Jesus and Mental Health

Luke 4:41-44

We have seen Jesus displaying miraculous, creative power, healing the masses.  He has power over the natural world and He can completely overpower the natural effect of the Fall and sin. This passage shows how He saves our body, our mind, and our spirit. Put another way: the natural, the supernatural, and the eternal.

So secondly, He had power over not just the natural world [physical], but also the supernatural realm, breaking the power of demons, whose realm is the mind, who control the world system that blinds the mind and corrupts the thinking and fills people with deception.  He can give us a new body, we know that, but can He give us a new mind?  We need the mind of Christ, but first, we must make room for it. We need to be empty before God can fill. If we allow garbage in all day long there’s nothing else than can be added. Can He protect our mind from the corruption and ignorance and darkness and filth of the demonic system?  Yes He can.  Dark forces build fortresses of ideologies and ideas and concepts, philosophies, psychologies, world views, and it's in everything.  It's in the music and the media and the literature, it's everywhere, this lying deception.  Ephesians 4:17 says that people without God have minds which are futile. That's empty.  It says their understanding is darkened. And in 2 Corinthians 4:4 it says their minds are blinded so they can't see the truth or believe the truth.  And that goes clear back to Isaiah, doesn't it?  Isaiah 6: They'll hear but won't understand, they'll see but won't get it.  And this force of demons have created world viewpoints that pollute the mind.  Can Jesus overpower that?  Can Jesus break the hold of the evil system of deception?

verse 41           As Jesus went and preached He literally shattered the demonic world.  They like to be clandestine.  They like to stay hidden.  They like to do their work covertly.  They like to be behind the scenes.  They don't want to reveal themselves.  He traumatized them.  He terrorized them.  Remember they were living inside people.  Demons take up residence and dominate their thinking.  And they stay there in a hidden fashion.  Cults like the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe Jesus is God, yet even the demons know that He is. But they don't. 

He has power not only over the natural, but over the supernatural.  He not only has power to rebuke a fever as He did in the case of the mother-in-law of Peter, but He has the power to rebuke a demon. 

Now, let’s pause and be reminded that not all mental health problems are directly demonic. The brain is an organ, and like any organ, it can have problems. Some are chemical in nature. Some have traumatic injury that was physically caused. And some have experienced trauma that was inflicted in other ways. Of course, if it involved abuse, you can credit the kingdom of darkness for that as well.

But overall, sinners don't just wander around independently having their own thoughts.  They are literally the victims of demons. They may not all be possessed by demons.  They may not all be dominated and tormented by demons who dwell in them, but they all have bought into demonic lies, one way or another.  They're all blinded, ignorant, empty-minded, because the god of this world has blinded their minds.

It is critical not only that we have our bodies delivered from the curse of sin, but that our minds be free.  We want to have the full mind of Christ.  We want to have our minds purged and purified.  We want to think the way God thinks. 

Darkened minds, blinded minds devoid of truth, corrupt minds, reprobate minds, those are the playgrounds of demons.  We're talking from sophisticated religious cults all the way to immorality, all the way to insanity, all of that is the playground of demons.  It's all ideas, thought patterns raised up against the knowledge of God.  And men need their minds delivered from those supernatural influences and Jesus proves that He can do it.

Someday we'll have a body free from the effects of sin. Someday we'll have a mind free from the effects of demonic deception. 

Thirdly, if Jesus is the Messiah He has to have power over the eternal realm.  Not just the natural and the supernatural, but also the eternal. He has to have power not only in the body and the mind, but the spirit and soul.  What can He do about this eternal problem?  Humans are headed for eternal hell.  We're members of the kingdom of Satan, as it were, the kingdom of darkness, and we're destined to perish in the lake of fire. 

V. 42                This would be Sunday after the Sabbath. He was healing all that multitude of people that kept coming and coming. That probably went on all through the night.  Finally the next day comes. He leaves.  He went to a lonely place.  Mark 1:35 tells us it was still night. It was just before the daybreak and...and Mark also says that He went to pray as He often did after this tremendous explosion of power.  He went for communion with the Father for restoration from the crushing presence and pressure of these crowds.

But He didn't get very far and found His place of seclusion until it says, multitudes were searching for Him and came to Him.  They found Him and tried to keep Him from going away from them.  They saw what He had done, power over the physical world, power over the spiritual world, and they wanted to hold onto Him.

Chapter 5 verse 1

Verse 19

Chapter 6 verse 19

Chapter 8 verse 19

Verse 40 of chapter 8

Chapter 12 verse 1

This was not the end, this was a means to an end, verse 43:  It isn't all about healing.  It isn't all about deliverance from demons. 

Most importantly He had to preach the kingdom of God: That you didn't have to stay in the domain of darkness.  You didn't have to stay in the kingdom of Satan.  You didn't have to be headed to the Lake of Fire prepared for the devil and his angels and all who follow him.  You could come to the kingdom of God.