Sermon
Jesus - The Miracle Worker
February 6, 2005
Pastor Donald Sheley

Father in heaven as we turn our attentions now to Your holy word, I pray that your Holy Spirit will be our instructor today, and may it be that we grow in the grace and in the knowledge of You, O wonderful Christ. Please help us. I realize, Lord Jesus, that we're approaching a subject today quite difficult to explain, more difficult to understand, and almost impossible to comprehend, but we're going to try. So may Your Holy Spirit help us open the Scriptures to us now I pray in Christ's name. Amen.

I'm going to ask you to have your Bible there with you as well as your notes because we're going to reference the notes quite frequently today in our lesson. Some weeks ago we started our series entitled 'Let's Talk About Jesus,' and we're going to be doing that all up to the time when we go to the convention center on Easter Day. We're going to tie all the series together on that one occasion and I'm going to preach a sermon entitled 'What Do We Have to Believe to Be a Christian?' And we'll tie many of the truths that we've talked about concerning the person of Christ.

What we have done in our series, the first four or five lessons, we went into the Scriptures and we found those verses that very clearly define and state that Jesus Christ was the divine Son of God and that He is deity. He was God in human flesh. So we went over the passage in Philippians and we covered many of the passages, and we of course believe with all of our hearts that Jesus Christ was God in human form.

Now we've moved along, then last week we talked about the conversation that Jesus had with Philip. So take your notes and right in the middle of page 3 we're going to read about that conversation, and this will open up our subject today.

In John 14, I'm right at the middle of the page in page 3 in your notes, Jesus is talking with Philip and He says to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him."

Philip said to Him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us."

Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you, I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves."

In other words Philip, if you have a problem believing what I say then go back and study the things that I have done, the signs that have been done, and they will validate Mine claims to deity. Check out what I've done.

Now Christ left an awful lot of validation to those claims. Go with me now to the front page of our notes and we'll just note how frequently Jesus did something miraculously that proved His deity.

Matthew 4:23-24 - "Jesus went throughout Galilee...healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about Him spread all over Syria, and people brought to Him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, the epileptics and the paralytics, and He healed them."

Matthew 8:16-17 - "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, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah, the prophet saying: "He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.""

Matthew 9:35 - "Jesus went through all the towns and villages...healing every disease and sickness."

Matthew 14:14 - "When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, He had compassion on them and healed their sick."

Matthew 14:35 - "People brought all their sick to Him and begged Him to let the sick just touch the edge of His cloak, and all who touched Him were healed."

Matthew 15:30-31 - "Great crowds came to Him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the dumb and many others, and laid them at His feet, and He healed them. The people were amazed when they saw the dumb speaking, the crippled made well, and the lame walking and the blind seeing."

Now those are just some of the passages out of Matthew. We didn't go into Mark, Luke, and John, but many are the occasions. In fact, most theologians will tell us that if we went through the four Gospels there are at least 35 miracles, major miracles, that Jesus did that gave evidence to His deity. And so what we want to do is we want to go through some of these New Testament passages and observe the miracle that was done, and the validation that took place as to the deity of Christ.

So now turn with me in your notes to page 5. You say, Pastor, what about all the rest of the notes? Well, I want to get to the very heart of my message because it's going to take a little explanation and...so you read the notes when they are convenient to you.

But over on page 5, down one third of the page, I suggest, let's respond to the invitation of Christ and observe some of the miracles He did in His public ministry that validate His deity. Remember, He said if you don't believe what I say, just observe what I do and that will prove My claim.

We have just quoted, and I noted in a previous page, Christ's visit to His home town Nazareth, and He went into the synagogue and He was asked to speak. So He got the scroll of the old book of Isaiah and He read that scroll, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the broken-hearted..."

And then after reading that ancient scroll, He concluded His readings by saying "This day, these Scriptures are fulfilled in your ears."

Now back to our notes - Jesus' visit to the synagogue, and immediately following that visit there in Nazareth, Jesus then traveled to Capernaum and He entered another synagogue. And here is what happened.

"Now in the synagogue there was a man who had a spirit of an unclean demon. And he cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Let us alone! What have we to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth? Did you come to destroy us? I know who You are-the Holy One of God!" But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be quiet, and come out of him!" And when the demon had thrown him in their midst, it came out of him and did not hurt him. Then they were amazed and spoke among themselves, saying, "What a word this is! For with authority and power He commands the unclean spirits, and they come out."

Now on that memorable day, Jesus took possession of both the Sabbath and the synagogue, since He was Lord of both. The new matter and manner of His teaching, so authoritative and different from the dry recital of tradition by the scribes, turned that Sabbath day into a new Lord's Day. While teaching with all majesty and force, His discourse was strangely interrupted.

An extraordinary incident occurred, namely, the shriek of a demon-possessed man--an incident "transposed in Luke to bring into better contrast by juxtaposition Christ's rejection of the Sabbath that He experienced at Nazareth and His welcome at Capernaum.

Now the quiet of the sanctuary was disturbed by a wild cry and the Lord is revealed as the Master of the underworld of evil who had come to destroy the empire of Satan. Now there is a question regarding the presence of a demonic in the synagogue. How did he get there? Well evidently, although possessed of an unclean spirit, he was not excluded from the public worship of God. Possibly it was not known that he was demon-possessed until the resident demon became conscious that he was in the presence of One stronger than the evil kingdom to which he belonged, and who with instinct and consciousness of usurpation, cried out.

Remember it was the demon and not the man he inhabited, who shrieked. Christ often meets demoniacs in the outside world, but that one should intrude into the very presence of God was extraordinary. So in the scene before us, Luke portrays Jesus' great battle with Satan and shows Jesus as the victor. Now this is the first of Jesus' miracles that Luke recorded.

And the distinguishable features of the demon in the miracle before us are as follows:
(1) It's described as an unclean spirit. Now this is the one case of demon-possession in which Luke adds such an epithet. "That the usurper is here called 'unclean' indicates the moral impurity by which he was characterized, and so we are not surprised to find that he violently recoiled from the unsullied holiness which dwelt in Christ. Other translations use the word EVIL to describe the demon. Evil (unclean) spirits, or demons, are ruled by Satan. They were not created by Satan because God is the Creator of all. Rather, evil spirits and demons are fallen angels who joined Satan in his rebellion and thus became perverted and evil.

(2) This demon recognized the claims of Christ as the Son of God. Now this to me is a fascinating story. Here is a demon who goes to church. And when Jesus walks into the synagogue the demon possessed man reacts violently; What have we to do with You, Jesus! I know who You are! And he shrieks. Can you imagine sitting in a church service and having an experience like that? The presence of deity causes the demon to recoil. Why did You come to torment us?

What demons know and what the devil knows, the day will come when they are going to be thrown into the lake of fire, into the abyss. They know that. And what this demon is recoiling from, he doesn't want to go there. Why do You come to torment us, he says?

Now here is an amazing proof of the deity of Christ. When Christ walks into the room, the demon recoils, and Jesus of course rebukes the demon and he flees.

Now I finished these notes on Tuesday or Wednesday, but I didn't have time to...as I study throughout the week I've added more notes. Now these notes are not in your bulletin because I've added them to my notes. I thought it would be interesting because we're talking about...you're saying Pastor, what's demon possession? What does that mean?

So I went to a theology book and here is what the theologian said: Demon possession was rather widespread during Christ's life upon earth. In the New Testament gospels those who were possessed of demons had various physical or emotional maladies such as dumbness, blindness, convulsions, self-destructiveness, superhuman strength, and even insanity. Demon possession - now he's going to define what demon possession is - demon possession is the invasion of a victim's body by demon or demons in which the demon exercises living and sovereign control over the victim which the victim cannot successfully resist.

And you say, well where did they come from? Well when we take our Bible, if we went to the book of Isaiah chapter 14, we have a scene depicted of a scene that takes place - and most theologians believe it describes the fall of Lucifer - he's the chief angel of heaven. He decides I'm going to kick God out, I'm going to take His throne, and as a result we have Lucifer taken out of heaven.

Now there's another interesting scene that may describe that very moment. We don't know. Remember the book of Revelation some interpret as being something that goes out to the end of time, but other theologians see the book of Revelation as a span of all human history. So take your Bible and go to Revelation with me and maybe this is the scene that created the demonic infusion into the world.

It's Revelation 12:7. Now remember John is seeing a vision and he's now going to describe that vision, and maybe this could have been in that vision where Satan is kicked out of heaven.

Let's read it: And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not win, they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast out to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

So that's when the rebellion takes place. Whenever...clear back in the eons of eternity past, whenever it happened, there was this cataclysmic happening in the heavens. There is war and Satan is thrown out with his angels. Let's read on.

Then I heard a loud voice saying in the heavens, Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ has come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they love not their lives to the death. Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them! But woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.

Now there seems to be an indication, whatever that took place, Satan is cast out of heaven with his angels, and those fallen angles become demons. Now we don't know how many. It could be in gillions, but they are present in our world about us. When you study this whole matter, you'll find that you don't find a story in the Old Testament on individual demon possession, but you do in the New Testament. It's quite frequent.

So if Satan has fallen and has fallen angels fill the atmosphere, how does a person become demon possessed? Well there is no indication in the Bible or in the New Testament that gives us an answer to that question, but there are two suggestions where the source might be. Paul in the Corinthian passage, 1 Corinthians 10, Paul speaks about taking and drinking from the cup of demons. He said you can't drink from a cup of demons and the cup of the Lord at the same time. And who he's talking to are people who are deeply involved in idolatry, and they would take their sacrifice to the idols' temple, and the sacrifice would be made, the priest would get a portion, and they are given a portion to take back and have a feast at home.

So here's a sacrifice, here's an animal that has been dedicated to the gods and they come back and they eat it for their meal, and Paul said I don't want you doing that. That's eating at the table of demons, implied, deep involvement in idolatry subjects to the possibility of demons coming and indwelling within.

But there's another way, another reason, and that is through the cults, occultism. You go into Acts and Paul has this lady that keeps yelling behind him, and this lady is a fortune teller and she's telling them that Paul is preaching the gospel. And Paul gets tired of this and finally he stops and he casts out the demon. Fortune telling comes from a pagan cult, which implies that the one who's doing the Fortune telling has gotten their resources from Satan. You walk on dangerous ground walking into a fortuneteller's office.

So there are two possibilities that the Bible suggests, but I don't have an answer - what causes people to become possessed? Now there are two things about demon possession; one of them is possession and the other is oppression. I will make this very clear. Possession is when that person has opened themselves, however, may be meaningfully, maybe intentionally, and they have allowed the demons, Satan and his works to come and invade their beings, or there is oppression, that is, Satan would seek to destroy, hurt, and injure us as Christians and sometimes his oppression is very real. You almost feel his presence.

So you have possession and then you have oppression. There's a world of difference. A Christian cannot be possessed but he can be oppressed. And I say we do not know what causes this. Does it still happen today? There is no indication in the Scripture that it ever stopped.

Let me tell you a story that brought this home to me. A few years ago in our preschool we brought in this little girl, probably about 40 pounds, and she's about four years of age. Her mother drops her off first morning...I don't remember, it's been so long ago, whether it was just a short time or a day or so, but all of a sudden this girl had a time when she just began to reel and began to froth at the mouth, and the froth that was coming out of her mouth was so stenchful the teachers had to put on masks because they couldn't even stand the stench of the froth coming from the mouth. And that little girl was reeling and twisting and convulsing and everything else - you say was it epilepsy? No, this was something different, because out of that little mouth were coming things that were demonic.

And the teacher started trying to control - I have some teachers, I think, that were here maybe when that happened - and they brought that little girl under control but it was a frightful experience. If I remember correctly it took three or four or five teachers just to somehow get that scene under control. So we contacted the mother and we wanted to know something more about that child. We learned this...we learned that the grandma lives in Oakland and that little child was taken every weekend to grandma's house and had been since she was a little tiny baby, and the grandma is a practicing witch.

Somehow in the environment of that home that little girl I believe was filled with demons. We wanted to pray, that was not acceptable to them, and finally the little girl was taken out of school. But it's interesting, the little girl as soon as she came to a Christian school and the teachers working with her, the presence of Christ in the life of the teachers (claps hands) created that immediate attention that Jesus experienced in that synagogue that day. When He walks in the devils knew exactly that they were in the presence of God.

To me it is a fascinating thing that Luke would use this first...this is his first recorded miracle to validate the deity of Christ. Amazing.

I say there is possession and then there is also oppression where Satan will do his best. And I have over the years of being your pastor...there are times when Satan would have liked to have destroyed this church. And there are times I have walked that mall all night long just pleading the blood of Jesus Christ over this church.

I had an occasion many, many years ago when a man was dead set on destroying the church with his accusations, and so we called a meeting, and as the meeting preceded the anger and the bitterness grew and I felt the tension in the meeting and I knew if I didn't grab a hold of this quick it would explode and the church would have been over. So what I did is I just began to say Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. I must have said it a couple of hundred times for maybe 5, 6, 7, 8 minutes, I don't know. And almost together everyone in the congregation began to weep and there was a melting, and there was a healing, and there was a sense of Christ's presence. And the man who was trying to create the problem, got up and walked out, and I have never seen him to this day.

We got up, hugged each other, loved each other; Satan was oppressing the church but he didn't win because we overcame him in the power of Jesus' name.

Now to our notes again. Go to page 6. There is another interesting story. Page 6, down at the bottom of the page, Luke records for us another event. "Then they sailed to the country of the Gadarenes, which is opposite Galilee. And when He stepped out on the land, there met Him a certain man from the city who had demons for a long time. And he wore no clothes, nor did he live in a house but in the tombs.

What a sad, sad...

When he saw Jesus, he cried out, fell down before Him, and with a loud voice said, "What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me!"

Isn't it interesting that the demon world were quicker to recognize the presence of deity than the religious people sitting in a church? Isn't that amazing?

I'm at the top of the page 7: For He commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For it had often seized him, and he was kept under guard, bound with chains and shackles; and he broke the bonds - that's that superhuman demonic strength that comes by demon possession - and was driven by the demon into the wilderness.

Jesus asked him, saying, "What is your name?" And he said, "Legion," Legion means untold numbers, "because many demons had entered him. And they begged Him that He would not command them to go out into the abyss." They didn't want to go to hell. They know that ultimately that's where they are going. They didn't want to go to hell.

"Now a herd of many swine was feeding there on the mountain. So they begged Him that He would permit them to enter them. And He permitted them. Then the demons went out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd ran violently down the steep place into the lake and drowned."

Jesus gets out of the boat, here's this man wandering around naked, they've tried to chain him, they've tried to bind him, but his demonic strength is such. And the first thing what he does, he sees Jesus, and he asks that question: "What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?" And he identifies the deity of Christ.

Another writer suggests there were 2000 pigs that day and there might have been 2000 demons, because all of those pigs destroyed...they couldn't even stand demon possession and ran into the lake. The interesting thing is that in the presence of Jesus Satan has to flee. I mean they are immediately...they recognize His deity and His divine power.

Now, let me get this thing right down to where the rubber meets the road today. We've got a lot of people, preachers, telling us that a Christian can be demon possessed. That is a lie folks right out of the pit of hell, and yet some of these television preachers will tell you that Christians can be demon possessed. That is blasphemy. Because we are told in Colossians, we have already read it, when we came to Christ He transported us out of the kingdom of darkness into His glorious light, and by His spirit He comes to live within us and we become the temple of the Holy Spirit.

And to even suggest that the demons would come and take up residence with the Holy Spirit, that to me is utter nonsense, because in these stories the first thing they want to do is run. They didn't want to take up cohabitation in the heart of a Christian. So ladies and gentlemen when you hear that you know you're hearing a falsehood. It's not true. When Jesus Christ comes live within your heart, and His Holy Spirit is there, residence, when we come confronted with the works of Satan, in the power of Jesus' name we can be more than conquerors.

Secondly, I heard an advertising recently they are having a seminar where you can learn to cast out demons. You give the preacher $150 and he'll give you the... Don't waste your nickel. It's nonsense folks. It's just another gimmick. It's interesting. I went through the New Testament in the last few weeks and there is no place in the New Testament where a Christian is given authority to speak to the demons. Now I know Paul did, but you go to the book of Jude and it says the angels didn't even contend they just claim the power of Jesus' name.

There are a lot of people all fascinated with the demonic world. I'm not. But it's something, a dimension of excitement that they want to get people involved in. The Bible says that when we are confronted, if sometimes oppressed, however it might be, or we're in the presence of a situation that seems to have demonic dimensions, the Bible says resist the devil and he will flee from you. And you resist him in the name of Jesus. And when you call out that name - and I take that passage we read from Revelation, it says, they overcome him with the blood of the lamb and with the word of their testimony.

So I often say, I plead the blood of Jesus. I plead the blood of Jesus. I plead the blood of Jesus. And what I'm saying is I'm saying, Jesus, on that cross You won the victory and You came out of that tomb, and I am claiming the victory of the cross. That's what I'm saying. And I have come to situations where I'll just quietly - I plead the blood of Christ - Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Ladies and gentlemen it isn't very long till the oppression ceases and the peace of Christ comes.

Do you notice that Jesus didn't have some big ceremony of exorcism? All He said is, Go! At the authority of Christ, Satan has no authority whatsoever. I agree, Christians can at times feel tremendous oppression, but I tell you this, our victory is found in Christ.

Some of us suffer from depression. Do you suffer sometimes? There are sometimes on Saturday after a long hard week and I'm in the quietness of my room, and sometimes depression starts. So I just sit there in my chair and say, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus I need You. And in the power of Jesus' name it isn't very long the depression is gone, and His Spirit fills my little office and I know He's won the victory.

So ladies and gentlemen, there is no indication in the Bible that demonic work has ever ceased. And only on one other occasion did I have a direct situation. I was called to the San Francisco General Hospital many years ago, and they have a psychiatric ward. And I was put inside of one of those boxes that was padded, and here I met a person who was totally out of control. They had no handle on reality whatsoever. And as soon as I got inside that cell and was locked in there, that person violently used all kind of language. I just sat there and said Jesus. Just let them rage on. Jesus, Jesus. It wasn't long until the sense of Christ's presence filled that little cubicle and they calmed down that I was able to talk with them.

I know that dealing in the spiritual world is a very sensitive thing, but you have no fear if you do it in the name of Jesus. And when Jesus is present the Devil's got to run. And that very truth Luke uses as a validation to the deity of our wonderful Christ. He is the sovereign ruler of the universe. He has power in heaven and earth, and all the spirit world is subject to Him. Amen? Let's pray.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, there's something about that name. Jesus, Jesus, we proclaim. Jesus we don't understand the spiritual world around us, but we do know this, You are the sovereign ruler of the universe and by Your spirit you come to live within us, and so we have the power of Your presence within us to resist and stand firm when the attacks come. And in Your name Lord Jesus we are more than conquerors. We love You dear Jesus and we worship You, and we believe with all of our hearts You are exactly what the Scriptures describe You, the divine Son of God, God in human flesh, my God, my Lord, my Savior. Amen. God bless you all.