The Cause of Deep-Seated, Long-Standing Personal Problems

This will be the first in a series of messages on demonology. By way of introduction to my message, I would like to read to you a verse from the prophet Jeremiah, chapter 6, verse 14.

It is possible that when I first read this verse, you will not exactly understand how it applies to the topic of demonology. But I’ll read the verse, and then I’ll seek to explain how I relate it to demonology.

“They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.”

This is God’s charge against the religious leaders and priests of His day, that they claimed to have offered healing to His people, but it was not a genuine healing. The King James Version says, “They’ve healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly.” And this is explained by saying, “They say, ‘Peace, peace,’ but there is no peace.”

In other words, they had a religious front. They had the religious language. They had the services of the temple, but they didn’t have the real inner experience which God desired them to have. They didn’t have that deep settled peace which comes from true faith in God and obedience to His word.

Over the years, it has been borne in upon me that this is true of multitudes of professing Christians. They don’t have what they profess to have. They’re not specifically insincere, but they’ve been brought up to sing hymns about peace and joy. Their church or the denomination teaches them that Christians have peace and joy. Some of them are even trained to go out and witness to others that they have peace and joy, but really, their hearts have only been healed slightly. There’s a cover-up for something that has never been dealt with deep down inside.

To give you just a little illustration of this, I was in Auckland, New Zealand, a couple of years back with a Baptist family. The lady in the family was a teacher in a Sunday school, a sort of young adult Sunday school class. They had a trained nurse in the Sunday school class who was not a believer but was there because she was interested and really seeking. They were talking about what the gospel does and how it gives people peace and joy and victory.

She stood up one day and said something like this: “When I don’t have to visit the homes of the members of your church and administer sedation and tranquilizers on a large scale,” she said, “I’ll believe in the peace and joy that you tell me that you have. But when your people are living on tranquilizers and sedation, there can’t be all that peace and joy that you’re talking about.”

I think this is a very real, let’s say, criticism. Christians have been trained to believe that they have something. They speak as if they have something. They try to look as if they have something. They even feel guilty if they don’t really have it. They still have to put on the front because that’s the way people act in church, and if they claim to be Christians, that’s how they’re supposed to behave. But somehow, deep inside, there isn’t that inner reality that corresponds to what they say they have.

Now, I served as a medical orderly in the British forces in the Second World War, and I wasn’t too much of an orderly, but I learned a few lessons which have remained with me very vividly. One was an incident in the North African desert when a British soldier was brought into the reception station with a shrapnel wound in one shoulder, which had come when a bomb had exploded somewhere near him. He took off his shirt and his upper garments, and he was naked to the waist. There on his shoulder was just a little sort of black puncture with a little blackness around the edge of the hole.

I, being theoretically a nursing orderly, went up to the doctor, the medical officer, and said, “Shall I get a first field dressing, sir?” And he said, “No, it’s no good doing that.” He said, “Bring me the probe.” The probe, in those days—I dare say medicine’s changed a bit—was a silver stick that he would stick in. So he sat the man down on the chair, and he stuck the probe in, and he wiggled it around gingerly for a little while, and suddenly the man went up in the air. Then the doctor said, “Now fetch me the forceps.”

So I fetched him the forceps, and he put in the forceps where the probe had touched something in there, pulled it out, cleaned the wound up. “Now,” he said, “you can bring me the dressing.” Then he said to me afterwards, “You see, the piece of shrapnel that caused the puncture was still in there, and if you just covered that up with a dressing without removing the shrapnel, it would go on suppurating and cause more complications.”

I always remembered that because I saw how foolish I had been. But many, many times since then, in counseling and dealing with people, that incident has come back to my mind, and I’ve thought how many times a minister of the gospel puts a first field dressing on, covers it up, but hasn’t removed the thing that really causes the problem.

As I see in your outline, I’ve stated there, before we put the dressing on, we’ve got to use the probe and the forceps. We’ve got to find out what it is inside there that’s really causing the trouble, producing the uncleanness, the irritation, whatever it may be, the pain. We’ve got to remove it, even though the person may find it acutely painful just the moment we touch the little thing that’s the source of the problem.

I have seen that this is true in the spiritual ministry. A great deal of what is called preaching and counseling is putting on a dressing on a wound that hasn’t had the object that causes the problem taken out. The Lord has shown me over the recent years that the real problem-causing agent in spiritual needs and difficulties is an evil spirit. We need the probe of discernment, and we need the forceps of deliverance before we can cover that thing up and say it is really healed.

I must testify from experience that over the years, I’ve seen so much of this covering a thing up that hasn’t really been cleansed and brought to the light and dealt with, that I’m sick of it. I can well understand God’s charge against the religious leaders of His day.

“They’ve healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace.’”

Putting on the dressing, but there isn’t any peace. I would say to you this evening that in most Christian congregations, you find very little real peace. You find very few people that have a deep, settled, inner tranquility. You find very little real, spontaneous, overflowing joy. You find a lot of people trying to look good, trying to look happy. You find not a few preachers and song leaders that try to make people feel happy. I don’t know how it may be with you, but nothing makes me feel more unhappy than somebody trying to make me feel happy when I’m not happy.

I call that just covering the wound up and healing the hurt slightly. I am convinced that God has come to a period in His dealings with His people when He is not going to tolerate that kind of thing any longer. The real root cause of most deep-seated and long-standing spiritual and personal problems is found in evil spirit, demon. In a later study, I’m going to try to give a little account of the nature and activity of demons or evil spirits. Let me just say for the present that I’m using the two phrases interchangeably: demon or evil spirit.

I also notice the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:26, speaking about his own ministry. He says,

“I therefore so run, not as uncertainly. So fight I, not as one that beateth the air.”

You see, a wild or inexperienced boxer will lash out with his fists, but all he hits is air. He expends a lot of energy. He may even get the impression he’s achieving a lot, but he really does his opponent no harm at all.

Again, so much of Christian ministry and activity is really beating the air. It’s lashing out with words and sermons and prayers. But if you don’t know the real nature and whereabouts and activity of your enemy, it’s a happy coincidence when you land a blow on him. Again, the real source of deep-seated, long-standing personal problems, in most cases, is demon or evil spirit. Until we come to detect them and realize and acknowledge their presence, know how they operate, and know the means to deal with them, we are mainly operating like someone that is beating the air.