Our liberating King - Midweek Message 1st July

Dear Friends,

In the course of preparing for last Sunday’s sermon on the final petition in Matthew’s version of the Lord’s prayer: Lead us not into temptation but deliver me from evil, I had been  reading later in Matthew in chapter 8.14-17: When Jesus came into Peter's house, he saw Peter's mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever.  He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him.  When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. This was to fulfil what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: "He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases."

It wasn’t so much the healings that caught my attention rather it was  the significance of Jesus dealing with those who were demon-possessed and driving out these evil spirits with a word.

In the late 1980’s Hollywood produced a film The Untouchables which starred Kevin Costner and Robert de Niro and which earned Sean Connery an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. It’s pretty gruesome in places but these were dark times. It  tells the story of  Eliot Ness,  a treasury department official and the team that he gathers around him, who come to prominence in Chicago in the days of Prohibition because they are determined to bring to justice the infamous gangster Al Capone. Capone is making vast sums of money  through supplying illegal alcohol and other illicit activity and no one seems willing or able to do anything about it. He can  do as he pleases because as a result of bribes, he has both the city authorities and many of the local police turning a blind eye to everything he does. But then Ness and his team arrive, and they refuse to be corrupted (hence the term The Untouchables). By their presence, their activity and their persistence, they in effect  announce that Capone’s days are numbered, his iron grip on the people and the city will be broken and sure enough he is in time put behind bars. A new day has dawned for the city.

Matthew is describing something similar but much more significant in his account of Jesus ministry in these verses and wherever in his gospel he mentions Jesus driving out demons and evil spirits. As we were saying last Sunday, from the Bible’s point of view and from Jesus’ own point of view evil and the evil one are powerful realities in this world which we need to take into account if we are to understand ourselves and our world. However, understanding them as realities is not enough. They are powerful realities – too powerful for us to manage and deal with on our own. In one way or another they hold us in their gruesome grip in the same way that Al Capone held Chicago in his grip.  That is why what we see in Matthew 8.16 is so significant. Here is Jesus, the Son of God but God in our human flesh announcing and demonstrating  that he is stronger than evil and the evil one himself (see Matthew 12.29) – that he can liberate men and women from their bondage to evil and the evil one and begin to  enable them to live under the rightful rule of their Creator God, their heavenly Father.  That’s one of the primary reasons he came – that’s why he died and rose again – to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3.8)

It’s true that not many of us may have come across anyone suffering from demon possession as such, but we have never met a human being who has not at some point been deceived or distracted by evil or the evil one- held captive in some manner. That’s why Jesus taught us to pray Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil and/or the evil one. That is also why we need to know we have a God who can deliver us who has as Paul put it rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption (freedom) the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1.13) . Knowing and trusting him we really can fear no evil,

Yours in Him

David