June 25, 2000
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Luke 4:38-44 Jesus: Divine Deliverer
Jesus: The Divine Deliverer, Part 1
Luke 4:38-44
Now as we look at our verses, the verses before us, what we have here interestingly enough is a summary of some of the evidences that Jesus is who He claimed to be, a summary of certain categories in which Jesus demonstrated His authority, or demonstrated His power. Let me read these verses, follow along as I read. Verse 38, "And He arose and left the synagogue and entered Simon's home. Now Simon's mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, they made request of Him on her behalf. Standing over her He rebuked the fever and it left her and she immediately arose and waited on them. And while the sun was setting all who had any sick with various diseases brought them to Him and laying His hands on every one of them He was healing them. And demons also were coming out of many, crying out and saying, 'You are the Son of God,' and rebuking them He would not allow them to speak because they knew Him to be the Christ. And when day came, He departed and went to a lonely place and the multitudes were searching for Him and came to Him and tried to keep Him from going away from them. But He said to them, 'I must preach the Kingdom of God to the other cities also for I was sent for this purpose.' And He kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea."
That may seem like an eclectic group of small, brief comments that summarize a certain period, or a certain range of activity in the life of Jesus, but they're very carefully connected as we would expect from Luke and as we would expect from the Holy Spirit who is inspiring Luke. You see, it is true about the Jews that they desired a sign. In 1 Corinthians 1:22 Paul says the Jews desired a sign. They weren't about to accept just anybody as their Messiah, there were plenty would-be pretenders to the role of Messiah who wanted to come down and gain a favor of the people and be elevated to positions of power as their Messiah. They wanted to have some criteria by which to judge who was real and who was not. And so they were always looking for some sign. A sign is something that points or directs you somewhere and that's exactly what they were looking for, something in the life of Jesus that would give them the necessary evidence to be convinced that He was in fact the Messiah.
They were looking for a sign and Jesus delivered. In these brief verses Luke shows us three realms of power in which Jesus gave them a sign...three realms in which He demonstrated His divinity...three realms in which He demonstrated His messiahship...three realms in which He proved Himself to be the great Deliverer. Obviously we would agree, since we've just done a series on it, that sinners need deliverance, that God sent Jesus to be the deliverer. Here we find that we require deliverance essentially in three areas, in body, mind and soul from our fallenness.
First of all, let's talk about the body. All of us are constantly subject to the devastating effects of the Fall physically. Birth is the first step toward dying. Deformity, illness, weakness, injury, aging, disease, death, that is the universal biography. We need help in the physical area because we are born to die. So whoever this Savior is, whoever this Redeemer is, He should be and must be capable of overpowering the physical realm which tends toward death. He has to be able somehow to stop the destruction of the body of man. He has to be able to do something to us physically that can grant to us eternal existence. He has to be able to give us new and eternal bodies that will never age, never become weak, never become ill and never die. So as we're looking for the Messiah, we need to find somebody who has power over physical problems. The question needs to be asked then, "Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, the Bible claims that Jesus was the Messiah, the Deliverer, the Savior, the Redeemer, so let's ask the question...did Jesus have the power to conquer disease? Did He have the power to conquer decay? And did He have the power to conquer death?" That is essential for the one who is to deliver us from sin and its impact on our physical nature.
Secondly, we need a deliverer who can work with our minds. When we talk about the mind we are very much aware of the fact that all human beings are subject to the destructive impact that comes upon the mind. That's where all the temptation and lust comes from. That's where all of evil desire comes from. That's where every thought that ultimately issues in a sin is produced. That's where the fertile ground of imagination stirs up iniquity. We need someone who can deliver our minds. We are assaulted in the mind, and particularly from Satan's kingdom. We know that Satan himself is disguised as an angel of light, demons are disguised themselves as ministers of light. They go around poisoning the minds of people. They are in the business of lying and deceiving. The fallen angels, the demons assault the minds of men through the development of a corrupt world system that generates wicked thoughts and wicked impulses in the mind. We need not only new bodies, we need new minds. That is to say we need to be free from the impact of sin physically. We need to be free from the impact of sin and the influences of demons mentally.
Thirdly, we need a Savior who can deal with our souls. We are as souls subject to the sovereign power of Satan. He is our father. He is, as it were, is the king of the sphere in which we live. Our souls are in his control. We are headed for eternal damnation as members of his kingdom. So we ask the third question...Did Jesus have the power to rescue sinners from Satan? From the devil's dominion and transfer them to His eternal Kingdom of righteousness and joy?
Essentially what we're saying here is this, does Jesus have power over the sin that is in us? Does He have power over the demons that corrupt our minds? And does He have power over the devil himself who is the sovereign over the kingdom in which we exist? The true Messiah must demonstrate those categories of power and authority. The true Savior of sinners must have authority to deliver sinners body, mind and soul from the effects of sin...physical, mental and spiritual. He must be able to rescue us from the decay of our fallen flesh, from the demons that assault our mind and from the dominion of the devil himself so that when Jesus comes if He is to be believed as the Messiah, then He must demonstrate evidence in these categories. He must show us that He has power over bodily decay, that He has power over the mind corrupted by demons, power over Satan's dominion.
So when we understand this, we go way beyond where the Jews were. The Jews were looking for a political deliverer. They were looking for some kind of military Messiah. But doomed sinners don't need a political leader. They don't need a social reformer. They don't need an economic guru. They don't need a military leader. We need a deliverer who will deliver our bodies and our minds and our souls from those things that damn us. And so it is in those three areas particularly that Luke records the power of Jesus in this brief passage. Let's take a look at the first one, and this opens up a huge area of important study in the life of Jesus, power over the physical realm.
He could deal with decay...power over the body, the fallenness of the body. This section helpfully is both specific and general. We will find here a specific illustration of Jesus' healing power and a general reference to the breadth of His healing ability which becomes evidence in this first category. Let's begin in verse 38 with a specific account. "And He arose and left the synagogue and entered Simon's home."
"He arose and left the synagogue." Same day. Now let me tell you how synagogue went, sort of. We went into detail as to what a synagogue service was like, I'm not going to go over that. But it generally ended around noon and that tradition is still with us. I try to end around noon, that's typically when church services tend to end and that goes way, way, way back to Sabbath observance in a synagogue when the services ended sometime around noon. However, in those days, of course, it was a Sabbath, it would have been on a Saturday rather than Sunday.
Now when the service ended there's another interesting part of Jewish life, it was followed by the major meal of the day. And so typically after the synagogue service was over, the people all went home to a very, very large and significant meal of the day which they sat together as families and enjoyed the provision of food. We pick up the story at that point. "They arose and left the synagogue and entered Simon's home."
Peter has not yet been called as a disciple of Jesus. He has not yet had his name changed from Simon to Peter. That happens later and we'll see that. He becomes a disciple in chapter 5. He gets his name changed later on and Matthew 16 records that. But there's no description of Peter because by the time Luke wrote his record, everybody knew who Simon was. Everybody knew who Peter was. So there wasn't any need to describe who he was, it was only necessary to mention Simon. And by the time Luke had finished his gospel and it was being read, everyone by then knew who Simon was. But at this time he is just a man in the synagogue. He is in the synagogue with his family. And his family is identified here. It says, "Now Simon's mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever and they made request of Him on her behalf." The word was getting around that Jesus could heal. As you know, He had been in Capernaum on prior occasion and had done some healing and there were healings done down in Judea in the south and the word was spreading. And so people were becoming very aware of His power. Already that very day, of course, the demoniac had been delivered from a demon, and so this was Peter's hometown.
Mark records the same account and Mark tells us Andrew was there, Peter's brother, as well as James and John. And none of them have been called as disciples yet, but they knew each other and they all went to the synagogue in Capernaum. And so they were fascinated by Jesus. Obviously they were drawn to Him and so they were the guests in the main meal of the day after the synagogue service was over.
We also know that Peter was married. I Corinthians 9:5 refers to Peter's wife. His wife is not mentioned here, but his mother-in-law was here. So we can construct a little bit about the family. This was Peter's house. Peter was married. Tradition tells us Peter had children, though the Scripture doesn't refer to them. And he had his mother-in-law living with him. That's a pretty common thing to do. So he was in a very normal kind of family structure. Well his mother-in-law had become very ill and she is suffering from what the other gospel writers who refer to this call a fever, and Luke, I guess, because he's a physician and tells...tends to be a little more technical calls a high fever, or mega fever. She had a severe fever. So these synagogue goers there in Capernaum had heard Jesus teach and they had heard about Jesus and they knew His power and they had known of His miracles and naturally they invited Him to dinner realizing, of course, that the mother-in-law was ill and wanting Jesus to do something about it. In fact, at the end of verse 38 it says, "They made request of Him on her behalf."
There's no way to diagnose exactly what she had but we all know that a fever is indicative of the body's effort to fight infections. She had some kind of serious infection producing a high fever. And there was great concern, no doubt, by her daughter, Peter's wife, no doubt by Peter and as well, perhaps, as others in the family...Andrew, Peter's brother and even friends like James and John. Tradition says Peter had children and so they would have been concerned about their grandmother as well. A family crisis. Luke writes a little more about this. He says they made request of Him on her behalf. They were very, very concerned about getting her well. They were aware that Jesus had been healing. His healing power had spread throughout all the surrounding district. Back in chapter 4 verse 14 we read that, also verse 23 indicates that Jesus had the power to heal and had demonstrated it at Capernaum, chapter 4 verse 23 you can look that up. So they had evidence of Jesus' power to heal, so they prevailed upon Him.
Verse 39, "Standing over her..." Matthew and Mark record the same account, same incident. They tell us she was lying down and they add that He took her hand in an expression, a gesture of tenderness, in a gesture of sympathy, showing the tenderness of Jesus as when He wept over the death of Lazarus and the sorrow of Mary and Martha in John 11, and also shows the compassion of God. But more than that, what we see here is not just compassion, anybody can be compassionate, standing over her, or leaning over her He rebuked the fever and it left her. This term "rebuke" is reserved almost exclusively for people, but here it is identified with a disease, or a fever. Uniquely He rebukes the fever. The intent of the statement is to show that He has power over what debilitates the body. He can speak to a fever and it disappears. There is no medicine here. There is no medical technique here. There is nothing other than sovereign supernatural power over an infection. Instantaneously does Jesus halt the infection and the fever goes and immediately she arose and waited on them. Remember now, this is the biggest meal of the week, generally speaking, kind of like Sunday dinner used to be. This is the Sabbath dinner, this is the big meal. And I just remark for you here, and this is very important to notice, there is no lingering weakness. Usually when someone has had a high fever over a prolonged period of time, fighting some serious infection, even if there can be some abatement of that infection through antibiotics or whatever, there is going to be a lingering malingering weakness. There is no trace of lingering weakness. There is no recovery period here. There is nothing gradual going on here. She isn't, you know, sort of picked up in her bed and given a cup of cool water or a, you know, the ubiquitous bowl of chicken soup. Nothing happens here like that, no flush cheeks, no hot skin, no sweating, no dryness, no limpness, no shivering, no struggling to get up and walk. There are no remaining residual symptoms whatsoever and that's what the text is telling is. He rebuked the fever, it left her, she immediately rose up and waited on them. And, you know, she went in essentially to help with serving dinner to a rather large group of people. I mean it was Peter and it was Peter's wife, and it was whatever children were there and it was Andrew and it was James and it was John and it was Jesus and whoever else may have been there, adults and children making up a very busy household. She turns immediately from this high fever, this mega fever and is engaged in serving them the Sabbath meal. This is typical, mark it, of all the healings of Jesus. It is typical of all the healings of Jesus.
Our Lord set the pattern for the gift of healing. Obviously it was the first time it had ever existed and existed in Him and He gave the power to heal to the seventy who represented Him and to the Apostles who represented Him for that period of time in which He was authenticating His messiahship and the gospel and establishing the Scripture. Medical science was crude and limited in those days, and, of course, there were more incurable diseases than we have now. Plagues could wipe out entire cities if not entire nations. Jesus came along with the power to heal and it was really an incredibly immense sign of His divinity.
I want to just give you six characteristics of Jesus' healing. First, Jesus healed with a word or a touch...with a word or a touch. And whenever you study the healings of Jesus, He spoke the healing or He touched someone, on some occasions He did both. And you see this in the many, many healings of Jesus in the New Testament.
Secondly, He healed instantly. It never says, "Jesus healed him and he kept on getting better." There never was any progression. The centurion's servant was healed in Matthew 8 that very hour. The woman with the bleeding problem in Mark 5 was healed immediately. In Luke 17 Jesus healed ten lepers instantaneously. And He touched another man with leprosy and immediately the leprosy departed from him, Luke 5. The crippled man at the pool of Bethsaida in John 5 immediately became well, took up his bed, began to walk. The man born blind in John 9 had to go and wash his eyes. As soon as he washed his eyes was healed instantly.
Thirdly, Jesus healed totally. There were no partial healings. That you see in the case of the healing here of Simon Peter's mother-in-law. There was a full and total restoration. No relapses, no recovery time.
Fourthly, Jesus healed everybody. Unlike healers today, Jesus didn't leave long lines of disappointed people and wrecked lives. People going back home trying to figure out why it is that they didn't have enough faith, or somewhere along the line they said a negative word and the negative word obviated the positive confession that could have produced their healing. You notice down in verse 40 here it says, "Laying hands on every one of them, He was healing them." And that is true of the healing of Jesus. He healed everyone...everyone. There were no disappointed people.
Fifthly, He healed organic disease. He didn't go up and down alleviating low back pain or heart palpitation, or headache, or any kind of invisible ailment that could have been caused by some emotional stress or some momentary problem. What Jesus did was not anything short of creative. He replaced crippled legs with legs that functioned fully. He replaced blind eyes with seeing eyes. He replaced deaf ears with hearing ears. He replaced paralysis with full function. His healings were creative, they literally recreated on an organic level.
And sixthly, Jesus raised the dead. Luke 7, Mark 5, He raised dead people.
Jesus did all of this and He did it all anywhere and everywhere. There wasn't any stage. There wasn't any setting. There wasn't any screening process. He did it all in public before huge crowds in various locations without any artistry involved. And listen to this, most of the people that He healed exhibited no particular faith in Him, made no confession of faith in Him, didn't believe necessarily. His miracles did not necessarily require faith. Furthermore, His miracles happened predominantly to unbelievers, almost always unbelievers who had no faith in Him, no salvation. In fact, He raised dead people and dead people don't believe anything. Dead people are dead. They couldn't have faith. They couldn't acknowledge Jesus. And they couldn't make a positive confession. His miracles were strung out throughout His entire ministry of three years not in specially controlled environments and circumstances but everywhere all the time during the normal flow of daily activity everywhere He went. In fact, to make it very simple, for all intents and purposes, in three years He banished disease from Palestine. In the three years of His ministry everywhere He went massive crowds and the people just brought all of the sick people to Him and He healed them all.
Now let's look at verse 40. "And while the sun was setting all who had any sick with various diseases brought them to Him and laying His hands on every one of them He was healing them." Do you see the comprehensiveness of that? Now we know from the account of Peter's mother-in-law how He healed. He healed with a word. He healed instantaneously. He healed without a recovery period. He healed completely and totally. And here we find He did that with everybody. These were instantaneous healings of everyone.
"While the sun was setting," that's important because what that means is Sabbath's over. This is Saturday, synagogue in the morning, lunch in the afternoon, the sun goes down, the Sabbath is over. It's a close of a very long day. Usually at the close of the Sabbath day you rest. It would have been good if the Lord could have done that. But as the sun goes down on the dusk and the dusk settles in on a Sabbath, the people now could do what they couldn't do during the Sabbath. They couldn't travel and they couldn't carry anything. So now that the sun is setting they can travel to where Jesus is and they can carry their sick and the people who are infirmed. They couldn't do it on the Sabbath, but now they can travel carrying all their sick loved ones to the house of Simon for Jesus to heal. So here it is and the dinner is over and the day is coming to an end and dusk is coming and all of a sudden everybody who's got sick people with any kind of disease shows up at the house.
Mark says the whole town showed up. The scope is amazing. Various diseases, not just infection, not just fever, and that's as broad as it can be. They're all aware now of His healing power. They all show up. They were aware of it even before He had healed Peter's mother-in-law. And now perhaps the word had spread rapidly about that healing in the afternoon and they all show up. And Jesus receives them all. There are no conditions of faith. There are no conditions of belief. There are no conditions of positive confession. He just puts His hands on everybody and everybody is healed. And that, folks, is the healing power of Jesus.
Now I want you to understand, as you get into the three-year ministry of Jesus there are nearly 90 New Testament texts in the four gospels about His healings. He did this everywhere through His ministry. It was literally a healing explosion that essentially banished disease from Palestine. Never in human history was there anything close to that. And these people today who say, "Well, Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever and we ought to expect Him to heal today just as the way He healed then," they don't get it. Listen, the first healing recorded in the Bible was during the time of Abraham. There are no healings recorded in the first 1600 years of biblical history up to the Flood, no healings recorded. And there were billions of people alive when the Flood hit. The first healing is recorded in the time of Abraham, that's about 2200 B.C. So for the first 2200-year history of the world there are no healings recorded. Now listen, from Abraham to Isaiah would be from 2200 B.C. to 750 B.C., okay so 1450 years, or 1500. During that period from Abraham to Isaiah, 1500 years let's say, there are recorded twenty healings, 1500 years 20 healings...five of them from Job, actually five of them...yes, from the time of Job and Abraham which would be the patriarchal time, five in Moses' day, two in Samuel's day, eight from David to Isaiah for a total of twenty. Twenty healings in 1500 years.
From 750, Isaiah, to Christ, 750 years guess how many healings are recorded in the Bible? Zero...there aren't any...none. This is not something God did willy-nilly all the time. During all that time from Isaiah to Christ there was sickness, there was disease and there was death and everybody died. But there were no healings. That is why...listen...when Jesus began to heal in Matthew 9:13...Matthew 9:33, the people said, "Nothing like this was ever done in Israel." They knew there had never been anything like this, never...never. Even the people of God, the people of Israel had absolutely no expectation of this. They had no experience of this. They had never seen anything like it. Mark 2:12, "We have never seen anything like this." Never. In Luke 10:23, "Turning to His disciples...Jesus had been healing...He said to them, 'Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see. I say to you, many prophets and kings wish to see the things you see and didn't see them.'" Nobody had ever seen this, never been done. In the gospel of John in the ninth chapter when the blind man was healed, this was absolutely incredible and remarkable. "Since the beginning of time...John 9:32...it had never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind." How about that? Since the beginning of time nobody ever heard of a blind person healed, nobody. This idea somehow that you have all through the Bible healings, and healings, and healings, and healings just flooding the world and somehow that should be the way it is today. Just not true...just not true.
But Jesus comes and how is God going to vindicate His claims? And how is God going to prove that Jesus is the Messiah? By granting Him the privilege to do what His power commanded that He could do, and that is to create and to manifest that creative power in healings. When Jesus came into the world there was an explosion of healing that banished illness from Palestine. Jesus gave to the seventh that He sent out and to the twelve Apostles the power to do that kind of healing as well because they were preaching Him. They were preaching His gospel and establishing the Scripture. And at the explosive time in human history when the Messiah came and the scriptures were penned that are the New Testament, healing came to attest to the divinity of Jesus and the divine character of the gospel and the Scripture. But as you go pass that time, what happens? Paul is ill and he doesn't get well. Trophimus is ill later in the New Testament. Timothy is ill. And Epaphroditus is ill. And you come in to 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus, the epistles for the church, no mention of healing ministry...no promise of healing.
The healing explosion had a purpose and John tells us the purpose. John 20:31, "These have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and believing you might have life in His name."
Now let me close with this. If everybody and anybody can do healing, then what was intended to point to Jesus Christ as the Messiah and the Apostles as the ministers of the gospel and the writers of Scripture is confused. That was a special power for a very special period in redemptive history. You can see in the New Testament it begins to fade away and certainly we can't expect that today. God may choose to answer your prayers in a wonderful and providential way and heal someone, but that's not the pattern and you can't expect that. You can know that if we pray and God chooses to hear and answer that prayer, He may choose that a person should get well. It's unlikely that He's going to use some miraculous means to do it. He may providentially allow that person to recover under medical care. He may aid that in wonderful ways. But I don't know anybody who has ever seen under any effort of prayer a quadriplegic get up out of a wheelchair and walk away. That's not what God does today. I have never seen such a miracle, I don't know anybody who has. So we know that this is not the norm, but that's okay.
We know this, we know that Jesus has the power over the physical, doesn't He? How do we know that? Because He demonstrated it, right? I don't frankly need to be fully healed in this life. I just want to know that in the life to come I'm not going to have to deal with this body, right? That's the issue. And Jesus proves to us that He can overpower the fallenness of our body. Philippians 3:20, "Our citizenship is in heaven from which we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ." Listen to verse 21, "Who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory." Isn't that what we want? Don't we want an eternal body that can praise God? Don't we want an eternal voice that can praise God? Don't we want eternal limbs that can serve God? Don't we want an eternal mind that can worship God? Isn't that what we want? So look for a Messiah who can do that and that's Jesus and He showed that He could do it by His healing miracles.
People always say, "Well isn't there healing in the atonement?" Sure. Matthew 8 and when Jesus had come to Peter's home, here's Matthew's account. "He saw his mother-in-law lying sick in bed with a fever. He touched her hand and the fever left her. She arose and waited on Him. And when evening was come they brought in many who were demon possessed and He cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were ill in order that what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled saying, 'He Himself took our infirmities and carried away our diseases.'" What a statement. He fulfilled that day in the house of Simon the prophecy of Isaiah that the Messiah when He comes will be able to show that He will remove infirmity and disease. It doesn't mean that you're guaranteed a temporal healing through salvation but it does mean that you are guaranteed an eternal healing.
He will take away all our illness, won't He? He will take away all our disease ultimately. Frankly, that's all I need to know. I don't really care about here. I don't particularly want to live forever here, do you? But I do want to be all that God can make me to be, perfect in the resurrected image of Jesus Christ. There is healing in the atonement. He did display the power to take away our infirmities and carry away all our diseases and conquer death for us by the amazing power of His miracles.
So when you're looking for who is the Savior and who is the Messiah, find somebody who can overpower the tremendously debilitating, decaying, diseasing and deadly power of sin. And Jesus showed that He and He alone had the power to do that. And that's why we believe He is the Redeemer, the Savior, the Messiah, the great Deliverer.
Jesus: The Divine Deliverer, Part 2
Luke 4:38-44
John writes in chapter 20 of his gospel, verse 31, "These have been written," referring to the record of the life of Jesus, "that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that believing you may have life in His name." The claims of Jesus and the evidence that His claims were true lead one to salvation.
Luke does a wonderful thing to help us, not so much in the anecdotal fashion, although there is an anecdote here, there is a story here, as in the categorical area. And in these last verses from 38 to 44 he shows us that there are three realms in which the Messiah had to demonstrate His power. One is a natural category. The second is a supernatural category. And the third is an eternal category. If Jesus is the Messiah, it must become clear then that He has power over the effects of sin on the natural world, that He also has power over the effects of sin on the supernatural world, and that He has power over the effect of sin on the eternal realm. That is to say He must be able to overturn our fallenness physically, the effects of sin on our bodies which is decay and sin and death. He must be able to overturn the power of demons in the supernatural world who have created a monstrous, deceptive corruption that has become the soul proprietary occupant of the mind of unregenerate men and women. Thirdly, He must be able to overpower that eternal judgment upon which all of us have fallen by birth, having been born, as it were, into the kingdom of darkness, being subjects to Satan all our life, headed for eternal hell. A Messiah must be able to break the power of Satan over us to extract us out of that damned kingdom of darkness and deliver us into the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of light, the Kingdom of heaven.
Yes He had power over disease. Yes He had power over demons. And yes He had power over dominion, over the dominion of the devil. He could transfer sinners out of the kingdom of Satan into the Kingdom of God. And in the battle to free men's souls from sin and hell, He had to be able to do that. He had to move them from judgment to glory, from hell to heaven. That's the good news. With that you can go back to chapter 4 verses 18 and 19 and remember that when Jesus came to preach, He preached a wonderful message of the gospel to the poor, release to the prisoners, of sight to the blind and freedom to those who are oppressed. He could deliver you from your spiritual poverty, from your spiritual prison, from your spiritual blindness, from your spiritual oppression. He could deliver you into the glorious Kingdom of God. He said, "I must preach this." Euangelizomai is the word for the gospel. I must preach this gospel, this good news, that's what that means. And I have to preach it to other cities, He says in verse 43. "For this purpose I was sent." And that, by the way, He repeats, chapter 9 and chapter 10 and particularly He says that in John 5; John 6; John 8; John 9; I think again in John 17. "I came for this purpose, I came for this purpose, I came for this purpose. I was sent, actually, apostello, as an apostle, a messenger. God sent Jesus to show that He could overpower the effects of sin in the body, to show that He could overpower the effects of sin in the mind. But more importantly to show that He could overpower the effects of sin eternally by moving people out of the domain of the devil into the Kingdom of God. And Jesus said I have to preach that in other cities, and verse 44 says, "And He kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea." He was in Galilee at the time, but Galilee was a part of Judea. Judea is the whole land of the Jews. He was in Galilee when He said it, but He covered Judea and the synagogues of Judea through His ministry where He preached this great message.
This is the Messiah, folks. This is the singular Deliverer. This is the Redeemer of God, the Lord Jesus Christ able to break the bondage, to shatter the hold of death and demons and the devil's domain. And Luke amasses this summary material at the end of the chapter to fix it in our minds. And we'll see those three categories dealt with throughout the ministry of Jesus as He deals with disease and death, as He deals with demons, as He deals with the domain of darkness.
This is a mighty Savior, is it not? Who can save His people from their sins and all of its effects.
