Old School: Part 2
April 16, 2023Pastor Patrick presented "Freedom" as the second of God's Old Testament promises (the four "I wills") in our current series, "Old School." A video of the message is here.
[Conversation Starters will begin again with the start of the next official life groups session this summer.]
The Hebrew word used in the Exodus 6:6 "I will"s passage for the second I-will is natsal (נָצַל). Interestingly, Strong's Concordance does not offer "free" as a definition, but rather to strip, plunder, deliver (many variations, probably the most common translation), snatch away, escape, recover, save, and take away. Some translations add rescue. My favorite is "will rid you" in the King James Version. Further chasing down the "rid" tree, you get "no longer encumbered by," clear, relieve, remove, divest, and disembarrass. As Patrick pointed out, God wants to rid you of what you do to yourself, what others do to you, and what evil forces work in you. God wants to rid you of all your bad stuff.
Stars aligned to some degree today. I actually wrote the Bonus below before leaving for church today. It was, I thought, just an interesting discussion based on our Family Dinner discussion a couple days ago. As it turned out, however, Patrick actually mentioned today the "Armor of God" to help you keep evil at bay. See below...
Bonus
Our Family Dinner topic this past week was demons, at Lexi's request of all people! Turned out to be a bit eye-opening for me. Up till this fresh look at the subject, I generally dismissed demons as being real things. As it turns out, however, there are many Biblical references to demons (and all the various synonyms) in both the Old and New Testaments. It sure seems that the Bible says they are quite real.
Lexi's question could just as easily have been, "are there monsters," you know, like under the bed or in the closet. One of the new understandings I came away with is this... Demons are those who get you to do evil while monsters do the evil themselves. And yes, they both exist. Maybe not exactly as the movies often picture them, but there are people who push you to evil and there certainly are people who do evil. And more importantly, there are urges in each of us, "for the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Genesis 8:21). Generally, it is incumbent upon you to fight your own "demons."
The first demon in the Bible that most people point to is the serpent in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). The serpent certainly does some devilish things, but whether or not he, or even the entire story for that matter, are real or a metaphor, is not important. It's the message: we can be tempted, and we are not all that strong to resist on our own. It's also interesting to note that the serpent does not speak all lies. He is truthful when he says, "you shall not die." Always good to throw in some truth when you're trying to sucker someone into lies.
Through history, there have been far more demons talked about than I ever imagined. If you look up "theological demons" in Wikipedia, you'll find over 50 demon names just in the 'A's (here). These are not all Biblical. These include religion, theology, demonology, mythology, and folklore.
Here are common characteristics of demons, real or metaphorical: lie, mislead, possess, deceive, tempt, disguise, wear us down, and interfere.
If you want to get deep into demons, try an article like this.
One comparison that I relate to is the notion that in some ways demons are the same as false gods. This is more like I thought of as demons. It's more internal, how we think. Demons tempt us, which is exactly what false gods do (like fame, art, wealth, power, etc.).
The premise of the book of Job is that the devil and God set up a bet of sorts. Can the devil (the head demon) cause enough problems for Job that Job will turn away from God? The story is captured in Neil Simon's play, "God's Favorite," a play I was in and got just two performances done before the COVID lockdowns eliminated the rest of the shows in 2020. Here's a glimpse.
A natural follow-on question when discussing demons is how to protect yourself from them, whether "real" in any sense or simply the demons within us. The best answer, of course, is to follow in God's ways, do as God instructs, keep your wits about you, etc. This is described uniquely well as a metaphor in Ephesians 6:10-18 as the Armor of God:
- Belt of truth
- Breastplate of righteousness (protects heart from sin)
- Readiness of feet (ready, willing, and able)
- Shield of faith
- Sword of the spirit (God's word, scripture)
- Helmet of salvation (protects what we hear, see, think)
- and prayer
However you end up viewing demons, the sad truth is that evil/sin crouches at your door all the time - do what's right (Genesis 4:7).
One last oddity... Later this Sunday afternoon, I stumbled onto a film just released, Nefarious. Its IMD entry is here. I understand the demonology presented in the movie is right inline with Catholic teaching. And I've heard that some very strange happenings occurred throughout the filming of the movie; as referenced in this article.
Lynn and I saw Nefarious this Sunday evening. It's classified as a horror/thriller. But it's the only horror/thriller I've ever seen that had no flying blood, guts, or body parts; no shotguns, buzz saws, or medieval weapons; no heads spinning all the way around. There was less violence in the entire movie than in 10 seconds of news coverage of big city riots. If demons are real in the sense of possessing your body, causing evil, and such, this may well be a rather accurate portrayal of how they behave. Of many interesting demon features portrayed, the one that caught me the most was the demon refering to God as "the enemy." It's worth seeing if you're intrigued by the issue of demons.