CS Lewis wrote one of his most famous books, The Screwtape Letters, from the perspective of a demon. He said that he was disturbed by how easy it was to think diabolically. He also said, “Though I had never written anything more easily, I never wrote with less enjoyment… though it was easy to twist one’s mind into the diabolical attitude, it was not fun, or not for long. The strain produced a sort of spiritual cramp. The work into which I had to project myself while I spoke through Screwtape was all dust, grit, thirst, and itch. Every trace of beauty, freshness, and geniality had to be excluded. It almost smothered me before I was done.”
Tonight we are going to be spending much of our time thinking of dust, grit, thirst, and itch with no trace of beauty, freshness, or geniality; we must because demons are at work in this world. It’s not always comfortable to deal in the real. This is why some of us avoid looking at our bank balance. This is why some of us avoid going to do the doctor. This is why we tend to avoid honestly considering the demonic. Now you know that refusing to look at your bank account will not end well. You know that refusing to go to the doctor will not end well. Please recognize that refusing to acknowledge the presence and work of the demonic will not go well. You need to know what you are dealing with.
We will study this in two points. First: demon basics. Second: the battle against the powers. First, we are going to study the basics about demons. Second, we are going to look at how we battle against true powers of evil.
First: demon basics. Demons are fallen angels. Last week we studied Satan who is the chief of these fallen angels we call demons. If you remember, we studied Peter’s words on the angelic rebellion: “God did not spare [these] angels when they sinned but sent them to hell…” These fallen angels are our focus for this week.
These demons are led by Satan, and therefore much of what we studied last week applies this week. As John Blanchard puts it, “demons are involved in every part of Satan’s program — opposing God, preventing people understanding the gospel, opposing God’s people, attacking the church, tempting people to sin and thwarting the spread of the gospel.” That is not a pleasant thought to consider, but it is reality and so we are considering it. We have enemies.
These demons are finite. They are not all powerful. They are not all knowing. “We should not think that demons can know the future or that they can read our minds or know our thoughts,” as Wayne Grudem puts it. Grudem deduces that from the prayer in 2 Chronicles 6:30 in which Solomon tells God, “You alone know the human heart.” Putting demons on par with God can only lead to paranoia.
People are quite paranoid when it comes to the demonic realm. They were in the Ancient Near East as well. Archeologists studying the Babylonians have found any number of amulets and spells designed to ward off evil spirits. Let’s not imagine that our culture is much different; we publish weekly horoscopes in many major newspapers.
There is a sense that there are spiteful spirits at work in this world; different cultures propose different ways to manage them. What’s fascinating is that the Bible contains no such techniques. There are no amulets or incantations in Scripture. The Bible warns us against dabbling with such techniques. As God said through Moses, “When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord.”
Such trafficking with the demonic is detestable to the Lord because it opens humanity up to demonic corruption. We see that in the worship of demons. Some of the false gods the Israelites worshipped were, in fact, demons. As Moses said, Israel, “stirred [God] to jealousy with strange gods; with abominations they provoked him to anger. They sacrificed to demons that were no gods, to gods they had never known.” Psalm 106 says, “They served their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood.” It seems likely that the false god in mind here is Moloch, who is referred to as the detestable god of the Ammonites. Moloch wasn’t merely an idol; there was demonic power behind that idol.
Now this is not to say that every false god is a demon. At best false gods, then and today, are shameful misunderstandings of God as He is and as He reveals Himself in Scripture. At worst, some false gods are demons who corrupt their worshippers to the point of calling for innocent blood.
Humanity must not open itself up to the demonic because the demonic is so strong that it can possess people. As John Blanchard explains, “In cases of demon possession, the personality of the person concerned is eclipsed by the demon, so that demonic personality is what is revealed.”
There was arguably some demonic activity at work in the life of King Saul; 1 Samuel 16:14, “Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.” You could read that to say that the Holy Spirit left Saul the Lord allowed a demon to, some extent, fill that void. The king became increasingly paranoid and murderous; that doesn’t mean he was necessarily possessed but he was certainly tormented.
The New Testament offers much clearer cut cases of possession. The gospel of Mark purposefully front ends such a story; ‘Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an impure spirit cried out, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”’
The gospels tell of a man who was possessed by multiple demons; ‘When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones… Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” “My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.” The gospels tell of a demon-possessed girl, a demon-possessed boy, a man who was mute because of a demon, and a man who was mute and blind because of a demon. Please notice that these demons were stealing, killing, and destroying, which is what we studied last week.
Now such demonic possession was going on well before the coming of Christ and was accepted as a sad and terrifying part of life, as it still is in many cultures. What made these notable at the coming of Christ was his ability to cast them out. The people weren’t amazed at the demonic possession. They were used to seeing that. They were amazed that someone had authority over the demons. We see that in the crowd’s response to one of Jesus’ exorcisms; “the people were all so amazed that they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.”
Now demons can’t possess a born again Christian because a born-again Christian is possessed, so to speak, by the Holy Spirit. To give a strange line of reasoning: the Christian hopes that his life is controlled by the Holy Spirit to a similar extent that the demon possessed man’s life is controlled by the demon. So demons can’t possess a Christian, but they can oppress them. They can tempt. They can and do weaponize the world against Christians. There is a real struggle going on; as Paul reminds us, “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
Awareness of the demonic is not a merely academic exercise. It is part of understanding the evil at work in this world, and to live wisely you must understand the evil at work in this world. The fight against evil is not ultimately a struggle against people with opposing viewpoints. The struggle against sexual perversion as a way of life is not ultimately a struggle against people with opposing viewpoints. It is a struggle against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms who are destroying people made in the image of God by means of sexual corruption. The people who are promoting such sin are swayed by the demonic without knowing it. Paul would say that they are, “follow[ing] the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.” The same goes for the greed around us, the culture of death in which we live from abortion all the way to euthanasia. The ultimate struggle is not with the people who promote this—they are redeemable. The ultimate struggle is with the demonic forces behind all of this; they are not redeemable. If you’ve ever looked around this world and wondered how it is that evil comes to be called “good” and good comes to be called “evil”, consider the possibility of the demonic.
By ourselves, we are quite helpless when it comes to the demonic. That’s the point that the gospel exorcisms drive home. “The Son of God came to the destroy the works of the devil.” He did that because we certainly can’t. We see that in our second point: the battle against the powers.
The gospels include so many exorcisms in order to make clear that Jesus has absolute power over the demonic realm. Interestingly, the Pharisees interpreted Jesus’ power as a sign that he was in league with the demons. Jesus found this interpretation laughable. He told them that, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” Jesus’ absolute mastery over the demonic came not from the devil but from God.
Now that matters because if you take the battle to the demons, you better bring superior firepower. The people who were afraid after Jesus’ exorcisms were probably afraid that he didn’t have superior firepower. They were afraid that Jesus couldn’t finish what he started. That’s probably what was going on with the fear that you see in the people after Jesus cast out the legion of demons into the pigs. We read that, “the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they pleaded with him to leave their region.” They wanted him to stop provoking the demons because they feared what those demons might do to them. Jesus has thrown down the gauntlet with the demonic. He must either finish the job or we will all be finished.
Jesus cast out the demons by a variety of means. He spoke directly to some. He cast out at least one without ever seeing the possessed person. He rebuked the demons. He prayed to his Father. This variety of means shows you that Jesus didn’t cast them out by technique, which would imply sorcery. He cast them out because he had authority. This is why he could give others the authority to drive out demons; Mark 3:14, “He appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.” You can’t give authority that you don’t have. It was by authority and not by technique that Jesus cast out demons and so that is what he gave his disciples. This is why so many of the movie portrayals of exorcisms are so misguided.
This is also why the New Testament shows the utter bankruptcy of magic as a way of controlling evil spirits. In the book of Acts we meet Simon Magus who couldn’t do what the apostles could do because the power to cast out demons wasn’t in the technique; it was in the authority that came from God. You see that in the sons of the Jewish high priest Sceva in the book of Acts. They weren’t followers of Jesus, but they sought to cast out demons by way of a technique involving Jesus’ name. ‘One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.’
If you have been born of God, you don’t need to worry about that because, as John put it, “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” You have been rescued and transferred into a new kingdom. “For [God] has rescued us from the dominion of darkness,” wrote Paul, “and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” You need not live in fear of the demons because, as Paul put it, “Jesus disarmed [the] principalities and powers; he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”
You can point others to that freedom. If our culture continues on its trajectory, you must be prepared for more demonic activity. Émile Cammaerts was right to say that, “When men chose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing. They then become capable of believing in anything.” It’s no mistake that dabbling with the dark powers is on the rise. These people need rescue. Many will come to want relief from the demonic, but what they need is rescue from the demonic and for that they need a superior Spirit. They need the Holy Spirit. Jesus described the trouble in store for those who are freed from the demons without being born of the Sprit. He said, ‘When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, “I will return to the house I left.” When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.’
You will encounter the demonic in some shape and form; it might be as blatant as meeting someone who is demon possessed; it might be as subtle as struggling against this evil age, but you will encounter it. When you do, remember that you aren’t standing in your own power. You stand in the armor of God; “put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” You stand against the demonic by putting on God’s righteousness, God’s peace, God’s salvation, and God’s word. You don’t fight the demonic by technique. You shelter yourself in God’s armor. You submit to Him. That may be why these two go together in James, “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
The demonic is real, but if you are a Christian you don’t need to live in fear of it. Now, if you do not belong body and soul in life and in death to Jesus, you would be wise to be afraid of it. The demons have the intention and opportunity to do you great harm. All those cultures with their folk stories about the demonic knew a bit of what they were talking about. You just happen to live in an age that is uniquely skeptical about the power of evil. It has its head in the sand and it is paying a tremendous cost. If you have the slightest sense that there might be evil at play in this world, you would do well to read the gospels. You would do well to consider Jesus. He is the only salvation possible from the demonic. He came to destroy the works of the devil. Amen.
“2 Peter 2:4, “…God did not spare [these] angels when they sinned but sent them to hell…”
2 Chronicles 6:30, “You alone know the human heart.”
Deuteronomy 18:9-12, “When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord.”
Deuteronomy 32:16-17, “They stirred [God] to jealousy with strange gods; with abominations they provoked him to anger. They sacrificed to demons that were no gods, to gods they had never known.”
Psalm 106:36-38, “They served their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood.”
1 Samuel 16:14, “Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.”
Mark 1:23-24, ‘Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an impure spirit cried out, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”’
Mark 5:2-5 and 9, ‘When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones… Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” “My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.”’
Mark 1:27, “the people were all so amazed that they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.”
Ephesians 6:12, “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
Ephesians 2:2, “follow[ing] the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.”
1 John 3:8, “The Son of God came to the destroy the works of the devil.”
Matthew 12:25-28, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”
Matthew 8:34, “the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they pleaded with him to leave their region.”
Acts 19:15-16, ‘One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.’
1 John 4:4, “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”
Colossians 1:13-14, “For [God] has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
Colossians 2:15, Jesus “disarmed [the] principalities and powers; he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”
Matthew 12:43-45, ‘When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, “I will return to the house I left.” When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.’
Ephesians 6:13, “put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”
James 4:7, “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.””