The Cutting Room Floor: Faith and Demons
Tropical Cyclone Alfred sure took his time. Initially predicted to cross between the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane on Thursday (6th of March) morning, then it became Friday morning, then Saturday morning, and then come Sunday morning and he had transitioned into a tropical low and was still dancing just off the coast.
What that meant was lots of weather news watching and pivoting. Quite a number of churches I knew had to shut their doors – particularly those renting facilities such as school halls – though one brave church kept their doors open and for that I’m thankful they could!
For us, we had to pivot to online. My initial hope was to have access to the church building to livestream the service from there, but then the forecast seemed more foreboding so I had to switch to pre-recorded.
In the light of that, and with the stresses and physical tiredness of the past week, I opted to keep the sermon really short. Lots went onto the cutting room floor.
Two points in particular were shortened and I thought it would be nice to add some note of it somewhere.
The first has to do with the discussion of faith. When Jesus is awoken by the disciples in the middle of the storm he asks them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?”
I have often wondered what Jesus meant by that, and so here is where my study of that passage led – and the original part of the script before I cut a lot of it for simplicity:
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Now, what does he mean when he says that the disciples have little faith?
Let’s work backwards through this little line to work it out. When Jesus says they have ‘little faith’ he’s not talking about the amount of their faith. He’s not talking about the intensity of their faith. Remember, it’s not the amount or intensity of our faith that saves us. If you were hiking and you slipped down a steep bank – and you reached out to grab a branch and you happened to grab one and it stopped you from falling – what saved you wasn’t the amount of faith but the object of your faith. You are saved not because you intensely believed the branch would stop you – you are saved because the branch itself was strong enough to hold you.
Saving faith isn’t about the strength of our faith – but the one who we have faith in.
So, when Jesus says they have ‘little faith’, he’s not talking about the strength of their faith. He’s talking about the content of their faith. Their faith was defective in some way – because their understanding of Jesus wasn’t quite there.
Let me be clear – Christians are called to have a simple faith. A faith that trusts Jesus simply. But we are not to have a simplistic faith. A child can have faith and trust Jesus and be saved – but we must not remain childish in our faith. We are to grow and mature.
The disciples have little faith because what they know and trust of Jesus isn’t sufficient yet. And so that is the cause of their fear.
When Jesus speaks to them in v26, he is gently rebuking their lack of understanding and also inviting them to know him more deeply.
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The second part that ended up on the cutting room floor has to do with the demons. I had a sidebar working through the question of demonic activity in the Bible and in our lives, here’s what I wrote in my notes:
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It’s worth pausing for a second here and considering what the Bible says about demons. As you survey the Bible you may be surprised to learn that there’s actually very little demonic activity. Satan appears once in Genesis 3 and then remains unheard from again until Job – where he appears before God’s court, plays an integral part in the story developing, and then isn’t heard from or referred to again.
Until the gospels.
Why does so much demonic activity spike during the gospel period?
It’s pretty clear that the arrival of Jesus has lots to do with that. Because afterwards, when Jesus is raised and ascended, demonic activity peters out during Acts and into the rest of the New Testament. There are some incidences in Acts, but towards the end of the book much demonic activity has gone quiet. In the New Testament relatively little is said.
I don’t want to give the impression that the demonic is now stalled and there’s no more activity whatsoever.
Peter mentions Satan prowling like a lion ready to devour. Paul mentions that our battle in this world is a spiritual one, not a physical one, and so we are armed with spiritual armour for the fight. Satan and his minions are still actively at work with the ultimate goal to destroy us. We need to take the demonic seriously, and yet with this clear perspective from Paul:
Colossians 2:13–15
[13] And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, [14] by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. [15] He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.
There’s a confidence we have in regards to the demonic. We have nothing to fear from them, because they have been disarmed at the cross. Satan may prowl like a lion, but he’s toothless. Believers have nothing to fear from demons or demonic possession. If we have the Spirit indwelling, there will no room for them.
At the end of it all I lean on what CS Lewis says in the preface of his book ‘The Screwtape Letters’:
There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.
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Readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar.
C. S. Lewis, Magdalen College
July 5, 1941
There are intelligent and rational pastors who have had strange encounters. I know some of them myself. John Piper recounts his own story. So, demons are no joke.
But genuine believers have nothing to fear from them. We fight against them with our spiritual armour, and we fight in a war that has already been won.
