This sermon was preached at St Matthew's Lutheran Church, Maryborough, 8.15am, and Grace Lutheran Church, Childers, 10.30am.
Grace, mercy and peace be to
you from God our Father, and form our Lord Jesus Christ.
He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey
him.
Prayer: May the words of my
mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our Rock
and our Redeemer. Amen.
Last week, we read about a
specific message and a particular word that Jesus was preaching, where he said:
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe
in the gospel.
Today we read: They went
into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath [Jesus] entered the synagogue
and was teaching. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them
as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.
In our reading today, we
don’t read about what Jesus was saying. The text simply says that he was
teaching. But we do read the kind of effect that it had on people, and why
it had this effect. We read: They were astonished at his teaching. But
why were they astonished? We read: for he taught them as one who had
authority, and not as the scribes. Jesus was teaching not with simply human
authority, like the scribes that the people were so used to. It is one thing to
be a scribe, and to check and double-check words and grammar—this is a good
thing. But it is another thing to teach. When Jesus teaches, he
is not simply teaching empty words, or rhetoric. He is not saying a beautiful
or a clever or a funny way of putting things. He is not showing off his ability
to communicate, or his skills in giving a speech. This is all human
authority. But Jesus’ teaching has authority, because he is not only a
human being, but he is also true God at the same time, in one person. And so
Jesus’ teaching is crystal clear, it is completely and totally true, and
there are no half-truths. Sometimes people say things in a clever way so
as to say two opposite things at the same time, and they end up saying nothing.
In actual fact, they just want to say something to keep people happy, and to be
politically correct, or to be diplomatic. But this is not how Jesus speaks:
every word that he teaches is God’s word. Proverbs 30 says: Every word of
God proves true. Jesus prays to his Father: Sanctify them in the truth;
your word is truth. He also says that the Scripture cannot be broken. St
Paul also writes to Titus that God never lies. And because of this, we
read in Hebrews that the word of God is living and active, sharper than any
two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and
of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And so
when Jesus teaches, the people are astonished, they recognise the divine
authority of Jesus, they recognise that there is something different about
what he says that no one else has said to them before. They recognise that
no-one has called them to repentance in the sharp, clear way that he
has, and no-one has comforted them with the divine comfort of heaven in
the way that he has.
But then, in the middle of
Jesus’ teaching, something very strange happens. We read: Immediately there
was in the synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, “What have
you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who
you are—the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and
come out of him.”
First of all here, we are
told that there was a man with an unclean spirit. An unclean spirit is
another name for a demon, or sometimes it is called an evil spirit. Now
what is an unclean spirit? One of things we often forget when we read the bible
is that creation includes things that we can’t see. In the Nicene Creed, we confess:
I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of
all things visible and invisible, or seen and unseen. The visible
creation is what we see around us, and the creation of these things is
describes right at the beginning of the bible, in Genesis chapter 1. Visible
things include light, water, the sky, the earth, land, the sea, plants, trees,
the sun, the moon, the stars, the planets, the solar systems and galaxies,
birds, fish, animals, reptiles, insects, and also, of course, humans. But then
there are also certain things that God creates that are invisible: this
includes heaven and hell, and also angels. Angels are spiritual beings, spirits
that are created by God, that don’t have bodies, don’t have flesh and
blood. However, like human beings, angels also were created with a free
will. God commanded human beings to love him and serve him, and he created
the angels to do the same. Loving and serving God means that we do it willingly—God
does not have us like puppets on a string, making us love him by force. That
wouldn’t be love.
And so, we also believe that
the devil decided to use his free will not for God and in service of God, but in
hatred towards God, and in rebellion against him, and for evil.
Then Satan tempted the first people into sin, and the human race became sinful
too, because they listened to the voice of the devil instead of God, and also
chose evil over good. But also, we read that the devil was not the only angel
who fell into sin, but there was a large number, who form a kind of army with
the devil as the leader.
In our reading today, we read
that an unclean spirit had entered into a man. Now, in our culture,
something has happened in the last two or three hundred years, which is called
the Scientific Enlightenment. From this time onwards people have made
all kinds of advances in science, which has been a very good thing.
However, at the same time, people started to reject things in the bible that
weren’t able to be proven by science, or weren’t measurable by science. People
started to deny that there’s anything that exists that you can’t see. We can
see this today, where many people don’t believe in the existence of heaven or
hell, angels or demons, the devil, or even God himself. They look at the world
with a set of rules that just completely does away with anything that they
can’t measure or prove with science.
Many people in the church too
have often read passages such as the one in our reading today in a scientific—or
we might say a “rationalistic”—way. This isn’t to say that we don’t use our brains
when we read the bible. Of course, we do.
But we shouldn’t use our brain and our reason to try and make the
bible say something that it doesn’t say. Especially we shouldn’t try and
make the bible say the opposite of what it doesn’t say! This is exactly
what the devil did when he tempted Eve: God had said that if they ate the
fruit, that they would surely die. What does the devil do? He interprets
God’s word in such a way as to make it say the exact opposite of what
God actually said. The devil says: You will not surely die.
And so, it is common for
people to read a passage like this in our reading today and to say that this
man didn’t have an unclean spirit, but that he had a mental illness. However,
this is not what the text says. Mental illness does exist, and sometimes
there are certain mental illnesses that have symptoms which look similar
to demon possessions. But they are not the same thing. Later in chapter
1 of Mark, we read that Jesus healed many who were sick with various
diseases, and cast out many demons. There are two things here: Jesus was
healing people who were sick, and he was casting out demons. They were
not always the same thing. So there are two mistakes that people make:
sometimes they think that there is no such thing as demon possession,
and that everything is mental illness. Sometimes people think that there
is no such thing as mental illness and everything is demon
possession. Both of these things are wrong. Sometimes a person can go to
a doctor or a psychiatrist and be treated for their mental illness—no problem.
However, there are also situations where medical treatment can’t help—the
reason is that the person is not really mentally ill, but are spiritually
troubled.
But let’s pretend that the
man in our reading does have a mental illness. Let’s listen then to what
the man says. He says: What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have
you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God. What kind
of mental illness is able to recognise Jesus, and to speak hidden things about
him that other people wouldn’t otherwise know? Also look at what Jesus does in
return. We read: But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of
him.”
When we’re dealing with
mental illness, we’re dealing with a person who is sick, and who needs treatment.
And when anyone is sick, whether they have a physically debilitating
illness or are mentally ill, we should pray for them, and they should go
and seek treatment. And we pray that Jesus would bring healing to the
person, either in a natural way through treatment or through medicine as
God provides through a doctor, or in a supernatural way through a
special miracle of God. We know that in this life, God may or may not give a
miraculous healing. But we do know that for those who believe in Jesus, that he
will heal us completely and totally in the next life and completely transform
and glorify our bodies so that we will completely free of all of our sickness
and troubles.
Sometimes people—especially
some charismatics or Pentecostals—make the mistake of believing that
when people become Christians, they become sinless. So every time they
see and recognise sin at work in them, they think it must be an evil spirit.
Now, it is true that because our heart is sinful, the devil has a close ally
inside of us. But some people make the mistake of always wanting exorcism,
when in actual fact, they need absolution, and forgiveness. They
need to hear the words that Jesus has died and paid for each and every single
sin and their whole sinful heart and their whole sinful condition, and even in
the church today we can hear the words of forgiveness from God himself spoken
to us. When we hear the words: I forgive you all your sins, the devil
has no more power to make accusations. Jesus has pulled his teeth out, and the
devil can’t bite us anymore! As St Paul says in Romans: There is no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus.
When we’re talking about
demon possession, we’re talking about two beings: one is a human being,
a man or a woman like you and me, and the other is an invisible being, a
demon or unclean spirit, who has entered in and joined itself to the person.
This unclean spirit can take control of the person, like in our reading, where
it uses the person to speak its own words. In our reading the
unclean spirit uses the person and says: What have you to do with us?
Have you come to destroy us? The unclean spirit even gives the person a
special insight into hidden things that the person otherwise wouldn’t know.
In our reading the unclean spirit says: I know who you are—the Holy One of
God. Notice here that the demon tells something that is true, but the means
of know that truth is not right. The words are true, but the authority
is not right.
And so we might ask the
question: how did this man end up like this? Well the text doesn’t actually
tell us. However, Jesus does say to his disciples: I am the way and the
truth and the life. Nobody comes to the Father except through me. We know
that outside of Jesus and his kingdom, life is a dangerous mess, and people are
open and susceptible to all kinds of spiritual danger. However, in our reading,
when Jesus is present there in the synagogue, and begins to teach,
the unclean spirit is exposed.
Now, we read in the Scripture
where God the Father’s voice comes down from heaven and says: This is my
beloved Son: listen to him. This happens at the Transfiguration, when
Jesus’ face and clothes began to shine with bright, white light. In the Old
Testament, Moses had already spoken about the coming Messiah, and said: The
LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your
brothers—it is to him you shall listen. All throughout the New Testament,
we read various passages that confirms this prophet to be Jesus, and
even God the Father says: listen to him. Moses had said centuries
before: It is to him you shall listen. But on the other hand, in
the same passage, Moses says some other things. He says: There shall not be
found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone
who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer
or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for
whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD. And because of these
abominations the LORD your God is driving them out before you. You shall be
blameless before the LORD your God, for these nations, which you are about to
dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the LORD
your God has not allowed you to do this.
So, do you hear that the
nations listened to fortune-tellers and diviners, and lists a whole lot
of occult practices that people did. All through the history of Israel and the
kinds, we see that the Jewish people often mixed in the practices of the
nations with God’s law. And so, what this passage teaches us is that
fortune-tellers and diviners are not speaking with the voice of Jesus.
Jesus does not use fortune-tellers and diviners to speak, but they use a
different spiritual power. Moses says: Don’t listen to fortune-tellers and
diviners. But God the Father says about Jesus: Listen to him.
In our culture, many people
recognise that there’s more to life than what we can see. But then the mistake
that people often make is that they think that everything spiritual is good.
That’s not true. The truth is that the greatest good is spiritual good,
but the greatest evil is spiritual evil. You can’t make use of a
fortune-teller, or a psychic, or a clairvoyant, or a medium, and think that
this is the Holy Spirit—it’s not. God has specifically said in his word that listening
to Jesus Christ and listening to fortune-tellers and diviners are
mutually exclusive things. And so when people open themselves up to these kinds
of false ideas and false practices, and particularly occult practices, they
also open themselves up to unclean spirits.
In the bible, an unclean
spirit is also called an evil spirit or a demon. The bible
speaks very negatively about them. But outside of the church, people use
positive-sounding ways of speaking about them. People might say: I have an
angel who speaks to me. Or: I have a spirit guide. Or: I try to
hear what the universe is trying to say to me. Or: I communicate with my
higher self. Even sometimes people can be mistaken and deceived for
thinking that they are talking directly with God or the Holy Spirit,
even when they reject and go against what the Holy Spirit has revealed in the
Scriptures. All these things are examples of people trying to make contact with
the unclean spiritual realm.
Now, the amazing thing about
our reading today is that Jesus deals with this man very simply. We read: Jesus
rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” The word “be silent”
means to “get muzzled”. Jesus speaks to the unclean spirit like a noisy dog.
And we read: The unclean spirit, convulsing him and was crying out with a
loud voice, came out of him. Even in Luke it says that the man was done
no harm. Jesus, being true God and true man in one person, knows exactly
how to separate an unclean spirit from the person standing in front of him. And
with his powerful and authoritative word, he simply casts the unclean
spirit out.
And we read: And they were
all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, “What is this? A
new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they
obey him.” And at one his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding
region of Galilee.
What is important here is
Jesus’ words, and his authority. There is no spiritual wrestling
match that goes on. Jesus is not addressing the unclean spirits as equals.
He has complete and absolute authority over them.
In the church, Jesus has
spoken his same authoritative word of power to you when you were baptised. And
when we are baptised, we make a clear statement against the devil and say: I
renounce the devil and all his works and all his ways. We confess
the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, and we renounce the devil. This is
who we are as Christians, and our whole life is a lesson in renouncing the
devil and confessing Jesus Christ. In ancient times, when a person was baptised,
they would rebuke the unclean spirit, and this excellent practice has been
reintroduced into our churches in recent years to emphasise the power of
Christ’s work against Satan in baptism. It’s no accident that as less people in
our society are baptised, spiritual and demonic trouble have increased for
people. In baptism, our Lord Jesus with his powerful word forgives us
our sin, rescues us from death and the devil, and gives eternal life to all who
believe this. Baptism is a wonderful defence and shield against all the attacks
of the evil one, because we can continually look to Jesus and his promise to
defend us from all evil. And when we are bothered and attacked by the evil one,
we can simply say: Be silent! Get out of here! You don’t belong here!
Jesus is the one who has
power over all spirits, and all the authority belong to him. We have access to his
great authority because we have his authoritative word, which is a word
of power. We are weak, but the word we speak is the word of Jesus. St Paul
says: My speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in
demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the
wisdom of men but in the power of God. So every time we speak the word of
God in its truth and purity, and preach it, and sing it, and read it, the devil
is cleared out. The devil knows his time is short when the word is in play,
because these words are the words of the living God and the living
Jesus who has risen from the dead. We cannot do anything in our power and
authority—Jesus is the only exorcist. We pray to him, and ask him to work
together with us, and to use us where he sends us. As the people say in our
reading today: He even commands the unclean spirits and they obey him. Amen.
Dear Jesus, we thank you for
your word of authority and power. Protect us from all the power of the evil
one. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment