Spiritual Warfare: Demonic Influence

Introduction

Good morning!

Demons.

You know, this is a topic that creates a vast division in the Christian world.

All Christians agree on the existence of dark spiritual forces.

Though the understanding of what they are, what they do, where they are, how to identify them, and what to do if you encounter them; is scattered amongst a wide range of ideas and modes of thought.

If you were to talk to a hyper charismatic evangelical about demons, they would tell you they are everywhere!

Up the road, around the corner, at the park, at the store, in the TV, in the radio.

If you accidentally drop a glass vase, they will start praying in tongues for the binding of that demonic spirit of clumsiness.

On the other hand you can speak to a more reserved theologically conservative southern baptist about demons, and you'd wonder if they believe in their existence at all.

They could probably watch a demon manifest directly in front of them with their own two eyes and their response would be “That was an odd hallucination, I need to lay off the caffeine.”

So, what are we to make of this?

Personally, with the study I have done, I find that the Bible seems to fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.

With my sermon today, I want to lead you along the fine line that is understanding the Biblical reality of demonic beings.

And show you what the Bible says about addressing these threats.

The Powers of Darkness

To start, we need to be familiar with what demons are.

Somewhere between the 3rd and 2nd century BC the Septuagint was formed.

The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures.

During the 1st century AD, the time of Christ and beginning of the Church Age, most people in Judea spoke Greek.

The translators of the Septuagint ran into a small hurdle while translating.

Essentially, they saw that there was all sorts of words used to describe spiritual beings in the original Hebrew and Aramaic.

Words that maybe didn't have a proper Greek equivalent.

So they decided that they would just make things a bit easier on everyone.

They would call the good guy spiritual beings Angeloi (An-go-loy)

Meaning “messenger”.

And the bad guy spiritual beings Daimonio (Die-mon-E-ah).

Meaning “evil spirit” or “heathen deity”.

Today we do the same thing, calling the good guys “angels” and the bad guys “demons”

Now, this is all well and good.

I dont have a problem with using a singular term to describe a wide range of things.

But we need to be aware that we are, in fact, doing that.