Jesus Meets a Demon

Today on the Lord's Day edition of Renewing Your Mind.

Dr. R.C. is speaking at the synagogue in His hometown of Nazareth, and how when He declared His identity there as fulfilling the Messianic prophecy of Isaiah and other comments that He made, the hometown crowd turned vicious against Him, and our Lord barely escaped with His life from that furious mob. Luke tells us that then He went to Capernaum, and there He abided for some time during His ministry in Galilee. In fact, we saw in our study of the Gospel of Mark that there for a while Jesus took up residence in Capernaum, probably at the house of Peter. And this past fall, some of you were with me and Vesta as we visited the town of Capernaum, and we saw the excavations of the synagogue where Jesus taught as recorded in the text this morning. We also saw the excavation of several homes in that town, and I was amazed at the size of these dwelling places. I'll just make a guess at this time that the average size of the home in Capernaum was about 200 square feet or less for an entire family to dwell.

And as I thought about how in the world can families live in dwellings so small, I thought of Indian tribes who managed to do it in small square footage in their teepees. And so ancient people were not used to the spacious accommodations that we experience in our day. But in any case, Jesus went into the synagogue as was His custom, and we read here that on more than one occasion He served as the visiting rabbi and interpreted the scroll of the week and gave His sermons there. And there we are told that the people were utterly amazed and astonished at His teaching because He spoke with such authority.

We've seen this before. We will see it again that Jesus had a manner about which He spoke that the Scriptures describe as speaking with the term exousia, which means either power or authority, and we can call it a mixture of the two, an authoritative power or a powerful authority. So that when Jesus spoke, the people marveled at His words, at His truth, at the solemnity, the sobriety, the depth and seriousness of His Word. They didn't realize that at the time, but they were listening to sermons presented by the One who was the very incarnation of truth and who had within Himself the power of life that attended the proclamation of His Word. And so when Jesus spoke, there was a moment of crisis for everyone in the room as they would feel the thunderous weight of the message that He would give. And on this occasion, as Jesus was preaching in the midst of His message, He was rudely interrupted by the cry of a demon. The text tells us that this translation omits the first word that the demon spoke was a word that when something like this, as Jesus was speaking, the demon cries out saying, ha! That was the first word, like ha!

Watch this. It was a brief word of mockery and sneering at the teaching of Jesus. Now let me pause for just a second before we continue with the narrative here. As I said beforehand that this text presents matters that seem somewhat bizarre and strange to our ears in this day and age. The German theologian, New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann said, no one can avail themselves of electricity, radios, televisions, and modern antibiotics and still believe in a world inhabited by angels and demons where there is a realm beneath the earth and above the earth and this supernatural realm that those days have gone. And if we are to gain anything of meaning from the New Testament, we must first subject the Scriptures to a rigorous process of demythologizing in order to try to find some kernel of religious or existential truth that is left after we do our task of reconstruction.

I can remember as a graduate student in the university in Holland that our professor, Dr. G.C. Berkhauer, once made the comment in a lecture that there cannot be any theology without demonology. The New Testament so clearly propounds the idea of the reality of the demonic world and of the angelic world, supernatural beings who are usually invisible to our gaze but nevertheless are real and powerful. I've mentioned to you before that the New Testament speaks more often about angels than it does about love or even of sin. That is, the word angelos, the Greek word for angel, appears more frequently by a large measure than the word for love, than the word for sin. So like it or not, this faith that we embrace has within it a commitment to this supernatural realm, the angelic realm where all of the angels are not good and righteous but also includes those that are fallen and that are of the minions of Satan. I also recall in the decade of the sixties the most remarkable phenomenon in the life of the American church was the rapid and surprising spread of the charismatic movement coming out of Pentecostal churches and making its way through every major denomination.

The Lutherans, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Episcopalians, even the Roman Catholic communion had an experience of this Pentecostal revival that had begun at the Zeus's Street Mission in Los Angeles early in the 20th century but for the first half of the century was pretty much restricted to, as I say, Pentecostal and church of God denominations. But then it burst out and went through all the different denominations, and with it not only came a revival of great interest in spiritual gifts, the speaking in tongues, and so on, but also it gave rise to the phenomenon of deliverance ministries in which exorcisms became the matter of the day, even reached the inner courts of Hollywood, which took advantage of this interest now in exorcism with a blockbuster movie by that title, The Exorcist. And I had a friend who was deeply involved in the charismatic movement and who was also very much interested in deliverance ministries, including exorcism, and he persuaded me by twisting my arm to listen to this tape from this learned scholar, Derek Prince, who gave what he said was the definitive teaching on the matter of demons and demonic exorcism.

So I agreed to listen to the tape. And at the beginning of the tape, I was struck by the careful work that Prince had given to New Testament exegesis. He talked about the Greek word, dimenion, from which we get the English word demon, and talked about all of the ways in which Scripture speaks of demonic reality. And then suddenly in the midst of the message that he gave, he moved from sober exegesis to, I don't know how to call what it was, politely. But he started giving his experiences of how to discern what kind of demon a person is delivered from, and he came up with his theory that demons leave people in a similar manner in which they first enter them. And he said, for example, if your person is delivered from the demon of smoking, you know the demon has gone when a person utters a sigh.

It's just like exhaling. And so that's how the demon leaves. If you have the demon of alcohol, you drank it in the first place, and you want to get rid of it, the demon leaves by virtue of vomiting. And so he came up with this bizarre set of signs on how to know when a demon was exercised.

And I said, that's enough of that that I need to listen to. This stuff is baloney. However, the reality of the demonic world is not baloney. And I want us to understand too that when Luke talks about this demonic occurrence where this man is possessed here, that Luke as a position throughout his gospel and through the other gospels as well, a distinction is made between demonic possession and lunacy. So, contemporary people who want to say that first century observers just confused demonic possession with insanity. No, the Bible distinguishes between those two and distinguishes between demonic possession and what we would call forms of convulsions or epilepsy. So there was a separate category distinguished from other maladies in New Testament literature that has specific reference to demonic possession. Now, I don't think there's ever been a period in human history when the demonic world was more actively at work and more furiously engaged against the kingdom of God than in the first century, because the Son of God was walking on the earth, and all the power of hell was unleashed against Him.

Virtually every miracle that you see Jesus performing in the New Testament was also performed in the Old Testament by prophets like Elijah or Elisha or Moses. What is radically new about the supernatural ministry of Jesus is His ministry of demon exercising. And He said, if you see Me casting out Satan by the finger of God, which is a metaphor for the Holy Spirit, then you know that the kingdom of God has come upon you. And so, the New Testament writers are very keen to let us know that Jesus' power over the demonic world is significant. It is a sign of His own supernatural origin and of His own supreme authority, that even the devils of this world tremble at His presence.

And so, the accounts that we find in Scripture of encounters between Jesus and the demonic realm follow a similar pattern. There's always a protest where the demon complains, saying, what are you doing? Let us alone. Don't torment us. What have we to do with you? Did you come to destroy us elsewhere?

The question is, have you come to destroy us before the time? The demons knew that their days were numbered. And in the providence of God that God had established a day when the demons would be wiped out and their power completely removed, but that day had not yet come, and they knew it. One thing I could say for the demons is they had a sound theology. They knew who Jesus was. They knew what the truth was. They knew who God is.

As James tells us, that you say you believe in God, that's a big deal. Even the demons believe and tremble. And so that if you say that you believe in God, all that does is qualify you to be a demon, because they know that much theology. And their understanding of the identity of Jesus was also, strangely enough, impeccable. Their problem was not that they didn't know the truth. Their problem was they hated it with every fiber of their being. And so no one hated Jesus more than these demonic beings. When He appeared, they trembled, they feared, they protested, they resisted, but nothing would quench their fierce hatred of Him. But the demon said, I know who you are.

Can you say that? Do you all know who He is? The demon said, I know who you are. You are the Holy One of God. See, nothing recognizes the holy more clearly than the unholy.

No one recognizes the intrusion of heaven more than those who inhabit hell. And so here we find the testimony of the devil to the identity of Jesus. And this demon interrupted Jesus, and now Jesus silences him by saying, be quiet.

That's polite. Jesus is saying, shut up and come out of him. And when the demon had thrown him in their midst, it came out of him and did not hurt him. And again they were all amazed and spoke among themselves saying, what a word this is, for with authority and power He commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.

And the report about Him went out in every place in the surrounding region. Last Saturday morning in the context of our annual mission conference, Dr. Pratt gave a message to the men at the men's breakfast entitled, Our God is a Warrior. And he went to the first chapter of Joshua where God spoke to Joshua, commanding him to have courage and to be brave, and warned him of the battle that was coming.

And he went on to say that he promised Joshua that he would be with them in this battle. But Dr. Pratt went on to say that we are called to be engaged in a battle, a fight, but we have to be engaged in the right fight and in the right way. And in that stirring message, he pointed us to Paul's words in Ephesians chapter 6, which I will read for you now briefly. In chapter 6 of Ephesians verse 10, Paul says, Finally my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. What the Apostle Paul ends this epistle with is the same thing he begins it with, the cosmic struggle in the heavens between the victor, the Son of God, who leads captivity captive over these invisible but powerful forces from hell.

Paul said, you need the whole armor of God because we're in a battle, and it's not with people. The battle that the Christian must endure is a spiritual battle, not just a struggle with their own sinful tendencies, but a war that is cosmic in scope. Paul said, do you realize as a Christian you are engaged in a battle against powers, principalities, cosmic powers, spiritual wickedness in high places. The Bible tells us with respect to world empires that God raises them up and God tears them down. And there is this idea that human empires and states, whole nations, can be demonized so that their political structure and their political actions are really actions that they are carrying on under the influence of the devil. And the late Swiss scholar, New Testament scholar and church historian Oskar Kuhlmann said, there's an element in biblical truth that is often overlooked, and that is the idea of the influence that these supernatural angelic beings have cosmically. The word in the Greek is cosmic power, and that's our battle. We're fighting against supernatural forces, and we're fighting that battle with supernatural power, with the Holy Spirit and the armor of God. The question I get all the time about demons is, can a Christian be demon-possessed?

I don't think so for a minute. You can be harassed. You can be oppressed. You can be frustrated by the enemy. Where the Spirit of God lives, there is liberty. Satan cannot inhabit the same space as the Holy Spirit, and if you are indwelt by God the Holy Spirit, Satan, can't get in you.

He can come up against you. Again, he can harass you, but he cannot possess you. For greater is the power that is in you than is the power that is in the world.

Now that's important. It's good news, but it's also bad news for those who want to find excuses for their sinful behavior by simply saying, the devil made me do it. Well, the devil maybe made you do it, but if he did, you're not a believer. If you are a believer, Satan goes around like a roaring lion seeking to devour whom he will, and he's an adversary to be warned of, but at the same time, the other image Scripture gives us is of this roaring lion fleeing with his tail between his legs. For God says, resist him, and he will flee from you. The mission that we have in this church is a mission that is despised by Satan and by the forces of hell, and they will do everything they can to push us out of the battle and onto the sidelines to paralyze us, to hold us captive, put us in the retreat, but we are called to pursue this battle until every inch of real estate on this planet confesses Christ as Lord and Savior.

Yes, demons exist, and yes, Satan is an actual being who desires to do us harm, but he is a conquered foe. And for those of us who have placed our trust in Christ, there's nothing to fear. We've heard a message from Dr. R.C. Sproul today here on Renewing Your Mind as he continues his verse-by-verse sermon series from the Gospel of Luke. We return to this study each Lord's Day, and we're making our way through the entire book.

The same insight we hear from R.C. each week can also be found in his commentary on the Gospel of Luke. I hope you'll contact us today with a donation of any amount so that we can provide you with a digital download of this nearly 600-page commentary. Our offices are closed on this Lord's Day, but you can give your gift and make your request online at renewingyourmind.org. Dr. Sproul, along with our Ligonier teaching fellows and many other faithful pastors and teachers are also featured on RefNet. That's our 24-hour internet radio station. If you're not familiar with RefNet, I hope you'll check it out.

You can listen for free at any time when you go to RefNet.fm or when you download the free RefNet app. As Jesus' earthly ministry grew, He traveled from place to place healing and preaching. Everywhere He went, crowds met Him, and His reputation grew. I hope you'll join us again next Sunday as we continue our study of the Gospel of Luke here on Renewing Your Mind.