Michael Shultz- Spirit Empowered Unity

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It is my pleasure to have been given the opportunity to speak today, and as he mentioned,

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I was not originally intended to speak in this capacity, so through a series of either fortunate or unfortunate events, however this goes, you've got me now.

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But I was assigned the topic that Brother Hull was meant to speak to, which was spirit -empowered unity, and so in light of that,

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I want to invite you to open your Bibles to the Gospel of Matthew, the New Testament Gospel of Matthew.

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My endeavor with every sermon is always two -fold. First of all, I always want to rightly expound on the text.

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I want people to know what it says. If I stand up here and talk and you don't know what it says,

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I wasted all of our time. So I'm always endeavoring to tell you what it says, but secondly,

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I also want it to be applicable and meaningful to the people to whom I preach it. If you know what it said 2 ,000 years ago, but you have no idea what it means for you, that was also a waste of time.

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So I always want to tell what it says, what it means, and then how it applies to you, and in the mindset of spirit -empowered unity,

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I want to approach this mindful of the fact that the people here, the vast majority of you are almost certainly professing

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Christians already, and many of you are already engaged in the ministry or aspiring to the ministry, so I'm going to approach this from the perspective of someone who is seeing pitfalls that we in the

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Christian community, and particularly in the ministry, may be prone to fall into in the coming days.

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And so in Matthew chapter 12, we're going to be covering a very short passage. It's going to be the parable that you'll find in verses 43 through 45.

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Matthew 12, 43 through 45. Very short parable. It's also found in Luke 11.

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It's exactly verbatim over there, with the exception of Jesus' closing remarks. Not one of his more famous parables.

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This one is not going to be written on any teenage girl's binder at school. This one is not as popular as some of his other ones, but it's very important.

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So for our purposes today, I want to look at it because it describes to us what happens when people try to have unity and try to have power without the

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Holy Spirit. This is what happens. The parable we're about to read is what happens when you try to do good things, when you try to do good works, when you try to be philanthropic and charitable and good and holy and righteous without the

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Holy Spirit. This is what happens. So we're going to see three things in as many verses.

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We're first of all going to see unclean spirits removed. That's a good thing. Unclean spirits removed.

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But then we will see unkept souls refreshed. It is refreshed, but it's unkept.

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And finally, we will see an unspiritual state ruinous. An unspiritual state is a ruinous state to be in.

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So hopefully you've had time to find your place in Matthew 12, looking at verses 43 through 45. I want to invite you to stand with me one last time in honor and reverence for the reading of the word of God.

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As we read together, Matthew chapter 12, verses 43 through 45.

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The word of God says, when the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none.

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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 the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there.

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And the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also it will be with this evil generation.

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You can be seated as we pray. Our God in heaven, you are three in one without division.

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And we pray to you, our father, by access granted us by your son, through the advocacy of your

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Holy Spirit. And today as we seek to most supremely worship you and learn about you, we pray that you would reciprocate our efforts to bless you with our worship by blessing us for worshiping you.

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We pray that you teach us your ways, oh Lord, and guide us into all truth. Help us to know you better and more fully, and do this all for our good and your glory.

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For it's in Christ's name we pray, amen. This parable, again, is a very short one because it is only a very small part, indeed a conclusion to a much longer conversation that's being had here in Matthew 12.

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The conversation that Jesus is having begins back in verse 22. He's having a lengthy conversation with a group of Pharisees because he has just performed an exorcism.

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He performs an exorcism on a man who was possessed by an unclean spirit, or perhaps a series of them, and these unclean spirits caused him to be both blind and mute.

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And in light of the exorcism that he performs, the Pharisees accused Jesus of being in a pact with the devil.

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They say, you are working these miracles by the power of Satan. You've worked out a deal with the devil such that he allows you to exercise his demons.

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And Jesus is incredulous at this, this unbelievable accusation, perhaps the unforgivable sin.

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And so he responds by taking the opportunity to teach them that this man possessed by these unclean spirits was a perfect embodiment of exactly what they were.

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He's possessed by the demonic, the unclean, and because of that, he's blind. He can't see the son of God right in front of him.

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And he's mute. He can't tell other people of the glory of God. And that's what they were.

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Possessed by unclean and demonic spirits, blind to the son of God right in front of them. Not telling people the glory and the gospel of God.

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That's what they were. But they didn't take his reprimanding. They were unwilling to recognize the problem that they had.

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And so Jesus says that he has come to remedy this and that in his ministry, he has been setting all the things that they've been doing wrong right.

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He's been correcting their false teaching, their false interpretations of the law, their false applications of the

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Bible. He's been exercising all the unclean spirits that were running amok in their area.

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And most explicitly, you see it in his cleansing the temple. But they don't listen.

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They say, give us more signs. And he says, you'll get another sign. You'll get the sign of Jonah.

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That is that a man believed dead will come back after three days. And if you don't believe that sign, you'll be left without excuse.

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And it's in that moment that he gives them this short parable about the unclean spirit. He's describing what's about to happen to them.

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He's describing that in this evil generation, that's what he calls them in verse 45.

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We know he's talking about them because back in verse 39, he described them as the evil generation.

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He says, this is what will happen to this evil generation. What he just described is what will happen to them.

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And although we know he's specifically describing them, that that was the direct application of what he was talking about.

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There is a timeless lesson to be learned in this parable because it is not just a parable.

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It's also a prophecy, but it's not just a direct prophecy. It is a lesson that is meant to be taken timelessly for all of God's people.

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That this is what will happen when you have reformation and restoration without regeneration.

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When you fix it, but you don't fill it. Here's what will happen to you.

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When you have investment without indwelling, this is what will happen. And so he describes the person as having an unclean spirit.

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The unclean spirit has gone out of them. It's a weird way to begin the story.

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It's not where we usually start the story. But you had a man who had an unclean spirit and the unclean spirit has gone out of him.

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The Greek term for gone out here is excelfe. It's an odd word. It means to leave under your own volition.

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Evidently the spirit in this parable has chosen to leave. Now that's the denotation of the word.

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That's the definition. In the context, the connotation, it's something more like an exorcism.

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Because earlier they said Jesus was casting out demons, ekbale, to throw out. So the connotation is something along the lines of throwing out demons.

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The denotation is something like they're leaving of their own volition. So either case, whether the demon has voluntarily left or been evicted, what

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Jesus is saying is there was a person with an unclean spirit and it's gone for the moment. Whether it left or has been exorcised, this person had an unclean spirit and it's gone.

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And in the circumstances of that, the departure of an unclean spirit, this divisive, evil, wicked, harmful, unclean spirit is gone.

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And we would say, Hallelujah! This is a hallelujah, praise God moment, celebrate.

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Bring out the tambourines and the flags, Pentecostals. Somebody get us something. This is a hallelujah moment.

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Don't tell the Baptists back home I said that. This is a moment to celebrate.

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But Jesus doesn't focus on the celebration. He doesn't direct his attention to the man out of whom the spirit has been taken.

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He directs our attention to the unclean spirit. He wants us to remember that unclean spirit.

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Don't forget that thing. Keep your eye on that thing. Just because it's been cast out doesn't mean it's gone.

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The unclean spirit, he says, passes through waterless places. We could call it a desert.

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It's an appropriate place for a demon, a desert. It's where Jesus battles with Satan is out in the desert.

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But he says he passes through waterless places. The mindset is probably something along the lines of what we find in Psalm 23.

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He leads me beside still waters which restores my soul. This unclean spirit is looking for something to refresh itself, looking for something to restore and rejuvenate itself, to give it some joy and some pleasure.

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And so the question becomes, what does an unclean spirit do for fun? And what unclean spirits do for fun is evil things.

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That's what they do for fun. Proverbs 4, 14 through 17 says, Do not enter the path of the wicked.

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Do not walk in the way of the evil. Avoid it. Do not go on it. Turn away from it. Pass on from it.

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For they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong. They are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble.

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For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence. Unclean spirits take nothing but joy in making other people stumble.

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That's what they get pleasure in. That's what restores them. That's what refreshes them. And that's what this unclean spirit is hunting.

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I want to make someone stumble. I want to cause division and strife. That's what

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I want more than anything. That's what would refresh me. But it finds none.

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Wanders about in waterless places seeking rest, but finds none.

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Wanders about. Quite literally, it becomes restless, looking for a person that it can torment.

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You think of a child. I've got two little children, a four -year -old and a one -year -old, and I can see them when they get restless. They start getting fidgety, you know, and you're waiting for them to say something or shout something or bump their head because they're not sitting still, and then you've got to deal with this now.

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They get restless. You've got to give them something, and that's what this demon is. He's restless.

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He's looking for anything. I have to torment something. I have to cause someone to stumble.

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I have to cause division. I have to cause strife. Now, ladies and gentlemen, we are living in an age that I don't think anyone really can disagree is an age of spiritual awakening.

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We really are. Though for many generations we have had so -called revivals,

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I don't know that anyone would be willing to debate that for many generations the Christian church has been asleep. We have watched as the church gradually degraded away from the true

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Christian faith, guided in many ways by cunning spirits that whispered in the ears of evangelists and Christians for many years now, accept

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Jesus, but deny the Bible. Pray this prayer and never pray again.

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These cunning spirits, they sound almost Christian. They sound almost orthodox.

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They're so close, and we have watched as the car gradually swerved onto the shoulder of the orthodox

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Christian road because the drivers were asleep, but we're now living in a generation of Christians who are waking up.

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It seems as though this cunning spirit, which has for so many years guided us off the road has been identified.

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And in many places it has either left or been evicted. We're living in an age of revival or awakening.

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We're returning to historical Christianity and spiritual dependence and biblical worship and Christian worldviews.

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And you have families that are again doing family worship and children being catechized. Where has this been for generations?

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We're waking up. We are waking up and the spirit that seemed to have beleaguered and deceived our generations long gone by seems to at this moment, even for the briefest moment to be wandering about in waterless places, seeking rest, but finding none.

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Beyond even the generation, beyond the churches, we see a group of Christian individuals who are becoming deadly serious about Christianity.

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They're taking up systematic theology and seeking out seminary educations and reading theological literature and listening to Christian podcasts, seeking out godly churches where they can get invested and involved.

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They're living in the same places that their families have lived for a long time, but somehow, even though their families have lived under the influence of an unclean spirit for a long time that deceived them, they are now waking up and living for Christ.

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And this is a hallelujah moment. We are praising God for what we're seeing.

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We praise God. The unclean spirit is removed for the briefest of moments.

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But take note that what happens to this refreshed soul when it is unkept verse 44, the unclean spirit says,

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I will return to my house from which I came. Now, when you read this in the

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Greek, the emphasis falls squarely on the words, my house, such that it's as though the unclean spirit says,

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I will go back to my house. Even though he has been temporarily evicted or left under his own prerogative, he is maintaining.

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That's my house. I'll go back there. And when he returns, he finds it empty, swept and put in order.

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I want to look at these three descriptors for a few moments. Let me look first at the fact that the house is swept.

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Those are Greek words. It literally does mean to sweep with a broom, but the root of the word means something along the lines of pristine it's spotless.

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It's made impeccably clean. No problems can be found in it whatsoever.

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That's how the unclean spirit finds his house is as though he walks in and he goes, Holy cow, somebody has cleaned my house.

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Somebody made this place spotless. It's perfect in here. Wow. This is wonderful.

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Puts it in order. Greek word, Kekos Memnon used 10 times in the new Testament, seven of them.

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It's translated adorned. The house isn't just set in order. It's decorated. It's been remodeled.

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It's been fixed up. All the lines are now square and straight. The windows have been washed and the carpets have been vacuumed and the toilets have been scrubbed and all the walls have been painted.

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Everything's fixed up now. Oh, how wonderful this demon must have thought.

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Thank God somebody came in and fixed this demon's house. How wonderful it's cleaned up.

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You must imagine that the house of an unclean spirit would be a ramshackle house, wouldn't it be the kind of house you'd drive by and it's falling in on itself.

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And you think, man, can somebody just come with a bulldozer and knock that thing over? Hope nobody's living in there. It'll fall in on them any day now.

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But now not only is it cleaned from the mess that was inside, it's been redecorated and rejuvenated and reinvigorated.

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Oh, how wonderful the demon must have thought. I was going to have to shut down the whole operation before the house was about to fall in.

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My work here was almost done, but somebody has come in and fixed the place up. I can work and operate here for years to come and do so happily.

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Why was it that the demon could be so happy that this house was swept and put in order?

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It's because of the first thing that he noticed about it. It was empty. It's empty.

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No inhabitant, vacant. It's as though the demon comes by one day and he notices there's no car in the driveway.

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He pulls in and he looks in the windows and he sees all the lights are on, but nobody's home. He goes inside and he's looking room to room and there's no clothes in the closet.

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I can't believe nobody lives here. This house is incredible.

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This is fantastic. My leaving or perhaps even being evicted was the best thing to ever happen to me.

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This is phenomenal. And you see, this is the lesson that the

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Pharisees didn't learn that in Christ's time, when people were flocking to Jerusalem and Israel, when

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Jesus was born, men came from the East. When he died, you'll read it in the gospel of John, right before he dies, men come from the

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West. They come to talk to Philip and Andrew, and then they talk to Jesus. Men were coming from all over men and women alike, flocking to Jerusalem, flocking to Israel because the sick were being healed and the blind were seeing and the mute were speaking and the lame were walking and the dead were living and Christ himself told them,

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I'm binding all the demons. I'm binding the strong man. I'm cleansing this place. But they failed to believe.

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And when Christ left, they failed to believe the sign of Jonah and they rejected the work of the Holy Spirit.

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So what does Jesus say in Matthew 23 verses 37 and 38? Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem who kills the prophets and stones those who were sent to her.

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How often I would have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling.

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And listen to how he ends the statement. Look now, your house is left to you.

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Desolate. Greek Eramos, literally abandoned, empty.

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This is what he's talking about. I came to clean it all up for you. All the paganism that you had worked in and your false interpretation and application of the law and the word of God.

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I cleansed the temple for you, literally. But when I leave, your house will be left empty.

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And in our day, we must see the danger of following in their footsteps. We look at generations of Christians bygone and we say,

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Oh, they were so silly in so many ways. So foolish, so silly.

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They were, they were asleep at the wheel. They never studied. They never systematized. They never touched the original languages.

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They never exposited. So we come in and we sweep up the place. Rid this house of the second commandment violations.

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We shout and read this house of these American flags on veterans day and 4th of July. No more idolatry in this house.

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We'll sweep the place up. And then we set it in order. We love a good liturgy.

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Give me an orderly service. No more of these topical sermons, no more of this worldly music set in an order.

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But ladies and gentlemen, until the Holy spirit of God comes into our churches and abides there, we have simply swept and put in order an empty house.

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We have decorated it. And in the end we will leave it by handing it over to the next legion of demons that are far worse than the ones we battled before.

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Jesus told the Pharisees, I've bound the strong man. But as soon as he left, the strong man came right back.

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The same is true in our lives, not just in our churches or generations. You can clean up your life all you want.

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Sweep yourself clean of addictions and defilements. Set your life in order. Begin attending church and regularly praying and reading the

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Bible. But unless the Holy spirit of God fills you, you are sweeping and decorating an empty house prepared for the next legion of demons and a legion.

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It will be, you see in verse 45, this elated spirit, he finds this house empty, swept and put in order.

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And it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself. And they enter and dwell there.

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And the last state of the person is worse than the first. This alone spirit we only learn now was not even the worst spirit on the market.

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There's far worse than him. And they're doing what? They're out wandering around looking for someone to torment as well.

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Waiting for just such an opportunity. Having found this empty house swept and put in order.

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He goes out and he finds seven worse than himself. Seven significantly. Seven, the number of completion or perfection.

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This person is not just plagued by evil as he was before. He is now completely evil. He's consumed by evil.

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Everything in him is evil. This is precisely what happened to Israel in the era following Christ's crucifixion.

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They had previously been plagued and polluted by paganism or pharisaic applications and interpretations of God's law.

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But they were still at least worshiping the one true God and reading the word of God. But when Jesus left, 1

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John 2 23 says, no one who denies the son has the father. When you reject the son, you reject the father.

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And so all of the sacrifices and rituals and laws that they were keeping were no longer the commandments of God, but a series of pagan practices of people worshiping a false

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God that they just called Yahweh. It's the same thing that they did when they came out of the

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Exodus. They dance around a golden calf. This is the God that brought us out of Egypt.

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You can call him Yahweh all you want, but you're not worshiping God. They are completely wicked.

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You'll see this also in history. Immediately after the departure of Christ, the Jews, they leave the

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Old Testament and they begin developing new texts like the Mishnah. They are no longer reliant on the word of God and they are no longer the people of God.

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They've denied the son and denied the father. These eight evil spirits now enter and dwell there.

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Dwell, a Greek word that literally describes travelers that are moving and suddenly they stop moving and live one place.

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That's how we know these seven spirits have been wandering, waiting just for such an occasion. And Jesus pronounces over this evil generation that this is what's about to happen to them.

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And your last state will be worse than your first. This is about to happen to you. But I greatly fear that we are on the road to that being our generation as well.

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I'm taken by the fact that in 2 Peter 2, Peter references this parable. It's the only other time that you get a reference to this parable in the

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Bible. Peter says that those who go through this experience are like Balaam.

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If you're familiar with the story of Balaam in the Old Testament, he was a prophet, fancied himself a prophet of God and indeed did prophesy

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God's word, but never knew God. Peter says that's what we're like.

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This experience of the unclean spirit being taken out, the house being swept and put in order but left empty, and the demons coming back and the last end being worse than the first.

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The people that go through that, it wasn't just the Israelites after Christ departed. It's a lot of people.

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And it's specifically people like Balaam who may rightly proclaim the word of God, but don't know the

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God of the word. He says in fact, 2

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Peter 2, 17, they're waterless springs. Using the same word

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Jesus uses, anhydron. Waterless. They're waterless.

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Of people like that who proclaim the word of God, but don't know the God of the word, people that are just like Balaam, they've never been filled with the

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Holy Spirit, they might be great preachers, but they don't know God. Peter says of people like that, if after they've escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they're again entangled in them and overcome, here it is, the last state of them is worse than their first.

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Exactly what Jesus said. Now why is it worse? He elaborates.

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It would have been better if they had never known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.

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You think of that for a moment. You see someone who goes through this process, they seem to have some manner of repentance and they clean their lives up, but then they fall away again and God says in His word, it would have been better if they had never cleaned themselves up.

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It would have been better if it had never happened at all. See, the Pharisees were benefiting from a temporary moment of awakening in their part of God's people all around them, recognizing

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Jesus and praising Him and being cleansed by Him, but in the end, it resulted only in a more perfect wickedness and on ultimate destruction.

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And here we stand in an era of great benefit where we are seeing another temporary awakening on the part of God's people, but here's the question.

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What will be the end of it? Where are we going?

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Will we go the way of the Pharisees? The Pharisees were all united and they exercised great power and influence in their era.

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They had enough influence to execute Jesus Christ when He had thousands of followers.

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They had great unity. The only people they were ununified with were the Sadducees. The Pharisees were all unified with great power in their day and they did not know

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God. Will we go the way of Balaam? Balaam was a great preacher. People wanted him to prophesy to them and indeed, he prophesied

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God's word. He actually said what God wanted him to say and he never knew

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God. It's a terrifying thing as a preacher to imagine that you could be a great preacher that people would call for.

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Come to my conference, come to my church, come to a revival and you preach the truth and you die and go to hell because you don't know

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God. Where are we going? If we're only striving for unity, if we're only striving for power, if we're only intending to preach the word of God faithfully without knowing the

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God of the word, we will end up like Balaam. We will end up like the Pharisees.

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Without the Holy Spirit moving in and through us, it would ultimately have been better for us if we never went down this road at all.

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It would ultimately have been better for us for us to never have doctrinal fidelity. It would have been better for us to never have faithful churches if we were going to lead them down this path without the

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Holy Spirit. The problem with the Pharisees, says Jesus, is they left the house empty and it left the house able or it left it vacant for eight unclean spirits to come in and dwell and settle in it.

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So what should we do instead? What's the solution to this problem? Well, you don't have to be a professor.

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You can use your Strong's Concordance to figure this out. The word dwell there is used also in Ephesians 3.

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In Ephesians 3 .17, Paul uses it. I'm going to begin reading in 3 .16. Paul says that he prays that God would grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being.

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Now what does the power of the Holy Spirit produce? What does He manifest? What does He bring about? 3 .17.

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So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. You follow

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Paul through Ephesians 3 and he speaks there in verses 16 and 17 of receiving the Spirit into our inner being and having

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Christ dwell in us through faith which produces love and empowers us to do far more than we could ever think.

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And as that chapter concludes, he drives right into chapter 4 still emphasizing the same point going on about the presence of the

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Holy Spirit and the presence of Christ within us and what He will produce. And he gives us a series of things that He will produce.

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He lists humility and gentleness and patience and long -suffering. And finally, he lists an eagerness to maintain the unity of the

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Spirit in the bond of peace. Why? For there is one body and one

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Spirit and we are all called to one hope that belongs to our call with one Lord and one faith and one baptism and one

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God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. What do we strive for?

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We strive for the Holy Spirit to indwell us such that the Spirit of Christ would be in us and empower us to have unity that drives us to actually act powerfully in the world.

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The Trinity is present in this Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They're all to be present in believers and they are the inhabitants of God's house.

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Which house we are. We are the temple of God on earth. Your body is the temple.

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We are not subject to the invasion of an unclean spirit or seven of his more wicked friends. The unity of the

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Spirit binds us all together and protects us both on the outside and the inside. It keeps us from being like the

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Pharisees and being like Balaam. Although they knew the Word of God, they denied the presence and the power and the protection of the

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Word of God. Now hear me on this. This is really where the rubber meets the road.

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Satan is overjoyed to attend a church that recites the Apostles' Creed every week. He is just wonderfully glee -filled to attend a church that has a really, really good and true confession of faith.

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So long as God's not there. Satan is overjoyed to find a person reading their

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Bible and studying Christian history so long as the Holy Spirit's not there. Satan is not the enemy of doctrine.

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Satan is not the enemy of theology. Satan's the enemy of God. He doesn't hate theology.

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He doesn't hate doctrine. Satan has better doctrine than any of us. He quoted the

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Scriptures to Jesus Christ. He knows the Bible better than you and me. He believes exactly what should be believed.

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The difference is he hates God. Every demon in hell believes in God. Every demon in hell has good theology and doctrine.

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The problem is they hate him. That's exactly where false teaching and heresy comes from.

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It finds its root in Satan. Not because he doesn't know better, but because he does. He knows exactly where to tweak it.

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He knows exactly how to orient us one degree off. He's overjoyed to find us doing all the things that Christians do just so long as the

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Holy Spirit of God is not a part of it. We can have unity in doctrine and practice all we want, but until we're filled with the

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Holy Spirit, our unity is worthless. It's worthless. It's a house swept and put in order, but empty without any inhabitant awaiting any evil spirit to return and make our latter end worse than our first.

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That's what unity in power without the Holy Spirit of God does. So what do we do about this?

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Well, unity in the Holy Spirit of God may not look like the uniformity that we are so frequently pursuing.

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Unity is not uniformity. That is to say, being unified doesn't mean we all do the same thing and think the same way and all believe the same way and all practice the same way.

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To my cessationist brothers, unity in the Spirit may look like joining hands with our continuationist

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Christian brothers that make us nervous. To my

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Presbyterian brothers, unity in the Spirit may look like joining hands with our Baptist brothers that we don't understand.

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We don't know why they don't do it. To my well -educated brothers, unity in the

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Spirit may look like joining hands with those untrained brothers that are so different from us. To my postmillennial and amillennial brothers, unity in the

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Spirit may look like joining hands with those premillennial brothers that you think are so very pessimistic. And to my premillennial brothers, unity in the

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Spirit may look like joining hands with those postmillennial and amillennial brothers that you think are interpreting the Bible wrong. Unity is not uniformity.

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That is not to say that we lay down the distinctives that we have and just agree never to talk about the things that make us different from one another.

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And it's not to say that we strive to unify our churches and we're all going to come together and have one holy Catholic church again so that we can all just worship together in the same house.

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That's never going to happen until Christ returns and sets us all right. And I'm not advocating for it, by the way.

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I'm advocating for it because I'm a Baptist church and we praise God on each side of the road. You do it over there,

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I'll do it over here. But this is the case that at the end of the day when we lay down in our graves and hand our churches and our books and our ministries and our seminaries over to the next generation, if we have not unified ourselves and everything we touch in the

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Holy Spirit under His power and guidance, we will hand everything we have built over to eight demons that were worse than the ones we fought in the first place.

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but for unity with each other. Those who we recognize are Christians filled with the

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Holy Spirit of God, recognizing that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Freedom to be different from one another, but more importantly, freedom from sin and the curse of death.

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That God the Father has provided that freedom for us. That God the Son has procured that freedom for us.

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That God the Spirit has delivered that freedom to us. And may we pray with the hymn writer, silence

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Lord the unclean spirits in our mind and in our hearts. Speak your word that when we hear it, all our demons will depart.

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Clear our thoughts and calm our feelings. Still the fractured warring soul by the power of your

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Spirit make us faithful, true and whole. We cannot simply sweep and decorate the houses whilst leaving them uninhabited.

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We must fill them with the Holy Spirit of God who catalyzes the unity of the Spirit such that we may finally and entirely drive all which plagues

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God's people to hell where they belong. As Jesus breathed on his disciples and called them to receive the

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Holy Spirit, let us say ourselves, breathe on me breath of God.

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Fill me with life anew that I would love what thou dost love and do what thou wouldst do.

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Breathe on me breath of God till I am holy thine, till all this earthly part of me glows with your fire divine.

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And as we receive God's Spirit, let us in this newfound unity drive not inward, but outward.

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With our battle cry being, did not his feet in ancient times walk upon these mountains green?

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Was not the Holy Lamb of God amidst our pleasant pastures seen? Did not his countenance divine shine forth upon our clouded hills?

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Was not Jerusalem builted here among these dark satanic mills? Bring me my bow of burning gold.

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Bring me my arrows of desire. Bring me my spear, oh clouds unfold. Bring me my chariot of fire.

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We shall not cease from battle strife, nor shall the sword sleep in our hand till we have built

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Jerusalem in this fair and pleasant land. We must not leave the house uninhabited.

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Sweep it and clean it and set it in order if you like, but make sure it is not empty.

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Fill this house with the Holy Spirit. Fill your family with the Holy Spirit. Fill your soul with the

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Holy Spirit. Only then will any unity and power be of any worth. This is the word of God for the people of God.