1 Jesus went to the Jewish meeting house again on another rest day, and he saw a man with one hand that was no good. It was all dried up and useless. 2 Some of the Pharisee mob were there. They were strong for the Jewish law. They wanted to make trouble for Jesus, so they watched him there. They wanted to see if he was going to help the man with the dried up hand, and make it better on their Jewish rest day. If he did that, they were going to say, “He worked on the rest day, so he broke the law.”

3 Jesus knew they were thinking like that, and so he said to the man, “Come here and stand in front of everybody, so they can see you.”

4 Then Jesus said to the Pharisee mob, “What does our law say about our rest day? Is it right to do good things on our rest day, or is it right to do bad things? Can I make this man better? Or can I hurt him?” The Pharisee mob said nothing.

5 Jesus looked at them. They didn’t care about people, they only worried about their law, and that made Jesus really angry. And it made him really sad too. Then Jesus said to the man with the useless hand, “Hold out your hand.” The man put his hand out, and straight away it was better. It wasn’t dried up any more.

6 Then the Pharisee mob went away and had a meeting with another mob of Jewish leaders. That other mob were good friends with the big boss called Herod. At that meeting they tried to work out a way to kill Jesus.

7 Jesus and his followers went away to the big lake, called Lake Galilee, and a big mob of people followed them. 8 Those people came from a lot of places. They came from Galilee country, and from Judea country, and from Idjumia country, and some people came from Jerusalem city, and other people came from the country near the towns called Tyre and Sidon, and some people came from the other side of the Jordan River. All those people heard about the things that Jesus did, so they wanted to see him themselves.

9-10 Jesus made lots of people better that day, and a lot more people wanted to touch him to get better too. A lot of people pushed up close to him, so he said to his followers, “Get a boat ready for me. I might need more room. If they push me too much, I will get up on that boat.”* Mark 4:1; Luke 5:1-3

11 Some of the people had bad spirits living inside them. Every time those people saw Jesus, the bad spirits pushed them down to the ground and they shouted out, “You are God’s son.”

12 And every time they shouted out, Jesus told them strongly to stay quiet. He said, “Don’t tell anyone that I’m really God’s son.”

13 One day, Jesus walked up a hill and called out to some of the people to follow him. 14-15 Then Jesus picked out 12 of them. He wanted them to be his special workers. Jesus told them, “You mob will walk around with me and live with me, and after that, I will send you to other places to tell people God’s good news, and God will give you the power to force bad spirits out of people.”

16-19 These are the names of those 12 men that Jesus picked out,

20 Jesus went into a house, and a big mob of people came there to see him. They were a really big mob of people, so Jesus and his followers were really busy, and they couldn’t even stop and eat some food. 21 Somebody went and told Jesus’s family about him. So his family said, “He is mad,” and they went to get him. They wanted to take him home to look after him.

22 Some teachers of the Jewish law that were from Jerusalem were there in that place. They said, “The boss over all the bad spirits is living inside Jesus. That bad spirit boss is called Beelzebul, and he is also called Satan. He is the one that gives Jesus the power to force bad spirits out of people.”* Matthew 9:34; 10:25

23 Jesus knew the law teachers were rubbishing him like that, so he called out to them and said, “Come here and listen to me.” Then he told them stories to teach them. He said, “Think about Satan, the boss over the bad spirits. Do you reckon he fights against his own mob of bad spirits? That doesn’t make sense. 24 Listen to me. If a tribe splits up into 2 mobs that fight against each other, that tribe will get weak and finish up. 25 In the same way, people in a family, if they fight each other all the time, they will split up and will stop being a family. 26 So, if Satan is fighting against his own mob of bad spirits, he will get weak and will not have any power. So Satan never does that. You have got it all wrong.

27 Listen to this picture story. A man wanted to take some things from a strong man’s house. First he tied up that strong man. After that, he took all the strong man’s things. Well, in that story Satan is like that strong man, and I’m like the man that tied him up, and now I’m taking my people away from him.

28 Listen, people might do bad things, and they might say bad things against God, but later, if they are sorry for those bad things, God can say they are not guilty. 29 But if somebody says bad things about the Holy Spirit, they are always guilty. God will blame them and punish them for ever.”* Luke 12:10

30 That’s what Jesus said to those Jewish law teachers. You see, they reckoned that Jesus had a bad spirit in him. That is the reason why Jesus talked so straight to them.

31 Jesus’s mother and his young brothers came to the house where Jesus was teaching, and they sent somebody in to tell him to come out and talk to them. 32 There was a big mob of people sitting around Jesus, listening to him at that time. The people said to him, “Your mother and your younger brothers are outside looking for you.”

33-34 Jesus looked around at the people sitting there and said, “Do you want to know my real family? You just have to look around. These people here are my real family. 35 My real family are the people that listen to God, and that do what he says. Those people are my brothers, and my sisters, and my mothers.”