Matthew 12:43-45 Letting the Guest Clean the House

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak takes us through his series on the book of Matthew called

Not Your Average Savior. Let's listen in. Well, good morning,

Recast Church. Welcome. I'm glad that you're here. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor. And I am so grateful for the

Thanksgiving service that we were able to have last week. I hope that it was a blessing to those of you that were able to attend.

And just really always encouraging to see how God is working in people's lives and the things that he's doing amongst us and in us as individuals.

And so, just very thankful for the opportunity that we had to share that gratitude together.

I'm speaking for all of us when I say this statement, and I'm not trying to be presumptuous, but we all need community.

I recognize that you might not be a person who necessarily craves that. You might be a person who kind of likes to go it alone a bit and appreciates isolation to some degree.

You might recharge your batteries by being alone. But the reality of it is all of us need community together.

We need to be in relationships with others regardless of whatever you might feel about that this morning.

You need others in your life to sharpen your walk with Jesus Christ. And being involved in a church is the primary way that God has given to us for us to develop into the people that he desires for us to be.

And so the church is a fundamental thing. It's not a kind of optional thing in the sense of, yeah, well, take it or leave it.

I can just grow on my own spiritually. You really can't. You cannot become the person that God wants you to be without being connected to others in the church.

And we come together each week to hear from God's word. That's one of the primary functions of the church is gathering together in community to hear and sit under the teaching of God's word.

Not to sit under my teaching, not because I've got it all figured out, but ultimately only in as much as I can connect us to God's word is what we do here valuable.

This morning we're going to encounter an illustration that Jesus gave to those who opposed him. And to be quite honest, it isn't a very pleasant

Christmas season type of message. A text about demon possession may seem a little bit more appropriate for October and Halloween than a message for the first week of December.

But remember that my goal in bringing us back to the book of Matthew has been to get our focus and our eyes back on Jesus and make sure that our eyes are taking in Jesus more than just the nativity, more than just the little guy with cute rosy cheeks in the manger, but the guy who grew up to become the savior of the world, the one who went to the cross for us, the one who adamantly and consistently said, you need me to be okay with God.

He said some radical things. And so I want to make sure that our eyes are on Jesus as he is and not on some

Jesus that we've conjured up for a season. Now granted, there is some benefit, there is some blessing in understanding that Jesus came in humility in that nativity scene, right?

The whole humility of coming in a manger and being born in that way, there's something that's powerful there.

But there equally is something to the things that he said to us that are meant to challenge us and challenge our way of thinking and challenge our culture.

See, Jesus came with a consistent message that we need a savior and he is that savior. He wasn't born in Bethlehem so that we'd have something to do in the middle of our wintertime, right?

The months get cold and get dark and there's not as much sunlight so hey, it's really great to have

Christmas right there in the middle of it so that we've got something to put our attention to and our minds to and decorations and all of that fun stuff.

So there was a lot more to it than that. He came to be the savior of the world.

As he grew and the world began to reject him, Jesus Christ doubled down on his message that we do not merely need reform.

We don't merely need to think better thoughts about ourselves. We don't even merely need education.

It's not an issue primarily of education or reform. But what we need is a radical internal heart change that cannot be brought about by any amount of cleaning house.

It can't be brought about by our broom sweeping up our lives and taking care of the insides of our hearts and just making sure that we follow a list of rules and do a bunch of things just the way that God tells us to.

This morning we will read that we have an option facing all of us. We can either clean out our hearts and then leave it open for any guest that might happen to show up.

Clean it up and say anybody who wants to come in can come in. Or we can invite Jesus into the home of our hearts and let our guest clean up our hearts.

That's the option that faces us. But no amount of cleaning before Jesus comes in is going to amount to anything.

And that's what we're going to see in our text this morning. So I want you to turn there if you're not already there. Matthew 12, verses 43 -45.

It's a short text this morning. But if you don't have a Bible on your lap or a means to navigate to a

Bible then Craig is back here and he's got a stack of them. Just raise your hand so that he can see that you need a

Bible and he will bring you one. But we want everybody to have a copy of God's word on your lap so that you can follow along.

And that's for the rest of the message. But also if you don't have a Bible at home, please take that home with you.

We want everybody to have a copy of God's word at your place so you can read it and check it out for yourself.

Matthew 12, verses 43 through 45. Recast this as God's word to us.

This is what He desires for us to say. A crazy passage. A little bit strange and a little bit out there. And yet the very words of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Matthew 12 starting in 43. Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship this morning.

Father we come to a text that could be confusing to us. Maybe even create some fear and some misunderstanding and some misgivings in our own hearts.

Father I pray that you would open our eyes to see what you desire to communicate to each one of us this morning.

To know whether or not we are under the protection of Jesus Christ or whether or not we are just open to whatever.

Whether or not we are a person who's trying to clean up our own lives and our own strength and our own behavior or whether we are welcoming the spirit in us to change us from the inside out.

Father I pray that you would be with this time of worship as we have an opportunity to reflect on the truth that you have loved us through the cross of Jesus Christ.

And I pray that that would be the center point of our worship this morning. His sacrifice and resurrection. His victory over sin and his victory over death on our behalf.

Father I pray that you would accept our singing as much more than just an exercise of our vocal cords but it would be an exercise of our very hearts and souls given over to you.

In Jesus name I pray. Amen. You can go ahead and be seated and I just want to start off by saying thanks to Dave for leading us in worship.

I appreciate the effort and time that he puts into just not only leading us on Sunday morning but he puts a lot of time into selecting the songs as well and the whole team for playing and practicing and all that stuff so grateful for that.

I'd encourage you to get comfortable and take advantage of coffee, juice, or donuts while they are, if there are any left.

And remember that at any time if you need to get up and stretch out in the back or do whatever it takes to kind of keep yourself comfortable and focused on God's word obviously that seat could become a distraction that would keep you from hearing what

God wants you or could keep you from hearing what God wants you to hear and so if that's the case go ahead and get up and stretch out or do what you need to do.

But also I would encourage you to keep your Bibles open to Matthew chapter 12 verses 43 through 45. Again our text and our outline for the morning.

A very short and bizarre passage for December and yet one that Dave kind of alluded to but it's been kind of a weird week for me and I'm not trying to be overly dramatic but in the process of preparing for a message on what

Jesus Christ has to say about the demonic realm it's been a really bizarre week. There's been some strange stuff and I don't take that lightly and I actually believe that there's some forces that would desire for this message to not go out so that's the very nature of this message is one that we all need to hear.

One that I believe that the evil one would desire for us to ignore him completely and just let him go about his merry way doing the things in his life, in our lives that he wants to accomplish and so take that on Matthew 12, 43 through 45.

I would suggest to you that when we talk about evil spirits I probably grabbed your attention just in the reading of that and I think that when we talk about that kind of thing our ears are a little tuned to it.

Just the phrases unclean spirits, evil spirits or demons evokes within all of us

I think some semblance of serious response. Now if it doesn't there's another issue with that altogether and yet I think that there's a curiosity that probably grabs us when we start hearing someone talk about demons.

Now the fact of the matter is some of you have a visceral response when I mention demons but it may be along these lines.

Maybe you feel incredulous. Like the feeling and the thought in the back of your mind might be, Don, hold on a second.

It's 2016 about to turn over to 2017. You don't really believe in evil invisible spirits that possess or influence people, right?

I mean come on. We've got science now. We've got psychology to explain the way that people behave.

We've got behavioralism that will describe the way that people behave and it's all pretty clear that it's by environmental causes and all of that kind of stuff.

Now others of you may have a story here in the room of a friend who heard from a friend about somebody who was possessed or a haunted house or something like that so you're kind of like, well no it's real because I heard from a friend who saw a show or something and some of you have been a little bit too caught up in maybe the horror film genre or even the reality

TV shows that are prevalent on cable now about ghost hunters and that kind of stuff and these electronic devices that can hear into the spiritual realm.

Whatever. So maybe from that you're getting your information. You're getting some knowledge from that.

But the reality of it is I would guess that some of us in the room, maybe even most of us in the room when we talk about the demonic realm, when we talk about evil forces there's a little bit of fear there.

There's a little bit of fear there. Now that can be a healthy fear or that can be an unhealthy fear. But I would guess that there's something that's unhealthy or that there's something that is fearful there when we talk about this.

But before we dive too far into that aspect of the illustration that Jesus gives about the demonic in these three short verses, it would help a lot for me to remind us of the context.

Because the context really helps to drive what the point of this passage is. Many people have read this passage and thought, oh it's just about demons and then left it at that level.

But there's more going on here. Jesus is speaking to a group of people who are confronting him.

This is not an isolated conversation, an isolated teaching, but the teaching is set in a context that matters.

That we wouldn't get down to the meaning of this passage were it not for us going and looking at the broader context.

So the entire scenario, you really have to go back to verse 22 in Matthew chapter 12 in order to really gain the point of what

Jesus is saying here several verses later. Back in verse 22, a demon possessed man was brought to Jesus for exorcism and healing.

Now the text tells us that the man was blind and mute and there seems to be some indication from the text that his infirmity, this man's infirmity was actually caused by spiritual causes.

That there was something about the casting out of the demon that led to his healing. Now Jesus healed that man, he cast the demon out, the man was able to see and speak and that was not lost on the crowds.

This is a guy who couldn't speak, was blind, and then Jesus cast the demon out of him and now he's able to speak and he can see.

And the crowds went, whoa, wait a minute, what power is this? And they immediately went to question the identity of the one able to do these amazing things.

Now somebody who, maybe some of you in the room know somebody who's blind. How many of you, if somebody walks up to a person blind and gives them back their sight, that person who's able to do that gets your attention?

Does that person get your attention? And you begin to kind of question the identity of one who's able to do that and that's exactly what happens to the crowds in this context.

And they immediately jump to what they understand to be the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, that people would be healed by the

Messiah, the Son of David, and they begin to question out loud, is he the one?

Is he the Son of David? Is he the Messiah that was promised in the Old Testament? Well the religious leaders didn't like that.

As religious leaders often, and I'm one of them, so I don't want to be like that kind, but there's a lot of power that can be associated with spiritual influence over people and they recognize that if they were to acknowledge that Jesus is the

Messiah, then his power is on the rise and theirs will by nature decline.

And so they wanted to hold on to the religious power so they immediately accuse, vocally, verbally accuse

Jesus of casting demons out in the power of Satan. They say, well he's casting out demons.

Of course he has authority over demons because he is driven by them and he is one of them so to speak.

So Jesus took it then to those self -righteous Pharisees that we saw a few weeks ago in my message where he accused them of having evil hearts that could be demonstrated by the overflow of their mouth.

He said, it's very clear that your hearts are evil because you're in utter and complete rejection of the one that God has sent.

Well in light of that accusation, then the next week we looked at how they asked him for proof that he was indeed the

Messiah. They said, if you're willing to accept this adulation from the crowd if you're willing to accept them calling you the son of David and calling you the

Messiah, then prove it. Well he's just done a miracle. He's just done an astounding miracle and they said, but just give us one sign.

Give us one more sign and we'll believe. And he didn't completely reject that notion despite saying it's kind of evil their intention that they want another sign when he's already done these things, but he says,

I will give you another sign. The proof will not be some parlor trick. It will not be some just chintzy thing that you can kind of second guess, but instead the proof will be that I will go three nights into the grave and rise again in the same way that Jonah was in the belly of the fish and came back out alive.

He says, I will be buried. I will die, I will be buried, and three days later I will come back to life.

And that was the last text before we get to verse 43. And now in verse 43 this text is a continuation of Jesus chastising these hyper -religious leaders and it's very important that we understand who

Jesus is speaking to about this whole demonic illustration. Who is he talking to about this?

He's not speaking to homeless meth users or even outwardly evil meth producers. He's not speaking to gang members.

He's not speaking to murderers. He's not speaking to people who steal candy from babies.

He is speaking to the who's who of religious leaders of his era. Now I don't think we can,

I don't think I can overstate to you how clean and righteous these people looked to their generation.

Like you pick the most spiritually minded, like I think in our generation you might say Mother Teresa for example.

Imagine that Jesus shows up to Mother Teresa and accuses him, or accuses her of being evil and having an evil heart.

Like that's the kind of thing that everybody would have been scandalized by. They would have been shocked. Are you serious? If those guys are evil what about us, right?

Because I mean they are the cream of the crop. These guys were the best that religion, religion, religion laws, rules, these are the best that religion can ever produce.

They kept laws and rules. Jesus at one point actually illustrates it by saying, gives us an example of the level of their religion as an accusation but it's an ironic accusation because he says, you even tithe on your spices, he says to the

Pharisees. So picture a scenario where they go shopping to buy cinnamon.

So they head over to Meyers, they need some cinnamon for their Sunday morning cinnamon roll tradition. So they go and they buy some cinnamon and then they measure it out on the scale and weigh one -tenth of it and bring that to the offering to the temple.

That's the degree of religious behavior of these guys that he is accusing here in the text.

So it's fundamental and extremely important that we understand who he is giving this illustration to.

They are the cream of the crop. These guys looked righteous, they looked religious, and they looked really, really clean.

And the way he starts in verse 43 probably grabs everyone's attention but indicates very little of where he's going.

So I think in the context that he's speaking it, the people probably were like, I don't really quite know where he's going.

But he has our attention. Since he's just cast a demon out of a man, the Pharisees may think he stopped his criticism of them.

And now he's just going to go on to explain the process of exorcism and they're going to learn something. So maybe they put their learner cap back on and they were like, okay, maybe we can catch him in something that he's going to say wrong here or whatever.

They probably had that attitude. But at the same time they're like, okay, maybe we're off the hook. And he does indeed begin by addressing what happens to an evil spirit when it's cast out of a person.

He says that when a spirit is cast out of a person, it wanders around seeking rest. But if it finds no rest, which rest seems to imply the inhabitation of a person.

It seems like that's the resting point of demons is that they want to be embodied.

But in the case that they can't find someone to embody, it seeks then to return to the person where it used to reside, says

Jesus. Now there's a couple of observations that are important as we remember that Jesus is illustrating here. He is using, that's the first thing,

Jesus is using exorcism as an illustration. We know that by his final statement.

Look down at verse 45 for a second. He concludes with this, so will it be with this evil generation?

So will it be with this evil generation? He's identifying something about the people that are addressing him and the culture around him by using an illustration of demon possession.

So there's something else that's going on here. But secondly, we also need to be mindful that Jesus believes in evil spirits and their power and influence.

That means that we need to look at this text from two different perspectives. We've got a little bit of a challenge in front of us that I'm going to kind of help us walk through and that is that there is indeed the illustration that we have to deal with, but then there's also the meaning behind it.

Context requires that we need to figure out what Jesus is saying to the Pharisees as the highest priority in this text.

That's the context. That's why it exists in our text. That's why this illustration about demon possession is there.

It's because Jesus wants to say something to us about religious hearts. To understand his message to the

Pharisees we need to delve into the illustration and understanding about what he is saying about the demonic realm.

If we only think this passage is about demon possession, then we're going to miss the true force, however, behind Jesus' words. So we need both of these aspects.

We need to understand the illustration in order to get the point. And with that hopefully clear to you, Jesus says some things that should open our eyes to the spiritual realm.

Here are six observations about demons from this short passage. So here are six observations that we see from the way that Jesus offers us this illustration.

First, Jesus takes for granted that the demonic realm is real. There really are demons.

Jesus believes that there really are demons. There truly are fallen angels. Jesus in our text has just encountered one who has been troubling a man by disrupting his life with infirmity.

And Jesus cast the demon out, healing the man. The way he rolled and the way he worked on this planet while Jesus was in flesh, he was here and he worked on casting demons out.

And they interacted with him and they spoke with him through people and there was that ongoing thing. Jesus believes in demons.

Second, demons can own a person. You see that in the text. You saw it earlier.

You would have seen it earlier in the text when the man was possessed. And then you actually see it in other contexts as well.

But in verse 43, it's clear that the demon in this illustration dwelt within a person and had to be kicked out.

Had to be removed. Further, it's implied that the preferred place of a demon is in residence with a person.

And even further in verse 44, this demon in Jesus' illustration calls the person from which he was cast a really scary term.

He calls him, my house. My house, the place that I live.

My house. He identifies some level of ownership over the person in our text. This is where we get the phrase demon possession, by the way.

The word demon possession does not occur in the text of the Bible. It comes from this notion of this demon here in this text calling this person my house.

It's a possessive pronoun. Mine. Even in scripture, it doesn't seem to be a common occurrence.

So you're kind of going, should we be watching for this everywhere we go? No. It does not seem to be in the scope, in the broad history of scripture.

Remember that we see centered around the life of Jesus quite a high level of demonic activity.

But I believe that that is in part because the Messiah was here in flesh. And Satan was indeed churning the engine of his opposition all the more because he knew who the

Messiah was and he was in opposition to him. So I think there was a high level of demonic activity surrounding the life of Jesus.

But that doesn't mean that demonic activity isn't going on around us on a regular basis.

I think they're not as prominent and not as willing to play their deck and show us their hand as often in this time and era.

But the first thing was that Jesus says that demons are real. Second, demons can own a person. Third, demons have a will.

They are sentient beings with a will and desires. Verse 44 actually even records for us in an eerie way a self -conversation that a demon has with himself.

It records the decision -making process. Well, I couldn't find another house and so I'm going to go back to mine, says the demon.

He wanders around in the desert for a while, doesn't find a suitable home, and returns to the place from which he was cast out.

He's shown to be a being with a will and a desire and a plan and able to plan.

Now the fourth thing that I want to state, it might seem obvious, but when you really think about it the concept becomes a bit confusing because we haven't really thought through it very well, most of us, and that is that demons have a negative effect on people who they are influencing.

So demons have a negative effect on people that they are influencing. Now that seems to be a given, but what we have not thought through very well is the way that demons can influence us, the ways that demons can influence people.

They appear in scripture to be able to control speech, to control muscles, to control thoughts, a high level of capability of control that might be pretty, again, scary and is the stuff of like horror films and things like that, right?

Like you kind of look at that and go, oh yeah, I've seen some of that. I remember coming across a movie when

I was a little kid and I wish I hadn't, but there's those things that are out there that we ought not to as Christians be playing around with, right?

Because if you believe that Jesus is true and you believe that the scripture is true, then you believe that the demonic realm is real and if you believe that it's real then you shouldn't be playing around with it, right?

Anybody with me on that? If there's anything that has to do with demonic things, man, I mean movies,

Ouija boards, anything that might even just scratch the surface of that kind of stuff, man, we just have no business playing around with and running with.

But that's a side note that wasn't in my notes. So that's a freebie. But it's really intriguing to me to just think in terms of how do they influence?

I would suggest to you that they are indeed able to control a human at the level of possession like we talk about in the

Bible where a little boy is cast into the fire multiple times and he can't even control his body and Jesus casts the demon out of him and he's normal standing there.

And so there's this kind of stuff that happens. And the most common word for demon activity is not demon possession.

As I mentioned earlier, it's not even that phrase does not occur in Greek. The Greek word is demonized.

That's the word that occurs for the man who is mute and blind earlier in the text that Jesus casts a demon out of him, but he's called demonized or as many translations will translate it, demon oppressed.

The ESV likes to use that because demon possessed is a little bit more driving and something that we like to avoid in our terminology.

We like to think, oh wait, I can't be demon possessed because I've got the Spirit of God alive in me but is that any better than being demon oppressed?

So thinking in terms of a demon having influence, some level of influence in a person's life.

The Greek phrase seems to cover a whole spectrum of levels of influence in the demonic realm over a person.

Jesus implies, think of it in these terms, Jesus implies that Peter was under the influence of Satan just as he merely suggested

Jesus said, I'm going to the cross. I'm going to die. I'm heading back to Jerusalem and they're going to kill me.

And Peter says, no, I won't let that happen. There's no way. I mean, you die? Are you serious? No, we already know that you're the

Christ. You're not going to die. And what does Jesus say to him? Get thee behind me, Satan. Some influence of Satan in the notion to Peter that, oh

Jesus, you've got another path. You can go another way. You don't have to go that way. So the thoughts, the suggestions, the theological inaccuracies that Peter held to are attributed to some level to Satan.

Satan, we know, entered Judas when he betrayed Jesus. There was an indwelling of sorts and an empowering by the evil one when he went and traded those 30 pieces of silver for the

Messiah, his friend Jesus. We also see Satan taking on and indwelling an animal in the form of a serpent or a snake and tempting

Eve in the garden. Able to influence, able to speak into, able to control to varying levels and degrees.

I can't quite parse that out and explain it all in depth and in detail, but I can tell you that there's a variety of different activities and behaviors in the demonic realm to influence people.

And it always results in a negative thing. The fifth thing, according to verse 45, demons vary in level of evil.

Now that might be new to some of you, but it's right here in the text and it's quite clear. They are all malignant.

They all have evil in their drive. They are all in opposition to the glory of God and all would seek to mar and damage the image of God which is us.

They all loathe and hate and despise the things of God and seek to so distrust and untruth and all kinds of brokenness.

They are all evil, but this demon, in our text and in Jesus' illustration, is able to go out and find seven spirits, what does the text say?

More evil than himself. More evil than itself. He's able to go out and find seven who are worse than him so that he can retake his house.

And that leads to the last observation about the demonic realm. The sixth one, we learn that demons will work together.

This demon in the illustration of Jesus enlists the help of other demons in order to retake its home. The demonic realm has some kind of organization, some kind of interaction, some kind of interrelationship.

And I'm not ready to quite go to the detail of the very popular books, This Present Darkness or Piercing the Darkness. Did any of you read those?

Anybody even know what I'm talking about? Really popular in the late 80s, maybe early 90s. Some of you are going,

I wasn't even around then. The books are still there, guys. Frank Peretti wrote those two books.

Intriguing, interesting. I read them when I was in high school. I thought that they were somewhat beneficial, but also equally not the main source for where you want to obtain your understanding about the way that things go in the unseen realm.

It's not the Bible. You want to turn to what God's Word has to say about the things that are going on in the unseen realm.

And this is one of those texts that's hitting on it right here. But I do believe that this illustration that Jesus uses from the spiritual realm does indicate that there is indeed some semblance of or level of collaboration in the demonic realm.

And so all of these components, all six of these components of this illustration conclude that a man who is possessed by a demon has a demon cast out.

And when the demon comes out, he cleans up his life, he gets it in order, he does good, and cleans up his act.

That's what this guy does. It says he sweeps up his heart, he cleans it all out, he works hard. He's like, okay,

I finally got past these demons, I finally got past this issue, and now I'm just going to clean up my life and just really, maybe

I'll start tithing on my cinnamon. Maybe I'll start walking little old ladies across the street. Maybe I'll start volunteering at church.

Maybe I'll start giving more to charity. I'll just go and rake leaves for shut -ins.

I'll do just really nice and good things. I'll clean up my heart. I'll take care of this.

Because the demon is gone now. And a lot of us might have the thought that getting rid of evil in our lives is the battle.

Getting rid of evil in your life isn't the battle. Getting righteousness in your life is the battle.

Getting the presence of good, not the absence of evil. Nobody is going to get to heaven on the basis of the absence of evil in your life.

You're only going to get to heaven by the presence of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. That's the only way you're going to get there.

And so this cleaning process begins. And I think many of us can relate to the cleaning process of this man.

The problem, you see it in the text. He cleans up his house so that more guests can come over.

And that demon returns with seven friends. And there's this ominous conclusion in verse 45.

The last state of that person is worse than the first.

Jesus is, bear with me for a second, but he's literally saying it. He says it, just not directly.

But he's kind of saying, better one demon than eight. Okay? Better one demon than eight.

This guy is bad off now. Okay? He had this demon cast out, cleaned up his act, eight now, and he is in a world of hurt.

But I don't believe Jesus leaves it there. There is no question that there is something even better.

One demon, eight demon, those are not your choices. It's not the extent of your choices. There's something so much better than any of that.

You see, all of this illustration that Jesus has been telling the Pharisees is an indictment on them and their generation.

He concludes with that in verse 45. You get down there and you finally realize, this has something to do with his generation. This has something to do with the culture around him.

This has something to do with these religious leaders that he's speaking this to. You see, way back and earlier in this verse, when

I set the context, they were rejecting the one who has the power to remove demons. They watched it with their eyes and they outright rejected him.

They believe they're clean. They've all swept up their own lives and they've done good things to make their life better.

Maybe even at the extent of serving others around them and looking really good. I believe that this generation, if you would ask someone standing, some random person in the crowd, who's the most likely to get to heaven here in this crowd, they would have pointed to the

Pharisees. I said, those guys, man. Look at them. Look at all that they do for God. Look at all that they do for others.

Look at all the service that they render in teaching others how to strictly follow

God. These guys are just bulwarks of the faith. According to Jesus, they are ripe for the retaking by evil forces.

That generation tried to clean up their act. They swept ferociously. They crossed their T's. They dotted their I's in trying to make themselves look clean.

But their problem was not in their inability or their ability to cast stuff out, but their problem was one of rejecting the good who wanted to come in.

See the difference? It wasn't an issue about casting out. So many of us think, if I could just get this out of my life, then

I'd be okay. If I could just get this out of my life. But what about getting the one in your life who can take care of that issue or that problem that you're facing?

What about grabbing ahold of Him and saying, I don't want to let go until you bless me, until you give me the things that my soul needs for healing and wholeness?

How does one truly protect their heart from evil? It's a fundamental question that's being asked in this text.

How are you going to protect your heart from evil? Because the fact of the matter is, Jesus is saying there are demons. They want to overcome you.

They want to control you. A real thing, a real scenario in real life.

And that can be a terrifying thing. The only way we can protect our hearts from evil is by letting the good one in.

By rejecting, I mean, if we reject the good one and instead try to fix the spiritual problems of our lives on our own, we're only inviting more trouble.

We're only inviting more trouble. It's like, you could ask me, what's the damage? What's the problem in just doing some good things for my sake?

Because I feel better when I serve at the food bank. I feel better when I give. I feel better when

I do these things. And I would suggest to you, hey, that's not where to start. That's not the place to start. Those are good things in society.

Those are good things for civil culture and for kindness to others and things like that. But if it's just cleaning up your own heart,

Jesus is saying, you're in danger. You're in a dangerous position if that's the amount of your spiritual life, if that's the extent of it right now.

Self -improvement projects can only take us so far. I think many of us in the room have experienced that. We've been around long enough that we've tried to scrub and clean and cast off evil from us.

But it seems like it returns time and time again. Does anybody relate to that? Anybody know what I'm talking about?

That effort and that time? I refer to it sometimes as the spiritual whack -a -mole game. Any of you ever play that game?

Annoying game, okay? But at least you can take your stress out on those things, right? But one pops up, you bang that one.

Another one pops up somewhere else, you bang that one. A never -ending process. You can just keep feeding quarters in that machine and they will just keep coming up time and time again, right?

And just about the time that you feel like you're obtaining victory in one area of your life, something else crops up or maybe that same issue.

Maybe you got self -control in one area of your life that you're struggling with and you start beating that one and that one's down.

And then all of a sudden self -control with food comes up and you're trying to hit that one. And it's self -control in your work or your time or something.

It can be the same issue coming up time and time again. And sometimes, just when we think we're obtaining victory, sometimes that's the most dangerous point, right?

Like at the point when I'm like, I got this. I got this. Watch out, right? Sometimes that's when it comes back with increased ferocity in your life.

Now, I want to be careful that I don't limit the illustration that Jesus is giving, merely taking the demons and watering them down to the point where I'm just talking about our issues or our struggles or something like that.

Because Jesus is speaking in our text specifically about demons. He's not talking just merely about the difficult problems that you face or the sins that entangle you or the things that hold onto your life.

Certainly, I want to clarify that I believe that some of that is demonically driven. I believe that some of us in this room have had demons give us thoughts this week.

There have been images that have been placed in your mind. There have been thoughts. There have been words on the tip of your tongue. There have been harsh replies and responses that have indeed, and you don't get to give, you don't get to pawn that off and go, the devil made me do it, right?

Because you're in control of your tongue. But I tell you what, I believe that demons are indeed influencing us.

They are indeed putting enticement in front of us and they seek our demise, our destruction.

They seek opportunities to push us away from God. I've had

He's talking about real demons here. He's not just talking about our spiritual struggles and I've heard many Christians ask the question, and I think some of you in this room have probably asked this question before.

Christians can't be possessed, right? They can't be. Can they? Or we don't believe that demons can really own us, right?

And whenever anybody has personally asked me that question, it's always asked with a nervous pseudo -confidence.

Do you know what I'm talking about? I think probably we've had that before, like, right? Like they can't, right?

Isn't that what we believe? I mean, we're a church that believes that they can't possess us, right? Like there's going to be some shelter or some sanctuary in my answer.

No, of course not. They can't do anything to you. You're skating above. And I believe that that's a lie that Satan wants to perpetuate.

He wants you to believe that you can never have influence from the demonic realm. He wants you to ignore it. He wants you to be scientific in your approach to the world.

He wants you to think in terms of materialism. It's just the world around you, man. That's all that it is.

There's no spiritual forces behind this. There's nothing going on behind the scenes. Ignore the man behind the curtain, right?

Ignore what's going on back there. It's all just this upfront stuff. Let me suggest to you that we ought to not concern ourselves so narrowly with the question, can

I be possessed? Our questions often nitpick the distinction between possession and oppression as if I'll take this one, not this one.

And I don't know about you. I don't want either one, right? Do you want one of those? I mean, is it a pick? As long as I can't be possessed,

I'm all good because I don't want my head spinning around in a projectile vomit or whatever. Some of you have seen the movies.

It's terrible. It's terrible. And you shouldn't see the movies.

But it seems to me that many Christians imply that they would be okay living under demonic oppression as long as they couldn't be possessed.

But we instead ought to concern ourselves with the way this entire interaction began in the text.

The Pharisees rejected the one who wanted to come into their hearts and change them from the inside out. They rejected the one who offers his indwelling spirit that will take up residence within a person and clean them from the inside out.

As we sang earlier, they rejected the one who was soon going to go to the cross for their sins and offer them a way to victory over sin, death, and the forces of evil.

They rejected him. What is the source of any hope against such a fearful reality as this?

If we genuinely believe this, I believe you will have some semblance of fear. You will have some level of fear if you're believing this.

If you don't find it fearful, then you have another issue that I would love to talk with you about. But consider whether or not you actually are believing the words of Scripture here.

Jesus is telling us there are invisible evil beings seeking to own and control people.

They want to influence anyone toward that they can with evil and temptations.

And you cannot protect yourself by cleaning up your own life. And remember, the only reason that Jesus is consigning this generation to that kind of fate of increasing demonic influence is that they have rejected him and his spirit.

They've rejected him and his spirit. So how does one come out from under the fear of demonic oppression and demonic influence?

How can you walk out of this room having heard this message with some semblance of confidence and some semblance of hope and even a semblance of joy?

Let me suggest to you four things for your concern, for your questions of your own heart, and for consideration of what is going on in you this morning.

Four simple things. I don't believe that this is like a silver bullet, like in the sense of, if you follow this pattern, then you can be free of demons.

It is just the way that God has given us for victory. This is the victory that is given to us through the word of God.

It is these four words, believe, trust, work, and rest.

Believe, trust, work, and rest. In that order.

The order matters. Let me talk about believing for just a moment. Believing is to agree with the written word of God.

To agree that it means what it says and that it is indeed true and meaningful to you and your life.

Agree with the word of God regarding its testimony of Jesus Christ. Start there. If you're here in this room and you're new and you're trying to figure things out, start with Christ.

Read the gospels. Read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Read to know Him, to see how He has revealed

Himself, and believe it. He is the Savior. He is the victor over the forces of darkness.

He is the source of forgiveness. He is the only mediator between God and man. He is the source of hope.

He is the rightful king. He is the acceptable sacrifice that was offered to God to atone for our sins.

That is our breach of relationship with God. Believing these things is the start of a relationship with God, but there are a couple of more steps on the journey to overcoming evil in your life.

Start with belief. Start with reading. How can you believe something you haven't read? How can you believe something you don't even know about?

Getting into this word is primary. It's fundamental to our start in a relationship with God.

Believing that this is indeed true in its testimony. I want to point out belief primarily happens where?

Point to the part of your body where belief happens. Up here. More often than not, it's a mental thing.

You can believe that these things are true. I'm convinced that there are people who believe that Jesus died on the cross that are not going to go to heaven.

It's not just belief that gets us there, but the second word is trust it. Trust it.

Trust happens here. Belief, I can believe all kinds of things. I believe that that's true, but what's it got to do with me?

What does it have to do with me? And that's where trust comes in. Ask Jesus to save you and walk in ongoing belief that he is your only hope and salvation.

It is not your trust that saves you. Just like it's not opening the present on Christmas morning that bought and purchased that gift for you.

That would be nonsensical, right? Somebody gives you a gift and you go, I did this. I did this myself. Look, I opened the present.

I'm the one who has obtained this. No, somebody else took the time to go to the store, spent of their resources, spent their time wrapping it and brought it and put it under your tree.

You don't get credit for opening it like, oh wow, good job. You bought yourself a great gift there. Somebody else has done that for you.

So you're not gaining credit. You're not earning. Trusting is not working for it. Faith is like the open -handed reception of a gift on Christmas morning.

Just trust. Are you putting your trust in Jesus Christ for your victory?

And that's the question. Are you putting your trust in Jesus Christ? And I'm not just talking about a starting faith that begins your relationship with Jesus Christ.

That's fundamental. That's important that you actually bow your knee at some point before God and say, I believe what

Jesus did and I put my trust in him for salvation. But that's not the end of it. That's not even the end of trust.

Many people answer the question, do you trust Jesus as your Savior with a statement like, yes, I trusted

Jesus as my Savior when I was eight years old at summer camp or with my parents in my bedroom or wherever it might have been.

And the fact of the matter is, the real question is, are you trusting in Jesus?

You see, trusting Jesus is a lifelong exercise of staying connected with him through prayer and through devotion, through listening to him by reading his word.

Trusting Jesus is seen by a relationship with him that starts with the life of the Spirit being lived out in our hearts as he cleans us out room by room.

Believe, then trust, and the third is work. I don't talk about work a whole lot up here, but I want to tell you something that modifies work in my thoughts as I see it in Scripture and I want you to take this on and I want you to wrestle with it.

Some of you are not going to like it when I say this exception or this modification to the word work and it is simply this, work like it isn't up to you.

Work like it isn't up to you. I've heard preachers, I've sat under teachers who have told me, work like it's all up to you.

But let me just tell you, if that's all the resources that I tap into is what this brain can accomplish, what these hands can do, what this heart can muster regarding love, boy, my family's in trouble, my life is in trouble, this church is in trouble.

If I work like it's up to me, we're all toast. If all of you work like it's up to you, you're toast.

Because guess what? You have, if you are in Christ, the power of the Spirit alive in you. The power of Almighty God to overcome sin.

The power of Almighty God to restore and heal relationships. To speak the life -giving words to others.

You have power. Don't work like it's up to you. Work like the Spirit of God is alive in you.

You have the infinite God on your team, on your side, in you.

He wants to live through you. Yield to Him. Work, but work like it isn't all up to you.

Work like God is alive. Reckon yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ.

Don't quench the Spirit. Work to obey the Spirit as He brings conviction from the Bible. Confess sins

He brings to your mind by His grace. You ask Him to convict you, He will. Have you had that experience?

Ask Him to point to sin in your life and you'll get a litany. He will let you know what you're doing.

Obey Him as He gently but firmly leads you deeper into love and care for others. So it's believe, trust, work like it isn't up to you, and lastly, in your fight against evil is this very strange encouragement.

Rest. Rest. Even in your work, rest fully in the work that Jesus Christ has done for you on the cross.

Never for a moment give in to the notion that your self improvement efforts, your efforts to sweep your heart clean are getting you closer to heaven.

Jesus paid it all because He loves you. He's granted it to you.

A free gift. And I would suggest to you that a person who finds no rest and no peace in their walk with God, maybe you're sitting here right now and you're going,

I've got no peace. I've got no rest. I've got no sense of God's love over me. I don't find joy in my life.

I don't find joy in my walk with God. Anybody in that state,

I encourage you this morning to come back to the gospel. Come back to this believe, then trust, then work, and in that you'll find rest.

I believe that the same thing that drove the Pharisees to clean and sweep their own hearts is still alive and well today. Self -righteous religion is just as alive today as it was back then, and I believe that it's just as demonically fueled now as it was then.

And I believe that some of you in this room have a sense of fear surrounding the text that we've looked at. You're feeling it inside.

You're feeling a level of fear. We talked about demons. We talked about possession. We talked about oppression. We talked about their desire and their hunger for us.

Some of it maybe in this room is a productive and beneficial fear because you are not under the protection of the

Son of God. Then it's a beneficial fear that you are fearful of this. Maybe you're here and you've not asked

Jesus Christ to forgive you. You have not believed and trusted. And if you're in that category this morning, then

I would encourage you to please take a moment to come up and talk with me after the service. I'm actually going to stay up front this morning.

I'm going to hang around up here. If that's you, I'd encourage you to take that bold step. I know that it's awkward.

I know it's uncomfortable. Someone might see me. Take a step and come up and let me know if that's you this morning.

If you want to come under the protection of the King and Savior. Some of you have a fear that's ironically counter to the

Gospel. Some of you are in with Christ and you still have fear. You see, the accuser specializes in making

God's children fearful. And the risk of this message this morning is that you could have an unhealthy fear that moves you to go out in your own strength and try to sweep harder and try to clean better.

Try to really scrub up and spit shine every surface of your heart. And that is not the pathway of protection.

It ended quite poorly for the man in the story Jesus told, right? So let me leave all of you again with the four steps that I believe applies to believer and unbeliever alike when it comes to the power to live a life of protection.

And it is to believe, to trust, to work as if it isn't up to you, and rest.

The beauty of ending each service with communion is that we come to a place of our own helplessness when we step up to this table.

We do not come to the table with self -confidence. As a matter of fact, I would suggest to you that you cannot rightly understand what these tables represent and come with self -confidence.

Those are exclusive concepts that you would step to the table with a self -righteous, haughty heart of,

I've cleaned myself up enough. I sat here in my seat as Don was talking and I confessed all my sin and I got my heart right so now

I'm worthy of that table. If you think you're worthy of that sacrifice of Jesus Christ, please skip it.

Please just remain in your seat and just do this. Believe, trust, work, and rest.

Get back to that place where you recognize it's not you. You can't come there with self -confidence.

It's dangerous for you to come with self -confidence. We take the cracker to remember that Jesus gave his body to be broken on our behalf.

We didn't do that. He did it for us. We take the cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed for us.

He willingly chose to be the sacrifice for you and me because of his great love. So if you've been saved by the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, then come to the table and remember that sacrifice for all of us and for you specifically.

Come and remember that he alone provides forgiveness. He alone provides victory. He alone is the shelter from the forces of evil.

He alone is the pathway to hope, peace, and a meaningful, joyful week ahead of each one of us.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you for the conviction of your word as I have been guilty at times of just really, just a self -improvement project in my life of trying to make myself better and trying to clean it up so that, in honesty, some of my motivation to look good for others, to look good on the outside, and to make sure that others respect me or see me as holy or see me as a spiritual leader.

Father, I pray that if there's anybody in this room who has not come to a saving, protected relationship through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, you give them boldness to come and talk with me.

And then for believers who are here who maybe have a conviction that they're relying too much on their own strength.

They've been trying to fix it themselves and they've got issues in their lives and they need help. Father, I pray that you would help them in boldness to go seek that help that they need and to, in their hearts, go back to believing the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Trusting that he indeed loves them and died for them. And then working out of the power that is supplied by your amazing and glorious and almighty spirit that dwells within us.

And then, Father, I pray, and I know that there are some in this room who just need that final step of rest.

They're just frazzled. They're frenzied. And it shows in their outward life. It shows in the dizziness of just not even having time to sit down with their family and eat.

It shows in the stress and the strain. The way they drive their car. The way they talk with coworkers. The way they're snippy with their spouse and their kids.

And I pray that you would give rest to those who need to rest in you today.