Jul 2 2023 Victory over Satan

Mark 1: 9 Now in those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan River. 10 And just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens splitting apart and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: "You are my one dear Son; in you I take great delight."

NAS – You are my beloved son, with whom I am well-pleased

Notice how brief Mark is – very brief – we looked at that last week. – Just a couple quick lines – but two very important things happen that are significant and necessary for Him to fulfill His purpose and ministry.

He is empowered by the Holy Spirit at His baptism – the heavens split apart. When Jesus comes to the Jordan – where others opened up the Jordan (Elijah) – Jesus opened the sky.

If Jesus did his actions by the power of the Holy Spirit – we must also be empowered by the Holy Spirit.

WHO is responsible for the outcome of what I do for God. Not the work – the outcome. You are responsible for the labor – Apollos planted, I watered, but God caused the growth –

Ask yourself – am I living a FOR God life? Doing mission for God – doing things for God – that all sounds good – Or am I living WITH God? God wants us to partner with Him. To join Him in what He is doing.

And there is a voice from heaven – You are my beloved Son – Jesus is affirmed.

We need to be empowered and affirmed by God.

First – it is a relational affirming – the Father saying – You are loved! We all need to know that – like children need to know they are loved by their parents.

Everything we do needs to be based on the knowledge that God loves us.

These are Messianic texts. Mark, as he is writing this – is drawing from Psalm 2 and Isaiah 42 – talking about the Messiah king – the Son of David. He knows He is loved – but the Father is saying – YOU are the seed of the woman – the Son of David – the Messiah. In Mark, it seems that no one else heard it.

Today – we will focus on Jesus’ empowerment –

Mark 1:12 The Spirit immediately drove him into the wilderness. 13 He was in the wilderness forty days, enduring temptations from Satan. He was with wild animals, and angels were ministering to his needs.

Once again – very brief – nothing about the temptations – but Jesus doing battle from Satan – little detail, but two things are important – there is Satan – and there are angels.

God came to earth in the person of Jesus – I think this is interesting – to engage in a heavenly battle! Rather than engaging in that battle in heaven, He comes to earth to engage in that battle.

I think Mark makes that brief because he wants us to know that this is just the beginning – and after that, we see confrontation after confrontation – and we see Jesus defeat and defeat these powers of darkness. He came to earth to declare war on the spiritual realm – to take back the world – and to do that He had to defeat the spiritual powers of the world.

In Jesus, the Kingdom of God came to the world – and all rivals and adversaries will be conquered – as we looked at last week.

We live in a modern world with all kinds of stuff. And in this modern world – we suffer from a disease of thinking – dualism – we separate the physical and spiritual – the body and the soul are separated. Like, the soul is what goes off to heaven – and that is not what the Bible says. And we separate the secular. But in Jesus’ time, there was no concept of a separation between the spiritual and the physical. They were intimately connected.

I think that makes it hard for us – to live in the spiritual realm the way that God would want us to.

It is easy to shove that aside and be so determined about what is happening physically in the world – that is not unimportant – but to ignore that there is always something spiritual that takes place behind everything.

We’ll look at an example of this on the next slide:

Mark 1:21 Then they went to Capernaum. When the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. 22 The people there were amazed by his teaching, because he taught them like one who had authority, not like the experts in the law.

There is a theme about authority (we’ll look at Jesus’ authority over evil) but Jesus comes in – and this is different from anything they had ever heard – because He had the authority of God behind what HE is saying.

And then there is an example:

Mark 1:23 Just then there was a man in their synagogue with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, 24 "Leave us alone, Jesus the Nazarene! Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are– the Holy One of God!" 25 But Jesus rebuked him: "Silence! Come out of him!" 26 After throwing him into convulsions, the unclean spirit cried out with a loud voice and came out of him. 27 They were all amazed so that they asked each other, "What is this? A new teaching with authority! He even commands the unclean spirits and they obey him."

In Genesis 1-3 the war began between the seed of the serpent and of the woman. And the battle has begun. And the story of Jesus is the climax of that battle. And this story gives us a window.

Mark is more of an action movie, not a docudrama like Matthew and Luke…

A window has opened up into what is at stake. The demon enters sacred space! The demon enters this worship service where the Son of God is teaching – and confronts Jesus in desperation, as one who knows his time is limited – and it is almost like a panic – just jumps into this situation. They know it is now or never for the powers of darkness. They know the final battle has begun.

Jesus has authority and casts out the demon. People respond with amazement – teaching with authority! There is power in the teaching of the Word. When God’s word is taught, a power is there – transforming lives. But then there is power in the deed – the action. I think what we tend to do is to emphasize one over the other – we are either heavy on the word and light on the deed or the opposite! Hard for humans to find balance.

There are 7 narratives in Mark where Jesus casts out demons – and 2 summary statements:

32 When it was evening, after sunset, they brought to him all who were sick and demon-possessed. 33 The whole town gathered by the door. 34 So he healed many who were sick with various diseases and drove out many demons. But he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

3:11 And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, "You are the Son of God." 12 But he sternly ordered them not to make him known.

So, this was just a normal thing for Jesus – especially in Mark. It seems as if there were demons all over the place! In the western world – many Christians do not place much emphasis on demon possession. We theologically believe it, but practically deny it. I have several reasons for that.

I think, in our world, there is a lack of clear theological understanding of this issue. Teaching is all over the place. For many – we throw in the towel – and the extremes get the attention.

Second – no matter where you stand – I believe we need to remove the theatrics from the subject and the practice. I think movies like The Exorcist (which is not written by a Christian – it was not a Christian movie) – form our understanding more than we will admit. IN the stories of Jesus – all the theatrics are done by the demons! Jesus never does theatrics – he just commands and they obey. Very simple.

Third – There are many questions in our world regarding the connection and not between mental illness and demon possession- and there are strong opinions on all sides – and it would be great to get some people in to talk about these kinds of things. Here is what I think – they are very separate and distinct things – however – at times, they overlap. That is all I’ll say at this point.

Fourth – outside of Jesus casting out demons in the Bible – there are only two, maybe three other texts that talk about it. Personally – I think that is significant. Those are in the book of Acts.

I want to make this practical for our lives – but there is a question that must be asked – maybe the most important question ever! “What happened on the cross?!”

Yes, Jesus died – but theologically and spiritually – what else happened? This is under debate right now – and has been debated for 2000 years!

So, the first and number one thing we focus on – Jesus died for our sins. Clearly. He took our place. He was a substitute

“but to serve and give His life a ransom for many” – substitutionary atonement – speaking of this broad understanding of what Jesus did on the cross – the problem – we tend to stop there. Much else happened on the cross. “but to SERVE” – Jesus sets the example of sacrificial god-like love. This is what it means to be truly human. When we see Him on the cross – THAT is what it looks like to be made in the image of God. When we think of what is God like – just look at the cross. That is a complete word-picture of what it means to be God.

Third – 1 John 3:8 the one who practices sin is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was revealed: to destroy the works of the devil.

Jesus: Son of Man has come for this purpose – not to serve, but to serve

On the cross, Jesus destroyed the works of the devil. The devil’s head was crushed. From birth to resurrection, Jesus came to defeat Satan and his powers. I think we need to put that in our gospel thinking – the conquering of the powers of evil.

Yes, He died for our sins and we are forgiven – we emphasize that – talk about it all the time – AND WE SHOULD! But we should not ignore this!

Michael Heiser talks about this – The Bible Project does as well:

Colossians 2 : 13 having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

There is this record of what we owe – CANCELLED! Our record – our debt – NAILED TO THE CROSS – so no longer do we owe anything! Our sins have been forgiven – and the JOY and all that means! But tied to all of that – is verse 15

15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

He forgave us our sins – and through that – Satan and his powers are conquered and defeated in our lives.

NT Wright – When Jesus died, the powers lost their power.

Stop there.

On the cross, Satan and all his minions lost their power.

“They can still rage and shout, but the power of Jesus is stronger – and it is the power of forgiveness.”

Forgiveness removes Satan’s power. Satan has no power over you because you are forgiven.

“The gospel was and is – the world has a new Lord – a summons for allegiance. Jesus defeated the powers that held people captive on the cross”

All who are forgiven are no longer under his power – no longer held captive – no longer controlled

This is another of those “already but not yet” kind of thing – it takes time to experience what has already happened.

My opinion – not only are we not held captive by Satan – but I don’t believe a Christian can be possessed – others disagree – but it is the power of the cross. Yes, we can be influenced and we can be oppressed – and he does it by being the accuser of God’s people. He accuses us – judgment, shame, guilt, fear – a constant reminder of our sins and failures.

Don’t raise your hand – but has anyone ever had him do that to you? Of course – we all have. That is his only power – to remind you. That debt – those failures – nailed to the cross.

Second – he is a deceiver – a crafty, slithering liar. Purpose – to lead us from a simple allegiance to Jesus.

I think he leads us to high places – where sacrifices were offered to God – and causing us to merge our worship of God with the world. This was the cause of Israel’s fall – offering sacrifices to Yahweh on the altars of idols.

In our world, we don’t have sacrifices, but we have idols – and we connect our worship with them.

Consumerism – Materialism – and we have brought that right into our worship of God.

Everywhere – I don’t know where I read this – in the New Testament – and the first couple of centuries – when the gospel went into a region and became fruitful – and began to grow – it had a negative impact on the economy of that culture!

IN an era of Christian stewardship seminars – we don’t understand that – but all economies of the world – forever and ongoing – are always tied and dependent on idolatry!

Talking about inflation, recession – 78% of our economy is consumerism.

So, they would go in, and preach the gospel – and most of the economic work was done through the temples -and people would stop buying idols – and it would collapse the economy.

I don’t think we have any idea that we are idolaters too. I don’t think we believe that. But we really are.

A couple quick things before we end:

We tend to be a performance-based discipleship – rather – doing for Jesus rather than being with Jesus.

Another area is pride –

Peter talks about the devil prowling about like a roaring lion – all in the context of God opposing the proud but giving grace to the humble. It is easy to be arrogant about our faith – that we have it right and others do not – that is a huge problem.

Finally – this thinking that the ends justify the means – we believe that some things are so bad, it doesn’t matter how we oppose it for Jesus. And that is just not what we see in the Bible.