The Duties of Demons (3)

At the present time in our study on what the Bible teaches about angels, we're talking about demons and actually in the last couple of times we've been together, we've looked at what they do, what they're up to, what demons are involved in. We saw that there are many activities, their activities are very diverse, but always directed toward evil. We saw that they promote Satan's program, they oppose God and his program. Last time we saw that they do that in several ways by promoting rebellion against God, by spreading slander against God and against people. And then by promoting idolatry, they also oppose God's program by rejecting God's grace and by promoting false religions and cults. Last time, last week we began talking about the third kind of area of responsibilities or duties that demons have and that is the oppression of mankind. They oppress people in many ways. We looked at the first one last week and that was that they may distress people through nature. We saw that demons can use natural phenomenon to afflict people, to cause people distress. Little did we know after talking about that last week, what would happen then the next day on Thursday. And of course none of us can assign to any specific natural phenomena what the cause of it was, whether or not God was causing that or Satan and his demons were causing that. Or whether or not it was just a part of the curse upon this world and that obviously is active all the time. This world operates not according to God's design because of man sin and the curse on it. We have to be careful that we don't start assigning blame or reasons for particular disasters when we really don't have that information. We really don't know. But what we're looking at is that the scriptures indicate that it can. It may possibly be caused by Satan and his demons. That is true. We saw that with Job. Now here's where we pick up from last week demons also oppress mankind through degrading man's nature. Degrading man's nature. And what I'm talking about there is that through the promotion of sinful desires, base desires of mankind and self-centeredness and sin, man becomes degraded. His whole nature is bent becomes degraded. And we see that in a couple of passages in particular. Look at Ephesians chapter two. We should have Ephesians two there on the screen for you. As for you, Paul says describing the Ephesians state before they were believers, he says, he says, ask for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live. This was a normal course of life transgression and sin in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world. Now notice the next phrase and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air. That's a title for Satan. And then he is called the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time gratifying the cravings of our flesh following its desires and thoughts. So Paul describes this lifestyle of following the spirit of disobedience as one that is characterized by gratifying the cravings of our flesh. The sinful desires of our sinful nature, cravings of our sinful nature. Well, the Bible teaches that what ends up happening when people live that kind of lifestyle and follow that kind of lifestyle, that it ends up degrading them. They become degraded. In fact, Romans 1 actually uses that term. Remember that long passage in Romans 1, 18 to 32 where God talks about his wrath as being revealed against unrighteousness because he's revealed who he is to all of mankind. And people can see his divine power and presence even in creation, but man has a tendency to suppress that truth so that he can live the way he wants to live. And when that happens, then man turns against God and turns toward his own idols or the promotion of himself as God. And when that happens, listen to what Paul says in Romans 1, 24, therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. And then it says in verse 26, because of this God gave them over to shameful lusts and then in verse 28 furthermore as they did not think it worth while to retain the knowledge of God. So God gave them over to a depraved mind so that they do what ought not to be done. And then in verse 28, three times it is indicated because of this following the spirit of wickedness that is characterized by this in this world, people's very nature is degraded. God gives them over to the sinful lifestyle they have chosen and that ends up being a degrading of their bodies, shameful lusts and depraved mind. It's pretty, pretty dark scene. Obviously demons are involved in that. They're part of that spirit of disobedience, the prince of the power of the air that is causing people to go further and further and further into sin. So one of the things that demons do is they help Satan oppress mankind by degrading our nature, by causing us to follow a lifestyle of sin that ends up degrading us and destroying us eventually. Okay, comments or questions there before we look at the next one. The third way that demons are involved in oppressing mankind is through distracting people from the truth. And we've already looked at this some but just remind you again demons are involved in blinding people to the truth of the gospel and thus distracting them with false teaching, with perversions of the truth. So blinded to the real truth can't see what the truth of the gospel is and so they start looking this way and that way and they're distracted by false teaching and so forth, perversion of the truth. A few verses that we've already looked at before just to quickly remind you of these passages that talk about how Satan and his demons blind people. Second Corinthians chapter four and verse three and four. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing the god of this age. Again, another title for Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ through the image of God. And then we've looked at these verses before but first Timothy four one says the spirit clearly says it in later times, some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits things taught by demons. So the false teaching that people are distracted by is actually promoted by demons and then first John four one also. Dear friends do not believe every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they are from God because many false prophets have gone out into the world and false prophets operate by spirits that are not the spirit of God. There is the Holy Spirit but there are also false spirits demons that teach destructive paracets and false teaching. So another way that men are oppressed by demons is distracting them from the truth. Questions, comments there. Believers who have been saved who would want I didn't catch all that I'm sorry. Let's go back to that let's go back to that verse. Go back another one first Timothy verse. Okay, is this the one that you were thinking of? Okay, I thought so. The spirit clearly says later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits. It's not necessarily talking about people who are believers. It's just that people will turn away from the acceptance of the faith, the truth of scripture and follow other teachings. They will abandon it in that sense. It's not talking about people who are believers that turn their back on the faith. That's a great question. There's a lot that we could get into there but there are other passages that need to be brought to bear like second Peter 2 and first John 2 where John describes those who follow false teaching in first John 2 as departing from us showing that they were not of us. He says that in first John 2 19 that they demonstrate they were not of us. They were not really one of us because they abandoned the truth. So people who may be professing Christians may turn their back on the faith but John says they just indicate the fact they really weren't of us to start with. They really weren't true believers. So abandoning the faith is more of a general concept of people who do not believe the truth of the gospel. Turn their back on it, abandon it and accept false teaching. Okay, great question. Certainly it does apply to churches or church groups, denominations, whatever that may turn their back on the truth of God's word and abandon it. Having a form of godliness, Paul says in 2 Timothy 4 or 2 Timothy 3, a form of godliness but denying the power there of not really knowing God's power but having a form of godliness religion with all the trappings, services, music, prayers, sermons, social talks, that kind of thing, but not really the power of God. It can apply to churches and even church groups. Got me? Sure. Yeah. In that case, in the parable that Jesus is giving about the sower and the soils, the seed is the word of God. So it's son and some people's hearts have not been prepared by the spirit or by their own hardness or the deceitfulness of riches in the case of the thorny soil to receive the word. And so that passage is very similar but talking more about the individual response of the person that does say in the hardened soil that the birds of the air come and snatch up the seed on the well-worn soil before it's able to penetrate and bring forth fruit and Jesus interprets that as being the devil, snatching away the word before it has a chance. Yeah. And the reason is that the soil is trampled like a path. It's hardened which in the figure indicates a hardened heart, one that's been trampled down. It could be trampled down by, you know, upbringing, experience, sin, repeated sin, whatever, but it, the heart has been hardened. And so when the truth is given out because of the hardened heart, Satan just comes and snatches it away before that person even has a chance to consider it. Think about it. Yeah. So yeah, that does tie in. Okay. Let's go ahead and look at the next one. Number four, disabling the body. Now this is a tricky one. So follow with me. I'm going to give you some new testament examples and then we're going to talk about this one a little bit. Demons may cause physical ailments. Certainly in the life of Christ, we see that happening numerous times in the, the, uh, evidences of demon possession and oppression that Jesus dealt with a lot of those involved physical ailments. Let me just give you a few examples to kind of prove the point, but these, most of these verses will be on the screen. Matthew 9, 32 and 33, while they were going out, a man who was demon possessed and could not talk was brought to Jesus. And when the demon was driven out, the man who had been mute spoke. The crowd was amazed and said nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel. So obviously the demon was the one producing the mutinus, the inability to talk. The two are very closely tied together because when the demon is cast out, now the man can talk. Another instance in Matthew chapter 12 in verse 22, then they brought him a demon possessed man who was blind and mute and Jesus healed him so that he could both talk and see. So this demon possessed man, one of the evidences of that was blindness and inability to speak and Jesus heals him. Obviously that included casting out the demon. Another example is in Luke chapter 9, verse 39, this man who had the son that was pressed by demon, a spirit ceases him. And he suddenly screams it throws him into convulsions so that he foams at the mouth that scarcely ever leaves him and is destroying him. This is obviously a case of spirit demon possession. The evidences of it are some kind of seizures convulsions. Let me give you one more. And this one I didn't put on the screen because of the length of it. Luke chapter 11, and this is a case of deformity. Very interesting. One Luke chapter, excuse me, Luke 13, verse 11. On a Sabbath, Jesus teaching one of the syndicators, verse 11 says, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for 18 years. Very clear that whatever crippling she had was produced by an evil spirit. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her woman, you are set free from your infirmity. Then he put his hands on her immediately. She straightened up and praised God. Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath. The synagogue leader said to the people, there are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath. The Lord answered him, you hypocrites. Doesn't each of you on the Sabbath unite your untie, your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water. Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, notice the next expression whom Satan has kept bound for 18 years, 18 long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her. So very clear tying of her physical deformity with a demon that was oppressing her for 18 years. And there are many other instances of this in the gospels with the the the ministry of Christ that some physical ailments are directly tied to demon oppression. Now here's the tricky part that does not mean that all physical ailments are demonic in origin. And that's where we have to be very careful. You cannot attribute every physical ailment to a demon. We just know from some of these examples that that could be the case. Certainly was the case at times in Jesus ministry. But remember again, there's a bigger picture. Physical ailments come generally as a result of the curse because of man's sin. Nothing in nature works like it should. Romans 8, the whole creation groans under the curse. Paul says and he says, we ourselves grown in this body. So Paul directly ties the bodily ailments to the curse there. And so you know, you can't say, well, I've got the demon of arthritis necessarily. I've got the demon of poor eyesight or whatever. A lot of people assign every physical ailment to some specific demon. And that's just not theologically correct. Physical ailments generally come from the curse placed on creation because of the fall. But at least we know from these examples that sometimes demons may inflict physical ailments on people. It's one of the ways they seek to destroy people. So questions, comments about that. Yes, Tom. I think you're on to something there, Tommy. I think and most Bible scholars believe that there was at least a spike in demon activity because of Jesus ministry on the earth. That because of the concentration of God's power on planet earth through Christ that Satan martyred a lot of his forces and was trying to do as much damage as possible. So I think there there probably was a spike in demonic activity during the ministry of Christ. But that's not to say that the same thing can't happen today. It might. Again, just like with natural catastrophes, I think it's very dangerous to start saying, well, I think that person must have a demon. You know, look at the arthritis. It's just not fair to say that. Yeah. That's a really good point, Ben. And that is that the Hollywood industry has glorified the horror genre of films, which makes the whole thing of demonic oppression and demonic activity, which is very real. It makes it all sound like entertainment. It's all just fun. And that's very dangerous because there there certainly is demonic oppression and a lot of occult activity that can be attributed to demons, Satan's power. And it's very real. It's not just entertainment. It's very real. All right. Good. Anything else? You know, that's a great observation bill. And I think it's hard to really get a proof text for this. One scripture that would just make it real clear. But most, most again, Bible teachers who deal with this kind of thing believe that demons cannot just capriciously come on you and oppress you. That you have to open the door that there is something you do by either way of interest in the occult. And that's another danger of the horror kind of movies. Interest in the occult or sin. You open your life up to certain kinds of sin. You're kind of opening the door for Satan to get a foothold. And we know there are some indications of that like an Ephesians four where Paul says, be angry and sin not. Do not let the sun go down upon your wrath and do not give the devil a foothold. He says. So if you don't deal with anger and let it go into deeper kinds of sin like bitterness and resentment and that kind of thing. Paul seems to indicate you're opening the door for satanic involvement in your life. So I think that that kind of gives us clue that yes, satanic involvement is or demonic involvement in our lives is not just something that kind of. It is generated by either some deep interest in the occult that kind of invites demonic activity or a pattern of sin that opens the door. I think you're really on to something there. So I don't think is believe especially is believers and we're going to get into this more when we talk about demon possession. We haven't gotten to that yet. But when we talk about that, we're going to find out that that for Sean 519, the whole world lies in the evil one. But he cannot touch us who are believers in other in words he cannot have us. He cannot completely control our will, our emotions and our bodies. We will see that demons can influence us if we allow them to, but not in the sense of possession. So I guess what I'm saying what I'm getting to is none of us as believers need to think, oh man, I might suddenly be overcome by a demon without even knowing it and radically change my life. I don't think that that happens. I think there is some previous involvement with either sin or occult activity that opens the door for demonic oppression. Exactly. Exactly. We are just as much under the curse as anybody on planet earth. We are not exempt from that at all. In fact, the Romans 8 passage, which is the clearest description of that, Romans 8, 18 to 25, is talking about believers. Paul says, we ourselves grown under the curse. He says, waiting for the hope to be delivered. He says, if we already have what we hope for, then there's nothing left to hope for. There's no hope. So he's talking about believers. Yeah, we are under the curse. But thankfully, we'll be delivered from that someday. And all you have to do to realize you are not exempt from the curse is start getting older. Just start just leave. Just keep living and you'll eventually realize, yep, I'm under the curse. Yeah. The whole thing, I don't want to get into it too much tonight because we need to lay a little bit of foundation. But the whole thing about demon oppression and possession is something we will talk about. We are not exempt as believers from demonic influence. I just don't think we can be possessed in the sense of a demonic taking over of the human personality, which is the case with demon possession. All right, good questions. Any others? Okay, another thing that demons may do, which is similar to disabling the body, is deranging the mind. D wronging the mind demons may cause some mental disorders. Now here again, we have to be careful just like we do with natural catastrophes and with illnesses or bodily ailments. We have to be careful with this. Not every evidence of a mental disorder is demonic and origin, but demons can sometimes cause mental disorders or inflict mental disorders. I'm going to give you a couple of examples. One is the demon possessed man in the tombs of Gaudero. Remember we've used him as an example several times. I didn't put these verses on the screen for you again because there's several. But in in Luke chapter eight, Luke's account is so graphic about some of his activity and just just listen to this description. It sounds like some bizarre mental stuff going on here. When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a demon possessed man from the town for a long time. This man had not worn clothes. Now that I'll tell you something. That's not normal. Had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet shouting at the top of his voice. What do you want with me, Jesus, son of the most high god? I said you don't torture me where Jesus had commanded the impure spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had seized him. And though he was chained hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places. Now there's a lot of weird stuff going on there that would strike the modern psychologist or psychiatrist as being mental illness to some degree. Well, this obviously is the result of a demon possessing this man. And then the other passage that we've talked about a few times, the man who had the son that he asked Jesus disciples to cast a demon out. They couldn't. So they come to Jesus and Jesus casts him out. I do have this verse for you on the screen. Mark 9, 22. The father says it has often thrown him into the fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us. So again, the suicidal tendencies of this boy seem to indicate an affliction mentally, which obviously in this case was caused by a demon. Now please again, be careful. Don't don't miss hear me tonight. Please don't hear me saying that every mental illness is demonic in nature. That's not what I'm saying, but I'm saying that demons can inflict mental damage on people. And in those cases, it seems to be the case. What would what would be described as at least some mental distress, if not full blown mental illness, was caused by demons in those cases. Okay, comments, questions there? Yes. Yes. The demons, they may have power over that man, but they are subservient to Jesus and they know that. They know he has more power. So they recognize him and they plead with him not to torture them, not to send them into the pit. Yeah. Okay, let's look at a couple or three others that demons may do with mankind. The sixth one is driving them to injury. And that kind of ties him with what we just saw. The two men that we just talked about, the description of the man at Gaudera, the Bible says he would often cut himself and inflict damage on himself. And then the boy, the suicidal tendencies, the demon tried to throw him in the water, tried to throw him in the fire. I mean demons obviously are not out to help people. They're not out to give life. They're out to try to destroy people. And so sometimes demons will drive people to injure themselves. That can happen. And then kind of going along with that, taking it a step further, number seven, destroying life. Demons may move people to take human life, either their own life, as in the case of the young boy who the demon tried to kill him by throwing him into the fire or the water. Or demons may move in people's hearts and minds to take the lives of others. A couple of verses in Revelation, tell us that. Look at these on the screen. Revelation 18 with a mighty voice he shouted fallen fallen his babble in the great. She has become a dwelling for demons and a haunt for every impure spirit. A haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable animal. Now look at one of the evidences of that. Denim verse 24 on the next slide. In her was found the blood of the prophets and of God's holy people of all who have been slaughtered on the earth. Babylon. However you interpret that in the book of Revelation, I don't want to get it in a discussion of that. Chapter 17 and 18 talk about Babylon. I think chapter 17 is probably political entity, chapter 18, a religious entity. But in chapter 18, one of the results which has Babylon has become a haunt of every kind of demonic and impure spirit. And one of the results is that is this religious entity is moved to kill prophets and kill God's people. Actually take their lives. Persecution. So demons may move some people to actually take life, destroy life. And then number eight, dominating individuals. And that opens up a whole other area that we're going to wait on till a little bit later. And that is demon possession. But demon possession is when a demon controls the mind, emotions and will of a person. There is control of that person's mind, emotion and will. And we'll look at that a little bit later in more depth. Okay, those are just some of the ways, probably not all of them, but at least eight ways in which demons oppress mankind in general. Any further comment or question about that before we talk about how they oppose believers? Yes, certainly. Now whether or not God caused that blindness, the blindness may have just been, he was born blind, but it was for the glory of God. God used that Jesus healed him in John 9 to demonstrate the glory of God. Yeah, yeah, he was driven out into the field like a wild animal. We're going to see in a little bit later, we won't get to it tonight, but we're going to see that all of this activity by demons, my last point in this whole study, is going to be that all of this is overruled by God. And we're going to see the very thing you're talking about bill that God sometimes uses what Satan and demons do for his own purposes. And we'll see several clear examples of that. So yeah, behind all of this and over all of it, we have to remember God is still in control and he overruled what Satan tries to do. Sometimes very specifically, and at least we know in general terms, in the final picture, God brings all of human history to his goal, his purpose. And Satan's is defeated. Yeah, that's an interesting question. And we don't know what we don't know exactly what age this young man was with a teenager or what it may have been him. It may have been kind of a family situation where the family was deeply involved in some kind of sinful behavior or demonic activity. And thus the whole family was being oppressed by demons. It's kind of hard to know what the actual cause of it was. But again, without knowing his age, it's hard to know what could he have done to invite demonic activity? We don't really know. It's a very difficult area. It's a word I'm looking for. Very awesome responsibility to be a parent because you affect your children. And if a parent say in that case is through worship of idols or deep, a cultic involvement or deep levels of sin is inviting satanic influence into the home, then it could possibly affect the children as well. You have to be careful with that with individual responsibility, but certainly the whole family could be affected. But again, all of this is conjecture. We really don't know how old that young man was. We don't know anything about him so we don't know what he may or may not have done. Okay, great. Good questions. All right, let's at least wait in to ankle level on this next point. Just barely get started on it. What what do demons do in opposition to the saints? Obviously as we have seen Satan opposes believers and certainly if he does, then his demons will do the same thing. There are at least 16 maybe a few more depending on how you view them. The messages in the New Testament that speak of Satan's opposition to believers and Satan and his angels would obviously be in kuhuts. They would be doing the same thing so demons would be included in this kind of opposition. First, first of all, let's talk a little bit about his opposition against believers in general. You might want to look at Ephesians 6. It's a passage we've looked at several times. It's one of those foundational passages whenever you talk about Satan and demons. But it describes the opposition of Satan and his demons against believers in general. Ephesians 6 verses 10 through 12. Paul says, finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers. Let us now plural this includes demons rulers against the authorities against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Remember we talked earlier about demons inhabit they live in space. They're not confined to hell. Certainly not all of them. A fewer confined to the pit and few to taterists and other place of confinement. But most are free to roam and so this in heavenly realms is talking about in space somewhere in the atmosphere somewhere. But all of these spiritual forces of evil are opposed to us as believers. That's the very point of the passage. We have to put on the armor to guard against their attacks because they're always seeking to attack us. So they are in opposition to believers constantly striving to defeat us, to discourage us, to dishearten us. Now we also have to battle with our sinful nature and this world system too. Those are two other enemies against us. So we can't attribute everything that comes our way by way of temptation or so forth. We can't attribute all that to Satan. It's not all the devil made me do it. Sometimes my sinful nature makes me do it and sometimes the lure of the world system makes me do it. But Satan is certainly involved. They are at the very center of attacks on believers in general. Okay. Questions or comments about that? Okay. We're going to wait till next time to talk about how they also oppose individuals. That's believers in general is the subject of Ephesians 6. But there are individual examples in the scriptures as well where Satan is clearly seeing and demons are clearly seen as attacking individual believers. We'll look at that next time. Alright. Let's pray. Father, we are grateful to you for the fact that even though our enemy is strong, you are stronger. We again claim that verse greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world. And so we trust you to give us the strength and the power to overcome the evil one in our lives and all of his demons. But Lord, help us not to be arrogant thinking that we have the strength and power within ourselves. Help us to realize you've told us we need to put the armor on and we pray that we'll do that consistently to be able to stand against the strategies of Satan. Help us father to trust you and to look to you and understand the ways that Satan may try to get at us. So help us not to despair when we look at all these ways that Satan is active in oppressing mankind and fighting against believers. Help us to know that you've given us the opportunity for victory through Christ. And all the provision he's made for us. Thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.