Spiritual Warfare - Lesson 12

Dr. Gerry Breshears
Spiritual Warfare
th251-12
Jesus and the Demons (Part 1)
Lesson Transcript

Well, let's do a little Jesus. The gospel stories have some powerful lessons in them for us as we do our spiritual warfare. And I want to... Well, let me look at a couple lessons from Mark. Mark Chapter 1. Mark does things really concisely or in great detail. So he does stuff really concisely. He calls these first disciples. They get up and follow him. They leave their nets and follow him, and he heads into Capernaum. And when he gets to Capernaum, which that's Peter's hometown, and that becomes the center of a lot of the early work of Jesus until about halfway through when he was in Jerusalem for the first time. He went to Capernaum. When the Sabbath came, Jesus went in the synagogue and began to teach. And remember, he's a new kid on the block.

He's not famous yet. He's not made the front page of The Jerusalem Post or anything. And when he comes in and teaches a synagogue, and it's not unusual to have a guest teacher in the synagogue, but when he teaches, the people are amazed at his teaching because he really taught us somebody had authority not just discussing the various opinions of the various rabbis.

I thought, "Wow, that's amazing." So he's teaching and he's teaching impactfully and the people are listening and receiving. But what happens when he's doing it? Because he's speaking truth from God with personal authority. Verse 23, "Just then, a man in the synagogue who is possessed by an impure spirit cried out, 'What do you want with this Jesus Nazarerth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the holy one of God.'" Again, if this were a class and I wanted to mess with you, I would've begun back in the beginning, "Okay, what is the first person in the book of Mark to give testimony to Jesus and who he is?" And seminary students never get it right because they think of one of the disciples or something.

It's not true. The first person to give the testimony is a demon, which is I mean love. That's the way Mark does it. What does the demon say? He knows his name, Jesus of Nazareth, and he knows who he is, the Holy One of God. So the demon is giving powerful testimony and it's an impure spirit and this man who is possessed by the in spirit, and this is the demon speaking out. This isn't the man. So this is one of the principles that is foundational to the way I approach this whole thing. And that is demons hate to be looked at in the name of power in Jesus. They react. Demons hate to be looked at in the name and power of Jesus and they react. They do. I just say they fuzz. It's what a little dog does when a big dog comes into the room. The little dog starts barking as loud as they can and fuzzing up its hair to look as big and mean as possible because little dogs get eaten by big dogs.

And that's what demons do when Jesus comes into the room. In this case is Jesus himself. But if we come in the name and power of Jesus speaking by the power of the Holy Spirit, the proclaimed word of God, demons hate to be looked at in the name of power of Jesus Christ. They will react. That's foundational the way of doing things. And I think that's what happens here, because Jesus is not looking around for a demon to kick out. His goal is just teach the power of God to the people that are in Capernaum, a very active synagogue. They're in Northern Israel.

"What do you want with the Jesus? Have you come to destroy us, I know who you are, the Holy One of God." Now Jesus' response is instructive because all he does is say to put it in cloak, glow English, "Shut up and get out!" That's all he does. He just immediately recognizes what it is, "Be quiet, come out." Wow! And the story, "the impure spirit shook the man violently and came out with a shriek." So when you think of demon exorcism, this is our first lesson in how it's done by Jesus. And I think that Jesus shows us how to do these things in his life, Jesus's example for our life. Now of course there are things he does we can't do, but I really believe in these kinds of things. What he does is a great pattern for what we do.

So what we should do is we come into context. We should speak in the name and power of Jesus, the words of His grace and healing, freedom and forgiveness. And when demons sense us opposing them, they react. And then Jesus's thing is, "Be quiet, come out" and it's violent reaction, but it comes out okay? And then the people are amazed. "What is this?" With authority, even the demons obey him because demons don't obey in normal people. They will obey those who have come in the name and power of Jesus is what this is telling me.

"Be quiet, come out." Now again, we have to ask ourself what is the tone of Jesus' voice? Of course it doesn't say that. It does say that the impure spirit is crying out. So it's shrieking. The way I read this is Jesus speaks what I call my teacher voice. It's not elevated. It's not emotion driven, but there's a teacher voice that just comes with an authority. And I think that's he's speaking with his teacher voice, maybe his mom voice. "Be quiet. Come out." That's how Jesus does it.

Let's look at one that's more complicated. Mark Chapter 9. Bible's clearly full of fun passages. I probably shouldn't have kept saying it, but I do it all the time. You get the transfiguration, six stages took Peter, James drawn with him in the high mountain and he's transfigured becomes dazzling white. He's chatting with Elijah and Moses and Peter freaked out of his mind at what's going on. He is completely overwhelmed. And Peter being the guide that he is, goes to the Bible.

This is not Peter being an idiot. This is Peter trying to do it biblically because in Exodus 33, when Moses meets with God, they shut up the tent. So that's what Peter says, "Let's set up three shelters" and let's do it in Exodus 33 biblical way." It's the best he could do, poor guy. And the word from God, this is my son in the world, please. And it's all that coming down the mountain. Jesus said, "Don't tell me about it." And they have this discussion when they get down from the mountain. Chapter 9, verse 14. They came, the other disciples, large crowd, verse 15. "As soon as the people saw Jesus, they were overwhelmed with wonder and ran to greet him". So this is halfway through the Gospel of Mark. So people now know who Jesus is, and when he shows up, people take notice. Then Jesus asks a question, "What are you arguing about?" Now it's a side point, but did Jesus know the answer to that question?

And this comes back to the Christology. I've talked about this a bit in the doctrine class. I don't think he knows the answer to this. I think Jesus lives as a perfectly spirit-filled human on mission of Messiah. And so the Holy Spirit gives him supernatural knowledge as he gives us supernatural knowledge when it's mission-critical. At this point, I don't think it's mission-critical, and I think he asks because he doesn't know. "What are you arguing about?" But I see him doing what I think we should do is start collecting information.

So man and crowd, teacher brought my son who's possessed by spirit, the derogative speech, and he describes how it is, and he says, "I ask your disciples to drag out the spirit and they could not." Now, if we went back and looked at Mark Chapter 3, we see that Jesus gave the disciples authority to cast out demons so they have the authority. I ask your disciples to drag out the spirit and they could not. And Jesus' response, I think to the disciples, "You unbelieving generation, how long do I have to put up with you guys?" I think he's saying that to the disciples, "You guys ought to do better than this." He can be demanding. "Bring the boy to me." So he brought him. Now again, my thing is when demons see and experience somebody in the name and power of Jesus, they react. When the spirit saw Jesus, they immediately threw the boy in the convulsion and it's awful. Demons do not like the name and presence of Jesus. They react.

You ask the boy's father, "How long has he been like this?" And the answer is from childhood. Now that's childhood, not infancy, but it's early on. And he described what's going on. "Please take pity on us. Everything is possible in who believes. Me, the boy's father exclaimed, 'Everybody's life first, I do believe helped me overcome my unbelief."

Then what does Jesus do? He sees a crowd running to the scene, rebuke the impure spirit and he addresses specific spirit, "You deaf and mute spirit." How did he come up with that particular way of addressing the spirit? This is not hard. How did he come up with that? "You deaf and mute spirit." And the answer is the spirit made him deaf and mute, but he's addressing a specific spirit and in a certain sense. He doesn't use the term. He doesn't command the demon to present itself, but it's telling the demon "Pay attention. I'm speaking to you, demon." And he says, "I command you, come out of him and never enter again."

That's all he says. And how Jesus speaks to demons is a critically important thing for our methodologies. I think we should do it the same way he does. "I command you, come out of him and never enter him again." He doesn't tell a demon where to go. In fact, in no case in scripture does the demon command a demon to go somewhere. We'll look at Mark 5 in our next teaching. "I command you come out of him and never enter him again." The same thing we saw in Mark 1, "The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out." There it is.

Okay. So it was a reaction, but it comes out. It doesn't take hours. Fairly short. The boy looks like a corpse. He's dead. Jesus, take him by the hand and lifting him up and stood him up. Then you get the obvious question. Jesus went inside the house, the disciples came to him privately and said, "Jesus, what happened? Why couldn't we drive it out?" See, they were expecting they could and they couldn't. How come? And Jesus's answer is enigmatic, at least. "This kind can come only by prayer." "This kind can come out only by prayer." Is that a special kind of demon in the boy or is this kind meaning these demons? And "this kind can only by prayer." And this again is a place where you get a textual variation. If you look in King James or New King James or that family of texts, it will say this pride can come out only by prayer and fasting.

And if you've got a decent Bible, you'll always have some sort of note about the textual variation. If you've got a study Bible, have a discussion on it. My suggestion, if you want to get into it a bit further, is go to the NET Bible, the New English Translation NET Bible. It's online and it has textual and syntactical and translational notes that are really, really helpful done by the top people in the world. So good resource to discuss these kinds of things. This kind can come only by prayer. Now, the problem here is, "Well, I'd say you disciples didn't pray enough," but Jesus didn't pray before he took on the demon. Now he lives a life of prayer, but he didn't go up in the mountain to pray. He came up the mountain and was transfigured. So Jesus doesn't pray, but he says it's kind come only by prayer. You think, "Oh, that's weird." A lot of weird stuff.

Keep your finger there and turn over to Matthew 17 where you get the same story. Matthew 17:17. Well, it starts back a little bit further, Matthew 14. 17 and 14, you get the same story: demonized boy, unbelieving, perverse generation. Bring the boy. 18, Jesus rebuked the demon. It came out of the boy and he was healed at that moment, disciples came into private. "Why couldn't we drive it out?" It's the same story, but Jesus's answer is different because you have so little faith.

Now, when I look at the stories in scripture, these are storytellers that take a longer event and they bring down the emphases that they're seeing happen. So Matthew and Mark have a little bit different emphasis. Matthew's emphasis is, "You didn't have enough faith." Mark's emphasis is, "There's not a prayer in your life." And I can see very quickly the connection between real prayer and faith. Because the better my prayer life is, the more I know God and trust God and my relationship with God is better. You can see the obvious connection between the two.

So I don't see this as any kind of a contradiction. They're just slight differences of emphasis. And the connection is that I need to have a trusting response to God, taking his word, believe his judgments. And that comes through prayer and communion with God. Life of prayer is one of spiritual disciplines. But I still ask the question. I don't really have an answer yet, why the disciples could kick out some demons, but not this demon. Is it different order of demons? Could be, but that's not a... I don't know.

Let me tell you what I think. When I look at parenting... Okay, we've got a mom and a dad and a two-year-old. Who has authority? People are immediately laughing. Mom and a dad and a two-year-old, who has authority? Well, in many households, Mom and Dad have authority, but two-year-olds running the house. Why is that? Mom and Dad have authority. They're the mom. They're the parent. They're the adult. But kid has all the authority. Why?

Well, there are two basic reasons, because Mom and Dad have the authority, but they don't have the confidence and the competence to use it well. I think that's what happened to the disciples here. They have the authority. Jesus gave it to them in Mark Chapter 3. They expect to have it but don't. And that's the thing that we're going to do as we come into the how-to part of this course a little bit later, is what do you do to get the confidence that the authority is real and the competence to use it well.

Think of Evangelism, telling the Gospel story. The Gospel story is true. I have full authority to speak the Gospel. Jesus, I won't go through it, you know what that is. But for many people, I don't have the confidence to do it because I think, "Man, if I talk about Jesus, my friends are not going to like me. I won't get the promotional work if I get known as one of those Bible-bangers or whatever," and we lose our confidence that we have good news. We don't have the competence to speak good news in a way that can be received well by a potentially hostile audience.

And you can see the connection really quickly. We have the authority of the Gospel. We have the authority to tell the Gospel, but we lack confidence and competence to do it well. I think that's exactly what happened here. I think when the disciples saw this boy, because we don't know how old he is, he's a child apparently, but his possession is extreme. And when the dad says, "Can you kick the demon out of my kid?" They, I think, lose their confidence and their buffaloed by the power of this demon that's doing such extraordinary things, and they just don't have the confidence that they can do it.

So as I retell the story in my own mind, "Demon come out in Jesus' name" and the demon says, "No," and they don't have the confidence and the competence. So they start maybe arguing with the demon. I don't know what they did, but see, that's a key thing, and this is what I want to learn as we get into the how-to sections. "How do I have not only the authority," because they're seated with Christ in the heavens, far above all authority, power, dominion, all those things, how to have the confidence that's true, and then the competence to do it effectively, not get distracted or deceived in what we're doing.

That's the lesson I find here in Mark Chapter 9 is we need not only the authority of Jesus, but the confidence and the competence that we can and can do the work of freeing people from demonic attachment. That's where we're going.