The Son of God and the Demons

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Well, there wasn't tongues in our children's blessing this week.

I don't know if that means that the Holy Spirit fell during worship or whether, whether there's something to come today. I will tell you that I'm super excited to deliver this message. And yet there's a huge weight. You know, it's one thing when you start to go through Matthew chapter eight and you start to look at Jesus coming off the mountain in the Sermon of the Mount and then he starts to put those teachings into action. It's one thing to look at him cleansing the leper and think, you know, surely like it's not that big of a deal.

I mean, he was God. I'm not, I don't have to worry about cleansing a leper all the time. You know, I'll leave that up to God himself. But when you start to get into Jesus interacting with demons, all of us conservative Christians are like, I don't know about that, like, we should just leave that on TBN for all of my Jewish loving, Hebraic loving, Torah loving, Jesus loving people. Demons are real.

The Bible testifies to that over and over again. Oh, and then God said, let there be light.

And so we can't go into the text of Matthew 8 today where Jesus has an interaction with demons. We can't go in willy nilly, we can't go in flippant, we can't go in acting like there isn't a spiritual battle that's around us at all points in time. Because there is a spiritual battle. Everything in the physical has some sort of tie to the spiritual realm. And when we look at this today, it's a little bit more serious than sending an unclean man to testify or an unclean man to testify to the clean or a gentile to the Jews.

It's a little bit deeper, a little bit more. We're gonna have to let the Holy Spirit do the Holy Spirit's work and the Word of God do the work of the Word of God inside each and every one of us to understand that we're not talking about Jesus waking up from a boat and speaking to the creation. Peace be still. We're not talking about the calming of the chaotic waves. We're talking about that age old battle of good versus evil.

Last week, while a lot of the kids were at camp and pre teen camp, it's good to see that Sarah and Kim have showered since then. It was a long week.

Hartman's are back. They kept us safe out there for the week and kept us hydrated.

Today we're going to tackle that issue that started in the garden where we had to wrestle against two natures inside of us. The one that would be obedient to God and the one that would wrestle with the obedience and desires of our flesh. You see, the devil gets a lot of accolades from Christians. A lot of times the devil made me do it or get behind me Satan. Yet the Bible has given us countless interactions where it's not just the adversary, it's us.

The adversary didn't make us do it. We wanted to do it and we wrestled with it. This is why we have confession and repentance. This is why we have a Savior that we're in need of. And so when we go into Matthew chapter 8:27 to 29, I'll tell you, I don't want to talk about demons.

I don't want to have to wrestle with the concept of our Hollywood interactions. You know, like the power of Christ compels you. Anybody seen the exorcism? Anybody who's ever had interaction with spiritual principalities that are not of the Lord. Just as much as the Lord can make you weep uncontrollably with joy and he can make you dance and he, there's so many things he can do with the power of His Holy Spirit.

There is a heaviness when you come face to face with the Spirit that is not of Him.

There's a heaviness when you see and interact with a person who is in cooperation with demons. There's a heaviness when you look at the testimony of God in the Scripture and he is tackling what will be the age old battle where one day he will come back and Jesus will sit on the throne and the adversary. And whether you call them fallen angels or demons or whatever terminology you want to use, they will no longer be in this realm. They will be cast away into the lake of fire where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. We heard Matthew 2 weeks ago refer to Jesus under the title of Son of Man, referencing back to the prophecy of Daniel about the deity of Jesus in his human form.

And today we will see the same question that his disciples who were doing life with him is the same question we have. What sort of man is this?

You see, it's no secret from my personal testimony and many of us in this church what our origin story is. Most of us came to a faith in Christ and salvation nature of Christ, some at an early age, some spent 20, 30 years in different denominations of churches. And then God opened our eyes and the Holy Spirit opened our eyes to some of the contextual elements of who our Messiah was. The Jewish King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. He opened our eyes to some of the beauty that could be found in the testimonies of Moses and Noah and David and Deborah and all of the stories that came before.

Some of us did what humanity does. We swung the pendulum a little bit too far and we wrestled with who is our king and whose authority will we sit under. Some of us wrestled with is Moses equal to Jesus? Even though the testimony of Scriptures never puts Moses equal with Jesus, many of our friends and our families have walked away from the salvation work of Jesus Christ. Yeshua hamashiach and they have taken and they have put Moses as their king, David as their king.

Noah is their king. Others in this room. It's your first week here. Sorry.

The Son of Man title that Matthew uses is one that fulfills Jesus own testimony. Think not that I have come to abolish the Torah and the prophets. Surely not. And I'm paraphrasing, this is the CJV version. I have come to fulfill everything Jesus was doing on this earth was to fulfill all of the prophecies and the testimonies that had come before that were all foreshadows of him as the king.

Him is the rightful ruler. Him is the rightful authority and the one who was given by the Father dominion over all the world. How do you get to the Father? There's only one way. Jesus.

And so last week we stopped with the verse, what sort of man is this that even the winds and seas obey him? I mean, we're 27 verses into chapter eight. We're eight chapters into the writing of Matthew. Some big things have happened. He's healed the lepers.

He sent them to the temple priesthood. He has taken a centurion and healed from afar. He literally spoke. And the waves and the wind stop. And yet they finish off 27.

Even after all these things, and they say, what sort of man is this? And Somehow in our 21st century arrogance, in the narcissism of Western culture of America, somehow we think we have Jesus all figured out. Cultured Jews grew up in the culture, all the testimonies, all the prophecies, all the things that the Torah and the prophets fulfilled that would foreshadow to Jesus. Some of them missed him and some of them wrestled. What sort of man is this?

Humanity continues to wrestle with who Jesus is. We understand that Judaism, some of them don't even believe Jesus walked on the face of the earth. Regardless of historical facts, archaeological information, some believe he was just a prophet. And yet in Christianity, some believe that he is void of his Jewish roots. Some people believe that he came to start a whole new religion when God spent his entire time on earth taking issue with the hypocritical religious leaders.

He was not a Republican or a Democrat. He was an equal opportunity offender. Yet we struggle to receive that testimony. It says that the Father testifies of who he is, and he only does what he sees the Father do. And yet we make arguments sometimes from silence that Jesus never testified to be God.

Well, I mean, Yahweh did one of the three parts of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit did. But hey, welcome to our armchair. Quarterbacking two to three witnesses was the Torah requirement. Most of you in this room know that the Torah requires if you're going to testify of something, if you're going to bear witness to something. It takes two to three witnesses in order to testify in a correct manner.

And yet we're not allowed to interject our own thoughts into our testimony because we don't want to run the risk of bearing a false witness or false testimony against a person. The Torah required humble submission to the power and authority of the testimony of the witnesses.

And yet we continue this week watching Jesus do exactly what he did from the moment he came down from that mountain. He put the mission of God first and foremost, the kingdom of God first and foremost through action. Indeed, he cast out demons, he performed miracles, he told creation to simmer down. He was trying to take a nap.

And yet, with a heavy heart, today I know that there are people in this room who are asking the very same question, who is Jesus?

It's not because you didn't grow up in a church and didn't know who Jesus is. It's because you found yourself chasing after the things that sounded great, the things that fed your mind while leaving your heart far from God. The power of the Word of God comes in the one who wrote it. And when Jesus walks and Jesus talks, we should take note. Today we're going to start in Matthew chapter 8:28.

We've taught for two weeks. I was able to draw out in the sermon series for two whole weeks, just clawing into my vacation on Monday morning, just kicking and clawing, Jesus is finally going across the sea. He started all of this off two sermons ago, saying, hey, look, let's go across the sea. And now here we are. When he came to the other side, to the country, two demon possessed men met him there.

And coming out of the tombs so fierce that no one could pass that way.

These men tormented people. Can you imagine? You know, Jesus has done some pretty miraculous things, but can you imagine? There's a beautiful cemetery right here on the way to Brent's house. When you go out, there's a beautiful cemetery.

Can you imagine? After service, it's like, hey, I got to drop something off at Brent's house. And we hang a left out here, and we're just driving down the road. We go past the tombs, and there's two men running out of the tombs.

We're not joking about. I see dead people at that point in time, I don't care who you are. There's a couple of people in this room I know very well. You're either shooting first and asking questions later, or you're screaming like my toddler would back in the day and going the other direction. And there's, like, the other ones getting out of the car.

It's like, I rebuke you. I love having a diverse congregation. Y' all keep me on my toes.

But can you imagine? Here comes the Son of God, the Son of Man with his disciples to the other side of the lake. He is cleansed lepers. He has dealt with disciples who had lacking of faith. And the first thing they come into is some trolls under a bridge possessed by demons.

This isn't the beautiful trolls movie where they sing all those really great songs. These are mean trolls. These are Shrek's cousin type of trolls. They're mean. They're possessed by the demon.

And once again, Jesus provides perfect order in the midst of that chaos. Can you imagine how chaotic it would be to watch evil come up against the life and perfection of Jesus? And behold, they cried out, what have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before our time? Okay, Jesus didn't even go looking for the fight.

At this point, Jesus is just going about his Father's work. Remember, Jesus was always on mission, and he's trying to teach by apprenticing his disciples. What does it mean to be apprentices of Jesus Christ? So he goes the other side of the lake, and they just start walking. And all of a sudden, from back in the corner over here, here comes two demon possessed men.

And they come out and they said, what will you have to do with us, O Son of God?

Well, unlike a couple weeks ago, where we looked at the terminology of son of man being the first time Matthew employed that, this is not the first time that Matthew employs the title Son of God. We actually see that earlier in Matthew. And because we started with the Sermon on the Mount series, there's those first four chapters that are also meaty, that we kind of reference sprinkled here and there throughout the text. But it's actually in Matthew chapter four, where the Son of God title is implied and employed by Matthew. And the tempter came and he said to him, if you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.

Anybody remember that? So Jesus, after he is baptized, we have the Holy Spirit come down like a dove, and we have the audible voice of the Father come, and they testify, this is my Son, of whom I am well pleased. And the Holy Spirit immediately casts him into the wilderness. It draws him out into the wilderness where he fasts for 40 days. And what happens at that time?

He comes face to face with the adversary. Some scholars actually believe this was a picture of new creation in the Garden of Eden, where the first Adam, who failed and fell into the trappings of the lies of the adversary, where the perfect Adam, Jesus Christ, Yeshua Hamashiach, would now come face to face. And what the first Adam could not do, Jesus would do. Now we're in chapter eight, so we know that he already won. You know, it's kind of like those TV shows where they have the flashback, like you already know what's going to happen because we're already four chapters ahead.

But the adversary, the tempter, came to him and said to Jesus, if you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. And Jesus answered, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. And then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the Son of God, twice here in Matthew chapter four, throw yourself down. For it is written, he will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. And Jesus said to them, again it is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

According to the text, Jesus wasn't out in the wilderness with a whole bunch of apprentices. He wasn't out there with a whole bunch of, like, groupies or friends or followers or anything. He was alone in the wilderness. And there was the angels who were in America rooting him on. They were.

They were encouraging him to continue to be steadfast in the calling. And there was the adversary who was encouraging him to basically throw it all away. Why does it matter if you're the. If you're the king, why does it matter? The angels, the devil and Jesus.

This is the landscape of what's happening in the wilderness. Yet we see that the devil himself testifies that Jesus is God.

Wasn't exactly where I was planning on going this week with the text, but when you start to look at the text, over the last couple of weeks, we've been talking about why does humanity struggle with who Jesus is? And then we read the Gospels and we realize that the people who should have known, the ones who were Torah observant Jews, they struggled mightily with who Jesus was.

But the devil didn't struggle with who Jesus was.

The devil testified in Matthew chapter four in his conversation in the wilderness with Jesus, that Jesus was the son of God.

This terminology doesn't just hearken to Jesus's humanity.

It talks about his divine nature. Remember, fully God, fully human, and yet his greatest adversary testified who he was.

Here in Matthew 8, we see that the demons, the ones who are working under the power of the adversary, the tempter, the devil.

Old cartoons, you can know my age, where it's like the little, little fat angel on one shoulder and the little, little red devil on the other shoulder.

We like to have images to kind of put it there. Makes it less scary, I guess, you know, if that's what the devil actually looks like, you know, he's itty bitty.

But we see that the demons also testify in Matthew 8 who Jesus is, that he's the son of God.

This is not the way that I would want to establish a Torah requirement. Remember, the Torah requires that we should have two or three witnesses in this room. There's multiple people. Should be pretty easy that if we all see the same thing, I could get two or three people to say, yeah, I saw. I saw what you saw.

Jesus has done miracles. Jesus has cast out demons. Jesus has called these things the winds and the waves to come and cease and to be at peace. And they're struggling, humanity, struggling with who he is in that moment. And yet the devil and the demons are testifying.

They understand that he is the Son of God, not the two witnesses that I would want to fulfill a Torah requirement. Now, thankfully, we also have the testimony of the Father, Yahweh, Lord God, Hashem, Adonai, whatever terminology he uses, a lot of titles.

All three testify of who Jesus is. And the demons weren't questioning. This wasn't like there was a theological debate. It wasn't like they were like, are we, on the same page, it says that the moment Jesus walks up, what will you have us have to do with this? O Son of God, have you come here to torment us before our time?

They knew that Jesus was the rightful one to sit upon the throne of God. And I want to. I want to tie back a series we did on the book of the Revelation. It was called the Lion's Roar series. It was about two years ago in the fall, maybe three, might have been three.

I think it was three years ago because I think two years ago was the. The gospel to the Hebrews that we did in the fall in December. All Those are on YouTube. If you're newer to the church and you want to go back and check it out. Brent did a multiple part series on the Book of Revelation called the Lion's Roar.

And while the Book of Revelation is commonly taught as a doom and gloom type of text, he actually approached it in what I believe to be more of its historical context, as a book of hope, as a book of encouragement to understand that the world is gonna do what the world's gonna do. But in the end, Jesus Christ is coming. We have a hope, and y' all will sleep. Because that's a big thing for me. No matter how bad I think up my life, no matter how bad I make the wrong decision, I have a hope that the Bible tells me at some point in time, it doesn't matter how bad it gets, Jesus Christ is coming back and I will find my salvation.

I will find my overcoming. I will find my. Find my deliverance in him and him alone. And he'll take care of all the rest. Okay.

I was about to do an altar call at the end today. I was like, I understand it's hot. I understand it's hot. But, like, Jesus can overcome the heat too. Last week, he told the winds and waves to obey.

So you never know. We've had more rain in Oklahoma this year than I think in any of the 10 to 15 we've had before.

Blessings, Lord.

But Brent talked about in the Lion's Roar in the Revelation series about the throne of God as a timepiece. I encourage you if you haven't, if you don't remember it, if you don't have your notes from. Go back and check it out. The throne of God is a timepiece. Revelation 12:12 says, Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them.

But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short. We also saw that in Matthew 8, where it said, have you come here to torment us before the time?

The demons were not questioning whether Jesus had the authority to torment them or to deal with them, or to judge with them or to deal. They weren't questioning whether he was the Son of God or not. They weren't questioning any of that. All the things that we debate about and now we have social media, so we have TikTok and we have all these ideologies and philosophies and everybody can take something.

This is why I said the most basic of things in Scripture have to be the foundation pieces you have. Because the moment you take out the testimony of Yahweh, the devil and the demons that Jesus is Messiah, you can make the Bible say almost anything you want, and you can make almost anybody a God.

And humanity has been doing it for centuries. The Bible was written to testify that there would come a perfect king. Even the demons knew it. This king would deal with the fallen world. Even the demons knew it.

And he would restore to perfect creation the only one who could, the one who spoke the creation into existence.

The demons didn't wonder whether Jesus was going to do these things or whether Jesus had the power to do these things. They asked him if this was the time. The revelation to John says that they knew that when the devil had come down with his wrath, that the time would be short.

This is the first time that the humans had heard the title the Son of God. It was the first time they had heard that being placed on Jesus. Matthew, as a narrative writer didn't go into all the nitty gritty and the nuances. There was 53 hairs on the left side of his fringe. He was about concepts.

He wanted you to understand the big picture and what the points were.

That one you've wanted. That one you've needed. That one you've cried out for. That one that we laid our hand on the goat and we sent it to the wilderness every Yom Kippur. That one who could come and take away all of that, he's here now, the Son of God, Emmanuel, Jesus, the Christ, the Torah and the prophets pointed to a king and a kingdom in a ruling order that was to come.

One unlike the previous ones, one that will fulfill all that was and is to perfect what is to come.

The moment Jesus stepped into this world, that cycle, that chaos cycle that we find ourselves in sometimes, it's our own trauma cycle we find ourself in. The moment Jesus steps into it, there's hope in the future that we won't continue to spiral. And this is what we see with Jesus. This is what the demons are scared of with Jesus. Because they know the one who's coming, the one who came and what power he has.

If we claim to be lovers of the Bible and the Torah, we must listen to the testimony of the witnesses that were fulfilled.

Jesus is God. Jesus is authority. The throne in heaven is his. And we get to fall on our knees and extol and praise him. We get to break off the chains of confusion and we get to listen to the testimony that's laid before us.

Worship team, you can come back.

Sometimes we get so far down in the text, we're looking for that mighty miracle, that super unique thing.

Matthew didn't hide it.

Matthew did not hide it. In the Pages of Chapter 8, Jesus walked up and as soon as the demons saw him, they were overwhelmed. To profess, what do you want, son of God? What are you going to do with us every day when we wake up?

What's the first thing you think of?

I forgot to do this yesterday. Or oh my gosh, I overslept. Or for me, it's, why is the puppy biting me in my back?

But it's a juxtaposition of life. Why does it have to be that? When we have the opportunity to wake up and say, oh, son of God, what would you want to do with me today?

Oh, son of God, how can I please you today?

My heart breaks as a pastor to watch people who are struggling in their finances and in their marriages and in sickness and struggling at their jobs and, and struggling with burnout and struggling with all these things.

Because most of the time in those conversations, when we start talking about what does your day look like, what does your conversations with your spouses look like most of the time, people will tell me it's a little bit more like, you know, the guy who's the demon possessed, men who are on the road just trying to make, make sure you don't pass. It's a constant struggle and chaos and just holding everything together. There's too many plates in the air. We're spinning around and around and around and around and around.

You have to remember the context of the culture of the people that Jesus was talking about. They grew up with Moses, they grew up with David. They considered their ancestor and their lineage to be from Abraham. They considered themselves to be the most Bible observant, Bible keeping holiest to people. And even though there was two parties, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, the majority of the people in that time were just trying to get by.

They were just trying to survive. They weren't sitting in the halls with the religious elite. And they weren't debating whether Matthew was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic. And did the Vatican steal it? There was no Vatican at that time.

They weren't debating whether or not they had the right to do these things. They believed they did. And they believed that everything they had read in the Scripture was leading them to that point. And this is how God wanted it to be executed. But when the Son of God, the Son of Man, is fulfilling Torah requirements, fulfilling the prophecies right in front of them, they are wrestling with, who is this man?

This is the third or fourth time in 29 verses we have seen people wrestle, not understand, not immediately obey Jesus. This was a culture that was far more ingrained in the commandments and the covenants of God than we are in 21st century Western America. And they struggled, but the demons didn't struggle to understand who God was. The demons didn't struggle to understand who God is. They didn't struggle to understand what his authority was.

And they knew that their time was short. We live every day as if we're going to have an average life expectancy of 86 years.

And yet God teaches us to number our days.

Diseases obey him, deaths obey him, demons recognize him. The devil knows who he is. The trees and the wind and the waves and the animals all obey him. The Father testified that he had sent him. You cannot be a Torah, observant, a prophet pursuant, whatever type of terminology you want to use, a Christian, a follower of the Bible.

If you do not break the chains that we saw of our ancestors and understand who Jesus is. Because if we say that we know the Torah and we love the Torah, we understand that by the matter of two to three witnesses, we have a testimony of a matter. We understand that Matthew testified of the obligation of the priesthood to speak to, to the people that the cleansing had happened of the leper, which was a sign that Messiah is here. Guys, we live in 21st century America. Jesus is all around us.

The Holy Spirit is all around us. It is ever present and active. And you are invited every single day into a life with him. It's not exactly like what we saw here, but we tend to walk away from church on Saturdays or Sunday, Sundays, and we take the same ball and chain with us.

We have to understand who the king is. Because when you understand who the king is, you stop fighting over the nuances of an interpretation. You stop worrying about Whether you're a Pharisee or a Sadducee, you get invited into a place, into a time in life where you can join with all creation, even the creation that attempts to oppose the Creator. In Jesus, you get a chance to prostrate yourself before him and say, worthy are you.

And I understand in America, it's a what can you do for me now situation. Jesus, what can you do? Jesus is the genie that we rub. Jesus, I need a blessing. Jesus, I need a healing.

Jesus, I need money. Jesus, I need this first and foremost, before we can go and ask for Jesus to do something in his namesake, in his character, we might want to make sure that we're on our faces and we're prostrating ourselves and we're crowning him as the king. Because if you don't believe he's the king and you don't believe that his is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, why are you asking him? Because he's just some other option and you're just trying to hit a bingo card. We cannot disrespect Jesus in that manner.

We cannot disrespect his name, his character, his kingdom, in that manner. We are invited into a relationship with Him. It is a relationship that brings power, that brings life, that brings order, that removes chaos. Guys, as we continue over the next couple of, couple of weeks, we're going to see more interactions with demons. And one thing that got me really hard this week when I was reflecting, if, if the demons understood Jesus, and there was a couple years of my life where I was questioning who Jesus was.

Was he an ambassador of the Father? Does he not get his crown until, you know, he comes back the second time? You guys have heard some of those teachings throughout Christianity. If the demons fully understood yet were in opposition to Jesus, Jesus, how hard was it for me to get to that place where I wanted to say, like, maybe I should take him down off his throne? The moment you take Jesus off the throne of your life, welcome.

It's as good as you got. Whatever you can do with these feet, whatever you can do with these hands and with this body, that's the best you have. The scripture testifies that all creation brought life through the speaking of the word of God. And all creation has and always will be under dominion to the Son of God, the King of Kings. So today I want to ask you this question for reflection as we respond.

I know I'm a little Pentecostal right now. I'm really sorry. I'm actually not sorry at all. That was a lie. I love Jesus.

And when I'm going through the text of Matthew and I'm seeing what Matthew is talking about, how could we ever come question who is the son of God? Or who has authority or who has majesty? How could we ever wonder of whether or not, you know, Jesus is. Is the messianic king or not? He is reigning or he isn't reigning.

He's been reigning since the moment he walked on this earth, whether we like it or not. Because even then the demons knew who he was. He didn't need a name badge. Welcome to HFF Church. I'm Chris.

If the demons knew this is Jesus the Christ. So today as we respond, I want to ask you, have you crowned him king of glory?

Have you crowned him king of glory? It's. It's one thing to profess with your lips that Jesus is the salvation. There's nothing wrong with that. With this is beautiful.

But have you crowned him king of glory? In your life, Is Jesus the king over your finances? Is Jesus the king over your marriage? Is Jesus the king over your prayer time? Are you the king over your prayer time?

Did your prayer time look like you're extolling him to his rightful spot? Or does it look like you asking him to solve the problems you have on your honey do? Listen, all of the problems of this world will be made less when you realize that this world is under the submission of the king of kings and the Lord.

We crown you King of glory. We crown you King of glory. We crown you King of glory. We crown you. Lord of light.

We crown crown you. You are worthy. We crown you, you are worthy. We crown you, you are worthy. We crown you Lord of life.

The throne room of heaven. The elders, the beasts, the elders sing worthy kadosh kadosh laka over and over and over again. Some people like Pastor Chris. I don't know how to pray. My prayers are awkward.

Awkward. Join the club. But I will tell you this. When I just crowned him and I just extol him and I just praise him, I don't think he cares how eloquent it is. He's the one who's eloquent.

He's the one who's worthy. He's the one who's righteous. He doesn't need my eloquent words. He needs me to crown him King of glory. Crown him King of glory.

Crown him. Lord of light, Crown him. He is worthy. Crown him, he is worthy. Crown him.

He's Lord of life. If you will stand with me and let's respond.