A sermon preached at St Luke’s Maylands and St Patrick’s Mt Lawley 11th October 2020
The thing about a journey: you never know what you will come across next. Our passage today takes us through some boggy ground. Our subject is the Devil.
It was my second year as a student living in a college house in Armidale. Some of the girls at Duval College were holding seances. A chap in my house asked me what I thought of it. I had become a Christian earlier in the year and knew that contacting the dead was off-limits. I told him I thought it was dangerous. He was amused and thought he would join in – just for fun. I urged him not to. He returned thoroughly frightened. The glass had really moved.
A few years later I was working with a church youth group in Sydney. Liz was in her second last year at high school. Her friend at school watched a television program on spirit-writing. To amuse herself during a dull lesson she would hold her pen above a blank page and ask a spirit to send her a message. Her hand would write. At the beginning it was a game, but gradually got out of control, until she would get messages into her mind without even asking. She became afraid and confided in Liz. Liz told her about the Holy Spirit and they prayed for the Lord Jesus to send away the unwanted spirit. She was not troubled again, became a Christian, and eventually a full-time Christian worker.
I don’t know what you make of stories like this. You can make of them what you will, but they raise the question whether there is a spirit world out there.
What convinced me as a young science student was reading history. John Foster, in After the Apostles, tells of one way the early Christians went about their missionary work. They would go into a pagan village and challenge them to bring out their worst cases of demon-possession. Then, in the name of Jesus, they ordered the demon to leave, and it would. His source for this information was Athanasius (fourth century). In his Incarnation of the Word, Athanasius appeals to common knowledge for evidence that Jesus is God. And listen to Tertullian early in the third century! He is answering the mockers who ask, “Who is this Christ with his fables? Is he an ordinary man, a sorcerer, and was his body stolen from the tomb by his disciples?” Tertullian replies, “Mock as you will, but get the demons to mock with you! Let them deny that Christ is coming to judge every human soul. At our command they leave, distressed and unwilling, the bodies they have entered. Before your very eyes they are put to an open shame.” Other ancient writers attest this; it is one of the reasons Christianity spread so powerfully.
But we do not base our belief on anecdotes: it is because of Jesus that we believe in the reality of a spirit world. Today’s reading let’s us glimpse a dark world, which although it may be beyond our ken, is real and dangerous.
Our reading today starts with Jesus healing a man without speech, caused, according to Dr Luke, by “an unclean spirit.”
Luke 11.14: Now he was casting out a demon that was mute. When the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke, and the people marveled.
The spirit is exorcised and the man regains his speech. The crowd is gob-smacked, but there were critics who suggested Jesus was successful in casting out demons because he was in league with the Devil. Others wanted an unmistakable miracle to prove that he was truly from God – as if what they had just witnessed wasn’t proof enough.
Luke 11.15-16 But some of them said, “He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of demons,” 16 while others, to test him, kept seeking from him a sign from heaven.
Jesus responded, and Luke gives us a summary of his teaching. It’s not his intention to prove the reality of the spirit world – he takes that as given – though it is a difficulty for many in the west.
A young doctor in a large psychiatric hospital was told to make a diagnosis of a mentally-troubled man. She was unable to place him in any of the usual categories, but found in her questioning that he had been involved in the occult – seeking to communicate with the dead. She tentatively asked the senior doctor whether possession by a spirit could be an explanation. He answered, “Do you find that in DSM? Then don’t mention it.” DSM is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual that describes known psychiatric disorders. This illustrates the collision between western scientific materialist thinking and the culture of most of the world which is open to the supernatural. The success of modern medicine is seen as a proof of the non-existence of spiritual powers, though it hardly is. In the end we must decide whether to be guided by the materialist rule or follow Jesus. Of course, it is a puzzle why he confronted spirit possession so often, and we so infrequently, but that is for another time. Let me simply say that wicked people don’t become possessed, nor alcoholics or drug addicts. There seems to be a psychic door shut fast against that sort of interference with our minds. But if someone tries to contact the dead, or invites a spirit in it would not be surprising if possession resulted. This is my opinion, not the teaching of the Bible. From the Bible we can say that the spirit world is real, and that we should avoid messing with it. Now let’s look more closely at
what Jesus actually teaches here!
He begins by disputing what the sceptics were saying about him.
Luke 11.17-19 But he, knowing their thoughts, said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls. 18 And if Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that I cast out demons by Beelzebul. 19 And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
Beelzebul is one of the titles of the Canaanite god, Baal: “Lord of the House”. It is one of the many names the Jews had for Satan. In Mark he is rudely called Beelzebub, “Lord of the Manure Heap (Flies)”.
We see here that Jesus views Satan as a powerful authority in possession of his own kingdom. When I was a kid we sometimes got hold of the older boys’ girly magazines. There was one we particularly liked, not for its girly pictures – we were a bit young for that – but for the centerfold, which was a depiction of hell: full of pictures of little devils pitchforking unhappy humans into holes in the ground. That is how we thought of the Devil’s kingdom. Many have grown up with the idea that hell is Satan’s kingdom. But it is not what the Bible teaches. The only thing like this in the Bible is the Lake of Fire at the end of the Book of Revelation, which doesn’t happen until after the last judgement, and it is Satan and his allies who gets thrown into it.
No, Satan’s kingdom is this world. God appointed Adam and Eve to be its king and queen, but they followed Satan’s suggestions rather than God’s command, and all their children have followed them. The world has fallen under the authority of Satan. The Devil has never pulled the trigger of a gun, nor has any demon punched a woman in the face, but through manipulation of us humans the world is filled with misery. Jesus calls him, “the prince of this world.”
“No,” says Jesus. “This is a crazy suggestion. Your own exorcists will tell you it is a crazy suggestion. It is “the finger of God” that is at work here, and that means the kingdom of God has come upon you.” We learn that Jesus saw the kingdom of God actually present and active in his exorcisms and miracles.
In the next little parable he likens what he is doing to a strong man invading an enemy kingdom.
Luke 11.21 When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are safe; but when one stronger than he attacks him and overcomes him, he takes away his armour in which he trusted and divides his spoil.
While ever Satan’s rule is undisputed his good are safe, but now that someone stronger has come his goods (people) are being liberated. Jesus took this idea from Isaiah 49. God likened the king of Babylon to a mighty one, a tyrant. In the Bible of the early Christians he is a giant, who has taken Israel captive and removed him to Babylon; the chance of them ever escaping is zero. But God is going to contend with the giant, and save his people. Seven hundred years later Jesus comes along and applies that prophecy to his own work. Only now it is not the king of Babylon, nor ever the emperor of Rome, but the Devil who is the tyrant who must be toppled. Martin Luther understood this so well. Listen to the words of his great hymn.
A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing;
Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing:
For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe;
His craft and power are great, and, armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.
Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing:
Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;
Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.
So, what are we to make of all this? Is it a piece of quaint first century mythology that we can safely ignore. Many people feel that way. But I want to suggest that we have stumbled on something here that is key to understanding Jesus, and lies at the very centre of Christian life.
Jesus saw his ministry as a conflict with Satan; we cannot escape this. He knew the spiritual realm; we don’t. He saw God’s kingdom over against the Satanic kingdom, and he had come to sort things out – for us. We are the captives that need to be rescued from Satan’s kingdom. Satan is his great enemy of the human race. Jesus was engaged in a great struggle, which he saw coming to a climax at the cross. A week before his death he signaled the approach of a great revolution: “Now is the judgement of this world, now shall the ruler of this world be cast out, and I when I am lifted up shall draw all people to myself.” (John 12.31-32) We don’t have time to talk about how this was so, but it is important to see that at the cross Jesus was involved in a cosmic battle on our behalf, and that he emerged victorious. The Letter to the Colossians (2.15) says, that through him God disarmed the principalities and powers – that is the Satanic forces – leading them captive in his victory procession. (Colossians 2.15)
A question follows: are we involved in this cosmic struggle other than God “rescuing us from the dominion of darkness and bringing us into the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Colossians 1.13)?
It certainly does. People wanted Jesus to lead them in a war against Rome. Rome was their oppressor; Rome was the tyrant, and if he was the promised king, he should lead them in a war of liberation. Indeed, he was about to engage in a war of liberation, but not the kind they were thinking of. Jesus never regarded any human person or institution as his enemy; they were the ones he had come to save. He sees us all as dupes and captives of the dark power. His mission was to liberate us. That is why he loved his enemies and taught his disciples to do the same. Everyone is to be looked on as someone Christ wants to save. They may see us as an enemy, but we must never regard them this way.
How different is Islam, which teaches that the world consists of two houses – two kingdoms, if you like. There is the House of Islam and the House of War. The House of War is the rest of the world outside of Islam. It is called the House of War because there is to be perpetual war until everyone submits to Allah, or is enslaved or killed. This is the teaching of the Qu’ran, and it explains why jihadists see it as a virtue to kill people. The Muslim’s struggle, then, is against flesh and blood, but for the follower of Jesus, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers and against the world-rulers of this present darkness …” (Ephesians 6.12) These are terms that describe Satan and demonic powers. Of course, Satan uses human agents, just as he incited the High Priests and Pilate to do away with Jesus. Spiritual warfare often involves blood. But Jesus never saw any human being as his enemy. He even prayed for the men who hammered nails into his wrists. The Bible says we are to fight with the armament of God, not the usual weapons of war. The belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, feet shod with the gospel, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God, and prayer. This is how Christians are to struggle for the kingdom. Jesus goes on to say, “Whoever is not for me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” No one can sit on the fence. He is gathering sinners into God’s kingdom and calls on his followers to help with the mission. We all start as enemies of God, outside his kingdom. Jesus is gathering us one by one. As we join him in his kingdom, we in turn become gatherers. As Bob Dylan once sang, “You gotta serve somebody; it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody.”