Demons Cower

 Good morning welcome. If you're new we've just started or rather re-started in the mornings a series called 'Jesus in Luke' last week we left the disciples after Jesus had calmed a violent storm with just a word wondering in fear and amazement who is this who the wind and waves obey? So let me start this morning by asking you a question: 'What do you think about demon-possession?'.

Now that I've got your attention why don't you turn up to p731 to Luke 8:26 and you'll see that today's passage is all about an encounter between Jesus and a demon-possessed man. Verse 27 Jesus sails to the far side ofLakeGalileeand when he stepped ashore was met by a demon-possessed man. Now at this point some of you are already putting your hands up saying - Demon-possession! You don't expect me to take this seriously do you? So we need to do a little bit of work here.

Christians are not materialists that is we believe in things which aren't physical but which are real. There is a spiritual world and that includes things like angels and demons. In fact it includes God himself because he does not have a physical body. So when Luke says Jesus was met by a demon-possessed man he isn't speaking in metaphor he means what he says. I'm guessing one or two of you will still have a problem with this but let me challenge a couple of assumptions you may be making:

1 We tend to think of the world Luke was writing in as being naive. They didn't have modern medicine and science like us and so they believed anything perhaps this man was mentally ill but they didn't understand and so called it demon-possession. But that simply isn't true at the time Luke was writing people did have a concept of mental health but this they recognised as something different. Remember too that Luke is writing as a trained medical doctor on behalf of the 'most excellent Theophilus' a Roman governor. He is an educated man writing to an educated primary audience.

2 Today we ignore the spiritual world. Our society doesn't have a category for understanding it and so we make an a priori assumption that it doesn't exist. Most people will say there's nothing beyond the physical without a moments thought or examination of any other possibility. Simply rejecting an explanation out of hand without examining the evidence is not being rational and scientific and so it's our generation starts to look a little naive.

3 Jesus treats this man as a demon-possessed man that's clear in all three of the synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke. Jesus' words and actions show that he clearly believed in the reality of the spiritual world. So if we reject Luke's account of a demon-possessed man we are also rejecting what Jesus himself believed - you don't want to be on that side of the debate.

So this passage really is all about actual demon-possession. Except that it's not, it's about Jesus. Jesus not the demon-possessed man is the central character. That's why this series is called 'Jesus in Luke' not 'Demon-possession' in Luke. Specifically it's about how Jesus has triumphed over evil and so is able to set captive people, like this demon-possessed man, free. That's the big idea if you like: Jesus has triumphed over evil, setting captives free. Under that there are four things that I want us to see in this encounter. The first is this: A man captive to sin.

1. A man captive to sin

Listen to the way that Luke describes the demon-possessed man:

27When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a demon