Jesus' Authority over Demons, Part 2
Luke 4:31-37
Let's open our Bibles to Luke chapter 4. We find ourselves in the text of verses 31 to 37. And while it is a brief story, and you might assume that it could be briefly discussed, we're spending some time here because it introduces to us a new theme in the unfolding story of Jesus Christ. This is the first time we encounter a demon-possessed person. Obviously the demon possessed appear again and again and again during the ministry of Jesus and the apostles, even into the book of Acts. It is very significant that the first miracle that Luke records of Jesus is a miracle of delivering a demon-possessed man from that evil spirit living in him.
There is a real world of demons. There is a real world of evil spirits, not to be confused with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I said that in the early service, somebody in the back immediately closed their Harry Potter book. I read a little bit of Harry Potter, about eight pages which was enough. I'm not debating whether it's interesting reading but it's fantasy and he creates illusions about a nether world, an underworld, a spirit world of wizards and magicians, a strange bizarre kind of creature that has supernatural power. The world of Harry Potter doesn't exist. It is the world of fantasy. But there is a real spiritual world, there really are demons, there really are unclean spirits that possess people. And sometimes I think that all of this fantasy, all of this preoccupation with the world of Harry Potter, and we see it in television, we see it in the movies, the endless fantasies of spiritual beings, supernatural worlds, aliens is somewhat of a clever smokescreen that covers over the true reality of the underworld of demons.
It was no fantasy in which Jesus engaged, however, when He confronted the forces of hell. It was a real world, a real world of demons. And one of the most fascinating features in the ministry of Jesus is His encounter with the demons. The whole subject of spiritual evil in high places, the whole area of study that we call demonology, the world of evil spirits obviously fascinates people. And unfortunately even in the Christian world reality and fantasy have merged to create a body of material that is basically very confusing. Were you to go in the average Christian bookstore and just take the material out that deals with demons and read it, in the end you would be probably hopelessly confused about the truth. It has never been God's purpose in the revelation of Scripture to confuse people. The Bible was written to make things clear. God revealed Himself on the pages of Scripture in order that we might know the truth, that we might understand, that we might have what we've been hearing in the music this morning, the mind of Christ. The mind of Christ is not a mystical experience, having the mind of Christ means to think the way Jesus thinks and that means to think the way things really are, that is to have a true understanding. It is important that we have a true understanding of God, it is important that we not deviate with regard to God or else we are guilty of having a false God. It is important that we not have another Christ, than the Christ of the New Testament. It is important that we understand the trinity and the Holy Spirit the way the Holy Spirit truly is. It is important that we understand salvation, the way salvation is because a deviant form of the gospel damns men's souls. Why would we think that we are free to mingle truth with fantasy and error in understanding the dark world of Satan, the world that holds the whole planet captive and in bondage?
It is a great grief to me, of course as you well know, that there's so much confusion in the church today about many things, and this is just another one to add to your list. In some ministries demons have become a major preoccupation. In fact there are ministries that exist for the purpose of going around trying to chase demons out of Christians, something that I don't think even exists. I'll say more about that later. But demons have become a major item in many ministries. Sadly, most of those purvey a view of demons that is not biblical, that is of their own imagination and invention and misrepresents the reality...and whenever you misrepresent the reality of Satan you put yourself in a highly vulnerable position. Confusion can be dispelled. I don't think you need to be confused about the demon world, I don't think you need to be confused about demon possession, it requires, however, a rejection of speculation. It requires a rejection of experience as the norm that establishes the standard and demands a careful confinement to Scripture. And you can go where Scripture takes you and beyond that you cannot go, but you certainly can go as far as Scripture takes you, and Scripture is the only reliable source.
And when you're talking about Scripture and demons, essentially you're talking about the gospels and the book of Acts...primarily there is no incident of a demon-possessed person in the entire Old Testament. There is an explosion of demon possession during the time of Christ and the apostles, and then in the epistles there is no reference to demon possession. Then there will be a greater explosion of demon possession as the apocalypse of Revelation tells us just prior to the return of Jesus Christ when according to 2 Thessalonians 2 the restrainer is removed, and all hell breaks loose as all the demons effect their evil on the world of the Antichrist. But in the Old Testament and in the time of the epistles which define for us the church age, there's no discussion of demon possession. It really explodes on the scene when Jesus arrives. It's as if, as I told you last week, demons did their work in a clandestine way, chose to function in subtleties, for the most part, until Jesus came and they couldn't remain confined and hidden. Their cover was blown under the power of Jesus as He pulled them out of their hidden places and exposed them and dealt with them. And so we see this dramatic escalation of demon possession and demon activity in response to the ministry of Jesus Christ, and we also see His immense and complete power over them all.
So the definitive material on demons is found in the historical records of Jesus' life, Matthew, Mark, Luke in particular, John doesn't mention demon possession. And it's also found in the book of Acts as we see demons being dealt with by the apostles of Jesus who also were declaring His messiahship and articulating the revelation of the gospel.
Now as we come to Luke 4 and verse 31, we come to the first miracle in Luke and in this miracle Jesus casts a demon our of a man. We also come to a turning point in the big picture of Luke. Up to chapter 4 verse 30, Luke has been concerned with the person of Jesus. Everything up to this point has focused on His person. He is the promised Messiah. He is the one John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Messiah announces. He is the one that the angel Gabriel proclaims will be born to the virgin Mary. He is the one who fulfills the Abrahamic, Davidic and New Covenant promises. He is the one who fits the Davidic genealogy. All that Luke has said up to this point focuses on the person of Christ, the testimony of angels as to His person...both the angel who announced to Elizabeth and to Mary, the angels who talked to the shepherds. Then the testimony of the shepherds, the testimony of Zacharias and Elizabeth, the testimony of Simeon and Anna, the testimony of Joseph and Mary, the testimony of a genealogy, the testimony of John the Baptist at the Jordan River, the testimony of God the Father, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," the testimony of the Holy Spirit who descends on Him like a dove, and then the testimony of the Messiah Himself who steps into the synagogue of Nazareth and says, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me because He's anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor, and He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate those who are oppressed and to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord and today this scripture is fulfilled in your ears," that's His own personal testimony to His messiahship as the fulfillment of Isaiah 61:1 and 2.
Up to now all of this testimony has focused on the identity, the person of Jesus. Now we have a transition here, and Luke looks at not the person of Jesus so much, but the power of Jesus. If He is to be the Messiah, if we are to believe He is, He has to demonstrate that He has power beyond any human level. And so he begins to tell us that He does and He presents His power over all teachers and all teaching, His power over disease, His power over nature and He begins in verse 31 by showing us His power over demons. This is a very, very important matter. Let's look at the text, verse 31.
Jesus came down to Capernaum and it is really down, it's 2,000 feet and Nazareth is 1300 feet above sea level and Capernaum on the shores of the Sea of Galilee is 686 feet below sea level, so He came down about 2,000 feet. After incensing all of the people in the synagogue in Nazareth, He had to flee for His life. They tried to throw Him off a cliff and kill Him. He goes to a rival city twenty some miles away called Capernaum and He there on the following Sabbath probably or soon after that was teaching them. And they were amazed at His teaching, that was always the response. They never heard anybody like this, clarity of mind, precision of vocabulary, mastery of the language, mastery of thought, power of conviction, all of it was there. They were astounded at His teaching. His message came with authority. And according to the verb in verse 31 He was teaching, in the process of teaching when there was a man, verse 33, in the synagogue possessed by the spirit of an unclean demon and he cried out with a loud voice, "Ha, what do we have to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth, have You come to destroy us? I know who You are, the Holy One of God."
There in the middle of His teaching, having read the Scripture probably from the same text, Isaiah 61, and now explaining to this city that He is the fulfillment of that, He is the Messiah and that He is come to preach the gospel to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, free those who are downtrodden. What He is saying is, Jesus has now come to go into the kingdom of darkness where sinners are kept in spiritual poverty, where they are kept as spiritual prisoners, where they are spiritually blind and spiritually oppressed and destroy the works of the devil, 1 John 3:8, and set those prisoners free. In other words, He has come to destroy the kingdom of darkness and to transfer sinners from that kingdom into the Kingdom of light. And in the midst of making that declaration and preaching that message, a demon screams out, according to verse 33 and says in verse 34, "Ha, what do we have to do with You..." and so forth.
Why does Luke start his discussion of the power of Jesus with this miracle? He's very selective for a very obvious reason, all sinners are in Satan's kingdom. All sinners are in Satan's kingdom. They are in the kingdom of darkness. They are dead in trespasses and sin in whom the god of this world literally works. The whole world, 1 John 5:19, is in the lap of the evil one. He is the spirit who works in the children of disobedience, Ephesians 2:1. He is the god of this world who has blinded their minds, 2 Corinthians 4. He is the one who holds the sinners all their lifetime in bondage, Hebrews 2:14. The whole world is captive to the kingdom of darkness. They are all the children of the devil, John 8:44. And if Jesus came to set the prisoners free, to make the spiritually impoverished rich, to give sight to the spiritually blind, and to deliver those who are downtrodden or oppressed, He's going to have to break the power of Satan and demons over the souls of men.
We are always, and I think in particularly in current years, discussing the doctrine of salvation. And there has been a great debate, as you know, on the issue of justification, as there has been effort to redefine justification in very broad terms which embrace both Protestantism and Catholicism. There has been a necessity of clarifying the doctrine of salvation, clarifying the doctrine of justification. And in that discussion there's a lot of things being written. And I, of course, am reading many, many things on the subject, and I do read about regeneration and I read about conversion and I read about justification and I read about redemption, and I read about adoption, but there's one feature of salvation that I rarely ever read about and it's unfortunate because it's critical and that is the element of salvation that we would call deliverance...deliverance. When is the last time you read a book or even an article on the matter of deliverance that when a person becomes a believer they are delivered from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son, Colossians 1:13? They are delivered from darkness to light, Acts 26:18. That's what salvation does. It takes us out of the sovereign dominating power of Satan and puts us under the sovereign dominating power of Christ. We're no longer slaves of sin, we become the servants of righteousness, to use the language of Romans 6 .
Deliverance is an issue that needs to be grasped. I'm probably talking myself into such an effort. I usually can't convince anybody else to do it and wind up doing myself. But that's a great concept, isn't it? If we are...if we are prisoners to Satan, prisoners to darkness, if we are in bondage to the devil, if we are in those fortresses of 2 Corinthians 10, locked in those massive granite fortifications of hellish ideologies and we need to be liberated, if that is our condition then salvation is our deliverance. And that's why 2 Corinthians 10 says that we come with the gospel and the gospel smashes the fortifications and we rescue the prisoners and lead them captive to Christ. That's what evangelism is.
Now if we are going to be delivered from the power of Satan which is no small force, if we're going to be delivered from the world of demonic power and influence, then Jesus Christ who is our deliverer must have power over that kingdom, right? Now we already know that He had power over Satan, we saw it at the beginning of chapter 4 because one of His credentials as Messiah is the fact that when He was tempted by Satan He was totally triumphant. So we know that personally Jesus can resist the power of Satan. What we also need to know is that He can break the power of Satan for the sinner. It's one thing for Him to resist the power of Satan in His holy perfection, it's quite another thing for Him to break the power of Satan over an unholy sinner. That's why Luke starts at this point. If we're going to talk about the power of Jesus, then let's talk about the place where that power has to be in effect. Jesus came to save sinners and sinners are subjects of Satan, children of the devil if they literally are controlled by the spirit of Satan working in them, if they are under demonic control, if they're held in bondage, if they're in great massive fortifications of demonic ideologies where they are prisoners, if Jesus is going to deliver them, if He's going to justify them, if He's going to redeem them, if He's going to regenerate them, if He's going to adopt them He's also going to have to deliver them. That's why the apostle Paul on the Damascus road was told by the Lord Himself that you're going to go and preach deliverance. You're going to preach deliverance.
I don't think Christian people even understand that today. We have people in our church who come out of other churches in this very area where the belief is that Christians are literally under the constant terrorizing by demons. That just is not true. I remember a few years ago reading a book in which there was a chapter on, "The Demon of Post-nasal Drip," and that somehow there was a formula that you could call against this demon to make your noise stop running-this is what we need to do... And there are ministries far and wide going on today in quote/unquote evangelical Christianity where the assumption is that whatever is wrong in your life as a Christian is due to some demon that's in you that needs to be exorcized. They failed to understand the great truth of deliverance..
The fact of the matter is, folks, we do not tremble in front of the demons, the demons tremble in front of us. We need to understand that. Satan has been put beneath our feet. James 2:19, "The demons believe and...what?...shudder, or tremble." They're afraid. I'm not afraid of the demons, we have no reason to be afraid of the demons. "Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world," right? There's nothing to fear. I am not the temple of demons, I am the temple of the Holy Spirit. That kind of tragic misrepresentation strikes a blow against the wondrous work of deliverance that Christ wrought in the life of everyone who is regenerated.
If they're going to be delivered from the kingdom of darkness while they're being justified and redeemed and regenerated and adopted and converted, all those great concepts, when we're going to be delivered then Christ has to have power to shatter darkness that destroys Satan and his demons. And He does. First John 3:8, "The Son of God appeared for this purpose that He might destroy the works of the devil." And He's done it in my life, has He done it in yours? He has if He saved you. Satan has nothing in me, he has no authority. Can he condemn me successfully? Not according to Romans 8, he can't condemn me. God hears no accusation against me by the devil, the devil is the accuser of the brethren, God hears no accusation. Why? Because Jesus Christ already paid the penalty for all my sins, no accusation stands. That's why nothing can ever separate us from...what?...the love of God, absolutely nothing. That's why no one can ever condemn us, no one can ever bring a charge against God's elect. I have nothing to fear from Satan. Satan cannot crawl into my life and possess me. My body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which I have of God, I'm not my own, I'm bought with a price, He paid the price of His blood. He purchased me, took me into His Kingdom, filled me with His Holy Spirit. And that's permanent.
Now the sin...the sinners in the world, the unconverted people, they're in the kingdom of darkness, they're under its influence. They're not all demon possessed. Demon possession is an extreme form of demonic bondage. It is a rare form of demonic bondage. As I said, throughout the whole Old Testament you don't have an occasion where there is a description or a discussion of demon possession. Through all the epistles of the New Testament you don't have any description or any incident of demon possession or any formula for dealing with it. The question is this simply, if a sinner is under demon power whether it's influence or the rare kind of possession, can Jesus deliver that sinner? And the answer to the question, according to this passage and many others in the gospels, is yes He can because He did and He did it sovereignly and He did it immediately.
Jesus in His life time has numerous encounters with demons. And during the time of Jesus they kind of blew their cover, they moved out of a clandestine and subtle operation with which apparently they're more comfortable and they were exposed. They were exposed in panic and fear very often like this demon. I don't think this demon necessarily wanted to burst out like this but he involuntarily couldn't restrain himself under the powerful preaching of the gospel, the implications of which was going to be his expulsion if that man believed and ultimately the implications are that he's going to be cast into the lake of fire, that's why he said, "Are You here to destroy us? Is this the time? Is it now that You've come to send us to the lake of fire?"
All sinners are influenced by Satan to one degree or another but demon possession is a very rare kind of phenomena, but it was escalated during the time of Jesus Christ as the demons literally were sitting under the powerful preaching of Jesus. The people were all astounded. The people were all amazed. They were astonished, they never heard anybody speak like this. Well, the demons had the same reaction with the added feature that they knew that the powerful preaching of Jesus would not only spell the salvation of those that they possessed, but the power of Jesus would some day damn them to a lake of fire. So He exposed them and they escalated the fury of their attack, I think they perhaps may have indwelt more people more frequently trying to hold on to sinners because of the powerful influence during the time of Jesus Christ. You find that same kind of demon activity in the early parts of Acts as the apostles are ministering and on into Acts down in to 16 and even in to 19 and then it just sort of fades away as Jesus moved off the scene and the apostles. We could say that they dropped their normal subtleties, they sort of blew their cover, they were exposed by the power of His message.
Now as we look at this incident, but I've told you last time, I'm just going to kind of talk about this a little bit, laying some ground work for the future cause we're going to see a lot more of this...I told you that the thing I want you to recognize is that demons live in fear. They are constantly terrified. James 2:19, "The devils, or demons, believe and tremble." Now what makes demons tremble? That's really the title for this brief little series, "What scares demons?" We think we're supposed to be afraid of demons. There's no reason if you're a Christian to have any fear at all. The question is, what makes demons afraid? And the answer is in this passage unfolding...the preaching of the Son of God, the purpose of the Son of God, the purity of the Son of God and the power of the Son of God. Now that's the clear outline in the text, unfortunately I can't preach it to you in one sermon and the reason I can't is because I have to lay the ground work so you understand the phenomena we're dealing with and then we can go through those points.
Let's just go back to the first point. The great power against the demon world was the preaching of the Son of God. Jesus is preaching. He's in the synagogue, He's teaching, He's preaching and in the middle of His message this demon who is dwelling in the man in the synagogue screams, the end of verse 33. The demon literally can't restrain himself. This is an un...this is a sort of an unpremeditated, involuntary panic that sets into this demon as he hears the gospel being preached, the gospel that says the Messiah has come to deliver these sinners from the darkness, the blindness, the spiritual poverty, the oppression in which the world of demons and Satan held them captive. And the demon can't restrain himself and out comes, "Ha," ea in the Greek from the verb saying "let me alone." It's an exclamation of terror. The demon is literally terrified.
This is a rare thing. I've preached the gospel for a long time and only about three times in my whole life have I ever heard demons speak being confronted. One of them was a few weeks ago, I told you about last week, right down in the front when a demon-possessed person came running down the aisle after I was preaching the gospel, exalting Christ's power over the kingdom of darkness...came at me and said, "Why are you attacking me? Why are you trying to hurt me?" Which is exactly what the demon said here.
But it was some years ago when I had first come to Grace. We had built the family center and we were having services there before we built this facility. It was a Sunday night and after the service was over I was over having some food with somebody from the church and I got a call from Jerry Mitchell who was here a few weeks ago, he was on the staff at the time. He said, "You've got to come down here, John, I've got a...I've got a girl in here whose got all kinds of demon voices." He had never experienced anything like this and I never had either. And I said, "Well I don't know if I could be much help but I'll come right down."
So I came down, I walked in and there was chaos in the office. It was over in the building by the family center, and I walked in and the place was in disarray and it was obvious she had been terrorizing things. She had overturned the desk and poor Jerry who was a boxer in the Navy was having a hard time defending himself against this girl, and this is characteristic of New Testament accounts where there's a certain level of strength that's beyond normal. And I'll never forget the greeting when I walked in the door. I walked in the door and this...out of this girl's mouth whom I had met and with whom I had spoken because she had been coming to the church came this voice, and I can't, obviously, replicate it but in my memory...I know what the voice said, it's something like (in a hoarse voice): "Not him, not him, not him, get him out, get him out...get him out," to me.
Well my first reaction was, "I'm leaving. I'm not sure I'm up to this." Wow! And my second reaction was, "They know who I am and they know whose side I'm on, that's very affirming." It was affirming. I sort of started feeling apostolic. Paul I know and Jesus I know and John MacArthur...you know? Wow! Amazing!
I don't think that demon was afraid of me humanly. I don't have any human power to deal with demons. In fact, Jerry and I didn't know what to do. We started trying to send the demons away. We sent them everywhere you could think of...the pit, the abyss, Phoenix...anywhere hot, you know. (Laughter) And the bottom...the bottom line is they didn't go anywhere and so we just were praying and saying..."You know, this isn't working, this casting out thing isn't working, I'm not Jesus and we're not apostles and we don't have authority over that kingdom." There's only one way that this girl will ever be delivered and that is when Christ delivers her in the act of salvation. So we wrestled...literally physically trying to restrain her and get her in a chair and she was so exhausted physically and finally calmed down and we gave her the gospel. And she confessed her sin, I'll never forget it, just really gushed out her sin before the Lord and embraced Jesus Christ and then it was just this calm that came everywhere. There was deliverance. Nothing to do with me, nothing to do with a formula, nothing to do with an exorcism, nothing to do with that at all, that...that is not what deals with demons. She needed to be delivered from the kingdom of darkness, you understand that? She was...she was.
The demon was terrified of me not because of something I could do in the human. The demon was terrified of me because the demon connected me with the message of the gospel. And the demon knew that if the gospel came to this girl and she believed, that he was finished. And that's exactly what happened. She was as clean as the driven snow after that and never had another occasion of that kind of terrifying experience.
So this demon is in this man and here's Jesus preaching the gospel. If the demon is afraid of me...whoa...how fearful is he going to be of Jesus? And the demon just screams out, "What do we have to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth?" which is idiomatic. And I told you last time what that means, "Why are You attacking us? Why are You trying to hurt us?" That's exactly what that man said to me a few weeks ago.
You see, what terrorizes the demons is the preaching of the gospel that sets the prisoners free. Do you see that? That's what terrifies the demons. When the supremely powerful and absolutely authoritative Word of God is preached, the forces of hell who hear it panic. And never was it preached and never has it been preached the way Jesus preached it. It's no wonder they couldn't restrain themselves. As I said last week, what a motivator that is for the preacher to preach the Word of God, right? You go into the pulpit with all your silly human ideas and your cleverness, you literally emasculate yourself. If you want some power, then just preach the gospel. That's what delivers people.
Well let's go back to the man. That was just review. Let's go back to the man...but I yelled in different places so you thought it was new. Verse 33, let's go back to the man. I mean, there's nothing about the man, it just says a man. We don't know anything about him and nothing is said about him. We don't know any post-script of the story or how the man dealt with any of this, it just says there was a man in the synagogue possessed by the spirit of an unclean demon.
So here's this man and the demon that's in him,