WWUTT 2012 When an Evil Spirit Goes Out of a Person (Matthew 12:43-45)

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Jesus talks about a man with an evil spirit that goes out of him and then comes back brings other spirits even more powerful than itself and the last state of that person is even worse than the first.

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Such is the case without Christ when we understand the text.

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This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible teaching podcast.

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That we may be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.

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Tell your friends about our ministry at www.utt.com.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

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Thank you, Becky.

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In our study of Matthew chapter 12, we're going to be picking up where we left off yesterday.

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So I'm going to start reading here in verse 43 and go through verse 50 out of the Legacy Standard Bible.

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Hear the word of the Lord.

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Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest and does not find it.

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Then it says, I will return to my house from which I came.

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And when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order.

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Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself.

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And they go in and live there.

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And the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.

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That is the way it will also be with this evil generation.

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While he was still speaking to the crowds, behold, his mother and brothers were standing outside seeking to speak to him.

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Now someone said to him, behold, your mother and your brothers are standing outside seeking to speak to you.

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But Jesus answered the one who was telling him and said, who is my mother and who are my brothers? And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, behold, my mother and my brothers.

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For whoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother.

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We come back to that section that had started in verse 38.

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And this from verses 38 to 50 is all about recognizing those who are truly of Christ and those who are not.

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It's understanding those who hear the word of God and believe it versus those who hear the word of God and are not quite transformed by it, not on the inside anyway.

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So you had the Pharisees who came to Jesus and said, we want to see a sign from you.

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But he said, an evil and adulterous generation eagerly seeks for a sign.

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And notice that that statement is also at the end of verse 45.

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So an evil and adulterous generation eagerly seeks for a sign.

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And then he addresses once again in verse 45, the way it will be with this evil generation.

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And so there are those who press Jesus for some sort of heavenly divine proof that he is the Messiah that was promised to come, the one who would come in the line of David, which we saw previously stated in chapter 12.

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Of course, Jesus has been performing many signs, many of those miracles that he has done.

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But they have not believed those miracles.

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Earlier in the chapter, we heard from the Pharisees saying that Jesus is only able to cast out demons and do these miraculous healings because he himself is of Satan.

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So they've seen the signs, yet they do not believe.

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There might even be some kind of outward demonstration of curiosity.

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Hence the question that they ask, we want to see a sign from you.

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So this might look like in the eyes of the people, we'll see the Pharisees really do want to know.

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So why doesn't Jesus give them a sign? And so Jesus gives this kind of parable here in verses 43 to 45 about an unclean spirit.

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It may be a parable.

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It may really be a description of the way that evil spirits come and go in the heart of a person and using language that would just be easiest for us to understand.

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Of course, the inside of a person is not like a room that needs to be swept clean, but it's just that kind of language that's used so that we might understand what's going on here with the wandering spirit.

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The one that goes out of a person comes back, brings seven other spirits stronger than itself, and the state of that person is even worse than it was before.

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So Jesus says in verse 43, now again, this is after he had talked about the sign of Jonah.

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Some do not believe most of them do not believe those who do believe in the sign that points to Jesus dying and being buried for three days and coming back to life again.

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They're the ones that show themselves to be truly of Christ, truly a follower of Jesus.

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But those who they just want to see things outwardly, they want to see these outward manifestations and there's no real transformation that happens on the inside.

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So Jesus gives this illustration in verses 43 to 45 when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest and does not find it.

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Now I don't want to read too deeply into this because if this is just merely a parable, then there's one point to it.

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And sometimes we can overly dissect a parable and take elements of it and make them mean things that they don't really mean.

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So we have to be careful in the way that we look at the individual elements of what it is that Jesus is saying here.

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But he starts by saying an unclean spirit goes out of a man, passes through waterless places seeking rest and does not find it.

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Now there was a quote from Matthew Henry on this particular section, verses 43 to 45.

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And he said the following, every heart is the residence of unclean spirits except those which are temples of the Holy Spirit by faith in Jesus Christ.

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So your heart is indwelt with a spirit.

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It's either going to be the evil spirits that are under Satan's power, or it's going to be the Holy Spirit that has been given to you by God.

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All those who believe in Jesus Christ, which spirit occupies you, the Holy Spirit or Satan's spirits.

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Now, I had posted that quote on Facebook, on social media, and I got a lot of pushback from people.

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I really was not expecting that.

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But there were some comments that came back saying, what sort of proof do you have that a person who is not a believer is demon possessed? Well, I don't really think that's what's being said here.

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There is a distinction between demon possession and being under the influence of evil spirits.

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After all, everybody who is not in Christ is indwelt with evil spirits.

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I do believe that the scripture says that.

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Ephesians 2, 1 and 2, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

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So there must be a distinction between a demon possession and the spirits that are at work in the sons of disobedience.

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And by the way, before we came to Christ, that was us.

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The spirits of Satan, Satan's minions, were at work in us.

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Before we came to Christ, the Holy Spirit comes in, ransacks our hearts, kicks all of that evil out, and cleans the place up.

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And continues to clean us, in a certain sense, in that we are being sanctified.

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We're completely justified, not yet fully sanctified.

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We're being washed with the water of the word, as said later on in Ephesians 5.

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But there is a clear indication there, in Ephesians 2, that all unbelievers have in them the spirit that is working in the sons of disobedience.

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You also have the statement in 2 Timothy 2, 26, that all those who are not in Christ, those who do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and trust in him for the forgiveness of their sins, they have been ensnared by the devil and captured by him to do his will.

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You are doing the will of somebody, either the will of Satan or the will of God.

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And those who are not in Christ are in Satan and under his influence.

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Again, a distinction between what we might call a demonic possession and being indwelt with evil spirits.

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Earlier in Matthew 12, 22, we read about the demon-possessed man.

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It was blind and mute, brought to Jesus.

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He healed him so that the mute man spoke and saw.

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There's clearly those persons that are brought to Jesus that have been afflicted by these demonic presences.

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That's significantly more than simply being indwelt by evil spirits.

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You understand? I know that isn't much of a definition, but I'm not really trying to do a deep dive in the difference between demonic possession and being indwelt with evil spirits.

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Just enough so that you can see that there is a distinction, right? So back to this particular illustration in verse 43, Jesus says, when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest and does not find it.

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So once again, we got to be careful in the way that we dissect the elements of this.

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We don't want to go too deep into it or take parts of it to make it mean something that it doesn't mean.

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A parable always has just one meaning to it.

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The parable is meaning to convey something.

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So you got to be careful with all the different elements to it, that it doesn't end up meaning something that Jesus did not mean to convey when he gave this parable.

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So the waterless places, I think it would be easy to say that the waterless places are those places where the Holy Spirit is not, because we read in Scripture as the spirit washing us with the water of the word, Ephesians 5, or we've been washed by the spirit of our God, 1 Corinthians 6, 11, or in Titus 3, the washing of regeneration of the Holy Spirit.

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So it would be easy to see this and say waterless places must be those places where the spirit is not.

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But I think rather, not being too analytical with other places in Scripture we find this reference to water or waterless, I think rather what it means is just simply this evil spirit is trying to find somewhere else to go and can't find it.

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He's trying to find a place where he can continue to be fed or energized or do his demonly purpose, and he just can't find a place to do that.

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Because he's gone out of a man, he passes through waterless places seeking rest and does not find it.

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So then it says, I will return to my house from which I came, and when it comes it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order.

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So the house that the evil spirit is going back to is plainly the man that he had gone out from in the first place.

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Because once again, verse 43, when the unclean spirit goes out of a man.

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So it's saying, I'll return to my house from which I came.

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So it's going back to that man, and when he gets there he finds the man, his house, his dwelling, is unoccupied, it's swept, and it's put in order.

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Now it's unoccupied.

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The Holy Spirit's not there.

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But the place is swept and put in order.

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What Jesus is illustrating with this is that there is some sort of an outwardly renovation that a person can do, an outwardly, what would you call it, reformation, I suppose.

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A person can try to make themselves look holy and righteous on the outside, but there's no true transformation that's happened in the heart.

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Because again, this is Jesus getting to the heart of the matter in this section, verses 38 to 50.

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So there is something that's happened to the person that you can look at and see, oh yeah, well that person is holy, just like the Pharisees.

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The people probably looked at the Pharisees and did see them as holy men.

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In fact, the people did regard the Pharisees in that way.

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But there wasn't a true transformation that happened in the heart.

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So when the evil spirit goes out of a person, maybe by that initial burst of excitement and longing for godly things, it may be just enough to suppress the influence of those spirits in a person's life.

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But then after a time, it turns out that this person's enthusiasm for those godly things isn't genuine.

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So that evil spirit comes back, finds the place swept and put in order.

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There was at least enough done in the person's life that the inside of his heart was swept up a little bit.

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It was cleaned up by this religiosity that he got into.

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But all of that being completely external.

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There's no real transformation that's happened there, because the heart of that man is not dwelt by the Holy Spirit.

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The Holy Spirit is not there.

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Or God is not there.

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I know that the Holy Spirit has not been given yet.

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That doesn't happen until Pentecost in Acts 2.

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But work with me here.

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In the illustration that Jesus is giving.

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So what the evil spirit does, verse 45, it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself.

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And they go in and live there.

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And the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.

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And that is the way it will also be with this evil generation.

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So the evil spirit goes and finds seven other spirits.

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The word seven does mean complete.

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It's the number of completion.

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So you're talking about this man finally coming into complete corruption with the evil spirits that dwell there.

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This is still in chapter 12, where Jesus had given the warning earlier about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, a sin that will never be forgiven.

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So when you have these evil spirits that come in, and you have spirits in the sense that it's the totality of the spirits, a totality of the corruption of that person, given that the number seven is used.

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So it's a complete corruption of this person by the evil spirits that dwell inside of him.

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This is most likely referring to a man that has committed that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, a man who will never be converted from that.

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He will continue in that corruption.

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And as I said last week, and I talked about with Becky on the Q&A Friday as well, this is something about a person that only God can truly know.

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Only he knows that a person is so far gone that they cannot come back.

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We still need to share the gospel with everybody.

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We don't know who the elect are.

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We don't know who the reprobate are.

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So share the gospel with everyone, and may God do that work in the heart of a person to transform them from death unto life.

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But as for this man, this evil spirit has come into him.

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These spirits have totally possessed the man.

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Not like a demon possession, but they own him, they possess him, so that the state of that man is now worse than it was before.

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Because he had gotten into religion, he believes that the religion is making him holy, it's making him right and good.

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No real transformation has happened in the heart.

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So how do you convince that man that he's not actually come to the place that he needs to come to? When he finds religion in the name of God, but no real change has happened in the heart.

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The spirits have deceived him to believing that he's more righteous than he really is.

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And so the state of that person now is even worse than it was before.

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You can't convince a man who truly believes that he's righteous, that he's unrighteous.

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Unless the Holy Spirit is going to do that work in the heart of a person.

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Now a person who has truly been transformed on the inside is going to show it on the outside as well.

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There is going to be an outward manifestation or evidence of the transformation that has happened inside.

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A person who is truly reformed from the inside out is going to want to obey God, will desire Christ and will walk in his statutes.

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This same sort of parable is also given in Luke chapter 11 with a slightly different context.

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Let me read that to you here and then share a story that I've shared before going along with what Jesus is teaching here.

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So Luke 11 in verse 24, Jesus says, 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.

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Sounds familiar, right? That's almost word for word what we read in Matthew 12, 44.

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So when it comes, it finds it swept and put in order.

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And then it goes and takes along seven other spirits more evil than itself.

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And they go in and live there.

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And the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.

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All of that seems identical to what we've read in Matthew 12.

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But in this account here in Luke 11, here's what happens next.

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Verse 27.

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Now it happened that while Jesus was saying these things, one of the women in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, blessed is the womb that bore you in the breast at which you nursed.

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But Jesus said, on the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.

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Those who hear God's word and do what it says, blessed are they.

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For they are the ones that demonstrate that they've truly been transformed by the Holy Spirit of God from the inside out.

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It's not just some outwardly thing, this, this choir robe that they're putting on to make it look like that they are, that they're more than they really are.

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But this is a person who truly loves God.

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And these Pharisees don't truly love God.

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They don't love Christ.

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There are going to be many ways about such a person that you will be able to see whether they are truly of God or not.

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Yes, the Pharisees were very religious.

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How would you have known the difference between them and one of Jesus' disciples? Well, because the disciples love Jesus, but the Pharisees did not.

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So you see this outward religion that they demonstrated, but you don't have a genuine transformation of the heart that has taken place.

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The person who is truly of Christ, who desires Christ, will hear the word of God and will keep it.

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Many of the others who are around Jesus here, they hear the word of God, but they're not keeping it.

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But blessed are they who hear God's word and do what it says.

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Let me give you a story.

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This is a true story, something that happened to me.

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And I've shared this before.

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You can find a video of me actually sharing this in a sermon on YouTube, but I'll conclude with this.

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There was a young man who came into my church.

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This was years ago, before I was living here in Texas.

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And he said that he was looking for somebody to do an exorcism, casting out a demon which he believed was possessing a friend of his.

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And I spoke to him and he said, I went to the Catholic Church.

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They said they don't do exorcisms anymore.

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I don't know if that's the Catholic Church at large, but in our community, they said they weren't going to do an exorcism.

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He said he went to several other churches.

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Nobody would listen to him, believe his story, or even want to follow through with doing an exorcism.

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But he asked me if I would do one.

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And I said, well, why don't you tell me why you think your friend needs an exorcism first? And then I'll let you know if I think that I can do it.

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And he said that he had this friend, this couple, as a matter of fact, a guy and a gal who were living together.

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And this gal believed that she had another presence in the room that was speaking to her.

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And sometimes she could even hear the words audibly, clearly spoken to her at night when she was lying in bed.

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And then when her friends were around and she had this feeling of paranoia that there was somebody else in the room watching her, they would go about the room.

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They would go outside.

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They would try to show her that there's no one else there.

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But she simply could not shake the feeling she was certain that there was somebody else in the room.

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And somebody was even afflicting her and threatening her in some way.

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She went to a shrink who even prescribed for her medication.

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But the medication didn't help.

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It actually made things worse.

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And now on top of feeling like she was being tormented by a presence, she also had feelings of suicide, thoughts of suicide, wanted to end her own life.

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And so this young man who came to me said that he went to his friends and asked them, would you be willing to entertain the possibility that this is a demonic possession and we might have to do an exorcism? And they said, after exhausting every other possibility, yes, if there's something we can do about this, if there's an exorcism that would help to cleanse whatever it is that's afflicting her, we would be willing to do it.

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So he comes to me and he says, do you believe my story? And I said, I have no reason to not believe you.

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And he said, so will you come do an exorcism? And I said, I can come and we can pray over the place.

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I can, you know, lay my hands on her and ask that God will heal her.

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I'm willing to do that.

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But can I show you something first? And he said, sure.

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So I grabbed a Bible out of the sanctuary and I opened to that passage in Luke 11.

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And getting to the part where Jesus said, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.

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And so I said to this young man, so here's the dilemma that is before us.

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I could do this thing that you're asking me to do and cast out this evil spirit.

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And maybe it'll even be effective.

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Maybe she will be exercised of whatever this thing is that's tormenting her.

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But if there's no real change that's happened in your friends, this guy and gal that are living together, then I've not really done anything to heal her.

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I've only prolonged the inevitable.

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And what will eventually happen is that evil spirit will come back and it will be even worse for her than it was the first time.

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Would you agree with me? I said to this young man, would you agree with me that your friends, this guy and gal are living in sin? And he said to me, you mean, do I believe that the fact that they're cohabitating together, sleeping together, and they're not even married with one another, that they're committing sexual immorality and therefore they're in sin? I said, yes.

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Do you believe that's the case? And he said, I would agree with you.

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And I said, okay, so they're continuing to live in this sin.

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This evil spirit goes out, but nothing about their lives has changed.

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They might even truly believe God has done something to bless them and cast out the spirit.

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But if they're living in sin, they're under the influence of the power of Satan, and this spirit will come back and the condition that she will be in when that happens will be worse.

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It'll be, it'll be as if I had never done anything at all.

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It'll be, it'll be worse than if I had never done anything at all.

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I said, what your friends need is the gospel.

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Your friends need to understand that they are sinners and that the judgment of God is upon them.

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Even Satan is having his way with them.

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And the only way that they can be rescued from this torment that they're feeling, even psychologically, it's even affecting them physiologically.

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The spiritual thing is affecting them in real physical ways.

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The only way that they can be healed of this is to repent of their sin and turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and trust in him and they'll be saved.

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They need to move out.

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They can't be living together anymore.

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And you all need to get into a good church because he did tell me early in the conversation that he used to go to church, but he wasn't attending church anymore.

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And so after I shared all this with him, he was amazed by it and said, can I take that Bible with me as though that Bible said something, you know, better than any other Bible.

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And I said, certainly.

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So I handed him the Bible that I was reading from and he took it and I never saw that young man again.

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I don't even know if he was from the community that I lived in.

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It could have been that he was from out of town and was just looking for somebody that was willing to do an exorcism, but nobody was willing to do it.

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But he did come back to the church later.

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It was the day that I wasn't there.

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And he came to my secretary and told her his name and said, you know, I was here several days ago.

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Pastor Gabe helped me with this.

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And I just wanted to let him know what he said was wonderful.

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And it was a tremendous help.

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And I just wanted to thank him.

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And so my secretary relayed that back to me.

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But I don't know.

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I don't really know what that meant.

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And I don't know if the boyfriend and girlfriend ever broke up and they got into a church.

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I pray that was the case, that they truly came to faith in Christ and got into a good church.

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And then Christ, by his mercy and grace, healed them of more than just the affliction they were experiencing at that time, but forgave them of their sin and has guaranteed them a place in his eternal kingdom.

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If that is truly the conviction that he had laid on their hearts.

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But do you understand, do you see the difference between just being a religious person and going through the motions and having a heart that is truly transformed in Christ Jesus to do the will of God? And that's what Jesus is laying out here in Matthew 12, verses 43 to 45.

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The person who does not truly know God, love God, trust God, that his heart is transformed to desire God, is just putting on a religious front and the devil's way with him will eventually be complete.

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So turn from your sin to the Lord Jesus Christ and live.

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Don't just be hearers of the word.

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And so deceive yourselves, as James says in James chapter one, but be doers of the word also.

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Let's finish with prayer.

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Heavenly Father, as we wrap this up, as we finish what we've read in just these three verses in Matthew 12, I pray that it does motivate us to do more than pay lip service to this faith that we have or put on something that impresses others, that might make others say, well, that person is a Christian.

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We're not just trying to look like it on the outside.

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We truly desire Christ and want to love him and obey him and follow him.

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And so may the word be in our hearts and guide our steps, open our eyes, conform our thinking to the mind of God, that we may do your will and desire that your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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Help us continue to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, knowing that it is God who works in us, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

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Philippians 2, 12 and 13.

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It's in the name of Jesus that we pray, amen.