Alex Portillo

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The kingdom of darkness is defeated. Often when people think of demons and Satan they do so from the perspective of movies, TV shows, comic books, and satanic panic literature. The language they use is often not based on any Christian demonology or ontology but animist worldviews imported from pagan spiritualities. Which makes sense, because often the people that are the most fanatical come from these backgrounds.

However, the Bible clearly teaches that the kingdom of darkness is defeated. And if there is anything that is demonic in this world the most clear identifiable sign is that it is violent, takes life, cheers for death, is impartial to loss of life, and speaks as if some people do not deserve dignity.

The parable is about the sower, not the soil. However, we are still invited to examine ourselves. Not to invite guilt, but to ask, what can I do to cooperate with the work the sower (Jesus) is doing in my life?

Would you read Psalm 102 at church?

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Jesus wants you to look deeper.

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Transcript:
Often the reason we lack faith is because we have not examined our faith. And a good example of this is Matthew chapter eight in the story when Jesus is crossing the sea with his disciples and he falls asleep in the back. They hit a storm. Jesus calms the sea, and at the end of it he asks them, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” Now, of course, this is a rhetorical question. However, I have found that a good practice is to answer the question. Because what would the disciples have said to Jesus had they had to answer the question? Well, according to Matthew, I think they would have had a pretty good answer for Jesus. Because in verse twenty-four it says that a great storm hit the sea. The Greek says seismos megas. Seismos is where we get our English word seismic from, which more describes an earthquake. And then he adds megas, which means mega, large. A large earthquake. So they could have easily told Jesus, “Well, Jesus, there was an earthquake out in the ocean. I think it’s reasonable for us to be afraid.” And perhaps there is the wisdom in the question. Not to shame them for not having faith in the moment of their terror, but in order to make them reflect now on the other side on the power and the goodness of God while they were in that storm. It’s an unfortunate feature of Christianity that we shame people for the features of their humanity. It’s only natural, it’s normal for our faith to falter in the moments of terror. And perhaps the reason Jesus asked this question to his disciples is so that we can imagine him asking us the same question on the other side of our failures. Not to shame us for our failure of having faith, but in order to comfort us and so that we can reflect on what just happened and see the depths that God just saved us from so that we can have faith in the next storm that comes.