Do Demons Go to Church



Do Demons Go to Church?

Mark 1:21-28

“His Name Is Wonderful,” “He Is Lord,” “Praise the Name of Jesus” We sang those songs a lot when I was instructor at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Baguio City, the Philippines. It was 1990, a year of a lot of demonic activity. Every time we encountered the demonic, one of our students would pick up the guitar and start singing praise songs, and the other guys would join in.

You know what Martin Luther said about good Christian music don’t you? He said, “Music is a gift and largess of God not a gift of men. Music drives away the devil and makes people happy; it induces one to forget all wrath, unchastity, arrogance, and other vices. After theology I accord to music the highest place and the greatest honor. We note that David and all the saints used verse, rhymes, and songs to express their godly thoughts.”

We weren’t very good at kicking the demons out at first. But we learned. We got pretty good at it really, we learned a lot, the teachers right along with the students, I guess you could say that we had a class in Exorcism 101!

Jesus was better! Every time Jesus met someone demon-possessed He kicked the demons out with just a word!

` This case in our Gospel lesson today is most unusual because of where it took place - in the very house of God! Why in the world would a man possessed by demons even be interested in going to the house of God?

Why would the devil want some of his demons to go to church? I think that’s a very good question to ask, because the Barna research group says that about two thirds of Americans today don’t believe in a real personal being like the devil, and that includes many who are church members. We’ve been lulled into thinking that it is Halloween style superstition. Just harmless superstitions. Really? Then why does the Bible speak so clearly about the devil and the ministry of Jesus and the Apostles list many encounters against the demonic? If you believe the Bible is God’s Word you have to also believe in the spiritual worldview that it presents.

The fact of the matter is, here in America we have a warped worldview. It is what missionary anthropologist Paul Heibert wrote about in the journal Cultural Anthropolgy, an article entitled, “The Flaw of the Missing Middle.” A short synopsis of his article is that in most parts of the world there is a worldview much more like that of the New Testament, that there is good and evil, and the demons are real personal beings, invisible most the time but real none the less. This is based on their actual experiences and encounters with demons. In America, on the other hand, we believe in God, but we don’t believe much anymore in spiritual beings, at least evil ones, having anything to do with us humans. Angels are OK. We even believe little babies that die turn in to angels. Remember we had a series on angels a year ago at Advent. Angels were created by God, and it is not true that babies turn into angels.

I think there are three reasons to explain why the demons go to church. I want to share them, and in the process share some of my personal encounters and experiences which validate the fact that demons do go to church.

First, demons go to church …

1. Because the devil has always been religious.

Satan and his demons are even rather orthodox in some of their beliefs. A. W. Tozer said, "The devil is a better theologian than any of us and is a devil still."

Of course it’s not just what you believe that matters.

James 2:18,19 - But someone will say, "You have faith; I have deeds." Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You believe there is one God. Good! EVEN THE DEMONS BELIEVE THAT - and shudder.

The devil and his demons are monotheistic. They know there’s only one God. Problem is, they don’t worship God. When they show up at church it isn’t for true worship but rather for false worship and other alterior evil motives.

Satan’s religion is false religion but it is religion nonetheless. He doesn’t even mind if we show up for worship - just as long as it’s false worship.

He loves to see folks go to church to talk about other worshippers. He loves to see us go to uplift our own goodness. He loves it when we are preoccupied with other things - like who hurt our feelings recently, and what so and so thinks about us. He loves to hear our critical comments about the worship leaders, or the choir or the musicians, or the candle lighters, and, of course, the most prime target, the pastor’s preaching.

The devil loves it when we don’t put our hearts into praising God. He likes seeing us just going through the motions. He can stand anything but worship of God in spirit and in truth. (John 4:24)

The devil is opposed to Christianity but he isn’t opposed to churchianity.

The demons know who Jesus is. The one in the synagogue did. He believed in the Incarnation of Christ - that he was both God and man at the same time.

The demon clearly identified Christ’s humanity by calling Him "Jesus of Nazareth". But he also identified Christ’s deity by calling Him "the Holy One of God". (verse 24)

The church must surely be on guard against false doctrine. But the danger we are sometimes less aware of is false worship. We must always guard against dead religion.

We cannot afford to become complacent and nonchalant about our worship of God! We should consistently re-evaluate why we worship and how we worship.

The Word says concerning dead worship by dead churches and believers: "having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them." (2 Timothy 3:5)

Church traditions can so get in the way of worship from the heart. The traditions become so ordinary that we lose the meaning behind them.

It’s been said before that tradition is the living faith of the dead, but traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.

So the short of it is that the devil is religious, yes he is even the author of all the other religions. His favorite tool is deception. And he is an expert on religious deception, he knows how to fool humans into any kind of false worship. That’s why I’m always preaching the importance of a personal relationship with Jesus, not practice of religion.

The demons will go to church to try to take people’s focus off the preached word and focus on religious stuff. Believe in the denomination, in the beautiful church building, or Lutheran traditions, or even believe in a pastor, but just don’t believe that Jesus is your Savior from sin!

Second, demons go to church..

2. The demons go to church because they’re looking for prey.

Yep, they don’t go there to pray, but to look for prey!

You can be assured it was not the devil himself that possessed this man in the synagogue. The devil is too busy with schemes all around the world, and he is not omnipresent as Jesus is. He is local, and can only be in one place at a time. He can move quickly, but still he is limited. It was clearly some demons of religion that were in this man. You see, there are millions of demons, and they have specialties, just like an army, there are privates, officers, generals, and special ops demons. In most places in the New Testament when it lists evil spirits there are four Greek words that are given. But that’s not my topic today, I just want you to understand that the demons do go to church. We should be aware of that and be on guard.

This may have been a case of multiple demon possession as the man with legion of demons in Mark chapter 5. "What do you want with US Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy US?" (verse 24)

Illustration

I personally experienced a case in 1990 in the Philippines of a person demon possessed. He wasn’t just in the church he was a student in the seminary, and he went to church every Sunday! His father was a pastor and he was raised in a Christian home. We cast the demon out, but he didn’t come clean on cleaning up his life and we weren’t very experienced yet at that point in counseling. He could give the right answers to all the standard questions about faith, but a few months later the demon came back with 7 others, just as Jesus said in Matthew 12:45. That’s when I knew we missed something. As I prayed the Holy Spirit laid on my heart that he had willingly opened himself up to a deception of the devil. I had heard all the details about how he had originally been occupied by this demon who gave him powers, but didn’t realize that even though we did a power encounter and cast the demon out, it came back because we didn’t do a truth encounter with the student for him to realize his error.

Then as I interviewed and counseled him in the process to find out what it was, he had been given powers not only to move things, but to see the spirits. How interesting. He sang in the choir and would sit in the choir loft on Sunday mornings, and see demons in church. “Where were they?” I asked him. “Well there’s a man in the pew nodding off and sleeping and there’s a demon right on his shoulders. And a couple of people are whispering back forth during the sermon, and there’s two demons right there.” I prayed silently, “Lord, help, I need your guidance.” I immediately received His word, I told the student, “Well it may be that this is a practical application of the gift of discernment of spirits that St. Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 12. If so then we should pray and ask God to confirm it and teach us to use it properly so we don’t turn it into a witch hunt on Sunday mornings. And do you agree that if it isn’t from God that we ask Him to take it away from you.”

He pondered it for just a moment, and totally agreed. Another student, one who had been a friend of his for a long time, was present with us as witness during this time. So we prayed….and God took it away, and he was freed from his powers and from seeing spirits, and had just learned what a truth encounter was all about. Jesus alone is “the Way the Truth and the Life.” (John 14:6) The devil on the other hand is the “father of lies.” (John 8:44) Today, many years later, both of these men are successful pastors in the ministry.

Satan’s ultimate goal is to have control. He can possess those who don’t have the Holy Spirit within. The Holy Spirit teaches and guides and gives us discernment. After that I convinced the seminary dean to let me teach two classes to them, The Book of Acts, and a doctrine class on the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit.

You see, demons can’t possess true Christ followers who have filled their house with the Holy Spirit. But they do still try to manipulate us and hinder our work for God and the growth of our faith.

Oh well, that was in the mission field, you might say. It’s different over there. They’re still backwards. My friends, it happens here as well.

Illustration

On a Sunday night, October 31, 1999, I was pastoring a church in Omaha, NE. We had started a Sunday evening youth service, with a youth contemporary Christian band. I would teach a short lesson, we would sing songs, then break out in to small groups to go deeper into the lesson. I had adult leaders to take the high schoolers, and I would take those in the confirmation class age. Now this church had a large K-8 school and you would have thought these children of good Lutheran church people would be faithful in attending, even if it was, yes, Halloween. Well, I got wind of a boycott of the youth service by most all of the confirmation class, so I made alternate plans. I took the “Jesus” movie straight from the Gospel of Luke, and showed it in the sanctuary to the high schoolers and few kids that came. At the first scene where the adult Jesus appears, at His baptism, one 16 year old girl got up quickly and headed for the back of the sanctuary. The Holy Spirit told me immediately it was a demon manifesting. Knowing the family she was from (her father was a felon just released) I wasn’t taken totally off guard. And then I could see it in her eyes. One of my elders was there, and learning about these things, we took her out of the sanctuary and in about 15 minutes had commanded the demons to come out of her. Then we took her to the lounge for the truth encounter, to find out she had been in an occult group in south Omaha and sacrificed small animals, and played Satanic music and slashed themselves. The demons went to church with her in the hope they could deceive others, but they couldn’t stand it when they saw Jesus. The Light of Christ shining in the dark scatters them, just like cockroaches when you turn on the light!

Remember what Jesus said to Simon Peter? "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat." (Luke 22:31)

Simon thought he would be able to go through all the trials with Jesus without cracking. Though his faith didn’t fail completely, he miserably flunked a major test. He denied Jesus just as Jesus was being falsely accused and beaten.

Peter was given another chance and he learned from his mistake, but we need to learn from it also. Satan is out to sift us.

That’s why Peter would later write in one of his letters to the churches this admonition: "Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour." (1 Peter 5:8)

If you think the devil doesn’t do some of his prowling in church you haven’t been around long. Satan even has control of the pulpits in some churches.

Listen to what the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 11:13-15: "For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what they deserve."

So when demons go to church they don’t go to pray, they go there to look for prey.

Third…

3. The demons go to church because the devil seeks worship.

The devil wants to be worshipped as if he were God.

Isaiah 14:12-14 - "How have you fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, ’I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’"

Remember what the devil said to Jesus? "All this I will give you, if you will bow down and worship me." (Matthew 4:9)

Satan will be able to accomplish for a short while what he has longed for all along.

The true follower of Christ is involved in a struggle. Our great struggle is not with paying our bills or staying healthy. Our greatest struggle is a spiritual one.

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." (Ephesians 6:12)

What Do We Do?

1. The Gift of Discerning of Spirits. Hopefully pastors have this gift. When they don’t they need to find others to come alongside who do have it.

2. Teach About the Enemy. Students at the Military Academy learn the art of warfare which includes studying their enemies. When we don’t understand the enemy we can more easily become his prey. Not to fear, “For greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world.”(1 John 4:4) But neither should we be casual about the modern manifestation of evil, such as the Harry Potter series, or the Twilight series so popular today.

3. Learn and Apply the Full Armor of God. (Ehpesians 6) I’ve taught on this before and there is much to learn here, more than one sermon, but the armor is real in the spirit realm, that is, the spirits can see if you have it or not. We do not see it, we are “to walk by faith not by sight.” (2 Cor. 5:7)

4. Pray. Personally, live in prayer. Corporately, many churches have prayer teams that minister before and/or during worship times for the purpose of the spiritual battle that is going on in the sanctuary and church grounds.

Let’s not be so naive as to neglect the fact that we war with the devil even when we come to church!

Prayer: Lord God, thank You that You are our great Shield and Protector and that You have already won the battle against the devil and his demons at the cross. Teach us to apply the lessons of spiritual warfare that we may be victors over the enemy instead of victims of the enemy. In Jesus’s name. Amen.

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