Let's be turning to Luke chapter
11. Luke 11, picking up in verse 14. Now, in this passage our
Lord heals a man with a devil, who had a devil. He cast a devil
out of him that was a dumb devil and a blind devil Matthew tells
us this man was made dumb and blind by this devil. Now, at
this time, you'll recall that it's well established that Christ
has the power and the authority to heal our sicknesses and heal
our diseases and to provide for our needs. He bore the infirmities
of his people, just as the scripture said that the Messiah would. And he had delivered many of
unclean spirits. And that tells us that the timing
of this being mentioned here now, because this is well established
that he did this. But the timing, that they're
telling us that he cast this devil out now, it means that
our Lord is revealing something more to us about casting out
this devil. And so we want to look, when
we come to this, we want to look at the context that this miracle
that he performs here is done? What's the context that this
is done so that we can understand what the casting out of this
devil is signifying? Because he uses that term too,
he casts out a devil. Normally, it says that he delivered
them of an unclean spirit, but this says he cast it out. He
cast that devil out. Now, just prior to this, the
Lord had taught his disciples how to pray, and he showed us
our great need of the Savior, our great need of his redeeming
grace, and he used a parable about a man in great need who's
shamelessly knocking on the door of his friend, begging three
loaves of bread. And the reason why he's in need
of this bread is because a friend on his journey has come at the
midnight hour, and he didn't have what he needed. And it showed
us, it brings out your great need and my great need of the
redeeming grace of Jesus Christ to wash us of our sins, to fill
us with His Spirit, to give us life and light and salvation
in Him. So we have that blessed view
of what our Lord's grace of His redemption was to accomplish
for His people. and how he would provide for
us so that we have what's needed to satisfy the justice of God. In Christ you have right now
all you need to be accepted and received of holy God because
of Christ, because of him. Then he heals this man, casting
out this dumb and blind devil, And a confrontation follows. There's a confrontation. Things
come up that reveal to us why this is recorded here, why this
miracle wasn't put earlier, and why it's recorded here. Now,
this wonderful miracle was performed upon this one man. But it speaks
to the resulting grace that should come into this world, that should
come upon us because of Christ's redemption. Think, when Christ
accomplished this work on the cross and he rose again, things
changed in this world. Things were very different after
Christ accomplished his work. There was a major shift there.
The grace of God and His power began to spread throughout the
world through the preaching of the Gospel. And the Lord began
delivering people, not out of the Jews only, but out of the
Gentiles as well. So there was a major change that
happened as a result of Christ's redeeming grace. And so we see
in this work here, this casting out of the devil, we begin to
see the purpose and the design that our Lord has in the preaching
of his gospel, in the salvation he's accomplished. It's picturing
the overthrow of the kingdom of Satan. This casting out of
this devil, of this man, pictures the overthrow of Satan's kingdom
that ruled in our hearts by nature, that was over us, that kept us
in bondage and in darkness, that kept the world worshiping vain
idols and all manner of wicked works and just false dead religion. Just pervaded. There was no knowledge
of God in the world. But now it's all changed and
come about. Remember this verse in 1 John
3, 8. He that committeth sin is of
the devil, for the devil sinneth from the beginning. Well, we've
got a problem, because we're sinners by nature. And it's saying
that we're of the devil by nature. Our sinful nature is showing
that by nature we're of the devil. Well, for this cause. for this
cause, for this purpose, the Son of God was manifested that
he, I can't, but he might destroy the works of the devil. He came
and destroyed that bondage, to snap that chain and bondage which
is upon his people to deliver us from that death by himself. That's what's being revealed
here, this overthrow of Satan's kingdom by the Lord Jesus Christ. So beginning in verse 14, and
he was casting out a devil and it was dumb. And it came to pass,
when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake, and the people
wondered." I mean, that there is just a glorious picture. There's
a gospel picture right in that. That when Christ overthrew Satan,
the dumb spirit that was upon us, That empty desert without
the word of God was transformed, was changed, so that the dumb,
we began to speak the gospel. We heard, believed, we received
and believed that gospel and began to proclaim that gospel.
That dumb spirit left us, and now we declare the glory of God
unto you. And what a mighty work that does
by the Lord Jesus Christ. And so Luke here, he's emphasizing,
he puts his emphasis on this casting out of the devil. He
was casting out a devil and it was dumb. And then we see the
glory which follows, the glory which follows. And it came to
pass when the devil was gone out. The dumb spake, and the
people wondered. They saw. They saw a light that
shone in the darkness there. Matthew, where he records it,
it's in chapter 12. We won't go there. But he tells
us that the man was possessed with the devil, blind and dumb,
both blind and dumb. And then he describes the glory
which followed. It says that He healed him insomuch
that the blind and dumb both spake and saw, and all the people
were amazed and said, Is not this the Son of David? What a
miracle of grace not only for that man but for the people to
see and behold the Lord Jesus Christ and what He does by His
power. And so this account, it speaks,
at the time that this was done, it speaks to the coming overthrow
of Satan's kingdom. It speaks to the coming destruction
of his kingdom when Christ accomplished our redemption and rose from
the dead there. And so through his glorious redemption
work, the grace and power of God goes forth and will be manifested. It's manifest in the hearts of
his people, whom he redeemed with his own blood. It's brought
forth. So this work pictures the witness
of the king. He's the true, the right and
proper king. He has dominion over all things. He's seated on the throne right
now, opening the seals of the book. that no man could open. We couldn't do it, but now he
did it, and he's worthy. And so he opens the seals of
the book, meaning he's implementing right now the will and purpose
of God to be gracious to a people, to call you out of darkness,
to provide all that you need, to give you salvation freely
by the grace of God in and by the Lord Jesus Christ. He's doing that. He's accomplishing
that. And now we'll see the glory of
Christ's grace and power brought in the hearts of his people as
he deals with this confrontation that now follows. So we're going
to understand more of what he's doing, because a confrontation
ensues. Men of the world. without the
Spirit of God, don't like it. They don't like what they're
seeing, and they oppose it. So our Lord Jesus Christ, he's
the rightful king, and he's coming here to secure his kingdom, to
properly bring it under the authority and power of God in saving his
people, and for God to forgive his people justly. by grace,
to do it all proper, all perfect, all legally, all righteously,
all justly. He does everything that needs
to be done so that God is just and justifier of them which believeth
in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's done, brethren. You don't
have to worry about anything, any snafus or anything catching
you. It's done by him. The serpent deceived Eve, and
then Adam rebelled against God. He rebelled against God, subjecting
himself and all his posterity, all his seed in him, under subjection
to the devil. So that now, and sin entered
into the world, and death by sin, so that all of us come forth
spiritually dead, speaking lies in ignorance to God, with enmity
in our heart against God, so that we reject Him, we don't
believe Him, we mistrust Him, we want to do our own thing,
we want to cast Him off from us by nature. That's what we
are by nature. And we're told that we come forth
from that fall in the garden, we come forth being born of Adam's
seed, dead in trespasses and sins, corrupt. Ignorant in darkness
and and by nature Ephesians 2 2 says that we walk according to the
course of this world According to the prince of the power of
the air the spirit that now worketh in this children of disobedience
That's what we see going on is the works of that evil spirit
in In in the people who happily do the works of the flesh is
doing their own thing but God Ephesians 2 for but God who is
rich in mercy for his great love wherewith he loved us He delivered
us from the power of that darkness By the Lord Jesus Christ by his
grace and power in Christ Jesus And He did it by sending His
faithful Son to redeem us through His sacrifice, the shedding of
His blood, that God may be gracious to us to forgive us of our sins,
to cleanse and purify our hearts in faith and love and grace. not by our works, but by his
glorious work. And as a result of that, Christ,
when he rose from the dead, came to his disciples and said, all
power and authority is given unto me. Go, therefore, and preach
the word. Baptize them in the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. teaching them to observe
all things whatsoever I've commanded you and lo, I am with you always,
even unto the end of the world. Amen now he sends his church
out right he gives his church the gospel and we go forth Proclaiming
this gospel under the banner of his love under the banner
of his grace and power trusting him Proclaiming what he's done
were made witnesses of these things of what Christ did in
dying and in rising again for his people and man hears it and
he resists it and He resisted. He hates that because he's under
thick bands of darkness. And it says here in Luke 11 verse
15 and 16, but some of them said, right? So we saw some wondered,
but then some of them said, And Matthew tells us it was the Pharisees
when they heard it. So they may not have even been
there to see it. But they said, he casteth out
devils through Beelzebub, the chief of the devils. And others,
tempting him, sought of him a sign from heaven. So there's some
there that are blaspheming God, attributing the work of God to
Beelzebub to save. They're blaspheming God. And
then others, Whatever they saw or heard was done, that witness
wasn't enough for them. They said, show us a sign from
heaven. We want to see you do a work from heaven. And Christ
had just done a work. a sign from heaven. He just did
that. And it still wasn't good enough
for them. And not only was that man delivered,
but the people were touched. Light shone in the darkness of
their hearts so that they wondered. And they weren't indifferent.
They weren't asleep or hard or indifferent to what they just
saw and heard. They were amazed and asked, is this not the son
of David? Is this not our salvation? Is
this not the promise seed that should come? They saw that. That's a sign of heaven. You
that believe, that's a miracle of the grace of God. You that
believe in spirit and in truth and continue in Christ, that's
a miracle. That's a sign of heaven of the
spirit of God being poured down and giving you life. Because
faith is not of this flesh. This flesh does works. The spirit
brings forth fruit. And faith is the fruit of the
spirit. And so our Lord Jesus Christ,
we see here, he's the light of the world. And when he works,
that light goes forth and touches his people and gives life to
his people and brings that light into our dark hearts, over our
dark minds and brings light in there so that we see. And hear. And many do see and hear. Many
hear it to some degree, but where there's no faith, that word just
gets taken away by the birds, by the devil, and just lost,
or falls on bad ground. But by the grace of God, it's
made effectual and is put in that prepared ground, that good
ground, to hear, to grow up, and to bear fruit, some 30, some
60, some 100-fold, according to the will of God. Now I want
to give you three examples on this. Three examples that demonstrate
we must be saved by the Lord Jesus Christ or else we cannot
be saved. Apart from Christ, you cannot
be saved. And we see that here. So first,
We see this willful resistance to Christ. It testifies to how
great our fall is in Adam. It testifies to the bondage,
to the chains, to the shackles we're in by nature and cannot
free ourselves. This is a natural response to
the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ right there.
It's a natural response. and by not believing in Christ,
man won't believe and by not believing in Christ, he's calling
God a liar. It's a willful act to deny Christ,
to not believe Christ with his power and grace that goes forth.
The natural man does not believe and that's where he lays if God
does not do a work of grace for him because man will not believe
Christ except God deliver him of his blindness. He won't see
him. He refuses to see him. He will not believe Christ except
he be delivered of his blindness. He will not confess Christ with
his mouth except God remove that dumb spirit that's over him,
that's upon him. We will not believe, we will
not see, we will not confess Christ, we will not believe in
our hearts except God do a miraculous work of grace for us. It says
in John 5, verse 39 and 40, the Lord, speaking to the Jews, said,
search the scriptures. And at that time, they only had
the Old Testament. We now have the Old and the New
Testament. Search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have
eternal life, and they are they which testify of me. And that
shows how man just misses it. He goes to this book, thinking
it's my how-to manual to get myself saved. This is what God
wants me to know to get myself saved. And he misses Christ.
And all he's seeing is what I got to do. Oh, I better stop that.
I better start this. And then when you do that, then
you start telling us, you better stop that. You better start this.
It just goes on and fleshly works, all the while missing Christ,
not seeing Christ that he works obedience in the heart. We look
to him, trust him to do for you what you need. And he said there,
verse 40, and ye will not come to me that ye might have life.
That's the free will of man. He will not come to Christ that
he might have life, except God give him a new heart and a new
will, a willing heart to believe Christ. Then we read again. So that was
John 5, 39 and 40. Now in John 6, verse 43 and 44,
Jesus therefore answered and said unto them, murmur not among
yourselves. Why were they murmuring? He was
telling them, except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood. Eat
the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood. You have no
part in me. And they heard that and said,
what? Who can hear that? I'm not going to eat your flesh
and drink your blood." They didn't understand the spiritual words
that he spoke. They saw it only in flesh. All
they were were fleshly creatures and so they murmured and complained
about Christ. And that's what the Holy Scripture
is revealing to us. It's a spiritual work of God. The Spirit of God is within you.
It's in faith in His Spirit being given to you that you hear Christ,
believe Him, feed upon the bread of heaven, trust Him, look to
Him, follow Him. It's a spiritual work of His
grace. We're so caught up in the flesh
and it's a spiritual work. And so they're murmuring. And
He said, no man can come to Me except the Father which hath
sent Me draw him, drag him. pull him out of that darkness
and bring him unto me, and I will raise him up at the last day."
And so we see there that left to himself, man is going to refuse
Christ. He's not going to believe him.
He's going to willfully resist. He'll pick up an idol, Jesus,
and that'll be fine for him. But he'll never believe the true
and living God and Savior, except God do a gracious work in his
heart to pull him out of that darkness and that prison and
that bondage of death. He will not believe. So Christ
must come and accomplish this salvation. Otherwise, we cannot
be saved. He must do this gracious work
in our hearts You that are sinners, you that are in bondage, you
that are captive, you that are broken hearted, you that are
afraid and fearful, cry out to him, ask him. Because he says,
all that ask, receive. All that seek, find. All that
knock, the door shall be opened unto them. And if you do, it's
because He gave it to you. But that should be, these words
stir us up, to turn us from trusting self, to show us how empty the
cupboards are, that we don't have what we need to satisfy
the justice of God, that we might find that satisfaction in our
friend, in his house, the house that Christ built, and he has
all the bread you need, to stand complete in the presence of Holy
God. And because of His accomplished
redemption, the Church goes forth declaring this Gospel of our
salvation, knowing that God makes known who Christ died for in
the preaching of the word by revealing faith in you. Because you would not believe
except God give you that faith. It just won't happen. Or it'll
be a fleshly faith and you'll fall away. But you that are His,
you believe. And when you see you don't believe,
you're crying out when the Lord shows you your darkness, your
coldness, your indifference, so that He makes you to see,
Lord, save me. I'm sinking, Lord. Save me. I'm
perishing, Lord. Because except God save you.
You can't be saved. But he's provided them. And it's
to show us how great our fall is. That's what it's showing
us. Now, in 1 Corinthians 1, 21 and 24, through 24 on this
point here, Paul wrote, for after that in the wisdom of God, the
world by wisdom knew not God. It's not a thing of intelligence.
It's not a thing of having or having not in fleshly things. We all are ignorant of this wisdom
of God. But it pleased God by the foolishness
of preaching to save them that believe. It was through the preaching
of Jesus Christ that you heard And God gave you faith under
that preached word. For the Jews require a sign,
as we see here. Show us a sign from heaven. And
the Greeks seek after wisdom. It's folly to them to think that
a man in his weakness, dying on the cross, could accomplish
so great and mighty a salvation for many, for many to hear and
believe. But we preach Christ crucified. We ain't turning from this gospel.
We preach Christ crucified unto the Jews a stumbling block and
unto the Greeks foolishness. We know, but we're not gonna
change the message because it's through this foolish message
that God is pleased to reveal his wisdom in you so that you
know, it's not of me, It's of his grace and power that I hear
and believe. But unto them which are called,
both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom
of God. We see here Christ's grace overcomes
the kingdom of Satan in our hearts and establishes, stamps in its
place, his image, the image of Christ, the kingdom of Christ,
giving you the spirit of Christ which is in you. and you're in
the wall, the walls of the city that we're in now are the walls
of salvation. They're our bulwarks, our defenses. It's Christ and his word and
what he's done for us. Now second, we see how Christ's
word opposed the kingdom of darkness, right? His word opposed this
kingdom of darkness and that by his word, the lies of the
evil one are torn down, are broken down. He's stripping his people
of lies and falsehoods and vain confidences, vain fleshly confidences
that you should find your all in Christ, in him. It says verse
17 through 19, Luke 11, but he knowing their thoughts, right,
he's omnipotent God, Knowing their thoughts said unto them,
every kingdom divided against itself. So this is their response
to them accusing him of doing this by Beelzebub. And he said,
every kingdom divided against itself, or every kingdom broken
right at the foundation, just divided, it's going to fall apart. It's brought to desolation. And
a house divided against a house falleth. If Satan also be divided
against himself, how shall his kingdom stand? because ye say
that I cast out devils through Beelzebub. And here he says,
if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them
out? Therefore shall they be your
judges. So back then, there were Jews. There were people, Jews and not
Jews, that had some forms which they taught or showed that they
were casting out devils. I think Josephus records some
examples of how the Jews did certain things to cast out devils. Now whether they were really
successful or not, that's not the point here. And Christ doesn't
even touch on whether they were successful or not. What he's
saying there is the Pharisees They had sons and people that
were casting out devils, and they didn't say anything about
that, anything negative. They didn't accuse them of doing
it by the devil. They just said, oh, praise God,
that's great that they just cast out the devil. But now Christ
is doing it, and they hate him. And so they accused him of doing
it by Beelzebub. And he's saying, well, wait a
minute. You don't have a problem with anybody else doing it, but
now suddenly you have a problem with me casting out devils. And now you're saying that I'm
doing it by Beelzebub? And so what he's saying is you
have no problem with anybody else but for me, the light and
life of men, to come and do this work, this miracle of grace,
and you're gonna say it's of the devil? You're gonna blaspheme
God? And so he's saying your own sons
testify against you. Because you live with it without
any problem, never complaining, never saying anything against
it, but now you do say against it. So it shows that man is trusting. He builds up defenses, he builds
up falsehoods, he builds up lies and trusts in these things. But
when Christ saves a sinner, we are made new creatures. born
again by the Spirit of God so that our eyes see the salvation
of God. They hear the salvation of God. We receive him into our hearts
by his grace and power, believing him. And that new man, that creation
of Christ, and you can't not believe. Because what's created
of Christ, that new man of grace, is not of the flesh and it does
not sin. This flesh sins, this flesh is
weak and unbelieving and conniving and tricky and clever and gets
itself in all kinds of sins and messes. But the new man of grace
in you, which is of the spirit of God, can't sin, doesn't participate
in that, doesn't believe that. He trusts only Christ. He believes
under the saving of our souls. He can't not not believe. And
all he does is glorify God, and trust him, and cry out to him,
Abba, Father, save us. Have mercy upon us. And so that's
not something that the devil would do. Because when Christ
did it, when Christ saved a sinner, he saved them to the uttermost.
He fills them with the Spirit. It's a living Spirit. It's not
of us. It's of His grace. And so when it's a work of Satan,
what is Manglorian? Himself. Well, I did this. I
gave my heart to Jesus. I walked the aisle. I changed
my life around. I stopped doing this and I started
doing that. And all he's talking about is
himself. That's a work of the devil. But a work of grace is
we boast in glory in Christ. Well, Christ saved me. Christ
had mercy on me. Christ bore long with me. Christ
brought me under the gospel. Christ brought me out of false
religion. Christ brought me from trusting
myself to trust him. Christ gave me faith in my heart. Christ delivered me from my sin.
We boast of Christ. He's our boast. He's our all. And then third, we see the whole
Godhead has taken a vital interest in defeating Satan and his kingdom,
that work of the evil one, by redeeming and reconciling us
who were, by nature and Adam, lost. It says, verse 20, this
is our final verse, But if I, with the finger of God, cast
out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you. And Matthew tells us that the
finger of God is the Holy Spirit. That's how he words it, with
the Spirit of God. And so he says, if I, I meaning
the Son of God, with the finger of God, with the Holy Spirit,
And the spirit being of God, meaning of the Father, if I do
this, then the fullness of God is come unto you, is present
here. And we're told that the fullness
of the Godhead dwelleth in him bodily. And so he's saying the
fullness of God is present. No doubt the kingdom of God has
come upon you. He's brought His kingdom near
to you. And you that believe, He's effectually
brought that salvation in your heart and brought you out of
that kingdom of Satan. And brought and established you
in the kingdom of Christ by giving you His Spirit, His light, His
life in your heart whereby you believe. In Christ, all that
you need in salvation is given. He's done the work. It is finished. He overcame this world. He overcomes Satan in us. He delivers us from that kingdom
by his glorious grace and power, which is wrought by him through
his glorious redemption. And so if Christ is indeed the
Son of God, and He is, and He's sent of God into this sinful
fallen world to redeem the lost sheep of God, then why do we
not believe? Why don't you believe? Believe
on him, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Neither is there salvation
in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given
among men, whereby we must be saved. And all that come unto
him, he saves to the uttermost. All that come unto God by Jesus
Christ. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and thou shalt be saved. I pray the Lord bless that word
to your heart's content.