Less Deliverance, More Repentance
To watch the sermon Less Deliverance, More Repentance | Matthew 12: 43-45
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Hff at home. So one of two things have happened. I'm recording this before Snowmageddon happened. So one of two things have happened. Either we have no Snowmageddon, or we have a lot of snow.
So your kids are probably outside playing if they're not still sleeping, and mom and dad are probably sitting on the couch, or they're still in bed. Either way, we're going to keep going on our series of the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew chapter 12 today. But before we do that, I want to kick off with a couple of announcements just to keep them in front of you guys, especially since we're not going to be in person this week. First and foremost, next week we are going to do our children's class. It's the fifth week.
Normally we don't do anything, but because we're in a situation where we're all sitting at home today, we don't want the kids to miss out on that, plus the lesson plans, all the other things that were going on. Secondly, next week, when we finish our service, we will leave from our current facility at Westmore and we will drive about a mile and we will meet in the white building at the new property. We'll give you the address, all that kind of stuff over the next week. All the children have to stay with their parents. It's not a free for all.
We don't own the property yet. We're going to be guests on a property that will be ours in the future. And so everybody has to have their kids and their children with them. We'll go over into the new building, which is the white building, and we're going to go ahead and go through the finances of last year. We're going to go through the building fund, we're going to go through operational changes, goals.
We're going to go through all the things that we normally do in our family meeting so that everybody can be up to speed on what's happening. And then we'll tour the property. So we're going to leave right after go and then we'll get into the new property for the family meeting. And then the week after that, Brent will be kicking off this series of the secrets of the Kingdom as we go through the parables in Matthew chapter 13. That will also be at 5pm on that Saturday, February 7th, as we celebrate our 10th anniversary.
So nobody's here to tell me if I did all the announcements correctly, but I think I did. So yay. Let's hope you can just send me a text or an email if I didn't. And my apologies in advance. So let's go ahead and let's dive into Matthew chapter 12.
This week. I entitled this portion, Less deliverance, More repentance. And so we're going to pick up. We're going to be in Matthew chapter 12, verses 43 through 45. But before we do that, I want to give a quick recap.
So the last couple of weeks, we saw Jesus going about the mission of the kingdom of heaven. He was preaching, he was healing, he was teaching, and he was modeling what the kingdom of heaven should look like when it comes to earth. It was his way of countering what humanity had done with the Torah and with the prophets. And in trying to bring kind of a reset back to the Israelites, to the nation of Israel and the people who were still left, we saw that he was met with really two different types of people. There was his apprentices and those who were following him from town to town.
And they didn't always understand what they saw, but they were still eager to learn and eager to follow him. And, you know, there was something different about him. And so they were. They were moving forward in faith, even though they didn't maybe always understand. We see Peter go through denial.
We see some of those human things that happen, but they were still following Jesus, and they were eager. We see the religious leaders of that day, they had no desire to understand, and they were eager to discredit him on a regular basis. Jesus had called that generation evil and adulterous because they were demanding signs while ignoring the ones that were. Were very present in their midst. And at the same point, they were attributing the work of God in the kingdom of heaven, the fulfillment of the Torah and the prophets and Hosea, Daniel, Isaiah.
The fulfillment was in front of them. But rather than attributing that to the power of the Holy Spirit and God, they were attributing it to the demonic. Which is really interesting because we see in another gospel in John, in an engagement where they say, our Father is Abraham. And he said, no, your. Your father is the devil.
And so they thought they were children of God and they were executing what God wanted, but they really weren't. They were executing what the devil had wanted to. So discord, division, a hard yoke, all of these things that were there, they had chosen that identity. I would say, probably even subconsciously. You know, I don't think any Pharisee would have walked around and been like, yes, you know, my actions, my deeds, all of these.
They. They're bringing Honor to the devil and shame to. To God. I don't think any of them would have knowingly done that. Maybe one or two, but I definitely can't judge the motives of their heart.
But it doesn't change the reality. This is how Jesus sees them. They did not want to become repentant or be restored to God when God was in their midst showing them how they needed to do that. And that's where we're going to pick up today. We're going to.
We're going to pick up in Matthew chapter 12. And before we get into this specific portion of Matthew chapter 12, I actually want to go back to the story in the Garden of Eden, the first two commandments. Why do I say the first two commandments? Because it's important for us not to see creation as just a children's story that we read about. It's the testimony of the beginning of God's relationship on this earth with humanity.
And it should testify that God is unchanging in his nature, in his character, in his graciousness and his righteousness. And one of the things I've seen very recently it's become very popular is that the first commandment in the Bible was not to eat of the fruit. And so I want to read that to you, and then I want to talk to you a little bit about why I don't believe that was the start of what God wanted and how that actually interacts with Matthew chapter 12, 43, 45. But the Lord warned them, may you freely eat of the fruit of every tree in the garden, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.
This was Genesis 2, 16, 17. But that was not the first command that was actually given to them. The first command was not a don't, don't eat of this tree or you will die. It was actually a positive command. And it actually came in Genesis 1:28.
It says, Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all of the animals that scurry along the ground. God's original invitation was not a don't. It was an invitation to partner with him in dominion, to rule over this earth with Him.
Humanity was to govern creation, not be governed by it. And that's the same invitation that you and I have today. And that's exactly the same invitation that Jesus was giving to the Pharisees throughout our testimony in Matthew chapter 12. So when Adam and Eve had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They didn't just merely break the rules of Genesis 2.
It wasn't just that they had committed the sin against God by, by disobeying what he. Yes, that's true, but it was more than just that. That's an incomplete thought. They actually had failed in the original commandment that God had given them in Genesis 1. They had allowed the serpent to lead them.
The serpent was able to influence them. And they were. And we. I'm not going to get in the weeds today on whether, you know, Eve versus Adam, original sin, all those different theologies and things that are out there in, in the end, when it boils down to the most simplistic of thing. They were told to be fruitful and multiply and to govern and rule over the creation.
They ended up allowing themselves to trespass against Yahweh because they were led by something in creation. Let that, let that sink in. They didn't govern over that. Now I want to talk about fast forwarding into where we're at in the context of Matthew chapter 12. See first century Israel had actually repeated this same failure from Eden.
The Jewish leadership were entrusted to govern Israel. Now Israel at this point in time were already fractured. The 12 or 10 tribes had already been scattered into the. The nations. The Jewish leadership in Jerusalem are under the Roman occupation at that point in time.
And that doesn't, doesn't matter whether it's the Essenes or the, the Sadducees or the Pharisees. If you were going to operate the temple and operate in the Levitical priesthood in any regard in Jerusalem, it was with the cooperation of Rome. And then you had the Assyrians, you had the Greeks, you had all these other places that had different leadership and dominion over the various areas. So here you have the Pharisees who were the remaining leaders of Israel at that time. But I believe that they were guilty of the same failure.
They were not fruitful in multiplying. And this doesn't necessarily just fall on the Pharisees. It falls on a lot of Israel's leaders, 70% of which we see in the Torah and Torah and the prophets who were not good kings. Israel was given a land. They were told to go take a land that, that Yahweh had already prepared for them.
This was going to be an inheritance for them. But in that land they were to be fruitful and multiply out to the nations. They were to be a beacon of light of God to all nations. And that wasn't happening. What was happening was, is they were.
They were turned inwardly to try to hold on to what they had. So they were not fruitful in multiplying. And in the engagements with Jesus in the text, the things that they are multiplying is bad fruit, not good fruit. Second was they surrendered their authority instead of exercising it. Jesus had called them whitewashed tombs.
They were unrepentant and they were more concerned with preserving their power than anything else. And I want you to hold that framework as we head into Matthew chapter 12, because I think it's relevant to what we're getting ready to see Jesus say in his engagement with the Pharisees. If you have your Bibles, turn to Matthew chapter 12, verse 43. When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert seeking that word. Desert can also mean waterless places seeking rest but finding none.
This is Jesus, Jesus's response to the Pharisees as they're going through this conversation. He is talking to them as a continuation of their demand for signs. It's a continuation of the same confrontation. You cannot evict evil and automatically fill it with light. You can evict evil and refuse the light.
And this is what Jesus is saying to them is, hey, look, when an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, the waterless places, seeking rest but finding none. So you can evict the darkness and you can still refuse the light.
Deliverance isn't the indwelling, it's just the start of eviction. When repentance happens, a spirit will leave. It goes into the waterless place or the desert. The this actually carries both a literal and a symbolic meaning. Demons craved embodiment.
They needed a host vessel, so to speak. They're like a parasite needing to to be hosted so that they can have a physical influence on the earth. They are spiritual in nature. They don't have their own host body. So they're constantly going through places trying to find a host body by which they can dwell.
Humans are roughly 60% water. Deserts are inhospitable. They're lifeless places. And so one of the places, not the only places, but one of the places that demons look to find a host is going to be in humans. In the first century, deserts were symbolic as desolation and spiritual absences.
You should think of that when Jesus is baptized by water and immediately goes out into the wilderness and he is met by who? The Satan? And he is tempted with all of the things in the world. They were places that, that were cut off from life. Even now think of the desert.
You know, a lot of times we'll go on Canva, we'll go on stock images, we see these really pretty pictures of the desert. But the reality is deserts are pretty barren. You know, there's not a lot of green foliage. There's not, you don't have grass. I mean, in Phoenix for the most part, you have rock or you have Astroturf.
And so it's not a place. When you think of the desert as being lush and beautiful and overwhelming, you know, growth of plants and animals. No, it's, it's, it's a, it's a very interesting kind of like cut off place from a lot of the life that we see around us. Which is why John was so revolutionary because see, John went out into the desert to do baptisms. Now think of this for a second.
When you think of deserts, you don't think of an abundance of water. In fact, all the movies we see when somebody's out in the desert, like they see the mirage where they, they think they see water and they crawl there and there's no water. But John's going out into the desert, a place that is cut off from life, and he is doing baptisms, telling them repent for the kingdom of God is at hand and to turn from their sins. John was invading the places of desolation and the spiritual absence with intentional repentance that bring life. John knew that one was coming before him, coming after him, sorry, that he was coming before the one.
And so water throughout scripture symbolizes the power of the Holy Spirit and the life of God. It is a living water. So a waterless place represents a soul that is cut off from God's presence. Well, I mean, wouldn't that be the demonic? It is a, it is a spirit that has been cut off from the presence of God because they rebelled against God in the heavens and were cast down to earth.
A demon leaves a place of rest, a human host, and finds no rest elsewhere. So what does it do? It returns. Deliverance without submission is just spiritual rearranging. So you can cast out all the demons that you want, but if, if you actually don't submit to the repentance and to the indwelling of the power of the Holy Spirit, that the living water, the spirit of Jesus, you're just rearranging what's already there.
And deliverance didn't change you, but Jesus would have. So what does God then say again? What does Jesus say in Matthew chapter 12:44 through 45? He says, I will return to the person I Came from the demon. So it returns and it finds itself former house.
What it finds, you swept empty and in order. Okay, so you created deliverance. You cast out the demon from yourself. The demon goes out into the desert place, the waterless place, and it finds nothing. It finds no life.
It finds no place for it to have life. So what does it do? It returns to the place where it had life, where it had possessed and. And had a host. So it returns.
Well, what did they find? They found that by the deliverance, the house was empty. It was neat and in order. And so what does the demon do? The person was cleansed, but it wasn't filled.
It was an empty house, an empty apartment waiting to be occupied again. Jesus is not turning deliverance into a spectacle. He's casting out demon. Because casting out demons is not difficult when we operate under Jesus's author authority. Every principality that is not for Jesus must leave.
It must go. We've seen this throughout the engagement of Matthew. Jesus authority is what we are supposed to walk in. If we are professing believers in Jesus, the Messiah, and we have been filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, we are called to govern, not be governed. This isn't new.
This is Jesus also hearkening back to something that the Pharisees would have known. It is the commandments in the garden to Adam. But if repentance stops at removal and does not lead to the indwelling, our condition actually becomes worse. It says, then the spirit finds seven other spirits. They're more evil than itself, and they will all enter the person and live there.
And so that person is worse off than before. That will be the experience of this evil generation. That's what Jesus was saying. He was saying, okay, good, so we cast out demons. Jesus was casting out demons.
The Pharisees were casting out demons. I'm guessing all the religious leadership in some regard were casting out demonstrations. But Jesus is saying, what good is casting out a demon if you're not going to fill the house with something different?
All the talk about deliverance ministry, and I'm not against deliverance ministry in any way, shape or form, but in the end, if you cast something out and you don't fill it with something better, something worse comes back. This is not the primary teaching of the demonic possession. It's a warning about unrepentant hearts. Remember in context, where we were the last couple of weeks, it was about an unrepentant heart. They were not repenting at the signs and the miracles that they were seeing through Jesus.
And they were not then turning and being filled by the power of Jesus and allowing God to be their teacher. They were holding on to their stuff. So if your house is empty, don't blame the squatters. What are you inviting in to dwell inside of you? Because you can cast out a demonic spirit, you can cast out an evil spirit, but until you turn, repent and fill it with the spirit of God, it is an empty vessel and that should wake all of us up.
To refuse repentance is to refuse the cleansing of God. To refuse cleansing is to refuse the filling. To refuse the filling is to abandon fruitfulness. To abandon fruitfulness is to reject God's original calling, to join him, to govern again, not a new commandment. This is what, what he told them in the garden to do.
And that path leads back to a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When you abandon the fruitfulness of life, the tree of life being Jesus, being God, and you abandon that with an unrepentant heart, without being cleansed, without having the indwell, then you're still eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Jesus is trying to show them the creation story in front of them. I am the tree of life. And that becomes even more relevant when he is hung on a cross, a cross that was meant to kill.
A tree that was meant to kill is now a tree of life. Casting things out without letting God in makes you worse, not free. I know a lot of times I've talked to a lot of people, I've counseled with a lot of people, and they're like, oh man, I just went through deliverance. I went through all these deliverance. I cast out all these things and I could see them leaving my body.
Praise God. But if you do nothing else after that, you are worse off. If you do not repent your heart for the decisions you made and the things you've engaged with, if you do not ask for the living water, the spirit of Jesus to come in and dwell inside of you. When the demons come back with all of their friends and all of the other people, they're going to overtake you because the master of the house is not able to overtake them. There's only one who can overtake the demonic, and that is Jesus.
It is his authority. And by his authority in the garden. And now here again in Matthew chapter 12, he is inviting humanity to come and to reign under his authority. If Christ doesn't live there, I can promise you something else will.
So life of the desert, that's the contrast we have here, we have the desert, which is a waterless place. It is a place where not really any life form goes. It's a place of a void, of the presence of God. Or you have life, chaos or life, death or life. This is the argument, this is the juxtaposition.
This is the thing that's happening with Jesus and the Pharisees. The devil does not produce life, but Jesus produces life. Evil entered through their disobedience in the garden. Life was restored through the obedience of Jesus Christ at the cross. The symbolism of the garden and what we're seeing here is overwhelming.
John the Baptist was sent to preach repentance through water, ending a 400 year drought of the prophetic silence. There was a 400 year drought, a void of the presence of God. Jesus then followed, proclaiming the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The kingdom of Heaven is not a desert. It is not a place of death and void of the presence of God.
It is like a garden where every day, during the cool of the day, the Lord would come and walk with Adam. Every day. If we find ourselves in the desert, we need to find out how we can repent and get back towards being in the garden with God.
Cyclical new creation.
Kingdom of Heaven is not the desert. It's not a waterless place. It's not even empty house waiting for renters. It's filled. It has always been filled, unceasingly filled with the elders, living creatures, the angels, and consistent worship of God.
So deliverance, casting out a demon without repenting and then asking Jesus and the spirit of Jesus to come in and fill you, leaves you as an empty place. Well, the kingdom of heaven has come to the kingdom of Earth. The kingdom of Heaven is not empty.
So when the kingdom of Heaven comes, we should join with the kingdom of Heaven, not be an empty house. The kingdom of Earth wrestles with who it will worship. Yet the apocalypse of Jesus's birth is not an escape, it's an invasion. Heaven saturating earth. The kingdom of Earth wrestles with who it will worship.
The Pharisees were wrestling. They did not want to worship Jesus. Those who refuse repentance wander without rest. Kind of like the demonic. If you refuse repentance, your heart becomes hard and you are in a wilderness place, a desert place, and you will wander without rest.
The scriptures tell us that we find our rest in Yeshua. He is the true rest. And an endless cycle of weariness comes with those who cannot find that rest. Those who receive the new living waters that Jesus is talking about are Filled with life. I want to be filled with life.
Those Jesus called that generation evil, not because the culture defined it that way, but because he did. The culture at that point in time considered the Levites, considered all of the the leadership of Israel to be the ones who were the most holy.
They were the keepers of the Torah. They were the keepers of the Temple.
They. They were told in the scriptures, in the Torah, you will do these things. Yet what they found is Jesus is calling them an evil, adulterous generation. Jesus was countering the culture by trying to show the kingdom of heaven to the kingdom of earth. Jesus defined it that way.
He did. So if you find yourself as a whitewashed tomb, more concerned about being delivered and delivering out demonic without actually looking to the source, source of power, Jesus, the Christ, the spirit of Jesus, as Paul calls it, for the indwelling. If you remain unrepentant, you are a beautiful apartment just waiting for more demons to come. Rent. Jesus is saying, I am giving you the opportunity to not only be delivered from those things, but to then be filled with something that should deliver you to a completely different heritage, a heritage found in him alone.
We need more people who are willing to repent and to be delivered with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit than people who just want to remain empty. If Jesus isn't the Lord of your house, then something else will. And this is the invitation through confrontation that Jesus, Jesus is trying to get across to the Pharisees. What good is it if you cast out the demonic, if you don't allow me to come and fill you? Thus fulfilling another prophecy.
The prophecies in Ezekiel, where it says that God will put a new heart inside of you, where he will write the covenant not on stone, but on temples of flesh and bone, on humans, not on a heart of stone, but on a living, breathing organism. Which is exactly what he did in the garden. It's exactly what he did with Noah. It's exactly what he did with Abraham. He dwelt with them, he spoke to them, he did life with them.
It was familial and relational. And that's what he wanted with the Sinai covenant too, with the Mosaic covenant. He wanted to be their God and he wanted them to be his people. Yet the progression of humanity, starting in the garden to now, here in Matthew chapter 12, had led them to create the same exact cycle. A cycle where they didn't see God, they weren't willing for God to lead them, and they wanted God to be made in their image.
They didn't learn from the golden calf. They didn't learn from the idolatry of the prophets. Yet here they were in Matthew, chapter 12, finding themselves in the same exact situation. So today, as you sit looking at the snow outside, drinking your hot cocoa, your tea, your coffee, what are you filling your house with?
Is it empty? You guys know from April and I, we love to purge our house. We don't like clutter, we don't like mess. And so we purge all the time. But what are you filling your house with?
It's one thing to purge out anger and bitterness and all these other things. But if you haven't filled it with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, if you haven't filled it with the character and the nature of Jesus Christ, you're an empty house. Shabbat Shalom.
