There are two extremes when it comes to thinking of the demonic... In my life I have meet people who you could say were
obsessed with the demonic. They saw a demon behind every bush, every problem,
every sickness, everything that went wrong. I was in a prayer meeting one night for a girl
in the church I grew up in who was very sick and dying and I remember one man
standing up and saying the reason she wasn’t getting better was that we hadn’t
prayed against demonic forces and principalities in the right order… I remember
thinking if your God is such a legalist mate I don’t want anything to do with
him. In the passage we are going to be looking at today the gospel acknowledges
a whole raft of different sources for the cause of difficulty and sickness in
life, which is not that comforting really but it is comforting to know that Jesus has authority in the spiritual and
physical realms.
I also know many Christians who deny the existence of the
demonic or spiritual realm as NT Wright says they write off Jesus encounter with
such things as simply medical conditions that people hadn’t diagnosed in Jesus
day. Yet there have been a few times in my own ministry where I have
encountered strange spiritual situations, that I associated with the
demonic. One night at a home group I
lead the whole gathering was like trying to move in porridge, like a wet
blanket of depression covered the place and people. I left at the end of the
night wondering what was going on and when I got to the end of the drive way, I
felt the Holy Spirit say ‘Howard there was a spirit over that place and I
needed to go back and deal with it. Great right…so I went back and told the
group what I had sensed the Holy Spirit saying and as I said the name of the
spirit the women whose flat it was screamed grabbed her head and fell to the
ground. I’d never dealt with anything
like this before, so I explained what I thought was happening to the people
there told them there was nothing to be afraid of and we gathered and prayed
that the spirit might be gone in Jesus name. The whole atmosphere changed and
the women got up
and was able to say that whatever it was had gone and she felt a real peace and joy in herself
and in that place. It led to the other people in the group
openly sharing what was going on in their lives and a very powerful time of
prayer and the Holy Spirit ministering to people. As we saw in the reading we
had today the Kingdom of God is about freedom and release.
We are working our way through Luke’s Gospel looking at the
Ministry of Jesus, following his footsteps…
we took a break last week and the kids took the service, it was great but before that we had looked at Jesus in hishome town where he had opened the scroll of Isaiah and read out a passage which
acted as a sort of mission statement for what Jesus was about,
‘the spirit of the Lord is upon me,
he has anointed me to
preach good news to the poor,
Release to the
captives,
Recovery of sight to
the blind,
to set the
oppressed free,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
In the passage we had read to us today Luke invites us to
see how that mission statement, that revolution of God’s grace and release starts to work its self out in the Ministry of
Jesus.
The passage we had read out revolves around two miracles
stories: The freeing of the man with the unclean spirit in the synagogue at
Capernaum, and the healing at Simon’s house of his mother in Law. They are
placed in the context of Jesus teaching and preaching ministry. It starts with
Jesus coming to Capernaum and preaching at the synagogue and it finishes with
Jesus spending time with God and affirming that God’s call on his life is to go
to many towns and villages with the good news of the Kingdom of God… That is
the first time Jesus uses ‘the kingdom of God’ in Luke’s gospel. Jesus ministry
is to proclaim the new way of living in relationship with God, and he is to
show that in healing and release in people’s lives.
The miracles themselves speak in so many different ways
about Jesus and his mission and his Kingdom.
They speak of his revolution of Grace…The people in Nazareth
had been upset that Jesus revolution of God’s grace seemed to be for the wrong
people. Here we start to see how Jesus good news for the poor release for the
prisoner is worked out. Someone who was identified as a having an unclean
spirit would have been ostracized seen as being on the outside. They would have
been classed as a sinner, or cursed. Perhaps, it is the same kind of stigma
that is attached to people who suffer from mental illness today that we are
trying to break down. Jesus however shows the person God’s mercy and grace and
brings liberty. By the way I’m not making a connection between the demonic and
mental illness per sae, Luke’s gospel is very quick in the narrative to point
out that what is oppressing or possessing these people are spiritual beings and
we see that they are very aware of who Jesus is, through the passage they are
the ones who acknowledge Jesus as the ‘Holy one of Israel, the son of God, the
messiah, Jesus tells them to be quite because he does not need their testimony,
it is not mental illness or delusional behaviour. Simon’s Mother-in-law was living with Simon
which means she was a widow and had no son to look after her, which meant she
fit the definition of the poor mentioned in Isaiah and she would have been
marginalised in her society, but it shows Simons kindness nd also Jesus
compassion in healing her. As the sun goes down and the Sabbath ends people
respond to this revolution by bringing people suffering from all kinds of
illness to Jesus, it’s like the revalation of God’s grace and compassion allows
them to do that.
The miracles speak of the release and liberation that this
revolution of grace brings. We should not be surprised that as Jesus had
already encountered Satan and overcome him in the desert that as he proclaims
God’s reign and God’s agenda of freedom, grace and justice that he should
encounter and defeat Satan’s foot soldiers. Most of us without knowing it owe our image of
the demonic more to such works as Dante’s inferno than scripture, some people
have a very highly developed demonology, but in this passage Luke uses three
words, to try and explain what Jesus is dealing with, ‘Spirit’ ‘unclean’ and ‘demon’,
he is basically saying that what Jesus is dealing with is the antithesis of the
Holy Spirit that comes from God. Joel
Green says that the mission of Jesus is set against these demonic forces, for
they are at variance with God’s purposes for human wholeness. God’s purpose is
for us to find freedom and wholeness in Christ and when we see these unclean
spirits in scripture they are bent on the opposite destruction and oppression
of humanity.
But it goes beyond that… The coming of God’s anointed one is
an onslaught against all the powers of evil, be they spiritual or physical,
like diseases and illness, on an individual level as we see in these case or
systemic as we see as we move on through the gospel. As we see Jesus teaching
and ministry come into conflict with the political and religious powers of his
day. And as we move though the gospel we see Jesus call people to be an
alternative kingdom, people who live out the grace and justice and mercy of
God. next week in Luke 5 we will see him
calling people to come and follow him, establishing that new people of God and then
in Luke 6, in what is called the sermon on the plain, because it contains so
much of Matthews, sermon on the mount, that Jesus gives them instruction of a
new way to live, a human society that is set free to live out the reign of God.
I want to finish by
saying three quick things…
Firstly, where we allow Jesus presence and teaching to come
it brings liberty and wholeness and life. WE are quite happy to see this in
terms of people’s lives being turned around, freedom for addiction or sin we
are not so sure about healing… Often when the miracles in the gospel are
preached on there is the debate over whether God still moves in the miraculous
today as in Jesus day. Does God heal? Does God set free? It’s a serious
question because often people will say well praying for healing isn’t it just
giving people false hope? John Blanchard’s response is ‘that while God uses the
body’s natural mechanism drugs, medicare and medical skill to restore people to
health today, he also works directly and by miraculous means. Do we limit God
by locking this kind of healing away within the covers of the Bible?
Secondly, where we allow Jesus presence and teaching to come
it brings liberty and wholeness and life. It means that we will come into
contact and opposition with forces arrayed against God’s kingdom. Spiritual
forces, physical forces, human forces... political and systemic. It is
important for us to be aware of that and also to be aware that we have the
presence of the same Holy Spirit that Jesus did with us and that Jesus has the
authority over those powers. By his life and death and resurrection he has
broken the powers of sin and death, and as his kingdom has come the power of
sin and death and evil to oppress and bind is broken in his name. We can have
courage and hope facing those things, at an individual level and a systemic
level. Some will be overcome miraculously some by sacrificial service and
perseverance proclaiming and living out the Kingdom of God.
Lastly, where we allow Jesus presence and teaching to come
it brings liberty and wholeness and life. This morning I want to invite you to
be still to encounter Jesus presence here with us today by the power of the
Holy Spirit. Are there areas in your life where you know you feel that
spiritual oppression or you just can’t seem to be free of that are holding you
back from knowing a fullness of life in Christ… I invite you to ask Jesus to
shine the light of his presence into those areas. Physical issues and troubles
offer them up to Jesus as well…
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