"Everyone Deals With Demons" Sermon Delivered By Reverend Richard E. Stetler
– February 10, 2013 Centenary United
Exodus 32:19-25; Luke 9:37-43 Our Scripture
lesson this morning concerns the well-known story of the young boy that
had epilepsy. Try to
imagine living in a day when there was no way to understand what was
happening to someone experiencing seizures.
In those days, people interpreted many abnormal events and
behaviors as though victims
of such experiences were cursed by the gods or possessed by
demons.
In the 21st
century, having
demons is a common reference to describe
troublesome life-issues.
All of us have to deal with them because we all have them.
If we scan our lives and self-diagnose what life-issues bother us
the most, we will find that our
demons cover a wide range of circumstances.
For example, the
longest steel constructed bridge in the world is near our home in Just as our fears
can grow to enormous size by our constantly feeding them, so can a host
of other demons that have no
relation to our fears.
Habits grow in people that enjoy comfort foods, playing video games,
love gossiping, fault-finding, betting on sporting events, being
competitive at the office and doing everything possibly to look young
and fit. A number of these
activities and attitudes may be part of our daily lives, but when they
become excessive, people often refer to them as
one of my demons. Some years ago the
television program 60-Minutes
devoted a segment to what is happening in the world of plastic surgery.
For a number of people, having cosmetic surgical procedures has grown
into an addiction. 60-Minutes
interviewed one couple with three children.
The wife was stunningly attractive.
Her attitude was, “I think people should do everything possible
to help them feel better about themselves.”
The husband’s position was that she has never been satisfied with
the results of her surgery. Since their marriage, the couple has spent
over $275,000 on cosmetic procedures.
When we feed
our demons with thoughts and
feelings, we energize their growth.
Some demons grow so large they are called
obsessive-compulsive
disorder. People have
wrestled with their demons
since the beginning of recorded history.
The Exodus passage was selected as one of our lessons this
morning because it demonstrated a
demon which Moses had to deal with repeatedly for most of his adult
life. When he became
disappointed with the behavior of others, his anger had few boundaries.
Following the story
line in the Book of Exodus,
we learn that God had already given Moses the Ten Commandments.
As Moses was returning to the Hebrew encampment, he saw a
golden bull that had been
fashioned by his goldsmith brother, Aaron.
The bull was a god the
Hebrews knew from their days in Moses became so
furious that he smashed the tablets by throwing them to the ground. He
had the golden bull burned and ground up into fine powder.
Moses poured the powder into the drinking water and forced the
Hebrews to drink it. (Exodus 32:19-20) That was not enough to soften
Moses’ anger. Moses angrily
exclaimed, “Everyone who is on the Lord’s side come and stand by me.”
Then Moses told those that had huddled around him, “The Lord God
of King David had
demons.
David fell in love with Bathsheba, who was the wife of his best
military general, Uriah, the Hittite.
Though having ten wives and ten concubines, David’s
demon reared its head.
David had Uriah killed and took Bathsheba to be his wife. (II
Samuel 11:15) Very few people
are spared from having to deal with their
demons. As we return to our
lesson, Luke describes an abrupt outburst of frustration from Jesus.
One wonders what happened to his lessons of love thy neighbor,
forgive 70 times 7, and to turn the other cheek.
Without any obvious provocation, Jesus exclaimed, “How
unbelieving and wrong you people are!
How long must I stay with you?
How long do I have to put up with you?” (Luke 9:41)
We can hardly
imagine what evoked such an outburst.
Try to empathize how this father felt after being scolded by
Jesus. He had no idea what he did or said.
This father said, “I begged your disciples to drive out my son’s
demon but they could not do it.”
For some time,
Jesus knew that people were not coming to him to learn how to
transform their lives. They
were coming to experience or witness healing and that was not Jesus’
purpose! Few people cared
about his message. This
outburst may have resulted from years of feeding his frustration.
Even his dearest friends, Mary and Martha, both said at different
times, “Master, had you only been here my brother would not have died.”
(John 11:21) Jesus had had
enough! We have to remember
that Jesus, Peter, James and John had just come down from the summit of What the four men
experienced was life-transforming.
Peter, James and John witnessed Jesus talking to Elijah and
Moses, two individuals that had lived centuries before and were now
standing in front of him.
Think of the implications of this experience.
People
do not have to hold any unique or particular beliefs about anything for
eternal life to be part of their ongoing evolution of spirit. Jesus wanted to
tell the world what the purpose is of the
earth experience, but people
continued to come to him for their own personal needs.
None of them understood his teaching that people could live in
the Jesus had to
struggle to let go of his frustration.
Healing was like skim milk
compared to the steak he
wanted to give to them.
Jesus knew that all healing was temporary because death ends the
physical experience for everyone.
His message was so
revolutionary, that no one understood it. For centuries, the beliefs of
the Jews were grounded in their obedience to the Laws of Moses.
This is why Jesus said to Nicodemus, “You are a great teacher in If we wanted to
identify with Jesus’ frustration, try to imagine coming upon a group of
blind people that had gone for a swim at This
urgency to save people from
drowning in their life-experiences is what fed Jesus’
demon of frustration.
What caused his message eventually to seep into the consciousness
of the disciples was another experience like the one encountered by
Peter, James and John on As we have
discussed before, once people have an extraordinary spiritual encounter
like the Apostle Paul experienced on the road to Can we learn
something from our demons?
Yes, we can. They
have a purpose in the created order.
All demons are
a teaching device.
They teach us how attached we
are to this world and how unattached we are becoming to our ability
to trust God. We are all
spirit-beings and our demons
pinpoint the areas of our lives that we have energized and elevated
above our trust in God’s presence.
Think about it.
For example, think about the
demon of worry. What
has worrying ever done to enhance our lives?
The more we feed our worries, the more powerful they become.
They can flood our consciousness with thoughts that are useless.
In fact, they attack even the little trust in God that we still
have left. Think about the
demon a few young people
begin to feed when they are young teenagers. A steady diet of thoughts
like, “I have no friends,” “I am unattractive,” “I am not loved by my
parents,” “I will never amount to anything” can grow to a point where
the demon will receive its
own label -- clinical depression.
What we feed grows. The story of Joseph in the Book
of Genesis has the answer for confronting all our
demons.
Joseph
lived what Jesus taught.
The root thought that nurtured and protected Joseph throughout
his life was that God was with him during every experience.
(Genesis 39:21) There is
no record of Joseph ever asking God to remove or change what was
happening to him. Think of the
directions Joseph could have gone.
After listening to one of Joseph’s dreams, his father Jacob said
sarcastically, “Do you honestly think that your mother, brothers and I
are going to bow down to you one day?”
(Exodus 37:10) Jacob
must have walked away just shaking his head. All kinds of
demons
circled around Joseph, but he fed none of them.
He was sold into slavery.
He was falsely accused of trying to seduce his master’s wife.
He was imprisoned for years and was forgotten by the Royal Wine
Steward who promised to speak to Pharaoh on his behalf.
The possibilities
are endless of what his very active and vivid imagination could have
done to him. Instead, his
possible demons never entered
his consciousness. Why?
His root thought was, “No matter what I experience, God is with
me and has a purpose for my life.” (Genesis 45:5) If we understood
this truth without a single reservation, all our
demons would be understood
for what they are – illusions that are trying to convince us that we are
alone in our bodies and that God is powerless to be with us.
The awareness that
God is with us will eventually come to everyone. Jesus was trying to
teach his followers that they do not have to wait until they die before
they begin to live as the spirit-beings that they are.
Today, our task is to pass on this truth by becoming living
examples like Joseph and Jesus.
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