The Demon’s Faith

Mark 3:17-12
Gregory Broderick | Sunday, January 19, 2020
Copyright © 2020, Gregory Broderick

Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake, and a large crowd from Galilee followed.  When they heard all He was doing, many people came to Him from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon.  Because of the crowd He told his disciples to have a small boat ready for Him, to keep the people from crowding Him.  For He had healed many, so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch Him.  Whenever the evil spirits saw Him, they fell down before Him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.”  But He gave them strict orders not to tell who He was.

Mark 3:7–12

Jesus Christ is the Son of God.  Most people here probably agree with that statement.  If you do not agree with that statement, you are not a Christian.  If you do not agree with that statement, you cannot be saved, and you are destined for eternal hell.  As Jesus Himself said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me.”  So far that should not be highly controversial, at least not within a church.  But the surprising truth of our passage from Mark 3 this morning is that agreeing that Jesus is the Son of God is not enough.  It is not enough to save you.  More is required.  My simple proof:  Even the demons, the evil spirits in our passage this morning, say to Jesus, “You are the Son of God.”  Yet they are not saved by their admission.  They remain condemned.

As it is with these demons, so it will be with many people who call themselves Christians.  Many people who agree that Jesus is the Son of God are not born again.  They agree with this truth but remain unregenerate.  They will be very surprised on that last day when they stand before the Lord Jesus, saying, “Lord, Lord,” only to hear, “Depart from Me; I never knew you” (Matt. 7:23).  They will be like the wedding guests without the wedding clothes:  speechless and cast out.  They will be, as our pastor has said, surprised by hell.  So more is required than just saying, “You are the Son of God.”  What is that more?  It is saving faith.  It is entrustment; submission of our whole selves to the Lord Jesus Christ in reliance on His perfect righteousness alone.

Jesus, the Son of God

So let us start with the basics.  Jesus Christ is the Son of God.  He is the promised Messiah.  As far back as Genesis 3, God promised sinful man that a Savior would come to crush the head of the serpent.  Many promises of this Savior are found throughout the Old Testament, including Daniel 9, Deuteronomy 18, Ezekiel 37, Micah 5, and many, perhaps most, of the psalms.  The book of Isaiah is especially rich in Messianic prophecy, foretelling the virgin birth of Immanuel, God-with-us (Isa. 7); foretelling his rule (Isa. 9); and foretelling his substitutionary death in our behalf (Isa. 53).  He is the one who will lead us to and on the highway of holiness (Isa. 35).

Jesus Himself is this promised Messiah.  He is very God.  He said so.  In John 8:58 He said, “Before Abraham was, I am,” clearly invoking the I AM, the name of God, from Exodus 3.  In John 10:30 He says, “I and the Father are one.”  John 5:18 says Jesus made Himself equal with God.  And in John 5:19–23, Jesus repeatedly refers to Himself as the Son—not a Son, but the Son, taking on the Messianic mantle.

We see Him doing a number of things that only God does or can do.  We see Him claiming God’s glory for Himself (John 17:5).  God does not share His glory with another, yet Jesus claimed this glory for Himself.  Jesus receives worship in Matthew 14:33.  Worship is reserved for God alone, yet Jesus receives it.  He forgives sin (Mark 2).  Only God can forgive sin, yet here is this Jesus forgiving sin.  And He taught with authority (Mark 1:22; Matt. 7:29).  The teachers of their time taught about the word, but Jesus, the Word made flesh, came and taught with authority.

He not only did a number of things that were reserved for God alone, but He also expressly claimed to be God, to be the Messiah.  In Matthew 16, He asks his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”  And when Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Jesus did not say, “No, no, no, you have made a mistake.”  Rather, He said, “Blessed are you, for this was revealed to you not by man but by My Father in heaven,” affirming that statement that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me” (Matt. 28:18).  All authority.  And when the high priest charged Jesus, saying, “Tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Jesus said, “Yes, it is as you say. . . .  [And] you will see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of the Mighty One in heaven” (Matt. 26:63–64).  He told them that He would be betrayed, given over to the chief priests, crucified, and raised on the third day (Matt. 20:18–19).  He said it, and it happened.

So it is as clear as can be from the holy Scriptures that Jesus Christ is the promised Messiah.  He is very God.  He is not some mere prophet.  He is not merely a good man or a great man or even the greatest man who ever lived.  He is not a mere servant of God or an under-God.  He is not the first created; He is not a super-angel.  He is God—uncreated, the eternal Word.  He was there in the beginning.  He was with God and He is God.  As Colossians 2:9 tells us, “All the fullness of the Deity exists in Him in bodily form.”  He is of one substance with the Father.  He is the Second Person of the Trinity, the Three-in-one Godhead.

Jesus’ status as very God—his Godness—is an essential Christian doctrine.  If you do not agree that He is the Son of God, that He is very God, then you deny the truth of the Bible.  You are denying the word of God, you are calling Jesus Himself a liar, and you are not a Christian.  Colossians 2:9 says, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity,” that is, all the fullness of God, “lives in bodily form.”  John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  And it says in verse 14, “The Word became flesh” in this Jesus Christ.  He is God.  And Hebrews 1:3 says, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being.”  The Greek word is “charaktêr.”  He is the character of God.  In Luke 9:35, God the Father testified, “This is My Son, Whom I have chosen.”  And, of course, we know that God the Father declared Jesus perfect, sinless, and infinite by raising Him from the dead.  Acts 2 and Hebrews 4 explain that.  Death could not keep a hold on Him because He was sinless.  And He paid the full price for our sin because He Himself is infinite God.  Therefore, in order to deny the full Godness of Jesus Christ or to demote Him to some lesser station, you must reject the holy Scriptures; you must reject God’s own clear declarations about His Son.

Now, despite the clarity of the Bible on this point and despite all other evidence, many will still deny that Jesus Christ is God.  Many will still deny that He existed, that He lived, that He died, and that He was raised again.  But they are lying.  And even as they lie, and deny that Jesus is Lord, they know deep down that it is a lie.  They know deep down that there is a God and that they are sinners who deserve God’s just wrath in eternal hell.  They know deep down that Jesus Christ is the only way to be saved.  The truth about Jesus Christ is obvious from creation (Rom. 1:20).  It is obvious from the holy Scriptures, which are now available in virtually every language everywhere all the time for free.  It is obvious from our conscience, which is the remnant of the image and likeness of God in sinful man.  So everyone knows the basics about God—everyone.  As Psalm 19:1–2 tells us, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. . . . Their voice goes out into all the earth.”  Everyone has heard these voices speaking.

Everyone knows the truth, but they hate the truth.  As Romans 1:18 tells us, they suppress this truth that they hate; they suppress it by their wickedness.  So the heavens declare, the Scriptures declare, our own consciences declare, but sinful man shuts his eyes, plugs his ears, and shouts, “There is no God!” over and over again, as loud as he can. Then sinful man sins and sins and sins the more to suppress his accusing conscience, to kill the conscience, and to shout down God who freely offers salvation to him.  Oh, the sinfulness of sin!

If you do not believe me, just look at the religious leaders of Jesus’ time.  In Acts 4:16, they are discussing what to do with Peter and John, who have just healed a crippled beggar and preached the gospel.  The Sanhedrin asks, “What shall we do with these men?  Everyone knows that they have done an outstanding miracle and we cannot deny it.”  They were not saying, “Maybe we should consider this gospel in light of the outstanding miracle they performed.”  They were not saying, “Maybe we should repent and put our faith in this Jesus that they proclaim.”  They were not saying, “We think that they defrauded everybody.  We think it is a fake.”  No, they agreed that the disciples had done an outstanding miracle.  They said, “We cannot deny it.  We agree it happened, but we hate it; we do not like it.”  So what is their solution?  Verse 17 tells us, “To stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn these men to speak no longer in this name,” in the name of Jesus.  Let me translate: “We must suppress the truth.”

Look at Jesus’ death and resurrection.  He predicted that it would happen, and the Jews mocked Him for it at the time (John 8:22).  They put Jesus to death and Roman soldiers stabbed Him in the side with a spear to make sure He was good and dead (John 19:34).  They sealed Him up in a tomb with a huge boulder.  They posted a guard so that no one could steal His body and claim that He rose again (Matt. 27).  And what did they do when all He foretold came to pass?  What did they do when the soldiers came and reported all that had happened: The tomb is empty, the stone is rolled away, the grave clothes are there folded, but there is no dead man inside?  Matthew says they gave the soldiers a large sum of money and told them to say, “His disciples came during the night and stole Him away while we were asleep” (Matt. 28:12–13).  In other words, they bribed these soldiers to lie and to cover it up and to suppress the truth.

Yes, the sinful mind is indeed hostile to God.  Sinful man hates God’s authority and so He lies to Himself and to everyone else saying, “There is no God, so I can do what I want.”  Although the devil and his demons know that there is a God, they still lie to you about it and try to convince you that the holy God that they hate is not real.  You see, the devil is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44).  He hates God.  He hates God’s people.  And he is determined to spend his considerable talent, his considerable guile, and his supernatural power to destroy as many as possible.  The devil lied to Adam and Eve in the garden, plunging the world into sin.  His lie was, “You will not surely die.  You will be like God.  God is against you, but I am for you.  I am the one who is going to lead you to the good way.”  The devil lied.  He knew it was all false when he said it.  He knew they would surely die.  He knew they would not be like God.  But he lied to them because he wanted them to surely die.

It is not just that the devil lied in the garden.  He said to Job, through Mrs.  Job, “Curse God and die.”  He said to Jesus through Peter, “Do not go to the cross.  It is not the good way to go.”  Lies, lies, lies.  So I say, “Do not be like Adam and Eve, and do not believe the lies that the devil is peddling.”  Look at it this way: The devil who is telling you these lies does not believe them, so why should you?

Mental Assent Does Not Save

Maybe by now you agree that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, part of the eternal Trinity, the Godhead, very God of very God.  In other words, perhaps you agree that this Jesus is the Son of God.  If so, understand that you are only halfway there.  Your agreement without more cannot save you.  No, more is required.

Agreeing that Jesus is the Christ does not save you.  Many, perhaps most, in our time, think that this is the big question:  Is Jesus God or is He not God?  Are the things about Him true, or are they not true?  But this is not really actually the difficult question.  It is the easy question.  Jesus is God.  He is the Son of God.  As we see in our text this morning, this argument that Jesus is the Son of God is not really even the subject of dispute or controversy.  Even the evil spirits, the demons, who are God’s sworn enemies, agree and say, “You are the Son of God,” as we read in verse 11:  “Whenever the evil spirits saw Him, they fell down before Him and cried out, ‘You are the Son of God!’” So they not only confessed this, but they are subject to His authority.  They fall down before Him.  The devil and his demons know all about God.

The devil was in heaven with God and was cast out in rebellion.  The devil does not dispute the existence of God.  Look at Matthew 4:6.  He is meeting with Jesus in the desert, and the devil says, “If You are the Son of God.”  In other words, “Since,” or “Because You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down.  For it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning You, and You will not strike Your foot against a stone.’” So, you see, the devil has no doubt that Jesus is the Son of God.  He knows it.  He even applies the Messianic prophecy of Psalm 91 to Jesus.  So He knows who He is talking to and whom He is talking about.  You may be confused about God or Jesus, but Satan is not confused.  He knows all about it.

The devil, though rebellious, operates under God’s authority and within the limits that God places upon him.  We can look at but one example in Job 1 and 2.  God places limits on what Satan can do to Job.  Satan is powerless to exceed those limits, and so are these demons here in our text.

If you have reached a point of agreeing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, do not congratulate yourself.  You just have the devil’s faith.  That is not much of an achievement, and it is certainly not a saving declaration.  One of the big lies of our time, and I am sorry to say, one of the big lies of the modern church, is that you will be saved if you simply believe in God, or if you believe in Jesus and accept Him into your heart, whatever that means.  This is a lie.  This is the devil’s faith.  This is a mere assensus faith:  just mere agreement with facts.  It does not work for the devil, and it will not work for you.  As James 2:19 says, “You believe that there is one God?  Good!  Even the demons believe that and tremble.”

The evil spirits in this morning’s text say, “You are the Son of God.”  So they clearly believe that Jesus is Who He says He is.  He is the Messiah, very God of very God.  They believe it, but they are not saved.  So simply by believing that, you will not be saved either.  This is not an isolated incident.  Recall the demons cast out of the demoniac, the crazy man in the tombs in Matthew 8.  They say to Jesus, “What do You want with us, Son of God?  Have You come to torture us before the appointed time?” You see, they too believe in Jesus.  They believe Who He is.  But they are not saved.

No, mere belief, mere assensus, is not enough to save you.  Those demons are cast into the pigs and plunged to their death.  We see this also with the demons cast out by Jesus at the synagogue in Luke 4:34.  Those demons said, “I know who You are: the Holy One of God.”  They obeyed Jesus’ command to come out of the man, a further acknowledgment that Jesus is Lord and that they believe it.  They do what He said that they must do.

These demons have better theology, perhaps, than ninety percent of the modern churches.  But they are not saved.  So it is clear that correct information and agreement with this correct information about God is not enough.

I have told you what does not do the job.  What, then, does it take?  What does do the job?  We need saving faith.  We need fiducia.  We need entrustment of my whole self to Christ alone for my salvation.  I must confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and I must believe in my heart that God raised Him from the dead.  I must abandon any reliance on myself or my own righteousness, and rely only on the person and work of Jesus Christ for my salvation.  I must humble myself.  I must bow my knee to Jesus Christ and cry out, “Have mercy on me, a sinner!”  I must declare Him to be my Savior and my Lord, and declare myself to be his obedient servant, his bondslave.  I must repent of my sins, confessing and forsaking them, and purposing to walk in obedience to my new Master, the Lord Jesus.  All of this goes hand-in-hand with saving faith and flows from a new heart given to me by God in regeneration.

It is true that there is an element of mystery here.  Even though it is our human responsibility and moral duty to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, and to entrust ourselves to Him alone for salvation, and even though we are responsible for repenting of all of our sins, we are all morally incapable of doing so.  (GTB)  We need God.  He must give us the gifts of repentance and saving faith.  We need Him to regenerate us and make us dead sinners alive.  Our pastor has said faith is both a divine gift and human responsibility at the same time.  But we need His divine gifts to cause and enable us to fulfill our human responsibilities.  It is not a matter of incantations or religious ceremony; it is the very work of God.  We do not have perfect understanding, but we know this: He calls us to come and He enables us to come, and He will not turn away anyone who comes.  It is guaranteed by Jesus Christ:  “Anyone who comes to Me I will not turn away” (John 6:37).

So I say, trust in God.  Believe His good promises.  Obey his command to cry out to Him for mercy.  Obey His command to repent (Acts 17:30).  Obey His command to confess Him as Lord, bow your knee in humble submission, and ask Him to save you, to change your heart, to turn you from a bad tree to a good tree.  If you ask Him, He will do it.  He will enable you to do what He commands.  By His irresistible grace, you can do it.  As Calvin famously said, “What God commands us to do by His word, He enables us to do by His Holy Spirit.”  So stop making excuses.  Do not write it all down to mystery and say, “There is nothing I can do about it.”  Do not settle for mere assensus faith.  For mere agreement.  For the devil’s faith.  Do not settle for a form of godliness that has no power.  Do not settle for an empty, heartless shell or veneer of Christianity.  Instead, cry out to God for regeneration, to be born again, and He will not disappoint you.  He will not turn you away.  He will save you.

Make Your Calling and Election Sure

And if you think you have already done so, do not be so sure.  Many have foundered on the shoals of assensus Christianity.  Many have settled for the devil’s faith, thinking it is enough.  Such people live their whole lives totally deceived, thinking they are born again when they are not.  They may go to church every week.  They may be able to answer every Bible trivia question or to recite various creeds and confessions.  They may have a Greek New Testament or a degree from a Bible college.  They may even be so holy as to be on the worship team.  They may be leaders or elders or pastors.  None of these things can save you.  Only true saving faith, fiducia, which is a product of regeneration by the Holy Spirit of God, can save you.  Without it, you will be damned and deceived.

Such counterfeit Christians will be very disappointed and surprised, as I already said, when they face judgment, crying out, “Lord, Lord,” only to hear, “Depart from me.  I never knew you.”  That is not just a story.  It is going to happen to some people.  Make sure it does not happen to you.

As one example, we can look at our crowd in Mark 3.  There was a big crowd that came to Jesus.  They seemed very spiritual.  They followed Jesus from all over the place to a remote location (v. 7).  It shows they had some desire to be near Jesus.  They came from all over the place (v. 8).  It was difficult to travel in that time, and yet they came from all over the place to this remote location.  They even crowded around Jesus to the point that He had to teach from a boat.  You see, they were so eager to get to Him that He had to go teach out in a small boat.  But I ask, what were they really there for?  Were they there to follow Jesus, to hear his teaching, and to obey Him?  Is that why they came?  It is very likely, from the parallel passage in Luke 6, that this is where Jesus taught the Beatitudes—about loving one’s enemies, about avoiding hypocrisy, about knowing a tree by its fruit, and so on.  But interestingly, we are not told that any of these people were not born again, that any of these people were saved, or that any of these people became his followers.  Maybe some did.  Maybe not.  But we are not told that.  We are told in verse 10 that many were healed of various diseases.  And we do not seem to see this crowd again afterwards.  It was a large crowd, a great multitude, it says in the King James Version.  So I ask, after they were healed of their diseases, where did they go?  We cannot say for sure, but it appears likely that many came simply to be healed of their diseases, and then they went home physically healthier but fundamentally unchanged.

As those confessing Jesus as Lord and Savior, we must guard against this kind of empty coming to Jesus to get something—to get health, to get wealth, to get community life, to get a husband, to get a soothed conscience, to gain respectability.  If, as some of those, you also come to Jesus to get healed of your worldly problems, you too have been deceived.  He is no mere guru, offering health and wealth or your “best life now.”  A mere guru dies and stays dead.  He cannot save you.  But Jesus died and was raised again.  Jesus is eternal God, who came to pay the full wrath of God in our place.  And He did it.  He did not merely come to save us from our earthly problems.  Rather, He came to save us from our sin, to save us from the penalty of eternal hell that is due to us because of our sin, and to save us from sin’s ruling power in our lives.  He came to be our Savior and our Lord.

If you come to Jesus for some other purpose, for any other purpose, for some lowly material purpose—if you come to Jesus to get stuff, you might get it, but that is all you are going to get.  Your fundamental problem, which is your sin problem, will remain unsolved, and you will remain unsaved.  So do not come to Jesus seeking stuff.  That stuff will not last.  Instead, come to Him seeking first the kingdom of God, and He will give you the grace to see you through all of your temporal problems, for your good and for His glory.  He may heal you of your disease, or He may give you the grace to go through that disease and suffer and even die.  But if you come to Him in faith, then when you die, you will go to be with Him forever.

Do not fall for the devil’s deception, seeking to solve our small, temporal earthly problems while leaving the big, eternal, spiritual problems unaddressed.  Jesus offers more than mere physical health or worldly benefits.  Jesus offers us forgiveness of sin, redemption from judgment, and deliverance from eternal hell.  Do not settle for anything less.  Do not settle for crumbs of good health, crumbs of wealth, or crumbs of a husband or children or whatever.  Do not settle for anything less than eternal life with Christ.

Make sure you have trusted in Him alone for your eternal salvation.  Do not take your calling and election for granted, but instead make it sure.  Commit to live for Jesus today and tomorrow and every day for all your days in this life.  And ask yourself, for it is good to test ourselves: Did I obey Master Jesus today—not to earn my salvation, not to get credit from Him, but to thank Him for saving me?  Did I do everything for His glory, whether I ate or drank or whatever I did (1 Cor. 10:31)?  Did I live for myself, or did I live for Him who died for me (2 Cor. 5:15)?  Did I demonstrate that my faith is genuine today by the obedience of faith (Rom. 1:5)?  Did I obey God’s word, as revealed in the Holy Scriptures?  Did I obey God’s delegated authorities (Rom. 13:1)?  All authority comes from God.  When I sinned (and we all sin), was I quick to say, “I am the man” and repent?  Or was I quick to excuse myself and cover up my sin and guard it so that I could keep doing it?  Do I love God and His word?  Do I love God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength?  Or am I, like some of these in the crowd, coming to God so that He can improve my situation, so that I can go back to the same old way, unchanged and unregenerate?  Am I like these demons, able to admit, “You are the Son of God,” but unwilling to put my faith in Him, to trust Him alone for my salvation?

The demons are incapable of doing that.  The offer is not available to them, but it is available to you.  So do not settle for mere demons’ faith, saying, “You are the Son of God.”  Rather, entrust yourself to Christ alone and be eternally saved.  Brothers and sisters, we must all answer the question that Jesus asks His disciples in Matthew 16: “What about you?  Who do you say that I am?” And everyone will answer, one way or the other.  Everyone will answer, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  You must give that answer because it is true.  It is the unchangeable truth.  You can give it now in faith and be saved.  Give that answer today and entrust yourself to Jesus Christ.  Or you can give it on that great day.  You can say “No” now, but then on that great day, you will be forced to admit this great truth.  For “every knee will bow . . . and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:10–11).

The question is:   “Who do you say that I am?” And we must admit,  “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  But do not stop there.  Do not be satisfied by mere agreement with this eternal and undeniable truth.  Mere agreement is mere demons’ faith, and it cannot save you.  Do not do that, and do not come to Jesus for mere earthly benefits.  That is the multitude’s faith, and it does not appear to have saved them.  Instead, make sure that you have trusted in Him alone for your salvation, that you call upon the name of the Lord and confessed Him as Lord and Savior.  That is saving faith.  That is the one thing needful.  That is the purpose of our whole life— to confess Jesus Christ as Lord and to cry out to Him for salvation.

And if you have done so, then live for Him who died for you.  Walk in God-glorifying obedience and testify to others how God saved you and made you alive.  Tell them that He can do the same for them.  Live a life of joy and live a life of glory to God.  “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31).  We are blessed in this Church in that we are challenged frequently to examine ourselves and see if we are born again.  That is not a message for anyone else.  That is a message for you.  That is a message for me.  That is a message for everyone.  So do not be satisfied that you know correct doctrine.  Do not be satisfied that you agreed that Jesus is God.  Ask yourself, “Have I put my faith in Him?  Have I truly trusted in Him?  Do I live for Him?  Am I eternally saved?”  Amen.