Video from Desiring God
The Demons, the Fever, and the Word of the King
"When we come to Luke 4:41, near the end of this message, we are going to see something that has a direct bearing on your life in 2023 and on how you relate to demons and fevers and death and sin and the sovereignty of Christ over all of it. I point this out now lest you be tempted to think that these two-thousand-year-old stories are interesting, but not really relevant to “my issues today” or the problems swirling in our culture. That would be a big mistake.
Luke writes in verse 41 that “demons also came out of many, crying [to Jesus], ‘You are the Son of God!’ But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak.” Why? Why won’t he let them talk? They just spoke one of the greatest truths in the world: “You are the Son of God.”
That’s better than what their master, Satan, said back in Luke 4:3 in the wilderness: “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” These demons aren’t playing that game. They came out crying, “You are the Son of God.” There’s no if about it. They know whom they’re dealing with. So why does Jesus silence them when they speak such truth?
He gives the answer at the end of verse 41: “ . . . because they knew that he was the Christ.” Eventually, the word Christ became virtually a proper name along with Jesus — Jesus Christ. But in our text, it’s a title: “the Christ.” Luke tells us, “They knew that he was the Christ” — which is the English transliteration of Christos, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Mashiah (1 Samuel 2:10), which means “anointed one” or “Messiah.”
So the demons know that Jesus is the long-expected Son of David, the kingdom-bringing, world-conquering, enemy-defeating Jewish Messiah. They know this. And at the end of verse 41, Luke says that precisely because they know this truth, Jesus silences them. My point here is simply this: in that act of Jesus, when he silences that truth, there is a worldview that has everything to do with your life today. That’s where we are going. But let’s get there by starting at the beginning of the text..." from the Transcript