Our first
two Mark passages included a number of passages about demons. They are
cast out of people. Jesus tells the healed persons to keep it a
secret. He wouldn’t want people to mis-interpret him as some sort of
magician. But word gets out. And crowds come from near and far.
Jesus’ exorcisms play an undeniably big role in the gospels. This can be
awkward for everyday Christians, for whom the big enemies each day tend to be
personal sins like impatience, anger, and loving things of this world more than
God. What do we believe about demons?
What “D-Fence” do we have against them?
Mark 1:21-28
shows us two typical qualities of demons – 1) they recognize Jesus’ authority,
but 2) they hate him and his authority. The demon, when confronted by
Jesus, responds: “Have you come to destroy us?” They recognize that he can
destroy them. But unlike the Christian, they think he probably wants
to destroy them. That’s different.
Jesus is their feared enemy. This has always scared me. How can
someone see Christ in all his glory and then still oppose him? I don’t
get it. But this has always been the mystery of evil. It defies
explanation.
If we
believe in these satanic forces, does this make us strange? Not in the
least. Spiritual warfare against satanic forces is firmly biblical and is
firmly rooted within the Christian tradition. New Age philosophies, the
occult, Satanism, and pagan religions often present this battleground as
something natural for the universe – that there has always been a war between
good and evil. This is not what Christians believe. We believe that
God is sovereign. Evil is not part of him. Nor is it a part of his creation. Rather, it is an alien force that has corrupted
the goodness of his plan.
Seeing “The
Exorcist” might have kept you awake at night when you were young, but no
Christian should have sleepless nights about evil spirits. Demons hate
Jesus because they fear him. (Mark 1:21-28) Victory over evil is already
assured in the cross. This is contained in Christ’s “It is finished.”
(John 19:30) We are not fighting a losing battle. World War II
lasted for another year after D-Day. But D-Day made victory
inevitable. Jesus’ cross and resurrection is our D-Day. God’s
battle against evil will restore the universe to the beauty, righteousness, and
fruitfulness with which he created it.
Thoughts of
spiritual warfare are scary because to acknowledge them seems to put us on the
defensive. It’s scary to be ‘on defense’
against evil because we understand so little about it. But we are ‘on
offense.’ One of the more famous things Jesus says about his church is
that “the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18)
When I hear this, I always instinctively picture hell not on defense, but on
offense, trying to beat us but ultimately failing. But that isn’t quite
right. Gates only prevail if they keep the enemy out. Gates
aren’t helpful for offense because they are a protective, defensive
measure. If the gates of hell won’t prevail against us, then it must be the
church which is on offense. In our
worship, prayer, and fellowship in the name of Jesus, we are taking the battle
to the gates of hell. We are on offense. They should be
worried. Not us.
But even if
we feel bothered or, indeed, possessed, by temptation, anxiety, fear, or an
evil spirit, we are well-defended in Christ. We should pray, and learn to
trust him. He is our shield. Psalm 23 reminds us to “fear no evil”,
even in the valley of the shadow of death. Jesus has won. What we
should fear is our own indifference to evil, that tendency of Christians to sit
on the sidelines in the midst of this great, and real, battle.
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