- First Presbyterian Church - https://fpcjackson.org -

Jesus: Ruler of the Ruler of Demons

The Lord’s Day Morning

June 27, 2010



Luke 11:14-28


“Jesus:
Ruler of the Ruler of Demons”

Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III

Sing to the Lord a new song all the earth.
Tell of His salvation from day to day.
Declare His glory among the nations and His marvelous works among all the
peoples for great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.
He is to be feared above all gods for all the gods of the peoples are
worthless idols, but our God, the Lord, made the heavens and the earth.
Splendor and majesty are before Him, strength and beauty in His
sanctuary, so let us give unto the Lord the glory due His name.
Let us worship God!


Our Lord and our God, You are
holy, holy, holy and we are not and because of this only You can provide a way
for us into Your presence to enjoy Your blessings, Your benefits, Your
fellowship. And You have done this
in Your great love and mercy and grace in Your Son, Jesus Christ.
While we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.
You sent Your Son, Your only Son, whom You love, the Lord Jesus, into
this world so that all those who believe on Him will not perish but have
everlasting life.


So we come to You the Gospel way
this morning. We come to You by the
cross of Jesus Christ, by the shed blood of Jesus Christ for our forgiveness.
He is the one who bore our penalty that we might receive the blessings
that flow from His person and His finished and perfect work, come into Your
presence as blood-bought declared right sinners, accepted as Your children,
adopted as sons of God, all by Your doing, all by His accomplishment, all by
Your grace. We have contributed
nothing to this. We simply stretch
our hands out in faith and receive what You have accomplished and provided.


So we come by the Gospel and by
the cross today to give to You the glory due Your name.
Make the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts to be
acceptable to Your sight. Speak Your
Word deep into our hearts today and make us to be not only hearers but doers of
Your Word. Exalt Yourself in our
praises and enable us to worship in spirit and in truth.
We ask all these things in Jesus’ name.
Amen.

If you have your Bibles I’d invite you to turn with me to Luke 11 as we continue
our way through this gospel. We come
to an extraordinary passage in which Jesus casts a demon out of a man who has
been made mute by the activity of that demon and it evokes varying responses
from the multitude that were observing this.
Some marveled but others ascribed Jesus’ activities to the power of Satan
while still others demanded that that sign of casting out a demon was not
enough. They wanted yet another sign
to certify to them that Jesus was indeed from God.
In the course of His response to these various questions that are laid at
His feet by the crowd that has assembled around Him, Jesus not only manages to
show the illogic of their position assessing Him, but to tell them much about
the activity of the prince of demons and of what it means to be demonically
possessed and oppressed. But even
deeper still Jesus teaches us about what true Gospel conversion involves in this
passage, where the power comes from to bring a human being out of darkness and
into the marvelous light of God’s grace.
And of course in this passage He identifies Himself as the One who is
able to plunder the strong man and so He shows Himself to be the Ruler of the
ruler of the demons.

Now before we read God’s Word let’s look to Him in prayer and ask for His help
and blessing to understand it.


Lord, this is Your Word.
Your Word is powerful and effective and sharper than any two-edged sword.
It can pierce down to the very depths of our being and separate in us
what is wrong from what is right and clarify for us where our hearts are right
with You and where they are not. And
Your Word, O Lord, is profitable for reproof and correction and training in
righteousness. It is fully
sufficient to equip the believer in every good work.
And so we ask O Lord that You would cause us, by Your Holy Spirit who
inspired this Word, to both hear and understand and believe and do the truth.
This we ask in Jesus’ name.
Amen.

This is the Word of God, hear it:

“Now He was casting
out a demon that was mute. When the
demon had gone out, the mute man spoke, and the people marveled.
But some of them said, ‘He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of
demons,’ while others, to test Him, kept seeking from Him a sign from heaven.
But He, knowing their thoughts, said to them, ‘Every kingdom divided
against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls.
And if Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand?
For you say that I cast out demons by Beelzebul.
And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them
out? Therefore they will be your
judges. But if it is by the finger
of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are
safe; but when one stronger than he attacks him and overcomes him, he takes away
his armor in which he trusted and divides his spoil.
Whoever is not with Me is against Me, and whoever does not gather with Me
scatters.

When the unclean
spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking
rest, and finding none it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’
And when it comes, it finds the house swept and put in order.
Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and
they enter and dwell there. And the
last state of that person is worse than the first.’

As He said these
things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, ‘Blessed is the
womb that bore You, and the breasts at which You nursed!’
But He said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the Word of God and keep
it!’”

Amen, and thus ends this reading of God’s holy, inspired, and inerrant Word.
May He write its eternal truth upon all our hearts.

This passage tells us a lot about the hearts of those who are blind to the grace
of God, to hearts which have not been converted to Him.
We see that first of all in the case of this poor man under the power of
this mute spirit. He was unable even
to speak. But we also see it in the
heart attitude of those, who instead of joining with the people in the crowd who
marveled at Jesus, instead accused Him of doing this great miracle of relief and
blessing on behalf of Satan, or those in the crowd who demanded still another
sign from Him to see whether He was in fact from God.
How blind do you have to be, how dead does your heart have to be, how
hard does your heart have to be not to see what is going on in this passage?
Is it really believable that Satan would be behind the casting out of
Satan? And so we see something of
the hardness of the unconverted heart in this passage.

We also see the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, don’t we?
We see that power in the way that He casts out this demon.
There’s no description of how He does it.
There’s no elaborate ritual that He goes through.
There are no words of incantation that are recorded that He speaks.
He simply casts the demon out and the demon is gone, the demon leaves.
It’s a testimony to the power of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Of course, later in the passage Jesus also testifies to His power because
He says that a strong man can only be despoiled from his palace by a stronger
man. And Jesus Himself is that One
who is able to cast Satan out, and then come take occupation of our hearts, and
take the spoils that Satan was ruining in our lives and use them for His glory
and for our good.

And we could meditate on those things for a while but I want to take you where
Jesus Himself goes in this passage, to a reflection on conversion itself because
in response to the accusations of some in the multitude that He was doing this
great miracle by the power of Satan and in response to the demand that He show
some other sign that He was really from God, Jesus not only teaches us about
demon possession and shows the illogic of the charges that have been brought
against Him, but He also tells us something very important about conversion and
what conversion really means and what is required for a human heart to be
transformed from the inside out and to be given new life, eternal life, and to
be changed so that we walk with God.

And so I want you to see two things today.


I. Conversion is more than an exterior renovation.

The first thing I want you to see is that Jesus makes it clear here that
conversion is more than mere external, moral renovation.
It’s a fascinating thing.
Jesus saves this man from oppression by a demon.
The immediate response of some in the crowd — look at verse 14 — is that
they marveled. Now that’s so far, so
good. Marveling is a proper
response. One would want more than
that as a response but that’s a good start at a proper response to what Jesus
has done. They ought to have
marveled. But some in this crowd,
hardened hearts with the leaven of the Pharisees in them, respond by accusing
Jesus of doing this by the power of Satan.
And Jesus shows the illogic of that position by telling them three
things.

First of all look at verse 17. Jesus
says that makes no sense. “If a
kingdom is divided against itself it will not stand.
Surely you don’t think Satan is divided against his own kingdom.
Surely you don’t think Satan is trying to undermine the dominion of his
own kingdom. It does not make sense
that Satan would be casting out Satan or that Satan would be giving Me the power
to cast out those who were under his rule.”
Then Jesus goes on to say, if you look at verse 19, “And by the way, if
I’m casting out demons by the power of Satan, who exactly is it who is giving
the power to the exorcists who are amongst your own village and your own people
to cast out demons?” Now Jesus is
not necessarily commenting on whether these exorcists are actually doing what
they claim. He is saying however,
and we know this — it was common among the Jews for there to be people whose
business what that of casting out demons and they often did it through
incantations and sort of semi-magical rites and words that are said in order to
cast that demon out.

We, in fact, encounter this in several places in the gospels as other people
attempt to duplicate Jesus and His disciples casting out of demons.
But His point is simply this — “Why would you accuse Me of casting out
demons by Satan when you don’t accuse your own of casting out demons by Satan?
That doesn’t make sense.” And
then He says this, “But if it is of the finger of God” verse 20 “that I cast out
demons, then the kingdom
of God has come upon you.”
In other words, He’s now turning to the people who’ve said, “We want
another sign,” and He says, “Now look, here’s your sign.
How is it that I’m casting out demons?
How could I possibly do that unless I’m sovereign over demons?
And who’s sovereign over demons but God?
And so the only way that I could do what I’m doing is if God has
empowered Me to do it and that is the sign that the kingdom of God is among you
and at work and that ought to evoke in you of all people, people who have grown
up on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, those of you who
have grown up on the law and the prophets ought to know that this is an
irrefutable sign that God is afoot, that I am the anointed of God, and that I
ought to be believed and followed.”
And yet they want another sign. This
is not unlike other places where other signs are demanded from Jesus and His
disciples.

And so He responds to the charges that are made against Him and He shows the
illogic of them and He explains to them why they ought to have believed at this
great display of God’s relieving mercy to this man who had been under the foul
domination of this mute spirit who kept him from even being able to talk.

But He doesn’t stop there. He goes
on to tell them a little bit about how demons work.
And in the course of doing that He explains to us something very, very
important about the human heart and about our own attempt to renovate ourselves,
as opposed to how He goes about liberating a sinner.
Look at what He says beginning in verse 21 — “When a strong man, fully
armed, guards his own palace, his goods are safe.”
Now this is a description of Satan’s dominion over us.
Jesus, by the way, is not saying that everyone who is not a Christian is
demon possessed, but what He is saying is that everyone who is apart from Christ
is under the dominion of Satan and the principle set down here in relation to
demon possession apply to everyone.
Everyone who is apart from Christ is under the dominion of the strong man and
the strong man is armed and he guards what is his and everything that is in his
dominion is safe.

What happens then? Verse 21 — “One
stronger than he attacks him and overcomes him.”
By the way, do you notice how Jesus makes it clear that His kingdom is
not on the defensive? He’s not
pulling up the bridges, filling up the moats with alligators and hunkering down
in some castle somewhere hoping to hang on.
His kingdom is advancing.
Sometimes we misunderstand what He says in Matthew when He says, “The gates of
hell will not prevail against it.”
Sometimes that sounds, in our ears, because of the word “prevail” like it’s hell
attacking and we’re on the defensive.

But notice gates are not usually an offensive weapon in battle.
Gates are designed to keep something out, so hell in that illustration of
Jesus is stationary and who’s attacking hell?
The kingdom
of God is coming against
the gates of hell and He’s saying the gates do not prevail against the assault
of the kingdom of heaven. That is,
the gates aren’t able to keep out the assault of the kingdom of heaven.
And here again is that kind of illustration.
One stronger than he attacks him and overcomes him.
Who is that? It is the Lord
Jesus Christ. And He’s illustrated
that of course in this extraordinary event of the casting out of the demon.
He is more powerful than the demon or the ruler of the demons because
He’s able to cast him out.

Then He says this — “Whoever is not with Me is against Me, and whoever does not
gather with Me scatters.” He makes
it clear that He is the dividing line.
There are only two types of people in the world — those who are with Him
and those who are against Him, those who have been liberated by Him and those
who have not been liberated by Him and are under the dominion of the evil one.

And then, beginning in verse 24 going down to verse 26, He describes how demonic
oppression and possession works. “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a
person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finding none, it
says, ‘I will return’” — notice — “’to my house from which I came.’”
In other words, He’s saying it is possible for a demonic spirit to leave
a person of its own accord and to wander and then to decide, “You know, I’m
going to go back where I came from and retake possession of my palace, my house,
my place.” The demon in this passage
is describing that human heart as his abode.
“And when it comes” — look at verse 25 — “it finds the house swept and
put in order.”

Now this is Jesus’ way of describing a person who has tried to turn over a new
leaf, tried to make a new start in life, tried to clean up his or her act, tried
to engage in a moral self-renovation, tried to be a better person, tried to live
a better life, tried to stop doing really, really heinous sins and get things
cleaned and swept up and in order in life and try and live at least outwardly a
more righteous way, a less obviously ungodly way.
When he returns to the house he finds it swept and put in order, but
what’s the problem? There’s nothing
in that house. That heart is empty.
That heart has not been changed.
The heart has been swept up a bit, things have been tidied up a bit, but
the house is empty.

“Then it goes and brings seven other spirits” — verse 26 — “more evil than
itself,” and then listen to this horrific judgment — “the last state of that
person is worse than the first.” Now
what Jesus is talking about here in this immediate instance of course is the
activity of demonic possession. But
it has a broader application because this is exactly how Satan operates
generally. Listen to what J.C. Ryle
says —

“How dangerous it is to be content with
any change in religion short of thorough conversion to God.
This is a truth which our Lord teaches by a dreadful picture of one from
whom a devil has been cast forth but into whose heart the Holy Spirit has not
entered. He describes the evil
spirit after his expulsion seeking rest and finding none and then planning a
return to the heart which he once inhabited and carrying his plan into execution
and finding that heart empty of any good and like a house swept and garnished
ready for his reception. And He
describes him entering once more with seven spirits worse than himself and he
winds up all with a solemn saying, ‘The last state of that man was worse than
the first.’”

Now this is what Ryle goes on to say — “We must feel, in reading these fearful
words, that Jesus is speaking of things which we fainting comprehend.
He is lifting a corner of the veil which hangs over the unseen world.
His words no doubt illustrate things which existed in the Jewish nation
during His own time of ministry but the main lesson of His words concerns us.
It is the danger of our own individual souls. There is a solemn warning
to us here never to be satisfied with religion reformation without heart
conversion.”

What does Paul pray for the Ephesians in Ephesians 3:14-19?
“That the Father would grant you power by His Spirit so that Christ would
dwell in your hearts by faith.” That
is a picture of the renovation of a life that only comes by the occupation of
our hearts by the Lord Jesus Christ and that is by the work of the Holy Spirit
in regeneration and conversion and it is received by faith.
But Christ is to dwell in our hearts by faith.
This is a picture of a person who has tried to sweep up and clean up his
or her life but Christ is not dwelling in that heart.

And Ryle goes on to say this — “There is no safety except in conversion.
In thorough Christianity to lay aside open sin is nothing unless grace
reigns in our hearts. To cease to do
evil is a small matter if we do not also learn to do well.
The house must not only be swept and whitewashed, a new tenant must be
introduced or else the leprosy may again appear on its walls.
The outward life must not only be garnished with the formal trappings of
religion, the power of vital religion must be experienced in the inner man.
The devil must not only be cast out, the Holy Spirit must take his place.
Christ must dwell in our hearts by faith.
We must not only be moralized, but spiritualized.
We must not only be reformed, but born again.
Jesus is teaching us that conversion is more than mere external, moral
renovation. It is a heart which has been changed and transformed and softened
and given new and eternal life by the work of the Gospel by Jesus Christ.”


II. The evidence of conversion
is a heart change.

Now after Jesus has done this teaching you can almost feel the awe of the crowd.
He has talked about things that human being just don’t understand.
He’s talked about the heart.
He’s talked about the satanic world.
He’s talked about the spirit, the hidden things of the unseen spiritual world.
I remember Gordon Reed preaching a sermon on one of the demon possession
passages from the gospel of Mark at the Trinity Presbyterian Church here in town
in the early 1990’s and he began that sermon by saying, “Now I don’t know much
about demon possession, but I’ve read some books by people who say they know
something about demon possession, and they don’t know much about demon
possession either.”

Well I’m sure that this crowd standing around Jesus must have been in absolute
awe at His knowledge and His comprehension of the unseen hidden world.
And finally one woman blurts out, “Blessed is the womb that bore You, and
blessed are the breasts that fed You as a baby!”
And Jesus does not rebuke that woman.
She is complimenting Him.
She’s saying, “What a privilege it would have been to have been Your mama!
What an amazing Man You are!
What unbelievable wisdom You have just displayed to us!”

But what does Jesus say? He doesn’t
rebuke her. In fact, He affirms the reality of the statement that she says but
then He takes it up. And He says —
look at His language — “Blessed rather are those who hear the Word of God and
keep it!” He says, “Ma’am, as a
matter of fact, the reason that the Virgin Mary is blessed is that she heard the
Word of God and she kept it.” Do you
remember the testimony of Jesus’ mother before He was ever born?
When the angel came to tell her that she was going to bear the Lord Jesus
Christ, do you remember how she responded to the angel?
“Behold, the handmaid of the Lord.
Be it done to me” — how?
“According to Your Word – Lord, I’m going to do, I’m going to accept whatever
Your Word says. Be it done to me
according to Your Word.” She heard
and she did the Word of the Lord.

Now Jesus is saying that that is the mark, that is the evidence of every heart
that has been converted. The heart
that has been converted hears the Word of God and shows its loyalty to the Word
of God and to the Lord Jesus Christ and then does what the Word says.
That’s the evidence of conversion that we hear and obey God’s Word, that
we trust and obey. That we trust and
obey is not a way that we earn our way to conversion. It’s not the way that we
earn our way into the presence of God.
Remember Jesus is saying that conversion is far more than some human
attempt at personal, moral, self-reformation.
No, it takes Jesus coming in and removing the strong man and taking up
residence in our life and giving us a new heart and a new spirit and new life,
eternal life, and then we hear and we obey.
And so this is the evidence of conversion that Jesus is talking about.

Now there’s a sense in which this sermon today is simply the prologue, it’s an
appetizer, it’s an
hors
-d’oeuvre
for the message that Derek is going to preach tonight because he’s going to be
preaching on “What is the Gospel?”
It is the Gospel that bears this converting power in our hearts.
And Derek is going to tell you what that Gospel is that bears the
converting power that changes our hearts and lives from the inside out so that
we are not merely people who’ve tidied ourselves up a bit, but we are people who
have a new occupant in our souls. And we have a new desire and we have new
affections. We want to love the Lord
God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength and our neighbor as
ourselves. We want to live in such a
way that we show love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness,
faithfulness, self-control — and why do we do that?
Because our hearts have been changed by the One who is stronger than the
strong man, by the One who is the Ruler of the ruler of the demons.

Let’s pray.


Heavenly Father, thank You for
this Your Word. We ask that You
would work its truth deep into our hearts and that we would trust and obey.
This we ask in Jesus’ name.
Amen.

Would you take your hymnals in hand and turn with me to 672 and we’ll sing the
first stanza of “Trust and Obey.”

Now receive God’s blessing. Grace,
mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.