If you've got your Bibles, you
want to turn to Ephesians 6, verse 12. We'll start off there. I'd like to talk to you in just
a few minutes about spiritual forces of evil. Just a reminder
of some things today that sometimes we forget about. Ephesians 6.12. Paul says, for we wrestle not
against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against
powers, against the rulers of the darkness, the rulers of the
darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high
places. The Greek actually says spiritual
forces of evil. So let's talk for a few minutes
today about the spiritual forces of evil. It seems to me like
You have a triumvirate of spiritual forces against us, Satan, his
demons or the evil spirits, and our own evil nature, which is
probably the most important and prevalent spiritual force we
wrestle against is our own internal evil nature. You know, the When
my wife and I, in our younger spiritual journey, we ran across
a few people in various churches that seemed to see a demon around
every corner. And I certainly do not believe
that's the way it is. But we do need to recognize that
there is such a thing and what their place is in the present
age and in the future. And that's what we'll talk about
a little bit today. Of course, we do not believe
as Christians in dualism. Dualism being that there's forces
of good and forces of evil, and they're balanced in this warfare.
Of course, that's not true. God is the only God. He's the
creator of everything and every living being. He created Satan. He created all the angels, some
of which did not fall and some of which did fall. And he created
us. So among the created beings,
There are some of those, Satan and his forces, that are evil,
that fell. We are evil and we fell too,
but they are much stronger and more powerful and something we
need to understand. Concerning the fact that we don't
believe in dualism, Martin Luther said that the devil is God's
devil. He's on a chain from God and
he can only do what God allows him to do, we know that. In studying demon activity in
the Bible, and you have it way back in the Old Testament, you
have the evil spirit that would come up on Saul and torment him
and then David would play his harp and the evil spirit would
go away. You have it in the Old Testament,
you have a predominance of it in the New Testament. It appears,
and we'll go through a passage of scripture that would support
this, it appears that when the king came, the Lord Jesus, on
earth, and he brought the kingdom in the presence of the king,
that that brought forth a real strong surge of demon activity
at his first coming. We don't seem to see that much
of it now, although I think we've all seen some things we wonder
if that's demon activity or not. But the next surge of demon activity
seems to be at the second coming, when the king will be here again. We see a lot of that mentioned
in the Revelation, where it talks about the locusts and the spirits
that came out of the pit, so forth. So that's demon activity. The word for demon, in the New
Testament, and it was actually a Greek word before the New Testament,
is daimonion. It's an inferior divine being
or a demon. Actually, Plato used it. In the
New Testament, it definitely means a demon or an evil spirit.
And the verb form is daimonidso. There is, the Greek words don't
say possessed with a demon of multiple words. It just says
the passive form of daimonidzo, to be demonized. So there's no
real words that say possessed with a demon. It's being demonized. And you can see from other passages
of scripture that indeed it is some kind of internal occupation
of that body because they are cast out. Let's look at the commissioning
of the 12 in Matthew 10. And this is along the lines of
what exactly do we attribute to demons and what do we not
attribute to demons. Some of the non-Christian world
sees us in the wrong light because of what some people spew forth
as Christianity. We do not see that the New Testament
is saying all sickness is from demon activity. It's definitely
not. The demon activity was very specific
and was very, you could tie it down to specific things happening.
And so we wanna see in Matthew 10, first of all, verse one,
This is where the Lord Jesus was setting the disciples out
on their mission. What were they going to be doing?
In verse one, and when he had called unto him his 12 disciples,
he gave them power against unclean spirits to cast them out and
to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease. Now
notice it's and, to cast the evil spirits out and to heal
all manner of sickness and all manner of disease. Now look at
verses five through eight, and you actually have categories
of the tasks these disciples, apostles were given to do when
they went out. These 12, Jesus sent forth and
commanded them saying, go not into the way of the Gentiles
and into any city of the Samaritans, enter you not, but go rather
to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as you go, preach,
that's the first thing, saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Second thing, heal the sick. Third, cleanse the lepers. Fourth,
raise the dead. And fifth, cast out devils. Freely ye have received, freely
give. So among the category of things
they were to do, they were to heal the sick, they were to cleanse
lepers, they were to raise the dead, and they were to cast out
demons. That was, if you just treat it proportionally, that's
one-fourth of the things they were supposed to be doing, plus
preaching, of course. are called unclean spirits. They're also called daimons,
or demons. So they're the same thing. Demons
equal unclean spirits. In Luke 10, there's a parallel
passage to this. No, it's not parallel, it's a
different occasion. But when the 70 were sent out
and came back, you remember they were so happy about the fact
that the demons were under their control. And the Lord said to
them, don't be all excited about this. I saw Satan fall from heaven. And what you need to be excited
about is that your names are written in the book of life.
So he put this all in context at that point. So we know that
the word is daimon, or daimonion, it means demon. And Let's look at a few of the uses
of the noun here, just to get an idea of what kind of things
the people, what they acted like when they were being demonized,
to give us a frame of reference. In Matthew 4, let's turn the
verses together. Matthew 4, 24. And his fame went throughout
all Syria, and they brought unto him all sick people that were
taken with divers, diseases, and torments. That word means
a disturbing, like it's used of the ocean, or the lake, being
tormented or disturbed. And those which were possessed
with devils, that's the word daimonidzo, the passive form
of it. And those which were lunatic,
This is also translated moonstruck. It has to do with, it probably
means epilepsy. And those that had the palsy,
and he healed them. So notice once again that the
ones who were possessed with devils is just one of these categories. It does not attribute all these
things to demon activity. In Matthew 7, 22, Many will say to me in that day,
Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name
have cast out devils, and in thy name done many wonderful
works. So this shows us that even the non-Christians can cast
out devils, demons. Matthew 8, 16. When they even was come, they
brought unto him many that were possessed with devils, and he
cast out the spirits with his word and healed all that were
sick. Another distinction between sickness
and demon activity. Now let's look at one of the
most striking examples of demon activity, and that's the Gadarene,
or Gerasene, it's one or the other, Demoniac, in, it's the
parallel passages, Mark 5 and Luke 8 and Matthew 8, but let's
read the Luke 8 account, in Luke 8. This gives us some pretty vivid
scenery of what a demon can do to a person. Let's read Luke
8, 26 through 39, and make a few comments as we read. And they arrived at the country
of the Gadarenes, which is over against Galilee. And when he
went forth, to land, there met him out of the city a certain
man which had devil's long time, and wear no clothes, neither
abode in any house but in the tomb." So there's an affinity
to nudity, there's an affinity to death. When he saw Jesus, he cried out
and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, what
have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou son of God most high? I
beseech thee, torment me not. Now this is significant because
we see in many instances in the New Testament that the demons
didn't need to be taught anything about the Lord Jesus. They knew
immediately in his presence who he was, They also knew that they
were going to be tormented sometime in the future by him. And so
this is significant. One thing I meant to mention
when we were talking about the fact that there's no dualism
going on with the forces of evil, they are created forces. That
means that, we're gonna talk about Satan himself in a minute,
just briefly, but Satan himself is not parallel with God. He's
not omnipresent, he's not omniscient, and he's not all powerful, omnipotent. So Satan, as well as his forces,
are only in one spot at one time. Then I heard a preacher once,
I'll never forget it. I thought it was a real good
comment. He said, you know, I really don't think I'm important enough
on this earth or strong enough spiritually that I've ever had
an encounter with Satan himself. And so, I mean, he's in one place
at one time. Now, what he may make up in that,
he may make up in speed. He may be able to get places
fast. But he has the forces at his command of the demons, and
I think there's a very interesting passage of scripture, without
going to seed on this, in Matthew 26. Do you remember when the
Lord was talking to Peter and about to go, no, he wasn't talking
to Peter. It was when the soldiers came
to get him, and Peter sliced off the ear of one of the guards,
and Jesus said, stop, don't you know that I could call forth
12 legions of angels right now if I wanted to. Isn't that interesting? He put a number to it. A legion
of Roman soldiers was about 6,000 soldiers. Some people say 6,200. All right, 12 times 6,000 is
72,000 angels. Well, don't you probably think
he was saying I could call all of them if I needed to? Maybe
that's all of them. They haven't. They were only
created once. Who knows when they were created?
I don't think there's any biblical evidence as to when angels were
created. But let's just say there's 72,000
angels, good ones, that would come to his aid. There's another
interesting passage in Revelation 12 where it's talking about the
dragon, Satan, and he swept the heavens and a third of the stars
fell. Those may be the fallen angels. So maybe there's a third as many
fallen angels as good angels. I know I'm going way too far
with this, but it's just interesting. So you've got a third of 72,000.
That's 25,000 or so bad angels. There's 7 billion people on the
Earth right now. So maybe you get a good angel
every 100,000 people and a bad angel Less than that, just to put it
into context. That's just the engineer in me,
I'm sorry. Okay, then let's go back to where we are. We got
chasing the rabbit. Verse 20, anyway, what we're
saying is they know Jesus. They didn't have to be introduced
and they were scared to death of it. So this is another factor
in that we need to respect evil, but we don't need to fear it
because our Lord is much more powerful than any evil forces.
For he had commanded the unclean spirit, back to verse 29, to
come out of the man. For oftentimes it had caught
him and he was kept bound with chains and in fetters and he
break the bands and was driven of the devil into the wilderness."
So there's strength to this guy. And Jesus asked him saying, what
is thy name? And he said, legion, because
many devils were entered into him. There's that word legion
again. So there are many demons that travel together often into
a person. And they besought him that he
would not command them to go out into the deep. And there
was there a herd of many swine feeding on the mountain. And
they besought him that he would suffer them to enter into them.
And he suffered them. He let them go into the pigs.
Demons do not like to inhabit free space. They want a body
of some kind. Then went the devils out of the
man and entered into the swine and the herd ran violently down
a steep place into the lake and were choked. When there that
fed them saw what was done, what a show that would have been.
They fled and went and told it in the city and in the country.
Then they went out to see what was done and came to Jesus and
found the man out of whom the devils were departed, sitting
at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind, and they
were afraid." That was an awesome difference, because they'd known
that guy out there in the tombs their whole lives, you know,
the crazy guy out there. And then to go and see him sitting
at the feet of Jesus, being taught, calm, clothed, you know, it was
just awesome. They also, which Saul told them
by what means he was possessed of the devils, was healed. Then
the whole multitude of the country of the Gadarenes round about
besought him to depart from them, for they were taken with great
fear. And he went up into the ship
and returned back again. They said, please, just leave.
We can't handle this. We cannot handle this. Now the
man out of whom the devils were departed besought him that he
might be with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, return
to thine own house and show how great things God hath done unto
thee. And he went his way and published
throughout the whole city how great things Jesus had done unto
him. So, quite a change. The guy wanted
to go along with Jesus, of course he did, but he didn't allow it. He said, you got things to do,
you got your life to live, be a testimony to me, so go back
to your folks. In Luke 11, there's another interesting
passage, Luke 11, 24 to 26. When the unclean spirit is gone
out of a man, he walketh through dry places seeking rest. And
finding none, he saith, I will return unto the house whence
I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth
it swept and garnished. Then goeth he and taketh of him
seven other spirits more wicked than himself. And they enter
in and dwell there. And the last day to that man
is worse than the first. So you don't just drive a demon
out and leave it a swept clean house. You need to have the Lord
Jesus in your life to fill up that space so that the demons
don't just come back again. Some demons cause mutinous. In Matthew 9, we're not gonna
look at all these passages. And in Matthew 9, 34, the Pharisees
accused Jesus of casting out demons by being Beelzebub, being
Satan himself and casting out the demons by the ruler of the
demons. This is where we find for sure
that Satan is the ruler of the demons. Some of them caused blindness
and muteness in Matthew 12. Now let's look at Matthew 12
for another point. Matthew 12, 22 to 30 drives home the point that I
was talking about earlier, that it seems that this heightened
demon activity was during the first coming at the establishment
of the kingdom. So let's read that and see if
it's not teaching that. Matthew 12, 22 through 30. Then was brought unto him one
possessed with a devil, blind and dumb, and he healed him,
insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw. And all the
people were amazed and said, is not this the son of David?
But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, this fellow doth
not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. And
Jesus knew their thoughts and said unto them, Every kingdom
divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city
or house divided against itself shall not stand. And if Satan
cast out Satan, he's divided against himself. How then shall
his kingdom stand? But if I, Beelzebub, cast out
devils, by whom do your children cast them out? Therefore they
shall be your judges. But if I cast out devils by the
Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come unto you. Or
else, how can one enter the strong man's house and spoil his good
except he first bind the strong man, and then he will spoil his
house? So when Jesus came the first
time, he was the strong man. He came to bind Satan and the
forces of evil by his crucifixion and resurrection. And so that's
exactly what was happening. All the demons were coming out
of the woodwork, like roaches, because he was there. The kingdom
was being established. He was proving that it was the
kingdom and the king. And so he was casting out demons
and showing the power of God over them. to prove who he was
at that first coming. So concerning other passages
In Matthew 15, there's a daughter grievously vexed with a demon.
It uses the word kekos for grievously, so she was tormented. In Matthew
17, there was an epileptic boy, an extreme case, where Jesus
said this kind can only go out by prayer and fasting because
the disciples couldn't do it. So Jesus rebuked the demon. In
Mark, the first chapter, This is interesting. Many times Jesus
wouldn't let the demons speak because they knew him to be the
Christ. He just didn't even want them
to speak because he didn't need their kind of testimony. In Mark
16, Jesus had cast seven demons out of Mary Magdalene. Did you
remember that? She had had seven demons in her. They are mentioned in Acts, in
the Book of Acts. And we have Peter, let's just
look at those real quick. Let's look at Acts 5.16. This
is Peter. There came also a multitude out
of the cities round about unto Jerusalem, bringing sick folks
and them which were vexed with unclean spirits, and they were
healed every one. This is concerning Peter. Then
we have Philip in Acts 8-7. So it wasn't just Paul that dealt
with them. For unclean spirits crying with loud voice came out
of many that were possessed with them and many taken with palsies
and that were lame were healed. And then we have Paul in Acts
16. This is very interesting. Chapter 16,
verses 16 through 18. It came to pass as we went to
prayer, this is Luke talking of course, a certain damsel possessed
with a spirit of divination so sorcery is also connected with
demon activity, met us, which brought her masters much gain
by soothsaying. The same followed Paul and us
and cried, saying, these men are the servants of the Most
High God, which show unto us the way of salvation. So it's
a true statement. And this did she many days. But
Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the Spirit, I command
thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came
out the same hour. And when her masters saw that
the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas and
drew them into the marketplace under the rulers, brought them
to the magistrates, saying, these men, being Jews, do exceedingly
trouble our city. She had these masters which used
this demon inside of her to save the future and make money for
them. And so she's following Paul along
all through the city, you can almost see it, just bugging him
to death, saying true things, these are the people of God.
He finally had enough, he just turned on his heels and he drove
the demon out. And there went all of her money
making for her masters. Then we have the Jewish exorcist
in Acts 19. This was a traveling band of
vagabond Jews, exorcists, and that's all they did, is they
drove out evil spirits. And look in verse 14, there were
seven sons of one, Sheba a Jew, and chief of the priests, which
did so. And the evil spirit answered and said, Jesus I know, and Paul
I know, but who are you? And the man in whom the evil
spirit was leaped on them and overcame them and prevailed against
them so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.
Here was a turning of the tide. These were some people, I said
before that it seemed like non-Christians could drive out demons, but here,
maybe not, because It's almost funny, the evil spirit says,
look, I know Jesus, and I know Paul, but I don't know you, and
therefore I'm gonna get you. And so he jumped him. All right, let's finish with
some reminder about the leader of all the demons, Satan himself.
I got into some interesting study that I do not have the answers
on, but I'm going to raise a few questions with you to think about.
Maybe our pastor can answer them for us. I got to thinking in
all of this, where is Satan during history? Where exactly is his
abode? And you got all of these passages
of scripture that are interesting along this line. First of all,
let me mention not just about Satan, but let's turn to 2 Peter
2.4. There are two interesting passages
that I don't know the answer to. 2 Peter 2.4. For if God spared not the angels
that sinned, those are the demons, but cast them down to hell, and
delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved unto
judgment." Et cetera. He goes on to talk more, but
that's all we care about here. This is a parallel passage to
Jude 6. Jude 6 is almost identical. And the angels which kept not
their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath
reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, under the judgment
of the great day. Well, they're in chains reserved
for judgment. So how do they demonize people?
I don't know. Maybe some are released at times
to do some work, but I don't know the answer to that. Now,
concerning Satan himself. Just to remind you in broad terms,
you obviously have in Genesis 3, you have the fall of Adam
and Eve. And you have at that time the
prediction that Satan would bruise his heel, but Satan would be
hit, would get the bruise on the head. He would get a death
blow by, we know, the Messiah. This is the first messianic passage
in the Bible, Genesis 3, 15. So that's the first inkling that
Satan would get a death blow. Then we have, okay, Where is
Satan right now? He's the prince of this world.
He's obviously, his domain is still this world. But, okay,
look at, I'll prove that with 1 Peter 5, 8. 1 Peter 5, 8. Peter says, be sober, be vigilant,
because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about
seeking whom he may devour." Right? He's walking about seeking
whom he may devour. He obviously can't devour a Christian,
but he's walking about seeking. Now, do you know a parallel passage
to that that I didn't even think about before this week? Turn
to Job 2, and you know where I'm going with that. In Job 2, Job 2, verses 1 and 2. Again there was a day when the
sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came
also among them to present himself before the Lord. And the Lord
said unto Satan, from whence comest thou? And Satan answered
the Lord and said, from going to and fro in the earth, and
from walking up and down in it. Okay, so in the present age,
after creation, after the fall, Satan is in the world, he's the
prince of the world, and he's roaming to and fro, first Peter,
or walking to and forth on the earth, but he does have access
to the councils of heaven to make this accusation against
Job. You know, the word Satan means
accuser. So that's the main thing he does
is he accuses people before God. So he would seem to be clearly
on earth, but you have the passage where we won't read it, but you
have the passage in Isaiah 14, which is the passage about Lucifer
and about the fall of Lucifer. So somehow Satan fell And I have
just assumed from forever in my Christian journey that it
was at the point, at creation essentially, or way before, that
Lucifer fell from heaven to earth. That was his fault. But now,
look at John 12. You know, I know a person has
to be confused before he's straightened out, so that's what I'm doing
here. John 12, 31 and 32. Jesus says,
now, this is about before the crucifixion. Now is the judgment
of this world. Now shall the prince of this
world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from
the earth, will draw all men unto me. Now, two commentaries
I read, one by Gill, one by Matthew Poole, said that this casting
out was the casting out of Satan from the kingdom of God, from
the Christian community, from Christians. So, I mean, he'd
already been cast out of heaven, but this was the judgment of
him. We know that the main judgment
of Satan is by the Lord Jesus, by the death on the cross, and
that's timeless. And that affected the whole casting
out of Satan, but this specifically was a casting out at the crucifixion. The final passage I'd ask you,
actually the final two passages to consider in all this is turn
to Revelation 12. Now, Revelation is a book none
of us can explain completely, or even a part of it. But I just
want to show you one chapter here. Revelation is, and many people
believe that you have the same cycle of things being described
in Revelation multiple times. The different seals and the different
things that go on are describing the same series of events multiple
times. So in Revelation 12, what you
have is you have this woman who is Israel, really, And she appears
and she's about to have a child, which would be the Lord Jesus.
And then let's pick it up in verse seven. And there was war
in heaven. Michael and his angels fought
against the dragon. The dragon is Satan. And the
dragon fought and his angels and prevailed not, neither was
their place found anymore in heaven. And the great dragon
was cast out, that old serpent called the devil and Satan, which
deceiveth the whole world. He was cast out into the earth
and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud
voice saying, in heaven now is come salvation and strength in
the kingdom of our God. and the power of his Christ,
for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them
before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the
blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and
they loved not their lives unto the death." Very interesting,
huh? Is this the original casting
out from heaven, or is this something having to do at the time of the
crucifixion, or is it something having to do in the future? I
don't know. Finally, in Revelation 20, you
know what happens there. During the thousand years, whether
you take them to be literal or figurative, it doesn't matter
because what it says here is that Satan is going to be bound
in the pit for 1,000 years. This is all about where he's
at. Remember, he can only be in one place at one time. He's
not omnipresent. So where is he? Where has he
been? Well, during the 1,000 years, he will be bound in the
pit and then loosed at the end of it to come back and gather
forces for the final fight. So in conclusion, I think the things that we need
to realize is the fact that, yes, indeed, we do fight against
spiritual forces of wickedness. We live in such a sophisticated
society that it's so easy for fear of being made fun of or
whatever, for our own minds to work on us, this is not real,
but it is real, that there are spiritual forces of wickedness.
I still say the most important one of those to deal with is
our own evil natures. You know, there's that old, remember
Flip Wilson and the famous phrase he brought to light, the devil
made me do it, and he did it so everybody would laugh, the
devil made me do it. That's not what we are to come
away thinking as Christians. We have our own evil nature,
which makes us, it's us that do the evil. But there are the
other two parts of that triumvirate, the devil and his forces. They're
finite, they are in single places, but they are powerful, they're
more powerful than us, and we need to, Be aware of them, but
we need to also understand that the Lord Jesus Christ is so far
superior to them. He dealt them all a death blow
at the cross. They will be physically dealt
with, and finally, at the second coming. And we are to fear the
Lord Jesus, and knowing that they will be tormented in the
end, and we will witness all of that happen.