Growing up through Sunday school or kids clubs many of the staple lessons faithfully taught to us were passages about Jesus’ healings. Healing the blind, the lame, the mute, the possessed, even the dead. And these are important lessons to learn for they remind us of Jesus’ authority and power – authority over sickness, over nature, over the whole world. They show that the God whom we worship is no some impotent weakling but a sovereign God, a worker of miracles, a doer of miraculous signs and wonders.
But often it stops there, and we’re sometimes left with the impression that that’s the end of the story. That’s the be-all and end-all of Jesus’ ministry. He came to help people who were sick and in need – that was his purpose.
Well he did come to help people who were sick and in need, and his healings and exorcisms point to that. A friend of mine is about to graduate as a doctor and as soon as he can he intends to work in a hospital in a Muslim country. Why? I asked him. “They need doctors,” he said to me. Their health systems need support and people need help. But most importantly, being a doctor is one of the best ways to get in there with the gospel.”
He doesn’t think healing of the body is the whole story. And it’s not the whole picture, or even the most important part of the picture, as we will see from this passage.
Well, let’s start with some context. In the first part of chapter 4, Jesus has been preaching in his home town of Nazareth. He spoke in the synagogue there and read from Isaiah these words:
LK 4:18 "The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."
And after reading this passage to the shock of all his listeners he declared “Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” God has promised to send his anointed one to preach good news, the heal the sick, to release the prisoners” – I am that anointed one, declares Jesus. And, as Jesus predicted, a prophet is never welcome in his home town and the Nazarene’s drove him out, even trying to throw him off a cliff.
So he moved across the lake, across the sea of Galilee to Capernaum. And what is the first thing he does there – he teaches the people on the Sabbath. And the people recognize that his teaching is different – it has authority. Considering that Jesus is God’s anointed one, that should hardly be surprising!
What then follows are two brief healing episodes that occur in Capernaum, a demononised man who comes into the Synangogue, and Simon Peter’s mother in law. And we’re going to spend the next few minutes exploring these incidents and then perhaps more importantly trying to answer the questions “Why did Jesus come”, what is Jesus really aiming to heal?
The first seems simple enough, it’s related to us in vss. 33-37. A man with an evil spirit is in the synagogue – his words seem to suggest the demon has taken him there to confront Jesus, because the demon knows who Jesus is. We’re not told what sort of symptoms this man has been exhibiting, perhaps none at all seeing as he’s been allowed in the synagogue. But the spirit sees Jesus and immediately recognizes him. And this is a very common and significant thing about demons in the gospels. They know Jesus is the holy one of God. They know he is the anointed one. They know he is the Christ. As we read a little later on in vs. 41 “Moreover, demons came out of many people, shouting, "You are the Son of God!" But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew he was the Christ.”
Jesus hears the demon speak and he tells it to be quiet. And it obeys. He tells it to come out of the man. And it obeys. It throws the man to the ground with injuring him and leaves. Quite justifiably the people are amazed. This teaching has authority – even demons obey the words of Jesus.
The problem many of us have with these instances of demonic possession is that we find the whole concept a bit bizarre and a bit embarrassing. In fact, we find the find the whole concept of a devil, a Satan, who actually is a threat to our very souls a bit bizarre and a bit embarrassing. Sure we can talk in philosophical and esoteric terms about the nature of evil and temptation, but the devil and his demons – that’s more at place in a fantasy novel or an African voodoo ceremony.
Some of you may have seen the final episode in the SBS series John Safron vs God. John Safron is a very irreverent satirist and he went around the world experiencing different religious practices. He managed to get an Islamic fatwa (death sentence) pronounced on Rove McManus. He took part in a voodoo ceremony which involved sacrificing a goat. He was sprinkled with chicken blood. He meditated in a Zen Buddhist temple. All lovely stuff. And finally he came to this Christian exorcist in the US by the name of Bob Larson. And this final episode was really incredibly powerful, because you saw this little Australian Jewish man yelling in this strangely deep voice and violently trying to attack anyone around him, just like the image we get in Scripture of the work of some of these demons. And the final scene of the series was Bob Larson telling this newly-exorcised John Safron that they would both go back to Australia and preach the gospel. And in fact last month Bob Larson was in Australia preaching the gospel and performing these exorcisms. I looked up his website I was a bit uncomfortable by the narrowness of his ministry and his failure to emphasise the death and resurrection of Christ – but his understanding of demons in the Bible seemed sound. What do we make of this?
The most common explanation you might hear is that what’s called demon possession in the Bible is actually mental illness – a chemical imbalance in the brain. If you take this view, however, you’re effectively saying that Jesus himself was also misguided in his understanding. Jesus is teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum and we’re told in vs. 33 that there was a man possessed by a demon, an evil spirit. The spirit sees Jesus and says to him, “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!" Now, by an stretch of the imagination, this is a very knowledgeable and discerning chemical imbalance in the brain – he knows who Jesus is. And the demons are scared of Jesus, they know the power that he has. Jesus gives them specific instructions – Be quiet! Come out of him! And the demon threw the man down and came out.
Perhaps the most well-known exorcism that Jesus performs comes later in Luke 8 where Jesus orders the legion of demons possessing a man to go into a herd of pigs. The demons again recognize the power that Jesus has and beg him not to send them into the abyss. Jesus talks to the demons, orders them out, tells them where to go. Jesus never transferred a case o blindness to some livestock, and nor would he do so if all we were dealing with was a chemical imbalance in the brain. This is a personal, intelligent, malicious being we are dealing with.
Soon, Jesus is famous for his power of demons. They cower in his presence because he is the holy one of God. And in Luke 11 some people accusing him of driving out demons by the power of Satan he puts them straight – I drive out demons by the finger of God, he says in Luke 11:20.
There were no doubt many in the ancient world who would always claim that any sickness or disability was a “demon”. But I think the creator of the universe would know the difference. In Luke 11, Jesus casts out a mute demon which had been preventing a man from talking. Yet he also heals paralysis, blindness, and even death without any reference to demons. He knows the difference.
If we try to take the respectable modern approach and dismiss ideas of demon possession as superstition, then we are denying the authority of God’s word. The Bible teaches that demon possession is a reality.
And just as importantly, denying the reality and power of Satan gives him another foot in the door of our lives. There’s a great quote in the movie The Usual Suspects and it goes like this “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” For who defends against an enemy who we don’t believe is there?
I don’t want to spend too much more time on this, but how do we deal with this issue today?
Does demon possession still happen? I’ve got little doubt that it does. How do we identify it? Well, I don’t have an easy answer to that. We see in Scripture that demons can manifest in all sorts of forms – schizophrenic-type symptoms, self-harm, other crazy sorts of behaviours but also blindness (matt 12) deafness and muteness. Should we go around performing exorcisms on every street corner? That probably wouldn’t be helpful for you or for the spreading of the gospel. But perhaps even the use of the term “exorcism” is unhelpful. It conjures up images of strange rituals using holy water and crosses. In the 16th century the Anglican Church had a rite for exorcism and the Roman Catholic Church still does. But in fact, the word exorcism isn’t used to describe the activities of Jesus or his disciples in the Bible. The one time it is used is to describe a botched attempt by some Jews in Acts 19. No, what Jesus and his disciples do is to simply call on the authority of God.
So what should you do? Jesus gave his disciples authority to cast out evil spirits - and not just to the twelve, we also read of other followers doing it. But I imagine that most people here wouldn’t feel comfortable with that so the suggestion I want to give you today is more simple – pray. There’s an interesting episode in Mark 9 where some of the disciples can’t drive out a deaf and mute spirit from a boy. Jesus comes along and does the business and they ask him afterward, “why couldn’t we do it?” And Jesus says “This kind can come out only by prayer.”
We have a God who is sovereign and powerful. We have a saviour who strikes fear into the hearts of demons, who can tell them to come out and they do. Prayer is our response to demon possession because it is the power and authority of God which will see people healed.
The second episode is a bit more straight-down-the-line. Peter’s mother-in-law is suffering from a fever and Jesus heals her – and then, like the consummate host, she begins to wait on them. Maybe Jesus real motive for healing her was those delicious pumpkin scones Peter had been telling him about! Most interesting is the way in which he heals her – look with me at vs. 39: So he bent over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. From this language, it could be that the fever was brought on by a demon whom Jesus casts out, but we can’t be sure. Whatever the case, these two healings bring Jesus considerable notoriety in the area. Vs. 37 says that after the demon in the synagogue news about Jesus was spreading throughout the area and, in vs. 40, as the sun was setting many people who were suffering all kinds of sicknesses were brought to Jesus and he healed them.
You can sort imagine the hysteria. Word gets around that there is a man in the area who can heal, and remember there is very little in the way of medical care in first century Palestine. Anyone who was sick or disabled pulled out all stops to get to Jesus – this was their chance. Just as night is falling they all start arriving and Jesus heals through the night until daybreak in vs. 42. Then he goes out to a solitary place, probably to pray, but they follow him there too and beg him not to leave. Vs. 43: But he said, "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent." 44 And he kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea.
So why did Jesus come, why was he sent by God? To preach the good news of the kingdom of God. Not to cast out demons or cure fevers – to preach. And, ultimately to bring in the kingdom of God with his sacrificial death and resurrection.
If that’s the case, why then does he heal people at all? Is it to give Sunday school teachers some good lessons?
I think the answer to it has a few parts. The prophecies of the Messiah in the Old Testament pointed to a man who would come to give sight to the blind, make the lame walk. We read one earlier from Isaiah 35, and also Isaiah 61 that Jesus himself quoted while preaching at the synagogue in Nazareth. That prophecy was fulfilled in him.
So the first reason is to fulfill prophecy.
And the second reason has to do with what these miracles show us. When we preached through John a couple of years ago we repeatedly saw that Jesus’ healings were never just miracles, they were miraculous signs. And what do signs do? They point to something.
But what are they pointing to in this case? Well as we already know, they point to the fact that Jesus has authority. He is powerful. He speaks and nature obeys. But they say more than that. They declare that Jesus is the promised Messiah, the anointed one. The one whom God has sent to heal us and set us free. Let’s return briefly to that prophecy from Isaiah 61
The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
When we hear that, when first century Jews heard that, we think small. They thought freedom from oppression – he going to lead us in a revolt against the Romans! Freedom for prisoners – the jewish zealots will be released! The blind will see! They thought small but God thinks big. He gets to the heart of the problem. He heals the things that really matter. Jesus’ healings and castings out of demons all point to the healing that God is really on about.
Because what Jesus really came to heal is not our bodies, it’s our souls. It’s our broken, sinful spirits. It’s our relationship with God. He came to preach a message which says “The kingdom of God is here. Repent and believe the good news.” That’s what Jesus is really on about – dealing with our problem of sin. Healing our hearts of the rebellion and ignorance that have left us blind to the truth and spiritually dead.
Mark Smith will be visiting next week and he will be preaching on the passage in Luke 5 where Jesus heals the paralytic and we’ll again see that the real problem Jesus came to deal with is sin – sickness is just sign pointing to our real problem and its real solution in Christ.
Many Christian leaders today refuse to acknowledge that this is the real problem. They pay more attention to the symptom rather than the cause. A man like Tim Costello who has said he became disillusioned with saving souls because it didn’t seem to have any affect on the here-and-now, so he reinvented the gospel to be about social action –healing the body but not the spirit. Last weekend we had the LIVE8 concerts worldwide, a united effort to influence world leaders to work to eradicate poverty. Now this is a great cause and one Christians should support. But it’s not humanity’s most serious problem.
We all need healing. And healing from sickness, disease, disability, poverty, injustice, demon possession are all good things that we should be praying for – but they’re not why Jesus came. He came to preach the kingdom of God, a healing of our sinful hearts and our relationship with the Lord. And that’s ultimately what we should be preaching, too – for what use is it for a man to gain the whole world but forfeit his soul?
Tony Campolo tells a story about being in a church in Oregon where he was asked to pray for a man who had cancer. Campolo prayed boldly for the man’s healing. That next week he got a telephone call from the man’s wife. She said, "You prayed for my husband. He had cancer." Campolo thought when he heard her use the past tense verb that his cancer had been eradicated! But before he could think much about it she said, "He died." Campolo felt terrible.
But she continued, "Don’t feel bad. When he came into that church that Sunday he was filled with anger. He knew he was going to be dead in a short period of time, and he hated God. He was 58 years old, and he wanted to see his children and grandchildren grow up. He was angry that this all-powerful God didn’t take away his sickness and heal him. He would lie in bed and curse God. The more his anger grew towards God, the more miserable he was to everybody around him. It was an awful thing to be in his presence.
But the lady told Campolo, "After you prayed for him, a peace had come over him and a joy had come into him. Tony, the last three days have been the best days of our lives. We’ve sung. We’ve laughed. We’ve read Scripture. We prayed. We’ve trusted Jesus. Oh, they’ve been wonderful days. And I called to thank you for laying your hands on him and praying for healing."
And then she said something incredibly profound. She said, "He wasn’t cured, but he was healed."
(Tony Campolo, "Year of Jubilee," Preaching Today Tape #212) (The Timothy Report, Swan Lake Communications, Swanlake@jam.rr.com September 30, 2002).
