Sometimes a direct approach is the best approach. Jesus is confronted with a screaming, truth revealing man possessed by a demon in a synagogue during a worship service in which He has been the guest speaker. My response might be to ignore him, after all, my reputation is on the line. I don’t want to offend anyone. I don’t want a confrontation. Maybe this guy does this every week to every guest speaker, and it is a kind of inside joke. Wasn’t this guy listening to my wonderful talk? As you can see, there are many different ways this could be taken and responded to, but Jesus takes a different approach.
In response Jesus just tells the demons to shut up and get out. No big formulas or fancy ceremonies. No waving of the hands or TV cameras. No showboating at all. Jesus just speaks and they obey. If only we could get our kids to act this way! Or our spouse (I had better be very careful here, she reads this!) What would truly be amazing if we could consistently get ourselves to obey what we know to be right and proper! That would be amazing.
The demon leaves with a scream. I bet the people in attendance remembered that sound for years. It probably cut right to the core of their being, just as the demon’s exit did to the man. It cut to the core of who he was. This demon did not want to leave, and it did not want to be in Jesus’ presence. Both meant, at least in the demon’s eyes, judgment had come. Hell had arrived. His time for heat had come.
The power of Jesus’ word to speak to demon powers and they obey was something very unusual in their time. Like Aslan in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, just the sound of His roar commands all of heaven, earth and all of creation into submission to His will. This was not the first time someone had cast out a demon. They had magic rituals and formulas for this kind of thing. Remember that one time His enemies accuse Jesus of casting out demons by using the power of the head demon, Beelzebub? Jesus’ response included the statement questioning what power they used to cast out demons. The casting out of demons is not what is amazing or different, it is that it only took a word.
Jesus’ approach is direct, and the demonic response is just as direct. Sometimes too many words muddle up the situation. Jesus has the power to solve it with just a word. Do we try and solve things on our own, before we allow Jesus to speak the word to our situation? How much easier it would be if we were willing to wait for Jesus to speak before we took action.
Perhaps we can respond immediately to Jesus’ word to us, just like the demon. Maybe we can stop all the reasoning and second guessing His voice. Instead, we could just obey, and leave the results in His hand. But this means we must know His voice, and be able to recognize it among the many competing voices in our lives. The answer of course is to spend more time listening to Him, getting close and being silent, so that His still small whisper becomes like the air we breathe.
The Arnold Journey 