SPEAKER_00: Matthew 12, 43 through 45.
SPEAKER_00: When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but it finds none.
SPEAKER_00: Then it says, I'll return to my house from which I came.
SPEAKER_00: And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and in order.
SPEAKER_00: It goes and brings with seven other spirits, more evil than itself.
SPEAKER_00: They enter and dwell there, and the last state of the person is worse than the first, so also will it be with this evil generation.
SPEAKER_00: This is the final encounter with Jesus' opponents in Matthew chapter 12.
SPEAKER_00: It really is the crescendo of an avalanche of opposition Jesus has faced.
SPEAKER_00: To understand the significance of this passage, which is a hard passage to understand for sure.
SPEAKER_00: There are words in it that are unusual.
SPEAKER_00: There are words in it that are used only one or two other places in the whole Bible, and so it is a somewhat of a complicated passage to navigate.
SPEAKER_00: In order to get our minds and our arms around it, we have to take a step back and remember what it's doing here in the whole book of Matthew.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 1 and 2 describes the genealogy of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It authenticates that he is the Son of God, that he is the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: It describes the virgin birth.
SPEAKER_00: It describes the King Herod trying to put him to death.
SPEAKER_00: It really establishes the deity, divinity, and messiahship, the kingship of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 3 then enters John the Baptist, who adds his own declaration to the identity of Jesus and baptizes him.
SPEAKER_00: And the Father from heaven says, This is my son.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit descends upon him.
SPEAKER_00: There can be no doubt that this is the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 4, the devil attacks Jesus, much as he attacked Adam so many years earlier.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus withstands temptation, conquers the devil, and at the end of Matthew 4 is declared to be the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: He's the light of the nations, the light to Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he's the light, he is a savior, not just of the Jews, but of the whole world, shining through Galilee, which is the Gentile area.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 5, 6, and 7 is a Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus begins his ministry preaching, and at the end of it, you remember the Jewish people were astonished at his preaching.
SPEAKER_00: They said, Nobody can preach like we've never heard anything like this before.
SPEAKER_00: Our own scribes and religious leaders and Pharisees, they've never taught like this before.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's the first sign that there's trouble in paradise.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 8 and 9, Jesus backs up his preaching with miracles and signs and wonders.
SPEAKER_00: The leper comes to him and says, If you're willing, you can heal me.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus heals him.
SPEAKER_00: The centurion comes and says, If you're able to heal my servant, please do so.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, Jesus couldn't enter a Gentile's house, so how is he going to heal the centurion's servant?
SPEAKER_00: But he does anyway.
SPEAKER_00: One miracle after another.
SPEAKER_00: He casts the demons into the pigs, he calms the storm, he heals Peter's mother-in-law.
SPEAKER_00: It's just one sign and wonder after another.
SPEAKER_00: That's Matthew 8 and 9.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 10, he establishes his disciples and sends them into the world.
SPEAKER_00: He gives them authority over unclean spirits.
SPEAKER_00: And they return rejoicing.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 11 is the great invitation.
SPEAKER_00: What the message that Jesus' disciples carry to the world, Jesus repeats, come to him, all you who are weak, who are heavy laden, come to him and find rest for your weary souls.
SPEAKER_00: When you take that together, it is clear Jesus is the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: He has teaching unparalleled in human history, matched with signs and wonders, followed with a great invitation.
SPEAKER_00: So the question then in Matthew 12 is will the Jewish leaders believe?
SPEAKER_00: After all of that, the genealogy, the voice from heaven, the baptism of John, the confrontation with the devil, the sermon on the mount, the signs and wonders and healing, the authority over evil spirits, the invitation to be saved, what will the Jewish leaders do?
SPEAKER_00: And that's what starts Matthew 12.
SPEAKER_00: And Matthew 12 becomes one excuse, one objection, one reason to not follow Jesus after another.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to use that as our outline this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Reasons people reject Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Because they just keep growing.
SPEAKER_00: And all of these reasons in Matthew 12 help focus our passage this morning.
SPEAKER_00: When you realize that the evil spirit leaving somebody, it's not just an isolated narrative plopped at the end of Matthew 12, but is really the crescendo of this constant avalanche, a tsunami of objections about Christ are crystallized in this encounter with the demon.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 12 starts with one of the most sad and pathetic exchanges imaginable.
SPEAKER_00: It is the Jewish leaders surrounding Jesus and wanting to know why his disciples are plucking grain on the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: Again, this would be funny if it weren't so depressing.
SPEAKER_00: He has raised the dead, he's given sight to the blind, he has healed lepers, he has done one thing after another, and then he has pleaded with them for their souls.
SPEAKER_00: They have seen all of this, and then they say, Yes, but why are you plucking grain on Saturdays?
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you, it is outlandish.
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish Sabbath is so central to their identity, to their ethnic identity, their religious identity, their national identity.
SPEAKER_00: They could not, these religious leaders could not even comprehend a world where the Sabbath and their own religious traditions were not central.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, God said Jesus is the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, he defeated the devil.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, he's raised the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, he's preached with authority and reoriented the law about himself.
SPEAKER_00: I know all of that, but he doesn't follow our traditions.
SPEAKER_00: That's what they're stuck on.
SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, this is about their status and their power, of course, but in that is their long line of faithfulness in their own mind to Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: They cannot get away from it.
SPEAKER_00: This objection still lives on today, of course.
SPEAKER_00: There are countless people that will not give Jesus a fair hearing because they are, you know, generation after generation in some other religion.
SPEAKER_00: I know Northern Virginia is very transitory.
SPEAKER_00: People are here and go all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Before I was here, I was pastoring in Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_00: Without a doubt, the most common response to a gospel presentation in Los Angeles was always, like, I understand what you're saying, but you don't understand that my family is Catholic as far back as it goes.
SPEAKER_00: We have been Catholic for generations.
SPEAKER_00: They cannot bring themselves to a place where they no longer trust the sacraments to dispense grace for them.
SPEAKER_00: They can only imagine a life structured in the shadow of the Catholic Church.
SPEAKER_00: They can't, you know, Jesus says, flee from that.
SPEAKER_00: Don't trust works, come to faith in Him entirely, be washed.
SPEAKER_00: And they they can't get to the point where they're willing to engage at that level because of the clutches of Catholicism over not just them, but generations.
SPEAKER_00: That's true in every nation of the world.
SPEAKER_00: People, it's not an objection about is the Bible true, or what about, you know, did Jesus really do these things?
SPEAKER_00: That's not the objection.
SPEAKER_00: The objection isn't I don't understand what the gospel says.
SPEAKER_00: The objection is just it's been in my family for generations.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus fulfills their religious tradition, but they don't have ears to hear that.
SPEAKER_00: Second objection is their intellectual skepticism.
SPEAKER_00: They are Ariadite in their own minds, and they tell Jesus, we would believe in you if you could only do another sign.
SPEAKER_00: These people are so sophisticated in their own minds.
SPEAKER_00: They're so educated, sophisticated, that they're not just going to fall for any faith healer that comes along.
SPEAKER_00: So they demand in the middle of this chapter, specifically in verse 38, they demand another sign.
SPEAKER_00: Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you, as they say in verse 38, which again is ridiculous.
SPEAKER_00: He has done sign after sign after sign, he has raised the dead, given signs.
SPEAKER_00: Even in this chapter, verse 22, he cast out a demon from a demon-possessed man, he healed a blind and mute man in this very chapter.
SPEAKER_00: They have seen so many signs, and that's a little window into intellectual skepticism.
SPEAKER_00: It's not an authentic objection.
SPEAKER_00: The irony with the intellectually skeptic person is that their objection is not intellectually honest.
SPEAKER_00: That's the irony.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus fulfilled religious tradition.
SPEAKER_00: He answers intellectual skepticism.
SPEAKER_00: He says there's no other sign you could possibly receive that you haven't already received, except one, I'm gonna die and resurrect from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, he does that and they do not believe.
SPEAKER_00: They reject Jesus because they are spiritually confused.
SPEAKER_00: They're so confused.
SPEAKER_00: They look at what Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: If you look up in verse 24, he just cast out the demon, he healed the blind and the mute man, and they say, Oh, it's only because he's the devil that the demons listen to him.
SPEAKER_00: So they just had this is what I mean by spiritual confusion.
SPEAKER_00: They just saw somebody who is demonically afflicted rescued.
SPEAKER_00: And they look at it and they cannot figure out if that's the work of God or the work of the devil.
SPEAKER_00: That's how confused they are.
SPEAKER_00: They're looking at something that is objectively good for this person.
SPEAKER_00: And they think, I don't know if that's God doing it or the devil doing it.
SPEAKER_00: I forget.
SPEAKER_00: Is it the devil who kills and harms and God who gives life, or do I have that backwards?
SPEAKER_00: That's where they are.
SPEAKER_00: You still see this today, all these you see today, these excuses, don't you?
SPEAKER_00: It is very common for people today to reject the gospel because the answer I hear the most often today is I can't be a Christian because of what Christians have done with abortion.
SPEAKER_00: Christians have advocated against abortion, and now look, Roe v.
SPEAKER_00: Wade is overturned, and the Christians are to blame for this.
SPEAKER_00: They look at abortion and they're so confused about is that good or evil?
SPEAKER_00: Is it good or evil to take a baby's life?
SPEAKER_00: Christians are against that, so I think that means they're working with the devil.
SPEAKER_00: It is a dark spiritual confusion.
SPEAKER_00: And that in Matthew's 12th chapter here is what Jesus says is the unforgivable sin.
SPEAKER_00: Is looking at all of the signs and all of the works of Jesus and concluding, well, that's the devil.
SPEAKER_00: Fourth.
SPEAKER_00: The fourth objection they have here is demonic oppression.
SPEAKER_00: The fourth reason they don't believe is that they are oppressed by demons.
SPEAKER_00: There are examples of people who are actually oppressed by demons.
SPEAKER_00: That is keeping them from faith.
SPEAKER_00: It is afflicting them.
SPEAKER_00: You've seen them in a few places here.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 27, Jesus says he's casting out demons.
SPEAKER_00: He asked if I do it by devil.
SPEAKER_00: The devil, who do your sons cast them out by?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there are people that are demonically possessed, the demons are being cast out.
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
SPEAKER_00: Demons afflict people throughout all of human history.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, the devil saw that God made the world good.
SPEAKER_00: The devil wanted to rule the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, God gave the earth to Adam, dirty, stinking Adam made from literal dirt.
SPEAKER_00: And the devil sees this and rejects that system and chooses to attack mankind.
SPEAKER_00: He attacks Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, he attacks Eve first because he's trying to subvert the order in marriage here.
SPEAKER_00: He has Eve set from her husband's leadership and protection.
SPEAKER_00: He tempts her.
SPEAKER_00: She sins.
SPEAKER_00: Adam abdicates his responsibility to protect and to lead.
SPEAKER_00: He sins as well.
SPEAKER_00: The human race is plunged into sin.
SPEAKER_00: Through Eve's sin, the sin is Adam is our representative.
SPEAKER_00: Through Adam's failure, all people are born into sin now.
SPEAKER_00: That's the devil's work.
SPEAKER_00: The devil gets angels to fall with him.
SPEAKER_00: At least a third of the angels join the rebellion.
SPEAKER_00: These angels become demons, and they also afflict human beings.
SPEAKER_00: Now, demons are they're spiritual beings.
SPEAKER_00: They don't have a human body.
SPEAKER_00: They can't act out their evil on people unless they take the form of a person.
SPEAKER_00: That seems to be the normal way that they operate.
SPEAKER_00: So the devil takes the form of a snake and inhabits a snake in some way.
SPEAKER_00: Demons do this throughout the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: The demons inspire David to take a census.
SPEAKER_00: A lying spirit, a demon, goes in the mouth of Ahab's prophet to call a lie about a war and give a false prophecy to convince Ahab and Jehosaphat he was a godly king to go to war together.
SPEAKER_00: It was all a lie.
SPEAKER_00: And God had a demon do that.
SPEAKER_00: Demons attacked Job and his family and his health, causing their death.
SPEAKER_00: That's the work of demons.
SPEAKER_00: And people ask, why doesn't God stop demons?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is God is sovereign over demons.
SPEAKER_00: Demons are rebelling against him, but they have to ultimately report to him.
SPEAKER_00: They cannot do what he does not allow, and God allows them to do things because it ultimately ends up glorifying himself.
SPEAKER_00: You see this in the book of Job.
SPEAKER_00: Job's last state is more glorifying the Lord than his first state.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make God responsible for evil.
SPEAKER_00: And that's so clear with Ahab and Josaphat.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, God sent a true prophet then to say, hey, that guy has a demon in him and he's lying.
SPEAKER_00: So you can't say, oh, God is causing them to believe a lie when God sent a prophet to tell them it was a demon.
SPEAKER_00: Don't believe him.
SPEAKER_00: That happens in the New Testament as well.
SPEAKER_00: People are demonically afflicted throughout the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: It happens today.
SPEAKER_00: People are demonically afflicted today.
SPEAKER_00: What does a person in the New Testament look like who has a demon?
SPEAKER_00: He's taking off his clothes, he's wandering around the street, he's cutting himself, he's talking to himself.
SPEAKER_00: And people say, I don't know if there's demons today.
SPEAKER_00: I would be surprised if there's anybody in this worship center that has never seen a demonically possessed person before.
SPEAKER_00: Demons are real.
SPEAKER_00: But the truth of them is that Jesus is stronger than them.
SPEAKER_00: And he says that in the middle of the chapter.
SPEAKER_00: He says that he's going to bind the strongman.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 29, how can someone enter a strongman's house and plunders goods unless he's first bound?
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is the strongman.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, Jesus outranks demons.
SPEAKER_00: So we look at these four reasons.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus fulfills their religious tradition, they don't care.
SPEAKER_00: He answers their intellectual skepticism, they don't care.
SPEAKER_00: He sorts out their spiritual confusion, sheds light on it, they don't care.
SPEAKER_00: And he's stronger than the demons, again, they don't care.
SPEAKER_00: After all of that, they are still stuck on their own rejection of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's where the fifth reason comes in in our passages this morning, verses 43 through 45.
SPEAKER_00: The fifth reason is outward discipline.
SPEAKER_00: Outward discipline.
SPEAKER_00: They refuse faith because of their religious tradition, their intellectual skepticism, their spiritual confusion, their demonic oppression, but fifth, their outward discipline.
SPEAKER_00: Now, outward discipline, by that phrase, I simply mean their own reliance on works, their own reliance on being a good person, on having their life together.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus illustrates that in verse 43.
SPEAKER_00: When an unclean spirit has gone out of a person.
SPEAKER_00: So unclean spirit is an unusual word.
SPEAKER_00: It means a demon.
SPEAKER_00: But this word for it has only been used in one other place in the Bible so far.
SPEAKER_00: And that place is in Matthew 10, where Jesus sends his disciples out with authority over unclean spirits.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus sends his disciples into the world to cast out unclean spirits from people.
SPEAKER_00: And they do that.
SPEAKER_00: Then you see an unclean spirit leaving a person.
SPEAKER_00: This is a jarring passage because it seems like it's coming out of nowhere.
SPEAKER_00: The verse before it, for example, was that the Queen of Sheba heard of Solomon's wisdom, was drawn to Solomon's wisdom, saw how great God was through Solomon's wisdom, and was converted, and now we'll judge Gentiles and the Jewish leaders.
SPEAKER_00: That's the verse before this next verse, when an unclean spirit has been cast out of someone.
SPEAKER_00: So it seems like you're in a bit of a car crash here.
SPEAKER_00: The connection, though, I'll make evident in a second, the unclean spirit is cast out of a person, probably by the disciples a few months earlier.
SPEAKER_00: When that happens, it passes through waterless places.
SPEAKER_00: There are some that say waterless places is like a spiritual realm.
SPEAKER_00: Back in Genesis, there's a separation of dry land and water, so maybe this is a land between those two, a spiritual realm where demons exist and they don't like to be there, like demon purgatory or something.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's probably better to take waterless places just at face value, an arid place, a dry place, a desert land, a place where people don't live.
SPEAKER_00: People can only live where there's water.
SPEAKER_00: The demon is cast out of somebody and goes off to the desert somewhere, roaming around because he doesn't have a person to inhabit.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, demons want to cause pain and affliction in human beings.
SPEAKER_00: In order to act out or manifest their evil, they need to inhabit a body, if not a person of an animal of some kind.
SPEAKER_00: So this demon is homeless, wandering through the desert.
SPEAKER_00: He's tired of wandering.
SPEAKER_00: He seeks rest, it says in verse 43.
SPEAKER_00: My favorite thing I read in a commentary this week is what a question.
SPEAKER_00: What do demons need rest from?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer the commentator said is their normal demonic activities.
SPEAKER_00: I laughed out loud when I read that.
SPEAKER_00: It's demon nap time.
SPEAKER_00: This demon is tired and wants a place to rest and doesn't have anywhere to go.
SPEAKER_00: So it says to itself, verse 44, I will return to my house from which I came.
SPEAKER_00: This is in the subjunctive.
SPEAKER_00: It's like it's guessing.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder what would happen if I went back to the place I got the heave ho from a few months ago.
SPEAKER_00: Look what would happen?
SPEAKER_00: It's just supposing in its mind.
SPEAKER_00: This past week I was in Los Angeles and I was driving around and I drove by a house that a bunch of the IBC pastors had stayed in a few years before when we were there for a pastors' conference.
SPEAKER_00: It had a nice pool and everything, and and I wondered, did that Airbnb change the code on the door?
SPEAKER_00: Like, could I get into the pool right now?
SPEAKER_00: That's a nice pool.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't do it because that would be wrong.
SPEAKER_00: If you're listening online, I didn't do it.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the demon is wondering.
SPEAKER_00: Did they change the code?
SPEAKER_00: Can I get in?
SPEAKER_00: And so the demon comes back.
SPEAKER_00: And lo and behold, this is the surprising part of this.
SPEAKER_00: He finds the house empty, swept, and put in order.
SPEAKER_00: It's intentionally ambiguous.
SPEAKER_00: Does he mean the guy's house or his own body?
SPEAKER_00: It's ambiguous.
SPEAKER_00: Both are true, of course.
SPEAKER_00: This becomes a picture of a man that has got his act together without the gospel and without the demon.
SPEAKER_00: He was demonically afflicted.
SPEAKER_00: He was wandering the street, cutting himself and naked and talking to himself and living out in the graves or living out in the caves, living out in the middle of nowhere, sleeping on the streets, abusing himself.
SPEAKER_00: That was his condition.
SPEAKER_00: And now that the demon is gone, he's not those things anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember when Jesus cast a demon out of the demoniac in the Gentile land across the Sea of Galilee when the demoniac came back to his town?
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember what everybody said about him?
SPEAKER_00: The first thing they noticed before they knew he was with Jesus, the first thing they noticed, they said, Oh, he is clothed and in his right mind.
SPEAKER_00: They could tell.
SPEAKER_00: That's this guy.
SPEAKER_00: The demon is gone.
SPEAKER_00: He's got clothes on, he's in his right mind, and more than that, he's got his act together.
SPEAKER_00: If this guy had a house before, I'm sure it was damaged and destroyed, and now it's clean.
SPEAKER_00: Everything's put away.
SPEAKER_00: If he was in an asylum before, which the Jews had asylums, maybe he was in one of those before.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's back at home.
SPEAKER_00: If he was homeless before, he's got a house now.
SPEAKER_00: And it's all strange.
SPEAKER_00: He's clothed and in his right mind.
SPEAKER_00: Beyond that, he's disciplined.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to the gym every morning.
SPEAKER_00: He's eating his vegetables.
SPEAKER_00: Or in the Jewish world, he's keeping Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: He's keeping the Torah.
SPEAKER_00: He's no longer a danger to himself and to society.
SPEAKER_00: He's got his act together.
SPEAKER_00: That's this guy.
SPEAKER_00: One commentator says, Leon Morris, a pleasant moral reformation has taken place.
SPEAKER_00: But the man thinks he's still in control of himself and with no reference to the Spirit of God, therefore the man is truly empty.
SPEAKER_00: He is open to invitations from all kinds of evil.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, his house is tidy, but it's empty.
SPEAKER_00: It's dusty, but there's no furniture in it.
SPEAKER_00: He has things in order, but there's no life there.
SPEAKER_00: This is a picture of the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to understand, this is the best case scenario that religion has to offer someone.
SPEAKER_00: The best case scenario, if you listen to the Pharisees or bring it present day.
SPEAKER_00: If you fall for the sacramental system in Catholicism, if you fall for the pillars of Islam, if you fall for the Eastern religions, if you fall for Mormonism, if you fall for any of that, at the end of the day, their best offer to you, the best they can do, if you do what they say, the best they have to offer is that you have your act together.
SPEAKER_00: You dress right, you have a job, you go to the gym, you eat healthy, you are not gluttonous, you're not covetous, you're not adulterous, you have your life together in a way that you are a pillar of your community and you function well in society.
SPEAKER_00: That is the Pharisees' best case scenario.
SPEAKER_00: That's what they offered people keep the Sabbath, keep the law, straighten out your life, and all will be well for you.
SPEAKER_00: This is the picture of works righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Now, God gives us his law.
SPEAKER_00: There are three uses of God's law.
SPEAKER_00: This is a little bit of a theology lesson to help you understand works righteousness here.
SPEAKER_00: There's three uses of God's law.
SPEAKER_00: The first use of God's law is to reveal to you who God is, that God is holy.
SPEAKER_00: That has the function of, you know, restraining sin.
SPEAKER_00: People don't want to sin because God is holy.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first use of the law, to reveal to you who God is.
SPEAKER_00: The second use of the law is to convict you of your sin.
SPEAKER_00: And make you realize you need a savior.
SPEAKER_00: The third use of the law is to show you how to live in light of your relationship with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: To motivate godly living.
SPEAKER_00: You make a very big mistake with the law if you start with the third one, and you make a very big mistake with the law if you ignore the third one.
SPEAKER_00: There's an order.
SPEAKER_00: For example, God's law says do not murder.
SPEAKER_00: That reveals who God is.
SPEAKER_00: It shows you that God is holy and that God is life-giving.
SPEAKER_00: Second use of the law is to expose you.
SPEAKER_00: If you've hated in your heart, you are guilty of murder.
SPEAKER_00: And you realize the clearest law possible, don't commit murder.
SPEAKER_00: I've broken in my own heart.
SPEAKER_00: I am condemned as a murderer and I need a savior.
SPEAKER_00: The third use of the law is so now that I'm forgiven in Christ, I should strive to love my enemies as myself.
SPEAKER_00: That's the full circle of that.
SPEAKER_00: If you do that out of order, you break everything.
SPEAKER_00: If you start with, I'm going to try hard to not hate people, I'm going to not murder somebody, so that I can be like God.
SPEAKER_00: You think I don't need a savior because I'm keeping the law, it makes me like God.
SPEAKER_00: It earns me credit with God.
SPEAKER_00: God says, don't commit adultery.
SPEAKER_00: It reveals that God is pure.
SPEAKER_00: That God has one bride, his church.
SPEAKER_00: The second function of that is to show you that if you lust, you commit adultery, you're condemned, you need a savior.
SPEAKER_00: Third function of that is to motivate personal purity in your life in light of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But the works righteousness person enters this and says, I'm going to refrain from adultery.
SPEAKER_00: I will have rules about adultery to guard adultery so that I can lead a pure life.
SPEAKER_00: You're bypassing the need for Christ so that you can be like God.
SPEAKER_00: That's works righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: This is endemic in Judaism.
SPEAKER_00: That's where the Jews are at the end of chapter 12.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to keep the Sabbath, they're going to keep the law, so they don't need Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus rebukes them for it time and time again.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to flip, we have a few minutes.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to flip over to Matthew chapter 23.
SPEAKER_00: Keep your finger in Matthew 12 because it'll be back there.
SPEAKER_00: But Matthew 23, towards the end of Jesus' life, is a very clear rebuke to this.
SPEAKER_00: The whole chapter is about this.
SPEAKER_00: You could really start anywhere.
SPEAKER_00: But let's start in verse 25.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 23, verse 25.
SPEAKER_00: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.
SPEAKER_00: You clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside you are full of greed and self-indulgence.
SPEAKER_00: They clean the outside of the plate.
SPEAKER_00: They washed the big pieces of food off the plate, but they didn't actually wash the plates.
SPEAKER_00: There's a difference between scraping the food in the trash and washing the plate, right?
SPEAKER_00: When you're done with dinner, you might scrape the scraps in the trash can, but you don't put the plate back into the cabinet then without washing it.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking to the teenagers here.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, that's what the Pharisees are like.
SPEAKER_00: They're getting rid of the big sins in their life, but they are not cleaned on the inside.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 27.
SPEAKER_00: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you're hypocrites.
SPEAKER_00: You're like whitewashed tombs.
SPEAKER_00: Outwardly, you're very beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: We don't really have the analogy to this in America.
SPEAKER_00: We have like the uh Arlington Cemetery is as close as we get when, you know, winter when the graves are white and they got the wreaths on them.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very it can be very pretty there.
SPEAKER_00: Still somber but pretty.
SPEAKER_00: In the Jewish world, the the graves, your body is put in a grave, it's wrapped in cloths and put in a grave.
SPEAKER_00: The grave is a cave, it's above ground and it's accessible.
SPEAKER_00: You rot then, your flesh decomposes.
SPEAKER_00: At some point years later, a family member comes in and gets your bones and takes the bones and breaks them down, you know, breaks the leg and the femur and all that, and breaks them down and puts them in an ossuary, puts them in a box.
SPEAKER_00: The box is then put in a grave that's on top outside of the ground.
SPEAKER_00: It's on top of the ground, it's inside of a stone box, it's got a stone slab on the top of it, and the ossuary, the bones go in that box, and there's a slab on the top of it.
SPEAKER_00: And then people will put rocks on top of the graves.
SPEAKER_00: You know, Americans put flowers on graves, the Jews have put rocks on top of the graves.
SPEAKER_00: That's demonstrating that the grave hasn't been moved.
SPEAKER_00: It's in hope of the resurrection, the bodily resurrection, all of that.
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's outdoors and it's flat.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, birds sit on the rocks, squirrels climb on the rocks, it rains on the rocks, birds poop on the rocks.
SPEAKER_00: And so people will come by every few years and wash the graves.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they'll even paint the graves.
SPEAKER_00: If you go to Jerusalem today and you go to the Mount of Olives, it's covered in these kinds of graves.
SPEAKER_00: And when they're cleaned, it's incredibly pretty.
SPEAKER_00: It's the shining white light that shines onto the temple across the hill there.
SPEAKER_00: And it's so pretty.
SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, though, inside of the rocks are bones.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's a very pretty white box with a femur inside of it.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you're dealing with there.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Jesus compares the Jewish leaders to.
SPEAKER_00: They reject the Spirit of God, they reject the gospel, but they clean themselves on the outside.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 28, you appear righteous to others, but inward you're full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
SPEAKER_00: You can flip back to Matthew chapter 12.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the demon finds.
SPEAKER_00: The demon comes back and finds this dude in order.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what does the demon think?
SPEAKER_00: He looks at him.
SPEAKER_00: And then, verse 45, he goes and brings with him seven other spirits more evil than itself, so they can enter and dwell there.
SPEAKER_00: The demon sees this and goes, This is perfect.
SPEAKER_00: It appears the demons cannot just inhabit any person.
SPEAKER_00: They need a person with that they have some kind of access to.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the person has given himself over to evil in a particular way, but in this instance is a place the demon has access to, and the guy is self-righteous and morally rigorous.
SPEAKER_00: And that makes him subject to Satan and the devil and temptation in a way that a lost and demon-possessed and depraved person is not.
SPEAKER_00: The person who is self-righteous is open to demonic affliction in a profound way because they're so confident in their own goodness.
SPEAKER_00: They don't need a savior.
SPEAKER_00: And it's morally perpetuating.
SPEAKER_00: The stronger and more self-righteous a person is, the less they think they need a savior.
SPEAKER_00: The more they're content in their fulfillment of the law, the less they're going to be drawn to a place of brokenness and a contrite spirit and crying out to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Whereas the morally depraved person, the broken person, that's a person who knows they need a savior.
SPEAKER_00: The self-righteous person, his very morality blinds him to his condition and binds him to his own sin.
SPEAKER_00: That's the problem.
SPEAKER_00: And this demon finds him and says, This is great.
SPEAKER_00: Let's throw a party here, let's do a rave here.
SPEAKER_00: And he has no problem getting seven of his friends to join him.
SPEAKER_00: I mentioned that this is unusual language, but it is used one other place in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: I'll put it on the screen for you.
SPEAKER_00: 2 Peter 2.20.
SPEAKER_00: If after a person has escaped the defilements of this world, the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they're again entangled in them and overcome, their last condition is worse than the first.
SPEAKER_00: That's the same expression Jesus uses.
SPEAKER_00: It's worse than the first.
SPEAKER_00: What this means is if somebody is exposed to sin, the law confronts them, they recognize their sin, and they try to fight it on their own strength and their own will, apart from Christ, apart from the Holy Spirit, they're going to fail.
SPEAKER_00: And when they fall back in, they may be able to, you know, through self-control and strength, be able to overcome their sins for a period of time.
SPEAKER_00: But unless they repent, unless they cry to God for forgiveness, unless their heart is cleansed, they're going to fall back into them again.
SPEAKER_00: They can put to death worldliness for a hot minute.
SPEAKER_00: They can put to death lust and idolatry and all of that for a few months, even.
SPEAKER_00: But when they fall back into it again after knowing about Christ, when they fall back into it, their second condition, Jesus says, is worse than the first.
SPEAKER_00: So also it will be with this evil generation.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the basic question that makes this such a jarring little way to end Matthew 12.
SPEAKER_00: Let's do the would you rather game.
SPEAKER_00: Would you rather be demonically possessed, stripped down, cutting yourself, and living in caves, hitting your head against rocks?
SPEAKER_00: Or would you rather be a pillar of your community, shirt tucked in, kids that behave, a good job and a dog and all that?
SPEAKER_00: Like which would you rather be?
SPEAKER_00: And it's not supposed to be a trick question.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, anybody would look at that and say, obviously, the second one.
SPEAKER_00: Or if you're being obtuse in your heart, how about this?
SPEAKER_00: Which would you rather your kids would be?
SPEAKER_00: You know, you don't wish your kid to be demon-possessed.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, you want him functioning well in society, not a harm to himself and to his neighbors.
SPEAKER_00: Of course.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus' point is that's as good as you can get.
SPEAKER_00: Outside of Christ and outside of the Holy Spirit, that's all religion has to offer.
SPEAKER_00: If you're playing that game, would you rather?
SPEAKER_00: You don't want either of those doors.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want either one.
SPEAKER_00: Both of them are dangerous.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the guy with a shirt tucked in is potentially worse off than the demon-possessed guy because he doesn't think he needs a savior.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' main point is it is worse off to be moral without Christ than it is to be straight up demon-possessed.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has answered all the objections.
SPEAKER_00: He's fulfilled their religious traditions, he's answered their skepticism, he shines through their spiritual confusion, he outranks their demonic opposition, and yet they still won't believe because they think they can get their life together without him.
SPEAKER_00: At the beginning of this chapter, they were curious and following, and now at the end of the chapter, Jesus connects us to their whole generation.
SPEAKER_00: Listen carefully.
SPEAKER_00: It is better, and he said this many times in Matthew 12, it would better be in Sodom and Gomorrah and never having heard of Jesus than it would be to have heard of Jesus and walk away with your shirt tucked in and your life together, but no faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
SPEAKER_00: How sad it would be to know of Jesus and not believe in him and not trust him.
SPEAKER_00: It would be devastating to be so close to heaven that you see Jesus casting demons out of people and yet you don't believe yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, that's what this generation will find itself in.
SPEAKER_00: In the Pilgrim's Progress, John Bund in his classic story, you probably remember the scene.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure many of you are reminded of it in this narrative.
SPEAKER_00: Christian comes across a place to stay.
SPEAKER_00: He's invited in, and there is the innkeeper there, and the place is filthy.
SPEAKER_00: It is covered in dust and dirt.
SPEAKER_00: And the innkeeper starts sweeping and sweeping and sweeping, but all his sweeping does is kick up the dust and kick up the dirt, and it makes it cloudy, and everybody's coughing.
SPEAKER_00: It is worse off than had he just left it there.
SPEAKER_00: And the innkeeper stops and goes and gets water and washes the room with water.
SPEAKER_00: And then dusts it and makes it clean.
SPEAKER_00: Now, had this been C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis, that would have been the end of the story.
SPEAKER_00: But John Bunyan isn't content with subtlety.
SPEAKER_00: John Bunyan inserts a character at this point whose name is Interpreter.
SPEAKER_00: He's not even trying to be subtle.
SPEAKER_00: And Christian turns to an interpreter and says, What meaneth this?
SPEAKER_00: And interpreter says, I'm glad I'm here.
SPEAKER_00: What this means is trying to earn God's favor through law-keeping is just moving the dust around.
SPEAKER_00: What you need is the washing of the water of the word, regeneration, faith in Christ, and the word of God cleanses you from the inside out.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're grateful that you cleanse us from the inside out.
SPEAKER_00: You offer us something better than works righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: You offer us wisdom, wisdom to see Christ, wisdom incarnate, wisdom to be convicted by our sin.
SPEAKER_00: Wisdom to hold on to Christ in his death and resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: Who is my mother and brother and sisters?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus asks.
SPEAKER_00: Only those who do the will of the Father.
SPEAKER_00: Lord help us be those people.
SPEAKER_00: We know the will of the Father is to believe in the Son whom he sent.
SPEAKER_00: So we trust Christ, not ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: It's in his name we pray.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church.
SPEAKER_00: If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_00: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_00: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.