The Bible Nerd

One of my favorite cartoon characters as a kid was Foghorn Leghorn.  For those of you who don’t know, he was a rooster with a thick Southern accent on the Bugs Bunny show (Looney Tunes).  Foghorn loved to torment the the family dog who was usually chained up to his dog house.  He would paddle him on the rear, and then start running.  Of course, Foghorn knew exactly where the line was when the chain would yank the dog back and he would be safe.  The problem is that eventually, the dog would get off the chain or Foghorn would push his luck too far, and the dog would get his revenge, usually blowing all of the rooster’s feathers off in the carnage.  Foghorn would then exit naked, carrying his feathers, and say my favorite line, “Fortunately, I have all of my feathers numbered for just such an occasion.”

My point in all this (in case you were wondering) is that I find myself to be a lot like Foghorn when it comes to Satan and sin.  I often think that I can get away with running up to Satan and sin, having some fun, and then running back to God and safety.  The problem is that I eventually get “my feathers blown off”, and give Satan and the sin an opportunity to control my life.  I said in an earlier post that the only power Satan has over Christians is what we give him.  How do we give him power?  Through three main ways: ignorance, fear, and sin.  Ignorance and fear go hand in hand together.  If we don’t know the Bible, we won’t know the power that we have in Christ.  That is why we went through passages about Jesus and His authority in the spiritual realm.  Eradicate the ignorance, and the chance for fear goes way down.

Sin is an all together different matter.  Going back to the book of Ephesians (an amazing book full of spiritual warfare teaching), Paul lays it out for us in 4:26-27, ““In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.”  This comes from a section in which Paul is calling the Ephesians to put off their “old self” and live like their “new self”.  That means putting aside the sinful habits of the past, and living according to God’s standards.  Paul says, when we give into sin, like anger and hate, we are in effect “giving the devil a foothold”.  This word “foothold” has been translated as opportunity, place, or “don’t give the devil a way to defeat you”.  The Greek word used by Paul is used literally for a city, village, or place, but carries the figurative meaning of power or occasion for acting.

Do we really think of sin as giving a “foothold” in our lives to Satan?  In my experience, the deeper and more habitual the sin, the more power we give over to him spiritually.  For many of us, these sins were demonically inspired or influenced before we were Christians.  Now, we are “sealed by the Holy Spirit” as Ephesians 1:13 says, but we are kidding ourselves if we think we can just dive back into our old sinful lives and not suffer spiritual consequences.  I DO NOT think that Christians can be “possessed” or “have a demon”, and I will make that clear in the next post.  However, I do believe that Christians can experience what I would term “oppression” or “influence” from demons when we choose to have deep, habitual sin in our lives.  Satan can’t create or take his own foothold in a Christians life, but we can hand the keys over and start digging for him.

The good news is that we are still Christians, and repentance is always an option!  James 4:7 promises us, “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”  Submitting to God means confessing our sin, getting help from others in counseling and accountability, and walking out a daily choice to not allow that sin to continue.  I don’t know about you, but I am tired of getting my feathers blown off.  Satan is on a chain, and I want to quit walking over to where I know I can get bit.  Time to take back those footholds, and be a smart chicken for once.  We all love Kentucky Fried Chicken over here in Taiwan, but I will pass at being a tub of original, extra crunchy, deep fried lunch.

I am amazed sometimes how little faith I have.  You would think after God has supported my family and I for over 17 years in missions, I would get that God can provide for us.  Seriously, God brought in $15,000 just so we could move here to Taiwan.  Yet, just the other day I was doubting and stressing over the money we would need to do a family outreach trip here in Asia.  Sigh!  I would like to blame my Jewish roots, and say that as a people group we excel at worrying, but the reality is that we all struggle with this at times.  I can hear my own pathetic thoughts, “God, I know you created the universe, but I just don’t think you can come up with a few thousand bucks!”

The stories we are looking at today are what happens when exorcisms go wrong. In one, the problem is extremely obvious, people are trying to use Christianity like magic.  The other is the kind of passage that keeps Bible nerds up all night, for several reasons.  Let’s take the easy one first, Acts 19:11-17.  Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva saw the power that Paul the apostle had in his ministry in Ephesus.  Evil spirits were getting cast out right and left.  These guys claimed to be “Jewish exorcists” which may seem odd to you.  In modern times, Judaism as a majority does not practice exorcism, and many Jews don’t even believe in it.  In Paul’s day, everyone believed in evil spirits, and the Jews were no exception.

Unfortunately, these Jewish exorcists seem to have been influenced by a pagan worldview.  They attempt to use the name of Jesus and Paul like a magic spell, believing that the power was in the name alone with no connection to their personal beliefs or lifestyle. Wrong!  I love what the demoniac says to them (oops, that sounds bad to love what a demoniac says) in 19:15, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?”  He then proceeds to open a can of rear end kicking, and the Jews leave buck naked and beaten up.  This failed exorcism is to show one thing: Christianity is not magic!  You can’t just use their God’s power like a mystery cult.  Without your own personal faith and relationship to Jesus, you end up running away naked and smacked down.

Building on this lesson, Matthew 17:14-21 (also in Mark 9:14-29 and Luke 9:37-43) contains the only other “failed exorcism” story with the disciples.  A father brings his young son to Jesus and complains that the disciples couldn’t cast the demon out.  The demon is tormenting the boy with seizures and often throws him into both fire and water.  The father’s faith is at an all time low after the disciples can’t do it, so he says to Jesus in Mark 9:22, “if you can do anything…”  Jesus rebukes the lack of faith, which brings the famous statement of the father, “I believe, help my unbelief!”  There is something not quite right with that, and eventually I will figure out what that is.

Jesus immediately casts the demon out, and everyone is amazed at His power.  The disciples, completely embarrassed, approach Jesus privately to find out what they did wrong.  Jesus’ answer in Matthew 17:20 says it is “because of your little faith”, but His answer in Mark 9:29 is that “this kind can only come out through prayer.”  Well, which is it?  Not only does the contrast of answers cause us difficulties, but most Bibles will offer a footnote to both passages saying “some manuscripts add BY PRAYER AND FASTING.  That is a big difference if fasting is added, so was that part of what Jesus originally said or not???  In dealing with manuscript differences, the conservative rule is to follow the careful research of the translation teams.  Here, most translations I can find choose to put “fasting” in the footnote, showing that they do not have enough evidence to consider it part of the original work.  There are too many ancient manuscripts of Matthew and Mark that don’t have that inserted.  When dealing with something like this, the last thing we want to do is build a whole teaching out of it without other clear passages! (so much for my best selling book, “Fasting for Casting”).

That leaves us with trying to put together Jesus’ two answers of prayer and faith.  Because of Jesus’ initial response to the father and crowd “O faithless and twisted generation”, it seems clear that the main issue is one of faith.  Even though the disciples had seen Jesus do miracle after miracle, and they had also seen him move through them to cast out demons, in this one occasion, they doubted.  Maybe it was something about the boy’s appearance or manifestations; maybe it was simply a “bad faith” day for them.  They were human, and like us all, they lost faith when confronted with a supernatural battle.  Perhaps the comment on faith points to their using Jesus name like the sons of Sceva.  Instead of “praying” and “believing in faith” for the demon to come out, they simply tossed out Jesus name like a magic spell.  They weren’t looking to God for the power, but thought they now had the “anointing” all by themselves.

Spiritual warfare is a war that lasts our whole life here on earth.  We have to know that some times, we have the faith to see Legion cast out.  Other days, one puny, little demon can send us running as we cry out to God, “I believe, help my unbelief!”  We must never forget though, that our power to cast out demons isn’t magic, but comes from our relationship and faith in Jesus.  Since I definitely would prefer NOT to get stripped and beat up by a possessed guy, I for one am going to try to remember this.

Since direct demon confrontation is a part of spiritual warfare, we need to talk about what guidelines or steps the Bible gives us about this. Unfortunately, there is no Exorcisms for Dummies book that you can buy or download onto your Kindle. There are plenty of books out there by various authors, but as Christians, we should always start with the What you Need to Know about Being a Christian for Dummies book, otherwise known as the Bible (not that the Bible is dumbed down, but that is our intellectual state). I don’t really like using the word “exorcisms” by the way, as it makes me think of those stupid, Hollywood movies. Seriously, how many movies about demon possessed people can they make these days???

The problem is that there are really only two detailed “casting out demon” stories in the Gospels, and only two in Acts.  Most of the time, it simply states that Jesus’ ministry involved this activity like in Mark 1:39, “And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.” (a little scary that demons and synagogues seem to be connected here).  No detail is really given, just the facts:  Jesus kicking demons back into hell.  Since there are only two longer stories, there must be something significant in them for us to understand.  The real question is though is what that “something” is.  In this post, we will deal with the story of Legion, and in the next post, we will handle the boy the disciples couldn’t heal. (there are other stories like Mark 7:24-30 and Luke 13:10-17, but the demon possession seems secondary to the main point of the story)

Mark 5:1-20,  and it’s parallel passages in Luke 8:26-39 and Matthew 8:28-34, gives us the longest exorcism story of Jesus’ ministry.  I have read many books that combine this story with people’s own personal experiences to give instructions on how to cast out demons.  One that I have read often is that in order to cast out or bind the demon, we must know its name in order to have power over it.  This could be a personal name, area of sin, or geographic area (Legion, spirit of slavery, prince of Persia, etc…)  They come to this conclusion from the fact that Jesus asks the demon it’s name, and then casts it out.  In fact, it says Jesus tells the demon to come out, then asks the name, and then it comes out.  Their conclusion being that Jesus first attempt was unsuccessful since he didn’t know its name.  This is a very important teaching, the problem is that it is not Christianity.  The spiritual practice it belongs to is called magic or witchcraft, and the religion it belongs to is called idolatry or satanism.

What???  Am I saying this story about Legion shouldn’t be in the Bible?  No, I am saying that we have allowed occult or pagan practices to affect our interpretation of this story.  In Jesus day, the Asian mystery cults, as well as Babylonian magic, believed that to learn the “secret name” of a spirit or deity would enable a human to have power or influence over that spirit.  They would give loads of money to “holy men” or mystics who promised that they had learned those secret names, and that if used, could grant the person power.  We need to take the whole of the Gospels in context, where Jesus’ normal routine is to silence demons, not conduct an interview.  See Mark 1:25, 1:34 and Luke 4:35, 4:41 for how Jesus would tell the demons to shut up.  If this is Jesus’ normal way of doing things, why does He change for this one time?

I believe Jesus does this because He knew what the reply would be and what it would inspire within his disciples.  The demon’s answer is “Legion, for we are many.”  A Roman legion was a military grouping comprised of around 5,000 men.  Now, I don’t know if there were 5,000 demons in this guy, but the point is there was a truckload!  You can imagine the fear it inspired in the disciples as they realized that one possessed person could actually contain this many demons inside, thus in their minds, being that much more powerful.  Yet, Jesus wants them to understand one basic fact; one demon or thousands of demons, NOTHING is more powerful than the authority of Christ!  Jesus sends them flying off into the pigs, which creates a mad stampede into the ocean.  Not even the demon backed power of Rome (Caesar and his legions) can stand in the way of the kingdom of Jesus.

The reality we will have to face is that the Bible doesn’t give us a complicated list of steps to follow in casting out demons.  It is usually as simple as Acts 16:18, where all it takes is one verse to tell us that “Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.”  I worry that in making it such a complex procedure, it is really saying that we don’t have enough faith in the actual power of the name of Christ alone.  Why do we need more than the blood and name of Jesus?  It sure doesn’t make for a ticket selling, drawn out  movie though.  It would be way too short and anti-climactic in the real “Paul” version.  Where is the fun in that?

I am the king of excuses sometimes.  When I was young, I saw the art of justifying what I did as a skill to be developed into a fine weapon.  Now, God is getting the last laugh.  He gave me four children.  I do love the creativity it inspires in them as they squirm and try to find a way to absolve themselves of their latest crime against humanity.  My favorites are probably 1) blame brother or sister (which is our fault since we had so many); 2) blame teacher (who is out to get me); 3) all my friends get to do that (sinister plot of parental oppression); and finally 4) I am just a sinner saved by grace.

Oh, wait a minute, that last excuse is my favorite one, not my kids.  Having an understanding of what Paul calls “the flesh” (NIV translates as sinful nature) has had an all together negative effect on my personal accountability.  It gave me the ultimate parachute for sin, “God knows I am a creature of the flesh, and until I get my glorified body, this is just who I am.”  The last main area of spiritual warfare that we are going to discuss is the flesh, or our sinful nature.  Demons are out there, the anti God worldview and culture is surrounding us, yet I think the flesh might be our toughest enemy.  Why?  It is us.

What is the flesh anyway?  Some people believe that it is a spiritual taint that is literally in our flesh and blood; a curse leading us to gross sin and immorality.  If that is what we think, then we agree with a lovely group of people we call ascetics.  Time to pick out your favorite form of self-abasement and beat yourself silly.  Beat that sin out of you I say!  Thankfully, this isn’t a Biblical understanding.  In Romans 7:5, Paul gives us a clear definition, “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.”  Our sinful passions are the things we want to do, believe will bring us pleasure, yet lead us to death in all its forms (spiritual, emotional, and physical).

Galatians 5:19-21 breaks it down into the practical, everyday fruit of our flesh, “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.”  We need to go back way further to see where this all began, Genesis 2-3.  God created Adam and Eve with a free will, and then told them what were the right things to do (tend the garden, multiply, etc..).  The only thing He said NOT to do was to eat of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”.  Why wouldn’t God want them to have a knowledge of good and evil?  Wouldn’t that help them avoid choosing evil?

Though we are made in God’s image, He held a few things back just for Himself: omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence.   What do you need in order to truly decide whether your action will be good or evil?  bad or good consequences?  You need to know the future, you need to have all the information currently available (people’s feelings, reactions, etc..), and you need to be able to see any or all ripple effects (be everywhere at once).  In other words, though God gave us free will, He didn’t give us the full ability to be able to decide good from evil.  That seems like God was setting us up for failure.

The truth is that God created us to be dependent on Him, created us to be in relationship with Him.  We have to submit our free will to God and trust Him that He knows what is best for us and for the world.  When we rebel against Him and don’t trust Him, we are choosing our “flesh” and our sinful nature is in full effect.  So, we fight against the flesh in spiritual warfare by living a life of submission to God.  We listen to the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, read and know the Word of God which teaches us, and are daily transformed into the image of Jesus Christ.  Sinful nature doesn’t make you do squat.  You are sinful nature!  Trust, obey, and submit, or choose to make the same mistake as Adam and Eve.  Apple anyone?

Watching the movie the Exorcist and then Nightmare on Elm Street, throughly traumatized me as a young kid.  You see, the church I grew up in believes that demons really do exist, and that part of spiritual warfare is to battle against them.  So, I witnessed deliverance ministry at church and heard about demons, and then watched these super scary movies where vampires would laugh as they crushed a crucifix.  If Satan had shown himself to me then, I would have needed a fresh change of undies no doubt!

The first time I can remember personally confronting demonic powers was on my first missionary trip to Costa Rica.  There was a city that had a very dark spiritual atmosphere, and both drugs and violence were an issue.  I remember getting off the bus and then waiting for our contact to pick us up.  A demon possessed girl came and stood across the street and stared at us for one hour (because of course it took an hour for someone to show up — it was a YWAM outreach you know).  Later that week, as we were interceding for the city late one night, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.  Suddenly I had a vision of a large red dragon over me and the city, and I knew it was Satan.  Needless to say, since that trip, I am a firm believer that PART of spiritual warfare is demonic oppression.

What is the main way we fight against demons?  I believe the main weapon we have is to first know what our authority and identity in Christ truly is.  All kinds of books have been written about step by step exorcisms or deliverance ministries.  We will discuss that more later.  More important is to know Scriptures like Colossians 2:13-15, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.  He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”  Note the past tense of the word “disarmed”, as in Jesus has ALREADY beaten all spiritual powers of darkness through the power of the cross.

Another favorite of mine is Ephesians 1:13-14, “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” Being “sealed” carries two connotations from its use in Greco Roman culture.  You would seal a letter or document back then to provide 1) protection- you would have to break the seal in order to read the contents; and 2)ownership- your family crest or symbol would be impressed into the seal so that as soon as you saw the letter, you would know who is was from (or who owned it).  The meaning here is that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit “seals” us as believers, meaning we have both protection and we are spiritually owned by God.

When you put these two passages alone together, the one thing Christians should never have in spiritual warfare is fear!  Neither Satan nor Freddie Krueger has power over us as Christians.  Why?  First of all, our identity is now in Christ, and Christ is clearly Lord over all spiritual forces.  Second, we have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week protection through the Holy Spirit.  In a later post, I will show how Scripture tells us that the only power Satan or demons have over us is what we give them through sin or fear.  Before being concerned about how to do deliverance, you must know who you are and what you have in Christ.

So, the next time you are tempted to say, “The devil made me do it”, remember that the devil can’t make you as a Christian do anything.  Better just to confess that you are lame and gave in to sin.  Otherwise, you imply that Jesus and the Holy Spirit aren’t powerful enough to stop Satan or protect you.  If that is true, well, that is the end of our blog series on spiritual warfare.  Game over.

I have never been the uber Puritan type to throw away all my tv’s, movies, and “secular” stuff to remove all “worldly” influence from my life.  For sure, some NWA and Easy E tape cassettes had to be burned in the fire (ok, I got rid of my Beastie Boys too).  However, there is no denying that what Paul calls the “world” in Ephesians 2 is one of the most powerful tools that Satan uses against us.  Direct demonic confrontation would probably cause more people to actually believe in God, whereas no one thinks twice before watching Jerry Springer every afternoon (or insert your tv show here that you watch and feel guilty every time).

The “world” as discussed by Paul in this context has nothing to do with the physical realm that we live in.  It is the anti-God culture and worldview that is all pervasive around us.  Neo might call it the Matrix, but unfortunately there is no Morpheus for most people, urging them to take the other pill.  John the apostle also speaks of this often in his letters, for example 1 John 2:15 -17 gives us our best definition. “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world— the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”

What is our ultimate weapon in fighting “the world”?  The Bible.  Only through a thorough knowledge of the Bible can we recognize the parts of our culture and worldview that don’t line up with God’s truth and law.  Because most of us are taught the “world” by our parents, schools, tv, magazines, movies, friends, and society around us, we come to think of it as “normal” or just the way things are done.  When we read the Bible, it is like King Josiah in 2 Kings 22:11, who rips his clothes in grief when he realizes how far he and his culture are from God’s truth and law.  In Josiah’s time, the Bible (book of the law) had been lost for so long that they didn’t realize how bad they had become.  2 Kings 23 includes a horrendous list of sin and idolatry that had become commonplace due to the ignorance of the people.  There were even male prostitutes in the temple itself!

Revelation 17 – 18 gives us a more graphic representation of the “world” in the whore of Babylon.  Babylon is a power hungry prostitute riding the beast of evil government.  She is the evil city of the world drunk on the blood of the saints.  I believe Jesus was revealing to John how ugly man’s society and culture can be.  In chapter 18, God judges Babylon, and the greed and materialism are shown for what they are.  Our media makes places like Las Vegas and Bangkok look like vacation destinations of pleasure with pictures of pretty women, big buildings and temples, and even families going there for fun.  You won’t see too many travel brochures with pictures of disgusting, blood thirsty prostitutes riding on hideous, demonic beasts, but Revelation exposes our world for what it really is.  If what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, then whoever dives wholeheartedly into the culture of this world shouldn’t be surprised how far from God they are.

Again, I am not saying that I hope evil cities fall into the sea, nor am I telling you to go join a monastery or covenant.  What I am telling you is that a huge part of spiritual warfare isn’t just demons, it is a whole culture and worldview that creeps into our lives and distorts our view of God and morality.  The main weapon we have is the Word of God as in Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”  We need to keep reading and teaching the Bible to fight this plan of Satan.  Let’s rock this “world”!

I have no patience at all for websites that don’t have fresh content.  If I check CNN and they don’t have new articles every hour, I get annoyed.  Don’t they know I am trying to avoid doing my real work and need a newsflash to justify wasting more time.  That is why I know it is death on a stick that I haven’t had a new post in 3 days.  I could give you a good excuse, like spending all day flying back home and having jetlag, but if you are as microwave society as I am, I won’t waste any more time.  Let’s talk about Spiritual Warfare.

Oh yea, we are tackling that fun topic known as spiritual warfare.  If you ask 10 people what they think of spiritual warfare, you will end up with 17 different answers.  You have the extremes from people who believe that there is a demon under every rock, to those who believe we have “advanced” beyond believing in such “ancient nonsense” like people being possessed.  Hollywood sure has realized that people are still fascinated with this stuff.  A huge part of the market is dominated by horror and psuedo horror films about the supernatural.  The Exorcist was just the beginning of a long line of kids’ heads spinning around and spewing what looks like green pea soup.

To me, Ephesians 2:1-3 lays the foundation of spiritual warfare in a 3 front battle.  ” And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”  Paul knew that the Ephesians were new believers in the midst of a heavily charged spiritual atmosphere in Ephesus.  Acts 19 records how deeply they were into magic before becoming Christians.  In one day, they burned their magic scrolls whose value would have amounted to one person working for 50,000 days!

Paul lists out three main areas of spiritual warfare that the Ephesians need to be aware of.  1) “The course of this world”:  this refers to the anti-God worldview and culture.  It is the oppressive system of this “evil age” that seeks to enslave and ensnare (and a whole bunch of other things that start with “ens”).  2) prince of the power of the air: not only is this referring to Satan, but to all demons looking to “steal, kill, and destroy”.  3) lusts of our flesh:  the sinful nature that was passed on to us by Adam, constantly fighting against the Spirit.  If we want to have success and victory in spiritual warfare, we must think through how to wage war in each of these areas.  In the next few posts, we will not only discuss each of these, but will address some of the difficult questions.

Can Christians be possessed by a demon?  are there “territorial spirits”, and if so, what are they and what do they do?  is there a Biblical basis for spiritual mapping?  are generational curses real?  how can they be broken?  how do you cast out a demon?  when did Satan fall and where is he now?  why does Satan have a pitchfork and a weird, pointy beard?  In all of this, our goal will not be to give any glory to Satan or demons.  We have to remember that it is Ephesians 1:19-21  itself that reminds us, “the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.”  Jesus rules!