The more I look at the scriptures, the more I am convinced
that the church, or at least most people involved in religion, have entirely
the wrong view of demonology. For
the most part, I think that we have completely underestimated the enemy, and
furthermore, I think that Satan is well content to have it so. I think that part of his plan for
deception is to allow himself to be caricatured as some monstrous, hideous looking
creature that smells of cordite and sulfur and has horns, a tail and carries a
pitchfork. I think that this image
works to his advantage in furthering our superstitions and has succeeded in us
looking completely in the wrong direction and often unaware that he is in fact often
working right under our noses undetected.
The fact of the matter is that Satan and his demons are
fallen angels from heaven. Since
they are spirits, they do not have bodies such as we imagine, but instead
disguise themselves by seeking a human body. You might remember Legion, the demoniac that Jesus delivered
who had up to 6000 demons which had inhabited him. And when Jesus came to cast them out, they requested that he
not cast them into the abyss, but into a herd of pigs. Demons have an inherent desire for a
body.
We see the same principle presented here in this
passage. Jesus said in vs. 24,
“When the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places
seeking rest, and not finding any, it says, ‘I will return to my house from
which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. Then it
goes and takes along seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they go in
and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.” If nothing else is learned from this
story, the least should be an understanding that demons, or unclean spirits,
seek a host body in which to live, and humans provide a desirable house.
Our misconceptions of the spirit world should be corrected
by 2Cor. 11:14 which says that “Satan
disguises himself as an angel of light.”
So, far from appearing as an evil looking monstrous creature, he
disguises himself as an angel of light, which means as a holy angel of
God. Here we are, looking under rocks
so to speak for the grotesque, while the devil is walking around in plain view
pretending to be a holy angel. And
the implication is that he is doing evil activities while masquerading as good. Furthermore, Ezekiel 28 tells us that
Satan was the covering cherub, the most beautiful of all the angelic beings,
whose beauty and splendor became the basis for pride which caused his
fall. Such descriptions hardly
confirms our superstitions which only serves to disguise the one who is called
the ruler of this world.
This misunderstanding of demons is apparent in the passage
we are looking at today. Most
commentators believe that this deliverance that Jesus does for this mute man is
the same one recorded in Matthew 12.
Only in Matthew’s version, he adds that the man was also blind. So the man was blind and mute, and the
text tells us that it was because of a demon, or an evil spirit. The point which I think needs to be
made is that there would not have been any way for the average person to know
that this man was demon possessed just by looking at him. Obviously, he would have appeared
severely handicapped, but I think it’s doubtful that anyone would have realized
that it was due to demon possession.
That must have only become apparent by the way in which Jesus delivered
him, perhaps by verbally commanding the demon to come out of him. And the point I want to emphasize is
that this is a case where we would have attributed something to purely natural
factors, but Christ was able to discern that there was something demonic that
was going on. Jesus was so filled
with the Spirit of God, that in His Spirit He was able to discern the evil
spirits and they in turn could discern that He was the Son of God, because they
operated in the spiritual realm.
Whereas the average person who does not operate in the spiritual realm
cannot discern such things.
This explains why Jesus seemed to encounter demon possessed
people somewhat frequently. The
demons recognized Him as deity, and He recognized them. And that is not something that is
always the privilege of the average person. While it may be possible to meet a demon possessed person,
yet though I have been a Christian for 50 years and may have wondered about a
couple of people that I have met, yet for the most part I cannot say
unequivocally that someone was demon possessed. However, I do believe that I routinely meet people that are
under the influence of the devil to some
degree or another on a regular basis.
Eph.2:1 teaches us that Satan engineers the events of this
world, the course of our world, even the daily circumstances of our lives in
such a way as to control us or influence us to work out his will. “And you were
dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the
course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the
spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all
formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh
and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” What that says is that all men
naturally followed the course of the world, and the spirit of Satan works in
them producing disobedience, making us in effect his children. The real work of
the devil is not to cause people to necessarily become demon possessed and do
crazy things, but to cause normal people to become controlled by the world
system that steers them away from God.
While I don’t believe that there is a devil hiding in my
closet, or behind every bush, I do heartily believe that most of the evil
influence that is happening in and around our lives goes totally undetected by
us. What seems to us to be normal,
but perhaps unfortunate occurrences in our lives are often deliberate attempts
by the devil to cause us to go off track.
I can attest to dozens of examples, for instance, of people that begin
to show an interest in the things of the Lord, and suddenly they get really busy at work. Or suddenly they become attractive to
the opposite sex. They suddenly get
a girlfriend or boyfriend. Perhaps
they are really convicted about their relationship to God and suddenly they get
offered a promotion at work, which of course requires more commitment to work
and preempts them from coming to Bible study. I could go on and on, but I want to tell you that you need
to become aware of the devil’s schemes.
He is more clever and more devious than to come to you in a black hooded
cloak and seduce you with an outright sin. But rather he comes as an angel of light, and offers you
enlightenment like he did to Eve when he tempted her that she could become like
God. He offers something that seems good on the surface but leads to damnation.
I don’t know what circumstances you may encounter in your
life from day to day and week to week.
But I will warn you that the devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking
whom he may devour. But you can’t
hear him roar. You can’t see
him. You only know that so and so
called you and wants you to do this or that, when you should be going to church. You only know of the immediacy of some problem that got you
to take your eyes off of the goal of following Christ and you turned away just
for a little while, you just plan to miss just this one church service, or just
going to skip this morning’s devotion time, or you just don’t have time to pray
today, and the next thing you know, it’s been three weeks and you’re so far
away from God it will take a miracle to deliver you from the path of
destruction. You failed to realize
the working of the devil in your life and you fell right into his trap.
I’ll tell you what, some of you, no, all of us, should have
the mindset that a team of wild horses will not be able to drag us away from
going to church. We should have
the mindset that come hell or high water we are going to have our devotion time
in the morning. We should have as
our mindset that nothing will keep us from our goal of being conformed to the
image of Jesus Christ. We need to
wake up to the devil’s schemes.
As 2Cor. 2:11says, “so that
no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his
schemes.”
Some of you Christians are being played by the devil. And you are totally ignorant of his
schemes. You think you are
good. You think you are safe
because you had an experience 20 years ago, or you used to go to some church
where you really learned a lot of stuff.
But you don’t realize that you have left your first love. You don’t realize that your love has
grown cold. And that you no longer
do the deeds which you did at first.
Jesus said to the church at Ephesus in Revelation 2:4, “‘But I have this
against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore remember from where
you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am
coming to you and will remove your lamp stand out of its place—unless you
repent.”
Now I want you to look at a verse we kind of flew over last week,
but which I think helps us understand why Luke includes this event in this
passage. Look at vs. 13, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts
to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit
to those who ask Him?” Notice the phrase, “if you then, being evil…” The principle that Jesus is teaching
here is that there are only two kingdoms in this world; the kingdom of God and
the kingdom of the devil. There is
the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. You are either holy or you are evil. And all of us belong to
either one kingdom or the other. There is no middle ground, there is no neutral
corner.
Now this principle is the basis for what is being taught in
this passage. A lot of people will
hear me say that you are either holy or you are evil and will be offended. Because they will acknowledge the evil
of someone caught in the throes of alcohol or drug addiction or some other
vice, and they will say, but I am not like that person. I don’t do those kinds of things. I’m not really evil. I may not be a religious fanatic like
you, but I certainly am not evil.
But John 16:8
says, “And He [the Holy Spirit], when He comes, will convict the world
concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do
not believe in Me.” See, the
condemning sin is that they do not believe in Jesus. It is the sin of unbelief. There are those who would maintain that they aren’t evil,
that they are good people, and yet sin is what determines evil, and unbelief is
the worst kind of sin. Now please
understand what constitutes unbelief.
The Bible says that the devils believe and tremble, that is they
recognized Jesus as the Son of God.
But they do not believe unto righteousness. Romans 10:10, “for with the
heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he
confesses, resulting in salvation.”
Belief is faith in all that Christ is and all that He came to do, and then
confessing Him as Lord, resulting
in our salvation.
Now that is the situation of the people who were in
attendance when Jesus delivered this blind, mute man from the power of a
demon. Matthew’s version tells us
that though the crowds were wondering if this was indeed the Messiah, the
Pharisees spoke up and said that Jesus “casts out demons only by Beelzebul the
ruler of the demons.” See, they
had already become hardened in their unbelief. Jesus did not meet their standards, their expectations. More importantly, He did not come from
their ranks, but rather exposed them as being hypocrites. And consequently, they hated Jesus, and
nothing He did or said would change their minds.
Ironically, the Pharisees were the really religious people
in the crowd. They were made up of
the priests and scribes and religious lawyers who professed to be godly. But Jesus routinely called these guys
out as being hypocrites. And they
hated Him for that. Jesus put them
on the same level as the guy in the gutter. In fact, Jesus put the Pharisees as being worse off than the
guy in the gutter, because they trusted in their good works, which were all
self aggrandizing, and though they had washed the outside of the cup, yet the
inside Jesus said was full of rottenness.
And so their response when they saw Jesus’ miracle was to
blaspheme against Him by saying that He cast out demons by the power of the
devil. In other words, they said
that Jesus had a devil Himself. It
was the ultimate blasphemy.
Jesus answers these men with a wisdom that cannot be refuted.
He says, “Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and a house divided
against itself falls.” That’s a
self evident statement that the Pharisees had to see the validity of. And so He
showing that if He casts out demons by the power of Satan as they suggested,
then the kingdom of Satan cannot stand.
It will fall. And obviously
Satan is not going to give power to destroy his kingdom.
And then secondly, Jesus uses their own exorcists who they
promoted and believed in, to condemn what they said. Vs. 19, “And if I by
Beelzebul cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? So they will be
your judges.” See, they profited
financially from these supposed exorcists that operated in Judaism who actually
were frauds. We see an example of that in Acts 19,
when these exorcists tried to cast out an evil spirit by using the name of
Jesus and Paul, and the evil spirit said, “Paul I know, and Jesus I know, but
who are you?” And the evil spirit in the man jumped on the seven sons of Sceva,
a Jewish chief priest, undoubtedly those who Jesus was talking about that day,
and the evil spirit beat them up and sent them running away naked. They were frauds, and Jesus knew they
were frauds, and it’s possible that the Pharisees themselves knew they were
frauds, and yet they condemned Jesus for what they allowed their own people to
do. Again, it was a testament to
their hypocrisy.
But the real point of that exchange is found in vs. 20;
Jesus says, “But if I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of
God has come upon you.” First of all, He is saying that the works that He is
doing by the finger of God is a testament to the fact that the kingdom of God
has come. He is the king of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of darkness cannot
stand against the kingdom of light.
And so when Jesus came as the King of the kingdom of God, then the
result is that the kingdom of darkness falls. He was works were proof that He was the King of Kings and
Lord of Lords. By the way,
Beelzebul was a name for Satan which is interpreted “lord of the flies”. It means lord of the dung heap. The Jews had taken the name of the god
Baal and changed it to a degrading term which in time had become the name of the
devil. But Jesus is saying that He
is Lord of all. That His kingdom
had come down to them and yet they were not part of it, though they were seeing
the signs attesting to it.
Then in vs.21 He offers an illustration of that
principle. “When a strong man,
fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are undisturbed. But when
someone stronger than he attacks him and overpowers him, he takes away from him
all his armor on which he had relied and distributes his plunder.” In other words, Satan is the strong
man. He is guarding his castle, he
guards his kingdom and he keeps his possessions. People are his possessions. 2 Tim. 2:26 tells us that the unsaved are those who are held
captive by Satan to do his will. But when someone stronger comes and attacks
him and overpowers him, he takes away his armor and distributes his
plunder. Jesus Christ is the one
who comes who is stronger, who defeats the power of Satan. What is the power of Satan? It is the power of death.
Hebrews 2:14, “Therefore, since the children share in flesh
and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He
might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and
might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their
lives.” See, Satan seduced man to sin
knowing that sin produces death, and through death he was able to take captive mankind
into the darkness of his kingdom and hold them there to do his will, which is
to destroy God’s creation. But God
sent Jesus Christ to Earth who overcame sin and death and defeated Satan’s
kingdom, broke his power to hold men in sin, and set the captives free. Ephesians 4 says that when Jesus
arose from the dead He took captivity captive. He took the captives of Satan and made them His
captives. That we that have been
saved might be transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of
light, and we are now captives of the stronger man, the God man, Jesus
Christ. And nothing on earth, not
even Satan is powerful enough to take us from the hand of God.
Romans 8:38, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor
life, nor angels, nor principalities,(that’s the devil and his realm) nor
things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any
other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is
in Christ Jesus our Lord.” John 10:28, “and I give eternal life to them, and
they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father,
who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch
them out of the Father’s hand.”
I like the part in our text that says that Jesus Christ not
only takes away the devil’s weapons, but distributes the plunder. That means that He not only takes us,
but our personality, our talents, our abilities, our minds, and our energies,
and everything that was once used for the devil’s purposes now Jesus has
transformed that they might be used for His purposes. Satan doesn’t have a hold on you anymore, unless you give
yourself back to him. And let me
tell you, your body is not yours to give back to him. You have been bought with a price. 1Cor. 6:19, “Or do you
not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you
have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a
price: therefore glorify God in your body.”
Therefore, consider your bodies as holy to the Lord, sacred,
set apart, and use your time, talents and treasure for the kingdom of God. You have been bought with a great
price, rescued from the domain of darkness and brought into inapproachable
light. Therefore walk as children
of light, for the days are evil.
Listen, the main point Jesus is teaching is there is no
middle ground. There is no neutral
corner. You are either working for
Him, or you are either deliberately or inadvertently working against the
kingdom of God. Jesus says in vs.
23, “He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me,
scatters.” Folks,
there is a simple question that is being asked of you today; are you with Jesus or are you with the
devil? Are you working for the
kingdom or are you living for the devil?
Oh, you may not want to believe that you are living for the devil. But if you are living just for
yourself, if you are just pleasing yourself, living for your agenda and putting
your purposes first, then you are working for the devil. You need to honestly examine yourself
today in light of that question and see where you stand.
Let me phrase that statement another way. Does what you do glorify Satan and his
world system, his kingdom’s goals, or does it glorify God? How about this one, does what you
listen to on TV and the radio glorify Satan and his kingdom or does it glorify
God’s kingdom? How about what you
do in your free time, how about the kind of work that you do, how about the way
you talk, how you act, what kind of movies you like to watch…does it glorify
Satan’s kingdom or God’s kingdom?
I challenge you to examine yourselves and be honest with your answers.
Jesus knew that such statements would cause people to be
taken aback. It might even make
some people angry to consider that they were not automatically in the kingdom
of God. That certainly was the
case with the Pharisees. And the
normal protest is that we point out some time in our lives when we turned over
a new leaf, or we had some traumatic experience that caused us to take a different
tack in life. And we try to find
justification through that. And so
Jesus gives us one more illustration to show that being transferred from the
kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God is not an act of will power, but of
supernatural conversion.
Jesus says in Vs. 24, “When the unclean spirit goes out of a
man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and not finding any, it
says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it
finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and takes along seven other
spirits more evil than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last
state of that man becomes worse than the first.”
Here is what Jesus is warning against. He is warning against turning over a
new leaf. He is warning against
recognizing in the flesh that there is something that is unhealthy or even that
is evil in your life and getting rid of it, but not having something better,
something stronger that replaces it. This is the danger of 12 step programs
that try to “free” you from alcohol or drugs, yet only teaches a vague belief
in a higher power that has no real power to transfer you to God’s kingdom.
Jesus says that evil spirit goes out of a man and seeks
rest, seeks a place to call home, and not finding any, goes back to the house
which he left and finds it empty.
This is the danger of transcendental meditation, by the way. There is an old saying that an idle
mind is the devils workshop. But
Jesus is saying that it goes much further than that. An empty spirit is the devil’s home.
And so the evil spirit comes back and finds it swept and
empty and so brings 7 demons worse than himself and they take up residence
there, and the last state of the man is worse than the first. Listen, the idea of some spirits being
worse than others is perhaps better understood as being more devious, more
deceptive, more crafty and ultimately more damning. Because these demons deceive the man into thinking that he
has escaped the obvious snare of the devil through drugs or some vice, and yet
he remains in sin, and consequently dead in his sins. He is worse off because at least in his first condition he
recognized that he was messed up, but in his last state he thinks he is not so
bad. After all, when he was a
drunkard it was obvious that he was pretty bad off. But now he looks like he has his life together. He doesn’t drink or do drugs anymore.
But in fact, he is still dead in his trespasses and sins, and doesn’t realize
that he is going to die and go to hell.
And the last state is certainly worse than the first.
Listen, there is only one way that you can have that
assurance that you have been not only delivered from your sins but forgiven of
your sins and transferred into the kingdom of God. And that is by repentance of your sins and faith that Jesus
Christ is Lord, and then confess Him to be your Lord and Savior. Jesus taught on the Sermon on the Mount
that if we are to enter into the kingdom of God we must come as a beggar and
recognize our spiritual bankruptcy.
That saving faith depends entirely upon what God did for us by sending
His Son to die in our place that we might be made righteous through Him. And
then having been made righteous, He promises to come live in us through the
Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit then is that guarantee, that deposit of God that
He will keep us, and the devil cannot take up residence in us anymore, because
someone much stronger now lives in our house. We are now the temple of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.
The question for us today is the same as it was for the
Pharisees 2000 years ago. Are you
for Christ or against Him? Are you a part of His kingdom or are you still a
captive of the prince of darkness?
There is no middle ground.
I trust you choose Christ, and that you will live for Him.
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