Mark 1:21-28
When the unclean spirit encounters Jesus…the spirit cries out:
- “Have you come to destroy us?”
- Jesus was teaching something new…in a new and authoritative way.
- The people were probably all wondering:
- “Has Jesus come to destroy what we know and bring us something new?”
- The unclean spirit…confronted with Jesus’ authority…was afraid of being destroyed.
- When Jesus commanded the unclean spirit to leave the person…the unclean spirit put up a fight.
- Verse 26 says: “And the unclean spirit…convulsing him and crying out with a loud voice…came out of him.”
We do not talk much about unclean spirits and demons in the Lutheran church…or in American Christianity in general.
- But not believing in demons has hardly eradicated evil in our world.
- And…even if we do not call them unclean spirits or recognize demons in our midst.
- We all have had the experience of something destroying us.
We really do not know what the New Testament means when it speaks of casting out evil spirits.
- Is it referring to mental and emotional illness?
- Would physical problems with unusual manifestations such as epilepsy have been considered demonic in a pre-scientific world?
- Most scholars are convinced that this is the nature of so-called demon possession in the Bible.
- It refers to people who are suffering from mental…emotional or even physical problems that cause them to act differently from the norm.
Like I said…all of us have times in our life when we are confronted with problems and emotions that overwhelm us.
- We visited a monastery in Greece… many years ago… perched high on a cliff several hundred feet in the air.
- The only way to reach the monastery was to be suspended in a basket which was brought to the top by several monks.
- The monks pulled the basket up with ropes and pulleys.
The ride up the steep cliff in that basket was terrifying.
- I became exceedingly nervous about halfway up as I noticed that the rope by which I was suspended was old and frayed.
- With a trembling voice I asked the monk who was riding with us in the basket how often they changed the rope.
- The monk thought for a moment and answered matter-of-factly:
- “Whenever it breaks.”
There have been times in my life when…emotionally…I have been suspended in that basket.
- I was at the end of my rope and feared it would break.
- Perhaps you have had that experience too.
- There is comfort in knowing that we have a friend who can heal brokenness of any kind…
- Whether it is physical…emotional or spiritual.
But here’s the thing I really want to say:
- Out of the womb…before we do anything wrong and before we do anything right…
- God has named us and claimed us as God’s own.
- But immediately…other things try to tell us who we are and to whom we belong.
- They all have a go at telling us who we are.
- But only God can do that.
- Everything else is temptation.
- And so…I would propose to you that demons are defined as anything other than God that tries to tell us who we are.
Before we had a chance to do anything at all…God looked at us and saw that we were good.
- God loved us and called us his own.
- So many things in this world try to tell us we are something else.
- That we are not precious…that we are not good.
- Those lies are the destroyer in our soul.
- In the presence of Jesus…those lies will quake in their boots.
What is it the world is telling you about yourself today?
- Is it that you have not done enough?
- Or…that you have messed up so much you cannot be forgiven?
- Or…that the world is telling you everything is just fine right now…when really God is calling you to dig deep and make some changes.
- Whatever it is…all those falsehoods are cast out in the presence of Jesus.
- Seeing what is real…changes everything.
In the presence of Jesus…the truth that we are beloved children of God will win out over whatever the world tells us about ourselves.
- Those lies may not go down easily.
- They may hold on and put up a fight.
- But…the love and truth of Jesus will cast all those things out.
- We just need to bring them into the light.
- Jesus casts out the things that destroy.
The unclean spirit recognized Jesus’s authority.
- The Greek word for “authority” comes from the word that means “out” or “from” and from the word that means “to be.”
- Authority is about who gave you being…or about who sent you.
- The unclean spirit recognized the source of Jesus’ authority:
- “I know who you are…the Holy One of God.”
- The crowd gathered around Jesus recognized that he taught with authority.
- But it was the unclean spirit that recognized where the authority came from.
- It was from God.
We live in a noisy world with a lot of voices trying to convince us to listen to them.
- They might speak in a way that makes us think they have authority.
- But where does their authority come from?
- We need to exercise discernment.
- Just because a voice is loud does not make it right.
We ask that Jesus cast out anything that tries to tell us we are anything less than God’s children.
- We ask that we have discerning ears so that we recognize the voice and leading of God.
- We ask that we live our lives in such a way that others will see God at work through us.