All right, if you'll return to
Luke chapter 11. I don't know that I have ever
witnessed a case of demon possession such as is spoken of here in
the Scriptures and in several other places. I don't know a whole lot about
demons. Don't care to. One thing I do know is what Hollywood
sets forth as the actions and work of demons is not the kind
of demonic activity that you and I need to be afraid of. I
don't even know that that stuff really ever goes on. I also know
this about demons, that they are not necessary. in order for
us to be sinful. The old excuse, the devil made
me do it. No. I'm not saying that demons
don't help and encourage it, but you and I have plenty of
sin all on our own that if we never confronted Satan, if we
were never once approached in our hearts and minds by some
demonic spirit, we would find plenty of ways to sin, because
sin is written on our hearts. I don't know a lot about demons,
but I know this, I can't think of any situation more desperate than to be possessed of another
personality, another person, a spiritual force over which
you have no power. Often, in fact, I believe it's
in all cases that you find in the scriptures, those who had
the Lord cast demons out of them, they never did come to the Lord
on their own. Somebody brought them. That's a desperate case when
a man is so possessed that he doesn't even have the capacity
to come to the one who could do Him good. Our Lord demonstrated His great
power in His ability to cast out demons with a word. In Mark chapter 1, our Lord cast
out a demon. And the people were absolutely
astounded. They said, what kind of man is
this? Nobody speaks with authority
like He does. Did you see that? He speaks,
and demons obey Him. Our Lord didn't have to light
a bunch of candles and speak an incantation over and over
and over again and sprinkle them with holy water and do all this
kind of nonsense to exercise a demon. He said, Get out, and
they left. Wasn't any arguing? He spoke, and it was. He commanded, and they left. Now, not all diseases and mental
illnesses and moral corruptions are the result of demonic activity,
but some of them are. In fact, even some of the suffering
in the flesh that believers experience is the result of demonic activity. Paul said that God sent him a
thorn in the flesh. And he identified this thorn
in the flesh also by this description, a messenger of Satan. And that word translated messenger
is usually translated angel. Now, if you look over here in
verse 21, It says, when a strong man, fully armed, guards his
own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger
attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which
the man trusted and divides up the spoils. Now, our Lord, while he may allow
a certain measure of demonic activity, and again, we've got
to get rid, get out of our minds this concept of a demon of being
some a ghoulish-looking fiend with slobber and all that, you
know? They are spirits. And as we'll see, some of them
look really good and commendable. And they're the dangerous ones.
But when our Lord allows one of His people to come under that
influence, the demon that is given some permission has been
bound. And he does not have free reign. Do you remember even Satan
asked to be able to touch Job? And God let him, but he set a
bound on him. He said, you can only go this
far. You can touch his stuff, but you can't touch him. And
then later, Satan comes back and makes more requests. He says,
alright, you can touch his body, but you can't take his life. Now there are some in whom, and
they're not believers, but in other ways, there are some in
whom God has allowed these spirits to have full reign, to exert whatever influence it
is they have. Boy, what a wretched existence
that is. And here's the interesting thing,
and the really dangerous thing. The great majority of people
who are under the power and influence and direction of demonic spirits
don't have a clue that it's going on. They don't know it. In fact, they are highly praised
by men. They are the upstanding people
and the leaders of religion. And we'll see that in what our
Lord has to say here. Now, he cast out this demon with
a word. And he cast him out in such a
way that whatever the limitations that that demon had put on this
man were taken away. And that man was loosed. And
the one who could not speak began to speak. And some of them said,
and I believe it's Matthew, Tells us who these people were. It
was the Pharisees, the religious guys. They hated Christ. They despised him with every
fiber of their being. And here the Lord had cast out
a demon. Everybody knew the man was demon
possessed. The demon that the Lord says
be gone and he's gone. The man begins to speak and the
Pharisees in their hard heartedness, cannot submit to the truth that
is revealed in what Christ did. And so they got to come up. I
mean, they can't deny that he did it. They can't deny that
he cast the demon out. So they got to come up with something
else. Well, he's doing this by bills above himself. That was
a name that they gave to Satan, one of the names. And they said, well, he's not of
God. They've been going around saying he wasn't of God. So now
he casts out a demon. Well, if he's not of God, then
who's he of? Well, he's doing that with the
power of Beelzebub. That's who it is. Don't follow
this man. And our Lord knew what they were
thinking. And he says, you know, if a kingdom's divided against
itself, it's going to fall. If Satan's divided against himself,
how can his kingdom stand? Why, if I'm here using the power
of Satan to cast out the His demons? That doesn't make sense. If Satan's casting out demons,
his kingdom's going to fall. And he says here in verse 20,
But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom
of God has come to you. Note this. He says, If I cast
out demons, by the finger of God. You know, if you could come up
with someone, you've heard the phrase, he was so weak, you could
push him over with your finger. My friends, the demons are not
weak, but God is so strong with his finger, he pushes them out
of the way. You know, as desperate, as demonic
activity would make a person. I mean, you think of that demoniac
there in the tombs. Many, many demons possess that
man's body and mind. And he couldn't get rid of them.
And neither could any of the exorcists of that day. And they
chained him up and he'd break the chains. And he lived out there among
the dead. Nobody could do anything for that poor man. But Christ,
with the finger of God, He says, Be gone. And a whole
host of demons leaves one man. And I tell you this, whether
your troubles are demonic, whether they are purely the result of
your own sinful nature and corruption, whatever they are, It takes only
the finger of God to remove it. A word from Him, and it's done. Now, I want to speak for a few
minutes. Our subject is, blessed rather, are those who hear the
Word of God and obey it. But our Lord didn't say these
words in a vacuum. After He made this speech, it
is about demonic activity. There was a woman who evidently
understood what he was saying. And I can just picture her in
that crowd. And she's happy at what she heard. I mean, what
our Lord says, we're going to see it here, He's really rebuking. He is undercutting and accusing
those Pharisees in front of Him of being demon-possessed of the
worst sort. And this woman understood it.
And I'm sure that just like you, some of you have suffered under
what we might call spiritual or religious abuse at the hands
of pharisaical people. And when you found out that it
was not by works of righteousness which we have done, when you
heard it declared that all that self-righteous works was nothing
but sin in the sight of God, it rejoiced your heart just,
you know, for the Lord, so to speak, to give them what for.
And that's what this woman did. She said, oh man, I can hear
that. And what she literally said, she said, blessed is the
womb that gave you birth and the breasts that nursed you.
And she wasn't blessing Mary. Don't misunderstand this woman.
She wasn't heaping praise on Mary. She was praising our Lord
in a sideways fashion. She said, I rejoice so much in
you. I'm going to be glad because
of where you came from or glad knowing where you came from. But our Lord also understanding
how people will twist words And knew full well that eventually
people will make a God out of Mary. He said, No. Blessed are those who hear my
word and keep it. How blessed it is to hear the
word of God. What's the word of God? Well,
some would say it's the Bible. And you know something? The Bible
is the word of God. But that's not what our Lord means when
he uses this phrase word of God. He's talking about the gospel.
He's talking about the message of God, the message, the word
of the kingdom, the message of the kingdom. Peter said that
we are begotten again by the word of truth. Or James said
by the word of truth, and Peter said that we have been born again,
not of corruptible seed, but of the incorruptible seed of
the word of God. And then he says this, which
word was preached to you by the gospel? Now you can open up this Bible
just like the Pharisees did, and you can read the words and
never hear the Word. You can go to a place, in fact,
you may be here this morning and you're hearing the words,
you're hearing what I say. But you might not hear the Word.
Blessed is the man who hears the Word. The Scriptures say
today if you hear His voice, Or what if, if you hear His voice? There are billions in this world
who have never heard one word of the Word of God. And many of them who have heard
the words of God have never heard the Gospel declared. You have heard the Word of God.
When I preach, I believe that I do preach the Word of God.
That's my intention. Not simply to open up the Bible
and give you some kind of intellectual treatise of what the Bible says. I want to preach the Word to
you. Blessed is the man who hears
it. Faith comes by hearing, says the Scripture, hearing by the
Word of God. A man never believed what he
hadn't heard. Now, not everybody who hears it believes it. But
everybody who believes it heard it. It's a little crowd here this
morning, very small crowd by the standards of world religion. What's 40 people here, maybe
30 or something like that. But what a great privilege you
have to hear the word of God. Blessed are those who hear the
word of God, but you know, there is a very cursed condition for
some who have heard the Word of God. And that condition is
this, that they heard the Word of God, but they didn't keep
it. They didn't obey it. It was set
right in front of them. And the Lord describes them as
being demon-possessed of the very worst sort. When an evil spirit comes out
of a man, he goes through arid places seeking rest and does
not find it. Then it says, I will return to
the house I left. When he arrives, it finds the
house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes
seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and
live there. And the final condition of that
man is worse than the first. Now, who's he talking about here?
He's talking about those who have been acted on by religion
without Christ. Well, in truth, what he's talking
about is the great majority of what passes for Christianity
today. Corruptions removed and a man
left swept clean and put in order and empty. And the demon that left him,
and I don't know here if our Lord's talking about an actual
spirit, he's speaking principles here. The demon that left him
comes back, and when he comes back, does he mess up the house
again? Never says he comes back and
makes a mess of the house again, says he brings seven demons with
him, worse than the original one. He was talking about folks like
the Pharisees who got their life straightened out, who are swept clean, and everything's
in its proper place. You say, well, that's not bad. Yes, it is. It's bad if you think
that swept and orderly condition is salvation. If you think by
the fact that you are swept and organized, if you put away your
sins and put your life in order and got all your I's dotted and
your T's crossed, if you think that gains you a favorable attitude
on the part of God, you are worse off. You are in a worse condition. than the man who is yet in his
pollutions. That's what our Lord is saying
here. I was talking to a man in the community here, oh, a
year or two ago. I can't remember just how long
ago it was. He was asking me about somebody that we both knew.
And he said, well, you know, he's been attending our church.
I said, oh. Yeah, you know, he's getting
his life straightened out. I said, oh. He is. That's how they define
salvation. He's getting his life straightened
out. That's what these people did. The demon left, and when
he was gone, somebody came in and swept his house clean and
organized his theology for him and told him when he should do
this and when he should do that and how he should stop this.
And he did all those things. And I tell you, the house looked
better. Don't deny it. It looks better. But the demon came back. And
when he came back, he brought seven demons along with him. Seven demons worse than himself.
So, well, what could be worse than moral pollution? Well, I've
got to think about that. What could be worse? I mean,
that's what demons are always associated with, you know. I
remember when I was a kid, you know, they always associated
demons with rock and roll music. And I have no doubt that there
is some association in some of it. No question. I mean, it can. But they always had them going
around, you know, and the people that followed them going around
in black robes and drawing stars, you know, a pentagram, you know,
and having seances. Oh, I wish that's the only way
demons appeared. Then we could identify them real easy. But there are some people ruled
by a demon of lust. Say, what could be worse than
that? A demon of self-satisfied purity. That's what could be
worse. A person who's lost somehow or
another, he's gotten control of it. And he thinks himself a better
man. And better in the eyes of God. And he's satisfied with
himself. Pleased with himself. and thinks
himself to be saved because he got rid of that lust. Oh, there is nothing worse than being good and thinking
God saved you on account of it. One man's captive of what they
call demon rum. Oh, he's drunk. And they come
along and they 12-step him. And he puts it away. I'm glad
when folks get sober. They'll have a better life for
it. But here's what often happens. They get rid of one demon and
they get their life swept. And you know what comes behind
it? That old demon comes back and
he brings a worse friend with him. Self-satisfied, self-confident
sobriety. Oh, he who trusts in his sobriety
in the sight of God is worse off. He is more captive. His
case is more desperate than a gutter drunk. Do you believe that? Others are captivated by pride. Oh, I mean, they're just full
of themselves. And everything's about them.
And they're always patting themselves on the back. But then maybe it leaves. They
overcome it. But that demon that made them
proud brings back another demon worse than himself. Self-imposed
false humility. Oh, they're clean and swept.
Everything's set in order. And they know how to talk the
talk. Oh, I'm just a sinner. I'll tell you how you can expose
one of those demons. If anybody ever comes up and
says, oh, I'm just a sinner and I deserve to go to hell. Say,
yeah, that's what I was thinking. You're a sinner and deserve to
go to hell. And see how they react. Ah, just a minute, you
know. You've revealed him. It's the
same old demon with a worse friend. The house is orderly. The house
is swept. Some are just stingy. Covetous
people. You don't like being around them,
you know. I mean, just everything. They live by the, you know, get
all you can and can all you get. And they won't give. They won't help anybody out.
And the world looks at that as a stingy man, a miser, a scrooge. But then he gets some religion. And every time he gets his paycheck
out, he moves the decimal point two spaces and gives his tenth. Oh, he's been swept clean. And
he's got it organized now. Everything's put in order. He's
given his ten percent. And he pats himself on the back
and he says, I've done all I need to do. Everything's good between
me and God. He'd have been better off to
keep his money. You see these swept clean people?
They are like that Pharisee who stands back and says, I thank
you, God, I'm not like other men. I'm swept clean. And I got
everything put in order. I'm not like this guy over here. What a mess. He doesn't know. Boy, Lord, you're
lucky to have me. How good I am. That's as bad
as it gets, friends. That is a man with seven demons
worse than his original sins. Better than a man? Blow the minds of religious people,
that you that believe, you understand what I mean by this. Better than
a man be a real bona fide sinner, than he be a self-righteous,
self-deceived, self-satisfied religious man. That's the man who hears the
Word of God, but he doesn't keep it. What's to be done for such a
person? Verse 21, is there any hope for
those with seven demons? Yes, there is. Saul of Tarsus
was one of these with seven demons. Boy, he was swept clean. He said,
as touching that righteousness which is in the law, I was blameless.
Talk about being set in order. I'm a Hebrew of Hebrews, of the
tribe of Benjamin, circumcised on the eighth day. I've got everything
in its place. And he was worse off than the
gutter drunks, and the prostitutes, and the homosexuals, and the
murderers, and the thieves, and all those that religion loves
to jump on. And yet God saved him. Because
you see, God can deliver from seven demons as easily as from
one. Look here, verse 21, when a strong
man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are
safe. Here's a man, here's a strong man, a man strong in religion,
and he is wet clean, and he's guarding his house, and he's
got his integrity, and he's got his righteousness, he's got his
goodness, he's got his charitable works, he's got his doctrine
straight, he is fully armed. Fully armed against what? The
gospel. Oh, I tell you, religious folks,
you preach the gospel, and it blows me away sometimes, and
I'm sure it's done this to you, too. You preach the gospel to
people, you tell them the gospel, and they smile and act like they
believe it and go on in their unbelief. Religion builds up a safeguard
against the gospel. Religion's got people building
up walls of self-righteousness, building up walls of their own
goodness, putting on an armor of their own works. And we hurl
the gospel at them, and it just, you know, a shield. You know,
the Bible talks about us having a shield of faith. Well, they've
got a shield of unbelief. You hurl the gospel at them,
they just deflect it. And they go on their way happy. And their
goods are safe. And why is it that when we preach
the gospel, their goods are safe? Because we aren't stronger than
them. I can preach the gospel to you and you can even understand
the truth of what I'm saying. It can even move you somewhat
emotionally. But I cannot strip you of your
armor. I cannot bind you. Because see,
I'm no stronger than you are. And if my words convince you
to take your armor off. Later on, somebody's going to
come and convince you to put it back on. What does it say? Verse 22, But
when someone stronger, someone stronger attacks and overpowers
him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted, and
he divides up the spoils. This is the sovereign grace of
God. Stronger than a man. He stands there and you say,
well, I thought you were talking about demonic activity. There's no
worse demon in all the world than demon self. There's nobody worse to be ruled
by than yourself. A strong man, like these Pharisees,
strong in their religion. Strong in their righteousness.
Strong in their ceremonies. Firmly rooted in the traditions
of their fathers. And they guard their house and
they guard it well and their goods are safe. Nobody can touch
them. Until Christ comes along. And
I like this. Attacks them. Oh, sweet and gentle
Jesus. I don't see sweet and gentle
Jesus here. I see that Jesus who is described as this. Jehovah
is a man of war. The Lord Jesus Christ comes in
His sovereign power and makes war against His chosen people
because they will not willingly take off their armor. They will
not willingly surrender their goods. He's got to take them. And the Lord Jesus comes, and
by the power of His gospel, the testimony of who He is and what
He has done to put away sin, He comes and He attacks them.
He undermines them. He's got power that can pierce
the armor. He comes and He makes that strong
man bow. All the strongest of all, it
don't matter. If demons can be moved with the
finger of God, what power has a mere man against the Lord Jesus
Christ? Our Lord comes in the day of
His power. In the day when He decides to deliver a man from
himself. deliver him from the spiritual
forces that bind him to darkness and unbelief. And he walks in,
and he is so much more powerful than that man. With a word, the
man crumbles. And the Lord Jesus Christ overpowers
him. Sovereign grace is omnipotent
grace. This religious garbage that says,
God wants to save you if you just let Him. Let Him? What are you going to let God
do? You can only let someone do something
if you have the power to stop them from doing it. You're going to let that bulldozer
run over you? I can't stop it. You don't let God save you. You
don't allow God to do anything. He does what He wants. He comes
and attacks and overpowers every one of His chosen people. And
He takes away their armor, the armor of their righteousness. He strips it off. And He says,
your righteousness is filthy rags. Their shield of unbelief,
He grasps it out of their hands. And there they are, stripped
bare in His presence. And for the first time in their
lives, they find out who and what they really are. And notice this. He divides up
the spoils. In other words, He takes possession. You know, the exorcists of this
world, when they cast out a demon, What do you got when you got
an empty person? They cast the demon out. Our
Lord doesn't just cast out demons. He takes possession. You see,
when the Lord cast out a demon, the man is just as possessed
as before. He's just possessed by someone
else. And that's why the demons never can come back in. The demon,
if he comes back, he's not going to find the house empty. He's
going to find that there's someone sitting on the throne of that
house. The Lord Jesus Christ. The spoils are His. The goods
are His. And no one will ever be able
to take them away again. Our Lord cast that mute demon
out of that man, and that man could speak for the rest of his
life. It wasn't going to be that he'd come back six months later
and the guy's mute again. No, sir. That demon was cast
out and he was cast out for good. And you know something? When our Lord comes and casts
out that demon of self-righteousness and unbelief, He casts it out
of our hearts, out of our spirits, and it never comes back. You
say, well, I still feel emotions of unbelief and self-righteousness.
That's in your flesh. The Lord hadn't cast that one
out yet. He will. He will. But in the heart of every believer, there sits enthroned the Lord
Jesus Christ. Every believer is Christ-possessed.
Every believer in his heart is free. He can hear. He can speak. He can see. He can believe. Because somebody
stronger than him took over. Blessed rather are those who
hear the Word of God and obey it. That word translated, obey,
means to keep. It can mean to guard. What does it mean to hear the
Word of God and obey it? It's got a couple, three things
in Revelation 1. Verse 3. Revelation 1, verse 3, blessed
is the one who reads the words of this prophecy. And blessed
are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it,
because the time is near. What is it to hear the word of
God and keep it, obey it? It means, first of all, to take
it to heart, to hear the word of God and say, that's for me.
He's talking about me. It's one thing for us to sit
here and say, yeah, our Lord's talking about the self-righteous
there. Our Lord's talking about the pharisaical religionists
of His day. Friends, He's talking about you
and me, because every one of us played the part of a strong
man, and we had our armor on, and we guarded our goods, and
we said, everything's in order. My soul, take thy ease. Your
barns are full. Everything's fine. And we would
have stayed in that condition. If one stronger than us had not
come and overpowered us and stripped us from our armor and took all
our goods away from us. Would you hear the Word of God
and obey it? Well, let's start out by this. Take it to heart.
It's about you. It's about me. It's not about
them. God help us if we ever hear a
message that's good for our neighbor. I don't need a message that's
good for my neighbor. I need a message that's good
for me. Secondly, to hear the word of
God and obey it is to understand that no matter how much I may
clean up my house, I am still lost, dead in trespasses and
sins. A drunk may get sober, but he's
just gone from a drunk lost man to a sober lost man. He's still
a lost man. I'm glad for his family and acquaintances,
because it's going to be nicer for them. But that has not moved
him one step closer to God. I like it when I find out that
those bound by corruptions put off some of those corruptions.
But friends, they're still lost. And they may be in worse shape
than before. Understanding that word, that
no matter how much I clean up my house, I'm still lost. What
is it then to keep that word? Well, it's to confess it to be
so. And repent. Not only of my obvious transgressions
against God's law, but to repent. even of all that righteousness
which I once held to myself and gloried in and thought was the
goods of my house. It's not hard to get people to
repent of their sins. Every drunk knows he shouldn't
be a drunk. Every adulterer knows he shouldn't be an adulterer.
Every thief knows he shouldn't be a thief. And every murderer
knows he shouldn't be a murderer. It's not hard to convince people
that that's wrong and you need to repent of it. But it sure is hard to make people
repent of their religion. It sure is hard to make people
repent of their righteousness. In fact, you and I can't make
them do it. We couldn't even do it for ourselves. The stronger
man's got to do that. The stronger man. Secondly, no matter how hard
I try, I must acknowledge this, no matter how hard I try, I can
never overcome sin or save my soul from it. It is necessary. that someone greater than me
take possession of my house by force. Do you believe that? Do you honestly believe that
you don't have any power to fix your problem? In fact, you realize you are
your problem. I am my problem. And you can't
save yourself from yourself. You'll be like arm wrestling
yourself. Somebody stronger. And I'll tell
you how you keep that word. You call on Him. You've heard
about the strong man. Oh boy, he could bind Satan. He can bind all his demons. He
can wrap your sins up in a cord and strap them to Himself and
put them away by the sacrifice of Himself. You've heard of Him. Call on Him. Hey, come take this
house. Come strip me of my armor. Come
spoil my goods. Come reign here. Possess this
man. Of course, if you ever do that, the rest of us that have already
been possessed by Christ will know this. Before you ever call
on His name to come rescue you, He will have already done it.
Because you're not going to call until He saves you. And when
you call, he'll save you. Say, it don't make sense. Doesn't
have to. Nobody ever willingly surrendered
their armor. But everybody who's been stripped of their armor
by Christ said, thank you, Lord, for stripping me of my armor.
Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it. Take
it to heart. Confess what it says about them.
It calls upon the only one strong enough to do anything about it. Heavenly Father, bless your word. Deliver us. Deliver us from ourselves. Deliver us from the spiritual
powers of darkness. Because we're unable to deliver
ourselves. Be that stronger man, Lord, and
take possession of us. for the glory of your name, for
the honor of your Father, and for the salvation of our souls.
In Christ's name we pray. Amen.