Sunday’s message was Jesus’ response to the Jewish leaders desire to see Him perform some kind of sign. Jesus responded by reminding them of the sign of Jonah in the OT and how it pointed to a sign that God would give them. The sign that the ‘son of man’ would spend three days and nights in the ‘heart of the earth’ and then be made alive.
This encounter is in both the gospels of Matthew and Luke.
Each gospel then moves from this discussion by recording a different part of what Jesus said.
Why might a person not respond to God’s grace by recognizing the greatest of all signs which is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ? DECEPTION or DARKNESS
John MacArthur said that,' Morality by itself is more dangerous than immorality’.
These Scribes and Pharisees who were questioning Jesus were the moral watchdogs over first century Jewish society.
They were quick to judge and condemn others.
They were religious and living under an illusion of spiritual safety.
THE PROBLEM OF DECEPTION: Matt 12:43-45
Most everyone in America can remember some point in their childhood where they received some type of immunization. During the 1950s there was a huge push to vaccinate children from all types of diseases such as polio, tetanus and the measles. I remember being given the oral polio vaccine not realizing that inside that little bit of liquid was a dose of polio itself. I was given just enough of the real disease to build up my immune system against a full blown case.
I am afraid that there are many today that, apart from a miraculous work of God, have been made immune to a real case of Christianity. They got just enough of an exposure that they thought they knew what it was or had what it was and when it was not what they had been promised they then built up antibodies against a real spiritual experience with Christ.
This passage teaches us that there are those who become motivated to clean up their lives and, although they have removed some of the negatives of immoral behaviors, they are a spiritual house waiting to be reoccupied.
I think Satan loves it when people have a short venture into a false morality and never discover a true relationship with Christ. They then become immune to the true work of Christ in their life because they believe they have given Christianity a genuine try.
Jesus said that the end result can be a 7 times worse person than they were before their false attempt at spiritual things.
These Scribes and Pharisees would be the last people in Jerusalem to admit person sin and the hardest hearts against a true work of God in their lives.
"Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and does not find it. "Then it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came'; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order.
This ‘unclean spirit’ has taken some time off from its previous host while that host went thru some religious or moral exercises. This spirit knew that the host would be much more usable after this process had been completed.
1) He/she would think that they had given God a try and found Him wanting
2) He/she would be usable for the long term so other evil spirits might as well move on in.
We live in a day where many hearts are filled with all kinds of spiritual deception.
1) This man had some temporary relief from his problem.
The issue is not that he was empty of what was bad but that he was not filled with Who was good.
A person’s life may roller coaster from good times to bad times but the end of the ride will be a disaster unless he fills his life with the calling of God.
Many have come to church and tried to clean up their lives. They have gotten the motivation to change for the better but they did not find what the Christian life is truly all about. It is not about making your present life better. It is about dying to that old life and receiving a brand new life that can only be found in Christ.
Leonard Ravenhill: ‘Jesus did not come into the world to make bad men good. He came into the world to make dead men alive!’
"Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. That is the way it will also be with this evil generation."
This is a very scary scenario: This first unclean spirit is almost like the scouting party who waits for a person to go through their ‘religious experience’ hoping that they will not experience a true relationship with God.
If they don’t then it is time to bring in other spirits more wicked and move in for the long term. They can settle in assuming that potential spiritual disruptions are now in the past.
When we are not filled with the Spirit of Christ then the world will gladly begin to fill us with all sorts of deceptions to lead our minds astray.
When a person has rejected God and has not filled their life with His Spirit then in comes many worse spirits:, humanism, atheism, godless entertainment and education, a spirit of tolerance of false truths, immorality and acceptance of things offensive to God’s holiness.
The hardest people in the world to reach are those who think they have already given Christianity a try and found it wanting. They were distracted from the true path by those who made them believe the Christian faith was about personal benefits such as health and wealth or the attainment of selfish ends. When this promised belief system does not pan out they then deem Christianity a failure and are much more resistant to a true work of God in their lives. the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.
Luke 18:9-14 And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt:
“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. “The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ‘I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’
“But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’
“I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
People often live in a deception they don’t know how to escape. Their world view has so attacked the truths of God that they don’t know how to resurrect those truths in order to embrace them in their lives.
I finished with a book called THE NEW EVANGELICALISM. It is a book about the Emerging Church and the new POSTMODERN theology that is being promoted throughout Christianity today. A postmodern generation is one that does not believe in absolutes and is saturated with the beliefs of tolerance and relative truth.
Some tenets of this new theology:
1) Jesus is not the only way by which a person may be saved.
2) Suggestions of UNIVERSALISM in that all will be saved.
3) Pushing of feelings over truths. Bible is too divisive.
4) Strive to make lost people feel safe and comfortable in the church rather than be honest with the issues of sin and judgment.
The book states: ‘The OLD MODEL with expository preaching and teaching from the Bible about the nature of God, man, sin, repentance, judgment, and God’s plan of redemption is to be replaced by the Mega church as the sociological change agent wherein man transforms Himself by addressing felt needs in a community or society.’
The problem is again is that you have a disconnect from a true relationship with Christ. It is another false system that will come to an eventual end.
The result of this will be a new crop of those who when the music dies down will have thought they gave Christianity a try and found it not lasting for their lives.
The only true lasting work of God in our lives is based upon the foundation of His Word which is the only truth that sets us free. To build a relationship with God based upon self-interests, self-comfort or anything other than a completely surrendered life will eventually run its course and leave the person with an empty experience and a harder heart to the true gospel.
THE PROBLEM OF DARKNESS: LUKE 11:33-36
These Jewish leaders were also guilty of taking God’s true light(Light of the World) and instead of proclaiming making it visible to the world they attacked and tried to hide it.
"No one, after lighting a lamp, puts it away in a cellar nor under a basket, but on the lampstand, so that those who enter may see the light.(33)
Churches are filled today with secret saints who routinely put on their masks on tax exempt properties. They may be very visible inside the church but as far as any of their other relationships they are every bit like the world they exist in.
John MacArthur told about coming across one member of his church who happened to be smoking. Although MacArthur had already seen him the man thought he saw MacArthur first and tried to dispose of the burning cigarette in his pants pocket.
What followed was a very comical and painful display of smoke and burning fabric.
We not only live in a world that is caught up in deception but we are surrounded by those who are captured by a spiritual darkness.
"The eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is clear, your whole body also is full of light; but when it is bad, your body also is full of darkness.(34)
John 3: 19 "And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
20 "For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.
1. We are surrounded by those who have chosen spiritual darkness for their lives because to come to the light would mean exposing or losing the darkness they have grown accustom to.
2. We are also surrounded by those what have wrongly identified the darkness inside of them as light.
"Then watch out that the light in you is not darkness.(35)
The kinds of darkness that can invade the human heart are things like pride, self-promotion, self-interests…etc. This is built around a false worship of self. It is where our interests and desires become the focal points of our supposed relationship with God.
This can be easily seen by the contents of our prayer life and the expectations we place upon God in order to maintain our affection towards Him.
"If therefore your whole body is full of light, with no dark part in it, it will be wholly illumined, as when the lamp illumines you with its rays."(36)
An eclipse is something that we are all familiar with. Even half-moons or quarter moons are eclipses in their own right. An eclipse is simply the earth getting in the way of the Sun as it tries to reflect its light by the moon. A total eclipse blocks it all. A task that I would not enjoy would be to take all the profession Christians I know and to classify them into what kind of eclipse they might be like? Does their life block out some of the reflection of the Son, part of it or most all of it? Hopefully each of us is like a full moon in allowing a complete reflection of the Son to come from our lives into a dark world?
Jesus gave them a wonderful truth about the RESURRECTION.
They were in danger of missing it because of the deception of their mind or the darkness of their heart. We face the same concerns in our day.
