The Powerful Purpose of Christ

Today we are going to look at the passage in Luke 9:37-45.  Jesus, Peter, John and James are coming down the mountain the day after the transfiguration of Jesus, in which his majesty and glory were revealed to the Three.  If you add that situation with all of the other signs and wonders they had seen, the power of Christ was well impressed upon them.  In this passage there is another powerful encounter as Jesus casts a demon out of a boy.  This kind of power can cause people to drool over all the imagination of what you can do.  Whether it is the people of Israel ready to conquer the Romans and remove the wicked leaders in the Sanhedrin or the disciples imagining their positions of power alongside of Jesus, we would not use such power for the same thing Jesus did. 

Yes, Jesus healed people everywhere he went.  But, that wasn’t his main objective.  Jesus physically couldn’t fix all the difficulties in the world limited within a human body.  But even if he did go around healing people and setting them free from evil spirits, it wouldn’t fix the underlying problem: our sin.   Jesus was sent to deal with the root of mankind’s problem.  We are a world that has come under the sway of sin and spiritual death.  Such a problem needs a spiritual answer.  Yet, that answer is counter-intuitive to our worldly thinking.  Even when we accept Christ’s death on the cross, we tend to see it as an example of how bad hatred is and how good love is.  Jesus is merely an example.  However, the testimony of Scripture is that he was paying the price for the sins of mankind.  Jesus had to lay down his powerful life and die on a cross in order to deal with our sin.  This seems like a waste of power to many people.

Jesus Heals A Possessed Boy

In verses 37-42, a large crowd sees Jesus coming down off the mountain and meets him.  Particularly, there is one gentleman who has a demon possessed boy.  He begs Jesus for help and states that his disciples (the nine who did not go up the mountain) couldn’t cast out the demon.

Now in the gospel of Mark chapter 9 we are given a lot more detail than Luke gives.  Let me go through some of those details.  We are told that the boy has been possessed since he was a small child.  The spirit had caused him to become mute and deaf.  The spirit would often seize the boy near fire or water, thus endangering his life.  He would not only seize, but would also foam and gnash his teeth.  It would be easy to scoff at the idea of a demon and look at these descriptions as antiquated relics of ignorance.  Of course medically we do know much more.  However, they had medicine back then as well.  Even today, there are incidents that modern medicine have problem explaining.  They typically get thrown under the banner of “mental disorders.”  Now not all mental issues have to do with demons.  However, there are three main problems that crop up in some mental issues.  The first is that the mention of Jesus or Scripture triggers events of seizure and difficulty in some.  Secondly, they sometimes speak in a different voice cursing Christ, the Bible, and Christians.  Lastly, it can be brought to the end at a vocal command through the power of Jesus.  These things cannot be mere coincidence or cultural.  So this really does seem to be more than just a brain problem.  There is a spirit that is doing this to the child.

The 9 disciples that had stayed behind had been trying to cast out this demon without success.  Now keep in mind that they had previously gone out throughout Israel healing people and casting out demons.  Jesus had given them authority to do so.  There was something wrong in this situation and they didn’t know what it was.  This goes to show that casting out demons is not about knowing the right words or merely being a disciple of Jesus.  Definitely we need to be connected to Christ in a living relationship.  But there is more to it than that.

In verse 41 Jesus brings up the issue of faith and perversion.  It is not addressed to the disciples, but to the generation as a whole.  It seems that this situation is itself a picture of how degraded Israel had become and how plundered by the enemy they were.  Spirits cannot just possess someone.  They can only take hold of someone when they have willfully opened themselves up to them.  This is done through false religions, occult arts, magic, sorcery, fortune tellers or any other such things.  Somewhere someone in this family has been going to spirits for something and it has resulted in a small child being possessed.  What does faith and perversion have to do with this?  God had given Israel perfect laws that would enable them to walk in power before the spirits of this world.  He had warned them of those spiritual traps the enemy used to gain power over people.  Yet, some did not believe the “old, archaic” words of the Bible.  Instead they willfully went their own way seeking power from sources God had told them not to.  On top of this, Israel had not merely sought power from another source, they also had done so while still claiming to be God’s people.  Their lives had become a mixture of things from the Bible and yet things forbidden in the Bible.  To twist God’s ways is to pervert them.  Thus the child bound by a demon and the impotence of the disciples is a small picture of the problem throughout all of Israel. 

Yet, Jesus tells the man, “If you believe all things are possible.”  To which the man replies, “I believe, help my unbelief.”  Here we see the mercy of Christ.  Though it is frustrating that they are in the situation because of their own willfulness and sin, God still has compassion on us and wants to save us.  Jesus points him back to the root problem.  If you will have faith in God all things are possible.  We are being challenged in this ourselves.  We are a generation that is lacking faith in God’s word and in His ways.  We have called our perversions acceptable to God by twisting Scripture to our own ends.  We need to take warning.

Mark tells us that Jesus commanded the Deaf and mute spirit to come out of the boy.  The boy convulsed greatly and screamed and then suddenly stopped.  The crowd thought the boy was dead.  However, Jesus took the boy by the hand and raised him up and gave him back to his father.  This is a picture of us.  We come to God full of all manner of evil things begging for help.  Though he sets us free, it leaves us in a powerless state like this boy, as if dead.  In his mercy, Jesus takes us by the hand and helps us to get up and walk in the new freedom that he has given us.  Not all have been possessed by demons, but we all have found ourselves helpless and bound to the lies that they have sown throughout our society.  Only Jesus can set us free.

Mark also has the additional information of why the 9 disciples could not cast out the demon.  Jesus told them, “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.”  There are two things that stick out in this answer.  First of all, there are kinds of spirits.  Some are apparently harder to cast out than others.  The disciples had not run into this kind before.  The second issue has to do with prayer and fasting.  We are not given the explanation of what prayer and fasting does to enable casting out “stronger” spirits.  However, the greatest work of prayer is to focus us on God and his work.  If we live our lives mostly focused on material things of this world and rarely on God, we will find that we lack power for certain spiritual things.  Jesus points his disciples to this area.  When he is gone, they are going to need to prayer and fast at greater levels in order to do the work that God has for them.

Christ’s Purpose vs His Power

In verses 43-45 we see an interaction between Jesus and his disciples.  All of the displays of power that Jesus had been doing caused them to expect the exact opposite of what Jesus was going to do.  They expected a confrontation with the Romans and the leaders of Israel in which Jesus takes over.  All of the majestic power of Christ was not headed to this objective.  Rather, He was headed to a cross.  Even today, many reject Christ because his answer to the world seems weak and pitiful to them.  What a colossal waste of power, they think to themselves.  This difficulty in understanding God’s ways has been a timeless problem for mankind.  We don’t just think differently, but our thoughts lead in the exact opposite direction.  The bible tells us that even the foolishness of God is far higher than the greatest wisdom of man.  In Luke Jesus says, “let these words sink down into your ears…”  A surface understanding alone will not work.  Jesus was to be betrayed and killed; get it through your head.  If we follow Jesus in a superficial way and ignore all the tough things that he says, we will not get far.  The closer Jesus got to the cross the fewer people who gathered around him, until he was all alone.  Jesus is the Rejected One.  No matter how popular he is in a moment in time, we will all be tested in the long run.  You will be forced to choose.  Whom are you following?  Are you following Jesus or the wise and great of this world?  This is the question that is constantly put before those who wish to follow Jesus.  To follow Jesus is to pick up your own cross expecting to die along with him.  Let these words sink into your ears.

Powerful Purpose of Christ Audio

Demons Obey the Command of Jesus

In today’s society it is easy to reject stories of demon possession as ignorant and unscientific descriptions of mental illness.  However, such a dismissive view leaves too many questions unanswered, both in our experience today and in Scripture.  In Luke 8:26-39 we have an encounter that Jesus had with an individual who is described as being possessed with a great number of demons.

So what are these demons?  The basic, biblical answer is that they are evil, spiritual entities that are in league with Satan.  Though they are invisible to the human eye, the effect of their activities can be seen.  Without detail, the Bible describes the reality that demons are able to take varying possession of the faculties and actions of certain vulnerable people.  In the Bible demonic possession involves more than simply “acting crazy.”  There is usually interaction with an intelligence that seems beyond the person, and is repulsed and removed by the power of Jesus.  For a man to go from years of “mental illness” and speaking as if he had demons within him to total transformation within a matter of minutes begs any natural explanation. Such is the case in our story today.  Christians should be careful of seeing all things strange as the result of demons.  However, neither should we fall into the materialistic tendencies of the modern age that sees such things as patently impossible.

Now the title of this sermon is about how demons obey the command of Christ.  How do I mean that?  God’s commands can be prescriptive in the sense of how we ought to live.  Thus His command: love one another as I have loved you.  Yet, God’s commands can also be directive or judicial in the sense of what will happen whether we cooperate or not.  God won’t force us to love one another.  But when he commands demons to leave a man, it is a judicial command that cannot be “disobeyed” any more than a man sentenced to prison can disobey and walk out of court.  They have no choice.

Demons Are Enemies of God and Man

Having crossed the Sea of Galilee, Jesus and his disciples come to the shore of the opposite side in the area of Gadara.  Here they are met by a raving man who has been abused by demons for a long time.  We are given the account of an interaction that Jesus had with these demons and in it we recognize two clear facts: Demons do not care for humans and they are not working with God.

Another thing we find is that demons are numerous.  Regardless the number, a great number of demons were working together to keep this man under their control and to work through him.  Any attempt to quantify the population of demons that are preying on mankind would be pure speculation.  Another point of note comes from Luke 11:24-26.  There we see that some demons are more wicked than others and the condition of a man is worse when more than one demon is involved.  Also, that demons have no “rest” until they have taken possession of an individual.  It stands to reason that wicked individuals become more susceptible to demonic possession as they morally degrade.  We would also expect societies that are heavily involved in working with spirits to see higher numbers of these possessions because they would have a higher number of vulnerable individuals.  Thus some places in the world may see very little of this and in other places it may be a common thing.

Another thing we see here is a classic sign of demonic possession.  Demons always abuse those they inhabit.  The abuse begins in the mind.  A demon that possesses a person will force its personality and will upon an individual from time to time.  Though it may be sporadic at first, it can become worse over time.  In this story the intellect of the man who is possessed does not appear until after the demons are cast out.  However, the abuse is obviously more than mental.  Note that the passage describes the man’s life.  Somewhere along the line these demons began to manifest to the point that the city in which he lived tried to restrain him.  However, nothing they tried was able to restrain the man.  He eventually is driven out into the tombs and lives among the dead and wearing no clothes.  He has become an outcast driven into the wilderness.  Thus demons abuse the host and yet also abuse others through the host.

At this point you might be scared of these beings.  Yet, notice that they are very afraid of Jesus.  As spirit beings they are perceptive of spiritual matters.  Thus they direct the man out of the tombs to meet Jesus at the shore with the question, “What have I to do with you?”  This area lies outside of Israel at the time.  Thus Jesus is stepping onto the spiritual turf of these demons.  He is a threat and they want to know why Jesus is there and what he is doing.  Lastly they are afraid that Jesus might be there to torture them by commanding them into the Abyss.  What is the Abyss?  Sometimes translated as “bottomless pit” it is only explained in Revelation chapter 9.  Here we see it is a kind of spiritual prison for wicked spirits.  Why some are in this prison and not all is not explained.  These demons are clearly afraid Jesus has come to put them in it.  Thus demons would rather be free to roam the earth and possess the vulnerable than be locked up in the Abyss awaiting the end of this Age.

Lastly, we see in this passage the manipulative nature of demons.  As evil beings they cannot be trusted.  Even “truthful” things they may say cannot be trusted.  I am not saying that Jesus is duped here.  However, the demons are attempting to control the situation to their benefit.  As long as they do not end up in the Abyss they are "happy."  They are not happy about Jesus being in this area.  Thus, I believe, the petition to be allowed to enter the pigs is more about creating a scene than attempting to stay in the pigs.  When Jesus allows this, the demons drive the pigs into the sea thus killing them.  This would then deprive the demons of their hosts causing them to escape into the area looking for more prey.  Why would they do this?  There seems to be an element of rage in this scene.  The full, destructive rage of demons is generally checked by their desire to retain possession of a host.  However, in this case, they do not care about the pigs and in a fit of rage throw a kind of tantrum as a means of venting against Jesus.  Yet, they also create turmoil in the area that would make the inhabitants fearful of Jesus and angry at their loss of income.  So there may be a kind of defensive maneuver here to protect their territory. 

Jesus Healed the Demon Possessed Man

Now in looking at the demons we do not want to lose sight of what is happening for the man.  Jesus has healed him of his affliction.  Even more serious than a physical sickness is a spiritual sickness in which one’s inner being is invaded by something worse than cancer.  We see here that no number of demons is a match for Jesus.  There is no battle, nor week long exorcism.  Jesus has absolute command over these demons.  Though they try to manipulate it, they had to leave the man they had controlled for so long.  Now for Jesus it is no problem.  However, for us, some spirits are more difficult than others.  Believers who come into contact with a demon possessed person need to be humble and careful.  Through prayer and fasting we can purge our life of anything that might be between us and our Lord.  Jesus is the power that demons fear.  If they fear believers at all, it will only be because of our close relationship with Jesus and dependence upon his power alone.

The owners of the pigs had witnessed this event and ran to town in order to tell everyone what happened.  Thus a large group gathers at the beach and finds the previously possessed man “in his right mind.”  He is no longer a raving lunatic that is destroying himself and anyone who gets in the way.  He is his “old self.”  Even here we see the recognition that a switch in personality and activity has happened, and without years of counseling and psychotropic drugs.  Unless you write off the account as a myth, it is hard to explain this other than the biblical explanation.  Let me take a moment to contrast the way that God’s Holy Spirit works in the lives of believers to the way demons operate in their hosts.  God does not want to take away control of our own mind.  He wants us to follow Him out of loving obedience.  However, evil spirits lust to subject the personality of an individual beneath theirs in domination.  They operate in an abusive mode, whereas the Holy Spirit operates in a gentle mode.  They operate in deception and manipulative promises, whereas the Holy Spirit operates out of truth and purity of intent.

Even though the man is in his right mind, the locals want Jesus to leave.  He is a "trouble maker" who threatens the order of things in their district.  Their fear of Jesus and what he is capable of doing causes them to push him away.  Jesus is going to leave.  However, I believe this encounter was exactly what he had come to do.  He had come to confront these demons and set a man free.  In light of this we may now have deeper understanding into why the storm threatened to swamp their boat and kill them all.  Spiritual battles often play out in the material world unknown to man.  Christ was causing enough problems in Israel.  Satan did not want him entering other strongholds.

The man’s response is understandably different.  The man is so thankful that he wants to follow Jesus and become a disciple.  He may also be afraid to leave the side of Jesus in that the demons could come back.  How wonderful it would be to follow such a man of power and compassion.   Imagine the safety and joy that would be his in the presence of Jesus.  Yet it was not to be so.  Following Jesus is not always about going somewhere.  Sometimes it is about staying.  It is not that this man lacks the qualifications to be a disciple that followed Jesus around, but rather, it is that Christ had a different purpose for him.  He would become a witness who would spread the truth throughout the area that Jesus delivered him from a legion of demons.  Later when the apostles spread out from Jerusalem due to persecution, Christians would enter this area and find people who were prepared to receive the gospel because of the faithfulness of this man who had been possessed by demons.

Let me close by warning believers.  We may run into this more and more in the United States of America in the future.  We are clearly casting off the Word of God and at the same time embracing all manner of spiritism.  Beware of playing with things that seek to contact spirits or satan even if it seems benign.  Beware of using spirits to try and foresee the future, whether through seemingly innocent Ouija boards or occult rituals.  These spirits are manipulative and deceptive.  By the time you think to back out, it will be too late.  Also, be careful that you are not hiding secret sin in your life because this will inhibit your ability to be a source of freedom for others.  Guard your heart from the seduction of spirits that promise the heavens but instead deliver hell.

Demons Obey Jesus mp3

The Power of Jesus

We have been looking at the True Jesus by walking through the gospel according to Luke.  Today we will specifically deal with Luke 4:31-44.  Now Luke has just finished sharing an event in the hometown of Jesus where he is received at first but then quickly it turns into a riot where they try to throw Him off of a cliff.  Tragically this incident becomes a metaphor for the rest of His life.  People often receive Him at first only to reject Him when they see they can’t manipulate Him.

In this section Jesus goes down to Capernaum and because this isn’t His hometown they are more open to receive His teaching.  This opens the door for amazing demonstrations of the power that Jesus has.  This section begins with Jesus teaching in the Synagogue of Capernaum on the Sabbath.  The fact that He is teaching is important but I am going to come back to that at the end of this sermon.

Jesus Has Power Over Demons

In verses 33-36, a man who is in the synagogue that day begins to manifest that a demon possesses him.  Jesus is in the middle of teaching and at some point the demon cannot continue to hide its presence.  The Bible does not explain the origin of demons, but several things are made clear about them.  First of all they are spirits that can afflict or possess people.  They need some form of permission to do this and so feed upon false religions and occult practices to act as “honey pots,” as it were.  We do not know how this man came to be possessed by a demon, but there are two adjectives that are used of demons.  They are evil and unclean spirits.  By this is revealed that their moral intentions are not for good.  Demons are bad no matter what power or knowledge they promise or give.  They cannot be trusted.  Also, demons are unclean.  This metaphor means that those who enter into business with demons risk themselves being “stained” by their moral filth.  The demonic spirits are as unclean as the Holy Spirit is pure.

However, these spirits obviously fear Jesus.  As Jesus teaches the spirit breaks out and speaks through the man.  “Did you come to destroy us?  We know you are the Holy One of God.”  Later Jesus runs into some other demon possessed people in verse 41 who declare that they know he is the Christ the Son of God.  These evil spirits know who Jesus is and because they know who he is they fear him.  Why?  Jesus has the power to remove them from this earth and put them in the spirit prison called The Abyss or Bottomless Pit.

Now Luke points out that once these evil spirits manifested, Jesus would not let them speak and told them to leave the person.  These demons had to obey and would leave.  However, they don’t want to leave.  Thus it says that the demon through the man down in the middle of the group but didn’t hurt him.  Clearly its intention was to hurt him, but the power of Jesus held it in check and made it leave.  Jesus didn’t let them speak because nothing a demon says can be trusted.  And, even if they do say something true, they are manipulating it to their own ends.  Do not become enamored with any secret information you think you can get from speaking to spirits.  If you are using occult practices to contact spirits you are being manipulated by evil spirits and will quickly come under their evil control.

Now Jesus has both Power and Authority over demons.  Though the words are related they have two very different emphases.  First Power is a reference to ability.  Jesus was able to make the demons leave.  “Greater is He [Jesus] who is in us than he [devil] who is in the world.  These demons are in league with the devil, but Jesus is more powerful than them.  He can force them to obey him.  Yet, Jesus also has authority.  This is a reference not to brute power, but rather to the power of position.  In other words, He has a place of authority that is over all of creation, visible and invisible.  Thus all things must obey him by right of position and by power of His strength.  Now God is not tyrannical with such position and power.  In fact most people wish He were.

For us as Christians, it is important to learn that Jesus delegated His authority to His disciples in order to carry out the commission that he gave us.  He gave them the authority to cast out demons and He has supplied the Holy Spirit in order to give us the power to back that position up.  The disciples of Jesus learned a lesson later when they tried to exercise that authority and the demon wouldn’t leave.  Why not?  It was because they were not walking fully in the power of the Holy Spirit.  We need to learn from the temptations of Jesus how to resist temptation through times of prayer and fasting.  In this we make agreement with the Holy Spirit and He operates more powerfully in our life.  Now we want to be careful with that because God is able to do what He wants without cooperation from us.  However, there are some things that He has determined to do only as men and women believe on Him, and ask Him to do them.  This is the testimony of the church that as men and women of God moved into dark, demonically-controlled countries, the demons fled from them.  In some cases the demons came back later, but that is a different sermon.  Let’s move on.

Jesus Has Power Over Sickness

In verses 38-39 Jesus goes to the house of Peter.  These very specific accounts of certain times, places and people are recorded so that people of Luke’s day can fact check his story.  Here Peter’s mother-in-law is sick with high fever.  Clearly she had a virus of some sort that threatened her life.  Notice that the family request Jesus to help her.  Jesus had healed others at different times and so the plea is only normal.  How important is it for us to be quick to ask and pray for our Lord’s help?  Sometimes we hold back because we think it to unimportant or we doubt it will be done.  But remember that it is the asking who receive.  Those who do not ask will definitely not receive.  But those who ask from a good God at least have the hope that he might answer in the affirmative.

Jesus then rebukes the fever, which may sound odd.  But just as he rebuked the storm on the Sea of Galilee, “Peace be still!”  So, here he rebukes a storm of a different kind.  A fiery storm raging through her body, is told, “Peace, be still!”  The fever not only subsides, but as a double miracle, she feels strong enough to get up and serve them.  Jesus not only stops the virus, but also strengthens her.  It is ludicrous to try and turn this into a self-serving miracle that Jesus does just to get her to serve him.  The more natural aspect of the story is that she is not just grateful to be feeling better, but feels well enough that she does what she enjoys doing, serving others.  After this, the town brings the sick and demon possessed to Jesus and he heals everyone that is brought to him.  On the next day Jesus began to leave.

Jesus Had Power To Teach

Although this passage seems to focus on the miracles of Jesus, notice that it begins and ends with the teaching of Jesus.  In verse 32, the people were astonished at His teaching and in verse 43 He reminds them that He needs to go to other cities and preach the Kingdom of God to them.  Notice that Jesus emphasizes that he needs to go there to teach, rather than do miracles.  The miracles of Jesus were to help people to receive His teaching.  In the end it is His powerful and truthful teaching that is of primary importance.

Now the people were first astonished at the authoritative tone that Jesus used when he taught.  But they were also astonished at the authority in which He challenged the accepted teachings of that day.  Jesus often employed a method of teaching that pointed out an accepted teaching of the day followed with a corrective statement by Jesus.  Here is an example, “You have heard it said love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say unto you love your enemy, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.”  False teachings can arise and then become entrenched within the ranks of God's people.  Jesus powerfully pointed these out and corrected them.

Jesus wasn't just explaining how to better keep the Law of Moses.  He was pointing them to the Kingdom of God and how they needed to live to be a part of it.  Don't be mistaken.  God's Kingdom is a real kingdom with real laws and ways of doing things.  Are you a citizen of that Kingdom?  Are you listening to the words of Jesus and incorporating them?  The powerful teaching of Jesus goes beyond the Israelites of the first century A.D.  It powerfully speaks to all those who desire to be a part of God's Kingdom and instructs them in how to be like their Father in Heaven.  Those who do not follow Jesus, by default, cooperate with the world system and serve the purposes of the god of this world.

This is important because many who seem to be good and purport to care often misuse the words of Jesus or minimize it.  A case in point is the modern teaching that God is the Father of all people and we are all brothers.  They may use Jesus to back this up through cherry-picked verses and explaining away those that contradict it.  Or, they may simply state that the specifics of what Jesus taught are not important.  The importance is that He understood the Universal Fatherhood of God.  This latter method does not come to Jesus for specifics but only for "big picture" principles.  But even these end up contradicting His own words.  Jesus did not teach the universal fatherhood of God.  He specifically taught that some even in the leadership of God's people are children of the devil and have sold out to his worldly system.  Jesus taught that only those who believed in Him enough to take up their cross and follow Him would be given the right to become the children of God.  Yes, we are all here because of the creative power of God, but that doesn't make us his children.  If you want to be a child of God then you need to have a spiritual birth, to be born from above, to be born again.  The teaching of Jesus is of primary importance even down to its specifics because it is the very light of God given to dispel our darkness.

Power of Jesus Audio