On Sunday and Saturday this last weekend, we looked at verses 1 through 13,

talked about the priority of prayer and the pattern for prayer, the persistence in prayer,

and the promises for prayer.

All that Jesus talked about it when the disciples

saw him praying and said, Lord, teach us to pray. And so Jesus went and gave us all of that,

really good stuff on this last weekend. And we pick it up here in chapter 11, verse 14.

And he was casting out a devil and it was dumb. And it came to pass when the devil was

gone out. The dumb spake. And the people wondered. But some of them said, he castes out devils

through Beelzebub, the chief of the devils. Wow, we start off with quite a situation

that's kind of crazy, really. Jesus had been casting out devils and demons. We've seen this

already in our gospel narratives, even here in Luke, but this time it's a little different.

And you might sense something

different. Why are the people suddenly kind of weirding out by this particular one? It says the

people wondered, Jesus had already cast devils and demons out, if you recall. What's the deal with

this one? Well, as it turns out, um, this one is unique in that it makes the person who's, you know, possessed

dumb where he cannot speak. Now, this is something you should be aware of because the

tradition of the Jews at that time period, they had sort of a different weird view that

wasn't something that came from God. It was something that they had worked out in

their traditions. This might be interesting to you that, you know, this whole devil, demon thing,

first of all, we have to be really careful not to over hebe-jee-g-be the whole thing. I think, you know,

movies where there's green vomit and head spinning and stuff has done such a disservice to the idea

of devils and demons. If I'm the devil, I would love for people to think more of a cartoon or

...