrews 4:10.[1] The church, post her Savior’s resurrection, enjoys each Christian Sabbath as an anticipation of the final, eschatological rest.
Eve, given to Adam to help him (not just for companionship or to do chores) was to assist in this goal of entering God’s rest. You know that, tempted by Satan in the form of a serpent, she did not help her husband reach the goal, but involved him in disobedience. Instead of entering God’s rest, our first parents were exiled from the Garden, not, however, before God had given the promise that the seed of the woman would one day crush the head of the serpent.
Now, many centuries later, that Son of Eve and Mary, on the Sabbath, performed the miracle of driving out a minion of Satan. At this point in Mark’s Gospel, the struggle is still going on. The crucial events of the death and resurrection of Christ are still future. But on this Sabbath the power of Satan is being crushed. The event holds the promise that one day the evil one will be fully and totally vanquished. The dark effects of his influence are not insurmountable, not for the One who died and rose and entered his Father’s rest. And what he has done, he is doing for you who trust in him, you who by faith are united with him in his death, resurrection, and ascension.
The darkness may not have totally vanished from your life. But the glory light of heavenly rest shines even into the darkest corners of Christian suffering in this present age. And a Sabbath day confrontation in a synagogue in Capernaum assures you of who the Victor is. The event on that Sabbath sounds a note that echoes through history, making each Lord’s Day a sabbathing, looking forward to the coming of our Lord.
[1] See the excellent treatment of this passage by Richard B. Gaffin Jr., “A Sabbath Rest Still Awaits the People of God,” Pressing Toward the Mark: Essays Commemorating Fifty Years of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, (Committee for the Historian of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church; Philadelphia, 1986) 33–51.