Luke 4:31-37--Jesus Heals a Man with an Unclean Demon

Luke 4:31-37
English Standard Version
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Jesus Heals a Man with an Unclean Demon
31 And he went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. And he was teaching them on the Sabbath, 32 and they were astonished at his teaching, for his word possessed authority. 33 And in the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice, 34 “Ha! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.” 35 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent and come out of him!” And when the demon had thrown him down in their midst, he came out of him, having done him no harm. 36 And they were all amazed and said to one another, “What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!” 37 And reports about him went out into every place in the surrounding region.

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We'll see the idea of "unclean" come a lot in the gospels (it goes back to the Levitical law, which is one of the reasons I wanted to step back and study Leviticus and Deuteronomy).  It doesn't really have to do with being unwashed (though that can be one way that someone can be "unclean"), but it has to do with them not being able to enter into the Tabernacle or Temple to worship God.  While the Tabernacle and Temple were places for all the nations to come and gather to worship the LORD, they also shut some people out because God's holiness demanded that His Tabernacle or Temple not be defiled.  If we're honest, this is all of us before Christ, we all have unclean minds, unclean hearts, and unclean bodies (as we've used our bodies for sin).

Notice where Jesus is when this encounter happens.  He's in the city of Capernaum, His new "home base," and He is in the synagogue on the Sabbath teaching, just like He was doing in Nazareth in our last passage (and the last passage mentioned that He had been doing this in all the cities and surrounding country), and once again the people listening to Jesus' teaching were amazed and astonished that He taught with such authority.  He was not afraid to definitively say what the Word of God did and did not mean--and how they ought to be applying it to their lives if they truly believed it.

In the middle of service, a demonized (I will use this word instead of "demon-possessed" for reasons I won't explain right now) man arose and created a disruption right in the middle of Jesus' teaching.  At this point in Jesus' ministry He was still being selective of how and when He revealed Himself and who He revealed Himself to, so this demonized man saying that He was Jesus of Nazareth, the one who was able to destroy and judge them (both the man and the demon) and that He was "The Holy One of God" was not wrong, but it was not the right time or place, and shouting it in the middle of the service when Jesus was trying to teach was meant to cause disruption and discord and to cause people to stop listening to the teaching.  We've already seen that the devil and the demons are willing to take things that are true and twist them for their own purposes that are against the purposes of God like when the devil gave a partial quotation from the book of Psalms during Jesus' temptation in the wilderness.  Also, let's not be deceived that just because the devil is not identified here doesn't mean that the devil wasn't somehow involved in orchestrating this--remember that the end of the text about Jesus' temptation said that the devil left Him until a more opportune time.

Jesus is going to speak to the demon here in much the same why that He will speak to the storm later (which is an interesting fact about the storm, but we'll get there later).  The expression "be quiet" might also be translated as "be muzzled"--it has an idea not only of being quiet, but being restrained (someone stronger and with more authority puts the muzzle on the animal that is making noise and being disruptive).  Jesus also commands the demon to come out of the man.

The demon still isn't done causing a commotion, so it doesn't come out of the man quietly, and causes the man to be thrown to the ground and then the demon does come out of the man as Jesus commanded, having done no harm to the man.  The people that were originally listening to Jesus' teaching the Word of God with authority are now in awe and possibly fear at the power that they have just seen.  They question what kind of new teaching this is and marvel at Jesus' authority to command the demons and they obey Him--apparently that wasn't the way their religious leaders dealt with demonized men and women.

How would you respond if you were there that day?  Would you respond in faith and bow down and worship Jesus?  Would you be afraid of Him? Would you be confused?  What would you do with the demonized man that had the demon cast out of him and was still in your midst?  Would you accept such a man into your community (even your faith community), or would you still treat such a man as unclean?  The text today doesn't tell us what they did, but we will see the reactions of some of the people to some other miracles that happen in the synagogues that probably give us a hint as to how these people responded (we'll see the religious leaders claim it was some kind of fake miracle--a set-up and they would try to get the person healed and their family to go along with their story, and if the person would not recant, the person that was healed and their family would be excommunicated, for the religious leaders could not risk such a person being in synagogue with the other Jews and giving testimony of how Jesus had changed them not only physically, but also spiritually).