“And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself.” (v.21)
Did you ever notice that there are times when even your family and friends think that you have went a little over board in the Lord’s work? I have. Those who I thought would understand me sometimes reproached me for doing right. The disappointment is heartbreaking, but still one must go on and do what needs to be done for the glory of God. Jesus must have felt disappointment in His friends for thinking that He was mad, and trying to pull Him away from helping those people. Our Lord was criticized by His friends as well as His enemies, as we see in the next verse. He was accused of doing His mighty works by the power of Beelzebub, which is another name for Satan. Beelzebub means “Lord of the flies” or “The lord of flies” and is a good description of the devil. The point here is that when we are disappointed in friends, and let down by their lack of faithfulness and trust in us, Jesus will never let us down. He knows what it feels like to be let down by friends. Our enemies? Well, we can expect criticism from them.
Jesus was so caught up in healing the multitudes that his disciples thought He was “beside Himself”, or “Out of His mind”. Paul was accused of this same thing in Acts 26: 25, when Festus was amazed at Paul’s preaching. To be “beside oneself” can best be defined by Webster:
With the reciprocal pronoun, beside one's self is out of the wits or senses; out of the order of reason, or of rational beings.
We ought to get so caught up in the Lord’s work that we are beside ourselves, and lost in the excitement of it (Perhaps “lost” is not the best word, but you get the gist of it). It is like we have lost all reason and sense of this world, and are totally occupied with our goal of glorifying the Father. I only wish others should think this of me when they hear me tell them about Christ. Perhaps when they called me a “fanatic” they were saying the same thing. Rejoice when the time comes that others reproach you for your testimony for Christ. Be glad, because they are treating you like they did Jesus.
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