What Is Demonic Oppression?

Matthew chapter 9, Matthew chapter 9 verse 32 through 34, and I hope that next week we'll close out this chapter, not this ninth chapter of Matthew, but I want to reread to you Matthew chapter 9 verse 32, 33, and 34. As they were going, behold a demon-oppressed man who was mute was brought to him, and when the demon had been cast out, almost like an afterthought, and once that was done, and when the demon had been cast out, the mute man spoke, and the crowds marveled, saying never was anything like this seen in Israel. But the Pharisees said he cast out demons by the prince of demons.

Lord again, we just ask you for your help as we look into your Word. Last week we looked at the reality of demons. We saw that demons are real, and we saw that demons are fallen angels.

They're spiritual beings who, like mankind, many of whom have rebelled against God. And they are real and effective in working against all that God is trying to do in the world. And one of my hopes as we think about demons again this week is to realize that the demonic is not like some foreign war that you watch on the news but has no bearing on your actual real life.

The demonic is not like some historic battlefield that you study and you know that this happened years ago. The Bible describes the work of the demonic as something very active and engaged in the Christian's life. The New Testament tells us we wrestle against the demonic.

It tells us that if we leave sin unrepented, we can give a foothold to the devil in our lives. 1 Corinthians 10 20 tells us if we dabble in false religion, we actually become participants, or as some translations put it, sharers with demons if we are those who dabble in false worship. So the demonic is not distant, brothers and sisters.

It's all pervasive. It's a reality that's all pervasive and we need to deal with if we're going to live as faithful Christians. That's why the second topic we examined last week was what do demons do? It's one thing to say they're active.

It's one thing to say they're real. It's one thing to say the demonic is something that the Christian must engage in. But we are asking how do they affect us? What do they do? And we looked at five out of six ways.

There's probably more than that, but I've tried to divide how demons work into six ways and we looked at five of them last week. Here they are. They tempt us.

They lie to us. They accuse us. They destroy and they fight cosmic battles for influence over various territories in the world.

So they lie about what's right and good and true. They tempt us to find pleasure in forbidden fruits that will poison our souls. They accuse us of our real guilt as if Christ had not paid for it.

They can sometimes destroy within the realm God allows. They can destroy travel plans, Paul tells us, our health, our loved ones like we see in the book of Job. They battle in unseen places so that sometimes answered prayers are delayed from even being answered.

They are active and effective in opposing God's work. And now last time we did not get to the sixth way that demons wreak havoc on human life and I want to touch on that now this morning. The final aspect of the devil's work that we want to examine is his work of oppression.

We want to think about demonic oppression. In our passage we read about this work in verse 32. So listen to verse 32.

It says, as they were going away, behold, a demon-oppressed man who was mute was brought to him. So we could call this last work that we're going to look at extensively this morning the work of demonic oppression. Now sometimes you've probably heard this referred to as demonic possession.

Demonic possession. And that's not an unfair way to think about things. We actually see that term used in Matthew 8.28. If you just go back one chapter to a passage we looked at just a few weeks ago, Matthew 8.28, this same idea is referred to not as demonic oppression but as demonic possession.

There we read in Matthew 8.28, and when he came to the other side to the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men met him coming out to the tombs so fierce that no one could pass that way. So which is it? Is it demonic oppression or demonic possession? Well, it's the same Greek word behind both of those ideas. Both the idea of demonic oppression and demonic possession are both the translation of the same exact Greek word.

So they're not two different ideas in our Bibles. They're one idea. And the Greek word is the word daimonizomai.

And the word could just be translated demonized. So why is this word daimonizomai sometimes translated demonic possession and then other times translated demonic oppression? Why do we have two different ways of translating one single word? Well, actually it would take a whole sermon to go through the history of the translation of this word, but they're both simply trying to communicate both ways of translating this one word as either demonic possession or demonic oppression are both just attempts of our English translations to try to explain a deeper than usual influence from the demons. They're both just trying to explain a deeper than usual influence from the demons.

I like demonic oppression a little better, but both terms are simply trying to express this deeper than usual influence from demons. Well, what characterizes this deeper than usual influence from demons? That's a little vague. What marks this off from just regular temptation or regular accusation? What would we say, now there it is, that is demonic oppression or that is someone demonized? What would mark that off so that we can identify that? My goal in going through all these things is that we might be people who can discern these things.

We might be able to be people who can notice the different activities of the devil. That's a vital part of our Christian lives. The Apostle Paul tells us we're not ignorant of his devices, but very often we are ignorant of his devices, and in order to not be ignorant of the devil's devices, we have to be able to discern the ways he works.

So what marks off what we would call someone who's demonically oppressed or someone who's demonized? Well, the first one is nothing. The first thing that's different from this work of the devil, from other works of the devil, is nothing. There's nothing different than this work of the devil, than all the other works of the devil.

What do I mean by that? Well, the demonized person is going to be someone whose mind is full of lies, whose heart is full of temptations, whose mind is overwhelmed with accusations, whose body and life is full of the devil's destructions. In many senses, demonization is just the devil's work intensified. It's just the devil's work turned up to ten on the volume scale.

Luke 6.18 speaks of demonized people as those troubled by evil spirits, and it seems reasonable to me that a person who is demonized would be troubled in part by a mind full of lies and temptations and accusations. So in many ways, there's nothing different between demonization and the other works of the demonic. There's a similarity, if you will, between all of the devil's works.

But then the second thing I would say that marks out demonization, and this is probably what makes it most distinct, is that it's internal. It's internal. I believe what makes demonization different from other demonic works is that a demonized person is not just influenced by a demon from the inside.

They are indwelt by a demon on the inside. They're not just influenced from the outside. I'm sorry, they're influenced by a demon from the inside.

Notice the language of casting out in the verse we just read. When the demon had been cast out, the demon was in, and then by the name of Jesus, the power was out. The same thing happens in Matthew 8.31. You can look at that verse and see the same idea of a work that's going on inside, and then a work that's going on outside.

Matthew 8.31. The demons begged him, saying, if you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs. And he said to them, go. And they came out and went into the herd of pigs.

Do you hear that? They're in, and then they're out. They're cast out of one person and then into a herd of pigs. So the demonized person does not just have a demon influencing them, but in them.

Now this is important, because if you read your Bible, what you find is that the whole world is under the power of the devil. If you read your Bible, it talks to us about the whole world being governed by the prince and power of the air. When we see Jesus dealing with unbelievers, he'll say things to them like, you are of your father, the devil.

But it's very important that we understand that he's not saying every single one of you is demon oppressed. Every single one of you is demon possessed. It's very important that we don't begin to see every single neighbor we have who are under the sway of the devil, are under the power of the devil, that we don't put everyone in this category of actually being demonically oppressed.

There's a difference between someone who has succumbed to the intense influences of the devil and someone who actually has a demon indwelling them, living inside of them, at a deeper level of control and domination over their lives. Everyone needs the influence of the devil in their lives to be ended. Not everyone in the world needs a demon to be cast out.

The third thing I want us to see about demonization or being demonically oppressed is that it's obviously dark. It's obviously dark. Now why do I stress that? Because most of the work of the devil in the world is not obviously dark.

Most of the work of the devil in the world looks good on first blush. The devil is eager to masquerade, Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 11-14, as an angel of light. Satan did not come to Eve and say, I've got something nasty for you.

He came to her enticing her with a good looking fruit. Even when Jesus was approached by the devil, the devil only offered to help Jesus make bread. He was coming as a friend.

He was coming to do good. And usually, we need to recognize the work of the devil as something like fool's gold. Something that's initially shiny, but that it will not help us, will hurt us, and is profitless in the end.

But, when the devil works in a demonizing way, the veneer of light is off. The veneer of looking good is gone. The people we see demonized in the New Testament are mute, they're blind, they're throwing themselves into fire, they're cutting themselves, they're full of self-destruction.

There's no allure, there's no tendency to act like there's anything good at all. The gloves are off, the veneer is off, and the pure heart of the devil is exposed in someone who's been demonized. It's obviously dark.

The fourth thing I want you to notice about demonization is that it's rare. It's rare. It's real.

Repeatedly, you cannot read the Gospels without hearing the stories of the demon oppressed over and over and over and over again. This isn't like one passage in some obscure book of the Bible. This is center stage as you read through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

And we do see it, but again, it's not like it's affecting everyone. We do not want to get the impression that the work of the devil in the world is always demonization. It's always been the minority of people at every period of time that have actually been demonized.

The last thing I want you to notice about demonization is that it draws Jesus' compassion and power. Jesus is drawn towards it. We tend to pull away from everything that would threaten us or harm us, but we have to realize we have a better Gospel than just a Gospel that would pull us away from everything dangerous.

Jesus moves towards those who've been demonized with compassion and power because He actually has something beyond anything the demons have. He has the power to cast out demons, and He's not fundamentally trying to be compassionate and powerful towards the demons. There's no redemption for demons in the Bible.

It's that He wants to free those who've been demonized. He wants to free those who've been under the power of the devil so they can be, as one passage talks about, in their right mind. It's a fascinating study.

I don't have the verse in front of me. If you look at Luke 8, it's amazing. There's this list of women who were Jesus' primary financial backers throughout His ministry.

There was a group of women in Jesus' life who were the massive amounts of financial support in helping Him be an itinerant preacher. You look at these ladies, and many of them had multiple demons cast out of them. What an amazing story.

Jesus, who was your primary source of financial care as you live out this life of itinerant preaching? It's a number of ladies who I took the demons out of, and they've gone on to follow me and support my work. Wouldn't it be a glorious thing if Emmanuel was full of leaders and givers and disciples who were testifying to Jesus having taken the demons out of them, and then moved them to be His choice servants? Now let's shift gears a bit and notice some markers of demonic oppression. How can you tell if someone is demonically oppressed? How do you notice if someone is demonically oppressed? Let me give you four markers of demonization.

And I'll just start here, and I'll make my caveats later. The first can be physical illness. One of the markers of demonization can be physical illness.

Notice this mute person was healed by having a demon cast out of them. So the demon's presence in this person's life did not just result in spiritual problems, but actual physical problems, and when the demon was cast out, the muteness was gone. Maybe you've watched these videos on YouTube of people seeing for the first time or hearing for the first time.

Can you imagine talking for the first time? All the extroverts would be having the time of their lives. If you went from mute to speaking, just at the touch of Jesus' hands, and that's exactly what happens here. This person is able to speak, not because Jesus brought a medical cure, but because He delivered them from the demonic.

Verse 29, He touched their eyes. And then verse 30, sorry, that's my next point. Yeah, that messed up.

Anyway, let me see if I can reclaim my thoughts. Okay, so when the demon is cast out, the physical healing occurs. Now, this is really important so that we don't shackle each other with all kinds of false expectations.

Not all physical healing requires demonic intervention, or requires intervention to cast out a demon. Yes, the presence of the demonized can result in physical sickness. We see blind people because of demons.

We see mute people because of demons. But if you'll just look up the page from where we're in, Matthew chapter 9, if you just look up to the very miracle right before the one we're in, what do you see? We see in verse 28 that we have these blind men. And then in verse 29, He touched their eyes.

And then in verse 30, their eyes were opened. So we have blind people who are made to see, and there's no talk of demons being cast out. So physical illness can just come alone.

It's physical. It's illness. It can be healed by Jesus.

But at other times, physical illness is actually not the disease, but a symptom. And the symptom is, sorry, it's a symptom of demonization. Another strong sign of demonic oppression is self-destructive behavior.

Another sign of demonic oppression is self-destructive behavior. We see this in Mark chapter 9, verse 17-18. There a man comes to Jesus, and listen to what he says, Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute.

And whenever it seizes him, it, the spirit, throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. A quick observation here. We often think of the demonic coming into a person's life, maybe as they get into the occult, Ouija boards, tarot readings, false religions.

And that is absolutely true. The demonic can enter your life through that partnership in ungodly religion and works. But repeatedly, in the New Testament, we have children who have been demonized from their youth.

In other words, sometimes a demonization is not the result of your personal sin, but one of the effects of being born into a fallen world. It may be something that a person doesn't have personal guilt for having entered their life. Still, Jesus here notices it, and what we notice about this demonic activity is that demons do not make people's life better.

The demon has a power to make people's life better. It's not just a demon that's biting him at the mouth. It's causing him to grind his teeth and become rigid.

Now normally, and again, I have to be very careful in all of this teaching, we should not walk through our lives saying in any way, shape, or form, the devil made me do it. You and I are both responsible for our personal sin. But it's fairly hard to escape the fact that when a person is demonized, there's a certain degree of control the demon has to torment and destroy the person.

There is a sense in which the devil's making them do it. This is why the cure for demonic oppression has to come from the outside. You literally have a person not able to help themselves.

And so the person has to come to a point where they can't just help themselves. And we really want to see the church in a place where if such a person were being tormented, the church isn't just recoiling, trying to keep her own purity, but the church is advancing, trying to help those who are under the sway of the devil. Another mark of a demonized person is that they can possess supernatural powers.

Another mark of a demonized person is they can have supernatural powers. Just a chapter ago in Matthew chapter 8, we met a couple of men who were so fierce no one dared to cross the road they were on. In Mark's gospel, the life of one of these men is highlighted.

And here's what we read. This is from Mark 5, 1-7. We read this about the disciples.

They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes, and when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. He lived among the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. For he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart and he broke the shackles in pieces.

No one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him, and crying out with a loud voice he said, What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High? I adjure you, by God, do not torment me.

And so you see it again, the self-destructive behavior and supernatural power on top of it. Now, listen to me. One of the things you can take from this, even if you never encounter a demonized person, is that this is the power the demons have.

If you are walking in any kind of godliness in your life, and you are not succumbing to all the temptations of the devil right now, this is the power that's been overcome in your life, and I promise it's not you doing it. It's the Son of God's power within you that would enable you to overcome this power at all. But we see here that the mark of the demonized can be physical sickness, it can be not only physical sickness, but a supernatural power, and also a tendency towards self-harm.

The final mark, I keep not being able to finish my words or my sentences, and I'm just going to pray about that. So let's pray. Lord, we just pray that you'd give me a clear mind to speak about these things that are so vital to us, and there really might be even right now those who are tormented that you want to use us to free.

And so I pray that you'd help me to make this teaching clear, and that you would accompany it by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that your Son would be glorified for his conquering of all this evil in the world. Pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

The final mark of a demonized person is that they seem to react strongly to the name and presence of the Spirit of Christ. They seem to respond strongly to the name and the presence of the Spirit of Christ. And this is the clearest marker, I would say.

You may see supernatural strength, you may not. You may see physical illness, you may not. You may see self-harm, you may not.

But I think when you see a strong, if you will, demonic, repulsive reaction to the presence of Jesus Christ and to the name of Jesus Christ, you're really encountering what can only be described as the demonic. And notice, we saw this in Matthew 8, it happens repeatedly, that the demon comes to Jesus, almost like it's been drawn out, like a boil has been lanced, and all the pus comes out towards Jesus. What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time? The same kind of thing happens in the Apostle Paul's life.

He's going about preaching the gospel, and a woman with a spirit of divination, we might call it a fortune-telling spirit, follows Paul, and while she's following Paul in Acts 16, she's saying, these men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim the way of salvation. Do you see that? The demonic recognizes the Holy One. The demonic recognizes and is in one way drawn to, and in another way repulsed by the presence of Jesus.

Theologian Rodman Williams writes, and this is good, demonic possession comes to light in the presence of Jesus Christ. Whatever may or may not be the outward expression, the evil power that lurks deep within the human personality is aroused at the coming of the Holy One. Hence, when one anointed with Christ's Spirit ministers in His name, you, there are occasions when this very ministry precipitates a crisis in one who is demon-possessed.

Although such a person may have long turned away from the truth and his inner spirit taken over by this alien spirit, now there is a sudden, even startling recognition, for the dimension of perception has now become totally a spiritual one. Spirit knowing spirit. The evil spirit in the one possessed crying out in recognition of the spirit of holiness.

Momentarily all the veils are dropped in the presence of God. Emanuel, I was thinking about this, and it is a burden of mine as I drive by the homeless in our city, and you wonder how much of this is just mental illness and how much of this is also demonic possession. As I've seen in my own life, a limited amount of clear demonic possession, and you wonder to yourself, how do we become effective? How do we not draw this out in the sense of beating the bushes for demons, but be available, if God would use us to free and liberate people from such demonic possession, the greatest single thing you can do is to be filled with the presence of the Spirit of Christ.

Your active pursuit of simply being filled with the Spirit of Christ is what was used in Jesus to draw demons to Himself and also for them to express their repulsion at Him. And it's in that circumstance that we're in the best place to offer deliverance to those who are demonically oppressed. So, we've said that the demonically oppressed will often be sick, supernaturally strong or powerful, self-destructive, and they will react strongly to the name of Jesus.

I think that would be the clearest sign that you were dealing with a demonized person. Now, we've looked at all six ways that the demons attack us, and this list is probably not comprehensive, but it covers much of what we will see in the Scriptures. The devil's lies, the devil tempts, they accuse, they destroy, they fight cosmic warfare, and they demonize or oppress different people.

How should we apply this teaching? We know we are literally surrounded by demons who are hoping to deceive and devour and destroy us. How should we live out lives when we know there's such an attack? Well, let me give you two or three things. First, we should keep a broad view of spiritual warfare in our minds.

We should keep a broad view of spiritual warfare in our minds. What do I mean when I say a broad view of spiritual warfare? Well, our temptation is to reduce spiritual warfare to the extremes, to only see spiritual warfare happening when demons are confronting, contorting people's faces, or throwing people into fires, or diseasing their bodies. Our tendency might be to say that if we're not seeing demons cast out, then we're not really in the battle.

Or, on the flip side, we might be tempted to say that if we see a number of exorcisms, then we're really living supernatural lives. That's wrong. The demonic battle we fight is fought through casting out demons, yes, but it's also fought in much more ordinary ways.

Spiritual warfare is happening whenever we try to correct someone who believes lies with gentleness. Listen to this passage. Listen to Paul's words in 2 Timothy 2. And if you've bought into the idea that the number one way to overcome lies in this world is by being as Christianly aggressive as possible, listen to this verse.

The Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome. What must the Lord's servant not be? But kind to other kind people. Oops.

To everyone. Able to teach. Patiently boot-stomping evil.

Patiently enduring evil. Correcting opponents with bite. No.

Correcting opponents with gentleness. Opponents. People against you.

With gentleness. In the hope that God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape the snare of who? The devil. After being captured by him to do his will.

Do you follow that? When the world comes against us demonically, we aren't just fighting spiritual warfare once we see someone with supernatural strength and demonic disease and all kinds of wicked displays. Anytime there's someone whose life is built on lies, our gentle, kind response may be the very thing that delivers them out of the kingdom of darkness and into God's kingdom of light. And if you were gentle with your demonic little kids yesterday, I'm not joking because that is a battle.

If you were gentle with anyone opposing the truth, you were trampling the devil underfoot as you did that work. And you were bringing the kingdom of God into this world. At the same time we need to be prepared for when God calls us to help the demonized.

We need to be prepared for when God calls us to help the demonized. We don't want to be fitted for just one kind of ministry. We don't want to have nothing to say to those who aren't in the right minds.

We don't want to only be able to help middle class educated people. We want to be able to help those who have literally been left on the very fringes of society who look so far gone the only explanation may be demonic. We have a gospel that can help those beloved.

We know a power that can help people. We can help people who aren't even able to sit in a church service for an hour. We can help them because we know the power of Christ who helped those who were demonized.

And if God were to bring us full of the Spirit into their presence, you are not without resources from the Holy One to do good to your neighbor. We need to be prepared for when God calls us to help the demonized. There are demonized people in this world today.

Nothing in the Bible would tell us this is all in the past. In fact, even our secular world finds it has to make categories for this. We have to make the American Psychiatric Association prints the Diagnostic Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders and this book is a guide for psychiatrists to diagnose various mental health problems.

One of the possible diagnoses in the book is Possession Trance Disorder. Some of the symptoms doctors face seem to only be adequately explained as spirit possession. Now I'm not calling into question all psychology or psychiatry in the least.

I'm simply saying that even the psychiatrists are looking at certain things and going, this seems demonic. Even those with a very secular worldview are going, this seems to be something that doesn't fit into the categories we have. But beloved, we have categories for these things.

We are not without a word to say to those who seem utterly under the power of something foreign. Now there are many things psychiatrists can help with, but true demon possession will not be one of them. The church of Christ must be ready to help those who are beyond just being influenced by demons and actually, if you will, indwelt by a demon or demons.

How do we get ready? Here are three biblical ways to prepare to love the demonized. And when I say love the demon, this is so important to me. I don't want us just to study demons.

The whole point is love. The whole point is knowing that every person is made in the image of God and whether they have cancer or a demon, whether they're enmeshed in Islam or Buddhism, we want them to know Jesus. And Jesus has given us all the resources so that there are no unreachable people on the planet.

And we want to make use of all of those resources so that we can love God and love our neighbors. It's about love. It's not just about getting your theological categories right.

As important as that is, it's about having everything you need in your tool belt to rebuild human lives on the solid rock that is Jesus Christ. That's the goal. So if you want to help the demonized, what's the most important thing you can do? Be full of faith.

Be full of faith. Be full of faith. Being scared of the demonic, being timid because you're scared, is frustrating to Jesus.

Literally. Let me read you Matthew 17, verse 14-20. Here we've read a bit of the story already.

But a man came up to Jesus, kneeling before Him, verse 15, and said, Lord, have mercy on my son, for he has seizures and he suffers terribly. For often he falls into the fire and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples and they could not heal him.

Jesus, your disciples should be able to do what you do, but they can't do it. And Jesus goes, that's okay. I'm the only hero in this story.

That's not what he says. And Jesus answered, imagine getting this as a discipleship session. I had like a little time alone with Jesus.

What if this was your time alone? Oh, faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me. Let me get this thing done. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, why could we not cast it out? And Jesus said, because I'm Jesus and you're not.

Just get used to it. Wrong. Because of your little faith.

For truly I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, and those are small people. If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there and it will move and nothing will be impossible to you. Beloved, we should ask God to increase our faith.

If you're full of fear, if you're like, if you're full of I don't think it could be done. If you're full of, I don't think it could be done anymore. Repent, turn away from that unbelief.

Ask God, come every Sunday morning as you get fed by the word and say, Lord, increase my faith. Go into your prayer room Sunday morning after morning and say, Lord, increase my faith. Make me someone who whenever anything comes into my life, I believe the greater is he who's in me than he was in the world.

Second, let's be a people of prayer. Let's be a people of prayer. Most important thing when dealing with the demonic is prayer.

You can't get demons out of people on your own strength. Only God can do that. And so the way we work in that direction is we ask him to do what only he can do.

Now, one of the things I love about having three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, sorry, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. One of the things I love about having three gospels like that is we get these same stories often from slightly different vantage points. We just get little nuggets as each of the gospel writers tells the same story, but maybe remembers a different detail or chooses to highlight a different detail.

Well, Mark tells that same story I just read about the disciples who couldn't heal the boy or couldn't cast the demon out of the boy. But when Jesus gets alone for his rebuke to the disciples, Mark brings out something slightly different. It's corresponding with faith, but it's a little different.

Mark 8, 9, 28. Mark 9, 28. And when he says, Lord, increase me that as Jesus entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, why could we not cast it out? And he said to them, this kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.

Self-reliant Christians are useless in spiritual warfare. But there's no end to what prayerful Christians can do. There's no end to what Christians can do, because nothing will be impossible with God.

So if we would help the demonized out of love, we should be full of faith. We should be full of prayer. And then third, we should have an appreciation for particular spiritual gifts that are particularly helpful when dealing with the demonized.

Now, one of the things I've been stressing over this sermon series is that when you look at Jesus, he's got all the gifts. He can prophesy. He can heal.

He can cast out demons at will. You look at someone like Paul, he can prophesy. He can speak in tongues.

He can cast out demons at will. When you move a little further through the New Testament, it becomes clear that God has now distributed those gifts through the body. We don't all have the same body.

We don't all have the same gifts. We don't all teach equally well. We don't all prophesy equally well.

We don't all administer equally well. We have different gifts. And two of the gifts that God highlights that will be particularly helpful for us as we think about the demonized is that 1 Corinthians 12 tells us there are some who have discerning of spirits.

There are some who have the gift of discerning of spirits. Now, sometimes a spirit is pretty obvious. Someone's hurting themselves, torturing themselves, slashing out against the name of Jesus.

Most of us, no experience, go, I think I know what's going on here. But other times it's a little bit more deceptive. And we should learn to appreciate and ask each other questions that would discern who in our body has a gift of discerning of spirits? That's particularly attuned to the Spirit of the Holy One and the Spirit of the Evil One.

We should care about that. And then one of the other gifts that 1 Corinthians 12 mentions is the working of miracles. Now, is there anyone who can just always work miracles anytime they want? No.

Can any Christian work a miracle if God decides? Yes. And are there some that are particularly gifted in working of miracles? That's what 1 Corinthians 12 says. There are some who have been given a gift of working of miracles.

Now, if we only attune ourselves, like so many Reformed churches do, to the gift of teaching and preaching, we'll never know that stuff. But if in our conversations, in our gospel community groups, we're helping each other find and discover spiritual gifts, which just happens by just moving out to serve in all circumstances. You just move out to serve.

And as you move out to serve, you begin to discern where people are gifted. You begin to encourage those gifts. We may find that there are Christians who are particularly gifted in discerning of spirits and particularly gifted in working of miracles.

And we, not just individually, but as a body, may be more effective to love those who are demonized and to see them freed from the power that the devil has them under. Well, I want to say one last thing, and then I'm going to sit down. The last thing I want to say is this.

When you start talking about the supernatural, demonic, miracle-working miracles, prophecy, when you start talking about the supernatural to a congregation like ours that's deeply concerned with the truth and getting it right, making sure that everything is done according to God's Word, when you start talking about that, there's a recoil because we recognize we might move into some of these situations and get it wrong. And because we're going to get it wrong, we aren't even going to do it at all. And so perfection becomes the enemy of the good.

Well, let me just use the illustration of how we treat preachers to remind you that we should probably treat other gifts the same way. What do we do when a young preacher preaches their first deadly boring sermon? Let's cut the preaching out of this church. This is bad.

Who could ever bear to be that bored ever again? Or what if a young preacher gets up and starts illustrating the Trinity using water, which leads to the modalism here. So do we say, never let that guy speak again. That's over.

That could destroy the whole church. If you don't have a good vision of God, you'll ruin everything. No.

We patiently teach, encourage, sharpen, encourage what's good, and help strengthen those initial impulses to use spiritual gifts. If we hear a prophecy that's a little off, what do we do? Shut her down. These spiritual gifts are going to kill us.

What if we think that someone is sick and it's demonic and it turns out it's not? Well, what would you do? You sort of throw the whole thing out because someone might get hurt? Or do you try to cultivate a family atmosphere where the children are able to take more and more responsibilities, and where you correct in love when difficult things happen? Beloved, many of us have categories that say, you know, I believe this. I think it's true. But I've never seen it done properly, and I've seen it done abusively.

So what do I do in the meantime? And the problem is, we say, well, because it's been abused, we better shut her down. Or we better operate in fear. That's going to circumvent us from helping a lot of people and seeing a lot of God's power.

Instead, what you do is you tolerate imperfection in the context of loving correction. You try and see what God is doing. You step out in faith with maybe a word God's put on your heart, or to pray for someone who seems demonically hindered.

And when God's fruitfulness is there, you point out spiritual gifts. And if something unhelpful is said, you correct and sharpen in the context of love. And if that's the case, we'll be able to grow more and more into the ministry we see Jesus exercising throughout Matthew 8 and chapter 9. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for your grace. We thank you for your mercy. And we pray that we would be a congregation, a familial, loving congregation who can help stir up the gifts, imperfect as they may be, hoping to see us grow in maturity to be able to see more of you and love more and more people.

We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.