WHAT'S THE POINT OF THE STORY? It is about moral improvement without God.
- Luke 11:24-26.
- Let’s begin by acknowledging that this is a difficult passage. It comes across a little obscure. It’s easy to read it and think it’s either just a weird saying or something with no application to our lives.
- I want to try to dig into the deeper meaning of what Jesus is getting at and its (very relevant) application to the church today.
- The context of this story is Jesus’ enemies accusing Him of casting out demons by demonic powers. Jesus rebuts them with multiple points, which we discussed in last week’s sermon. The most relevant of those is simply this: a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. Jesus’ enemies were grasping at straws to explain away the obvious spiritual power that Jesus was displaying.
- This story is actually a continuation of His rebuttal to them, but I have saved it for a separate sermon because it raises an issue that is especially pressing to the church in America today.
- What is the story?
- A demon voluntarily leaves a person. It’s important to note that the demon is not forced out by the power of God. It eventually decides to return and while it has been gone, there have been some attempts at self-improvement. It then returns with more demons and the state of the person is worse than before.
- What is the point of this story? It is a little obscure but I think the point is that self-improvement without the power of God entering into a life is doomed to failure. This man made some attempts at moral self-improvement but they ultimately failed.
- I think this story is about non-God moral self-improvement. The man tried to sweep and clean up his “house.” In the end, though, it leads to a worse situation. Trying to clean up your life and have moral improvement without God does not lead to a good place.
- This is a truth that, according to Jesus, applies in demonic situations.
- A related question also worth pondering is whether it applies in non-demonic situations. I think the answer is yes. What’s that look like? How would that type of moral self-improvement lead to a worse state?
- Even when some small progress is made to make us feel better morally, that's actually counter-productive in the larger picture. Why?
a. Our pride in our tiny changes masks how massive the total amount of moral changes would have to happen to make us genuinely good people.
b. Our pride in our tiny changes makes us think we are doing well and don't need the moral resurrection Jesus says we need.
c. It’s tied to our own thoughts on morality, not God’s absolute standard of truth.
d. We are pursuing it without the help of the Holy Spirit pointing out where we need to make changes.
e. We will usually ignore or be unaware of our more pressing moral issues.
f. And there is the moral pride that often comes with most efforts at self-improvement.
- In sum, we can easily end up at a worse place morally after a little moral self-improvement.
- One point of application for us right now that I think is really important is how this truth applies to our society.
Let me highlight two major ideas that are prevalent today.
- There are some Christians who preach the social gospel. They argue that by going forward and doing good works we can transform society. Often this is divorced from preaching Jesus but instead is just doing good works. This type of moral self-improvement for society will ultimately fail.
- Especially relevant to this passage, though, is another idea for societal change: legislating morality. If we put the right people in office and get the right laws passed, then this country will become what it should be. This is another type of moral self-improvement for society. It’s a different approach but it too will ultimately fail. Moral self-improvement apart from God will not work.
- That raises a crucial question: what will work?
- As Christians, we believe that only one thing will work to bring moral transformation.
WHAT DOES JESUS POINT US TO INSTEAD? There is transforming moral power in hearing God’s Word and obeying it.
- Luke 11:27-28.
- Some treat vv. 27-28 as a separate section but it’s not. It’s the continuation of the thought that Jesus is sharing.
Having said all this about transformation without God, a woman shouts out a statement about who is blessed. Jesus’ response culminates this passage and gives us deep insight into the point of Jesus’ mission: blessed . . . are those who hear the word of God and obey it.
- I cannot overstate how important this is. It shows up in multiple other places. Just to name two: Jesus concludes the Sermon on the Mount with this point and His famous “vine and branches” analogy of John 15 makes the same point.
- This isn’t about a vague, undefined “belief in Jesus” that has no practical impact on our lives. Not at all.
Rather, what Jesus will do on the cross and in His resurrection opens a door for us to not only be forgiven but also to be made into new creations in Christ, now capable of living for God. We move forward living out the teaching of Christ and experiencing the transformation that comes from that. It’s not that we are saved by our obedience (salvation by works) but rather that salvation opens the door for us to be able to live obedient to Jesus’ teaching.
- This is what salvation looks like: living a changed life in obedience to the teaching of Christ. It’s amazing how effective Jesus’ salvation is, that it can transform us into beings capable of actually living for God. As we are changed, we become living billboards to God’s power. This is one of the biggest problems today: we try to attract people to the gospel through outreaches and events when it is supposed to be changed lives that are the draw. Now, that's not to say we should never do outreaches and events, just that we seem to think that those in the absence of changed lives are still going to be effective.
- Anything other than or different than this is a misdirection. This is repeated emphasized as Jesus’ plan.
- Now, having explained that, I want to talk for the rest of the sermon about the specific shortcomings of trying to change society by moral improvement. You might initially dismiss that as a subject that's not particularly important but it is actually something that's been a huge issue (indeed, one of the primary mistakes) of the conservative Christian church in America.
- We don't call it “changing society by moral improvement.” We call it “culture war.”
- This is something we have been pursuing to very questionable outcomes for fifty years now. It is an attempt to transform society by moral and political changes. If we pass the right policies, if we elect the right people, if we try to improve society, we will see great outcomes and America will again be what we want it to be.
- Of course, we’re fifty years on and it hasn’t worked, yet huge swaths of the evangelical American church has not only not given up on it but has actually doubled down on this in recent years.
- The point that this sermon is making is not a criticism of any particular political party or politician. It’s not a criticism of an organization. Rather, it’s a criticism of the whole approach. This approach manifests itself in numerous ways but the results are always unimpressive. Why? Because we’re trying to do things in a way that's not what Jesus said. The hope of the church is v. 28 - to hear God’s word and obey it. That's it. That's the whole ballgame.
- John MacArthur puts it well: “By trying to establish Christian values through earthly methods, we risk creating a false sense of morality. Forcing people to adopt our biblical standards of morality only brings superficial change and hides the real issue - sin and their need for rebirth in Jesus Christ. When people of this world face God’s judgment, their “traditional Christian values” won’t matter at all - only how they responded to Jesus Christ. That's why pursuing outward change at the expense of inward transformation is both a nearsighted and deadly choice.”
- Also: “God simply is not calling us to wage a cultural war that would seek to transform our countries into ‘Christian nations.’ To devote all, or even most, of our time, energy, money, and strategy to putting a facade of morality on the world or the appearance of ‘rightness’ over our governmental and political institutions is to badly misunderstand our roles as Christians in a spiritually lost world.”
- I think it will be helpful to be more specific in explaining why this culture war approach doesn’t work, so let me detail five.
THE SPECIFIC SHORTCOMINGS OF TRYING TO CHANGE SOCIETY BY MORAL IMPROVEMENT:
- These are culled from a much longer list of criticisms of this concept from John MacArthur’s commentary on this passage.
1. It attempts moral change apart from the gospel.
- This approach endeavors to bring moral change without the gospel.
- Does that work? Absolutely not.
- What does it usually look like? It usually ends up as outward conformity to some moral standard without actual heart change.
- So you have talk about the importance of sexual purity while behind the scenes pornography use is rampant.
- So you have talk of the sanctity of marriage while the divorce rates stays high.
- So you have talk of the value of God while the whole society is running madly after Mammon.
- So you have the people leading these efforts toward morality who are not personally living moral lives and yet that fact is seen as largely irrelevant.
- It ends up being the P.R. that matters, not the actual change in lives. This, of course, ends up with one word: hypocrisy.
- The gospel, of course, charts a wildly different course.
- The gospel is about the spiritual transformation of individuals into the character of God. While it has significant cultural implications, at its core it’s not cultural but personal.
- It’s about Jesus coming into our lives and changing our hearts.
- The belief we have is that Jesus works in us first and then the change is possible after that. And we believe that moral change doesn’t work apart from the gospel.
2. It will fail because people can’t be righteous without God.
- A second point - and one that flows directly from the first - is that trying to change society by moral improvement will fail. Why? Because people can’t be righteous without God. To put a finer point on that, people can’t be righteous without the transforming power of Jesus Christ.
- An essential starting point here is how deep our sinfulness goes.
- Today we are masters at minimizing and deflecting our sin nature. We argue that many things that God says are wrong might not be that bad after all. We find ways to justify why we did things that might be questionable. We always have an excuse.
- The bottom line on that is that very few people believe that we are hopeless sinners. “I’m not that bad.” “I’m no worse than everyone else.” In fact, many people coming to Jesus for salvation don’t really think of themselves as that bad. Sure, they want Jesus in their lives because He seems great, but the full implication of His death on the cross hasn’t hit them.
- Jesus died on the cross because I am a horrible sinner incapable of earning my way to God. I am hopeless morally. I am without a path to get to Him. That's why Jesus died on the cross - to open a way where there was no way. Few believe that, but that's what the cross means.
- We can’t be righteous without God. We need His power.
- This means that any attempt to transform society by moral improvement will fail. Always.
- The truth is that we usually aren’t looking for deep and abiding moral change when we attempt it by changing society. That would end up requiring that we have to make difficult moral changes as well. No, we usually just want to be made more comfortable by people who sin in different ways than I do being put in their place.
That doesn’t work.
3. It tries to make morality the power of moral transformation.
- Again we have a point that flows from the previous one.
- This approach tries to make morality the transforming power. That doesn’t work.
- It would be nice if it would, but it doesn’t.
- What do I mean by morality? I mean, in essence, someone saying, “This is what is right and moral, so let’s all live this way.”
- There are at least three problems with that.
- First, just saying something is right doesn’t mean that people can actually live that out. In fact, without gospel power, they can’t. So you end up with hypocrisy.
- Second, we will define the moral not in terms of God’s moral absolutes, but in terms that excuse our sins and condemn those who are different than us. You see that right now in how much more offended most evangelical Christians are by homosexuality than they are by heterosexual couples living together. Both are sexual sin but one is treated as a far worse sin.
- Third, people cannot live changed lives without the power of God coming in their life first.
4. It is outside our mission.
- A phrase that is used a lot today is “winning America back.” Why there are certainly arguments to be made about the value of that objective, the simple gospel reality is that such a goal is outside our mission.
- The church is not about changing society. The church is about sharing the good news of a salvation that transforms lives.
- But the church has often had an impact on the larger society as they’ve lived out the gospel. Absolutely true. But that's a side effect, not the point.
- Our mission is to share the good news that Jesus’ death and resurrection can transform you. That is focused on individual transformation. It’s the only way to change a heart. As those hearts are genuinely changed, they will have an impact on a whole host of areas, but we have to stay focused on our mission.
- Our primary goal is not to “win America back.” It’s to see souls transformed into the character of Jesus Christ.
5. It creates hostility toward those we should be trying to save.
- This fifth point flows directly from the fourth.
- The culture war mentality we have embraced over the last fifty years has led to us treating huge swaths of the population as our enemies, because they are our political enemies. We see them as an enemy to be destroyed.
In truth, the gospel is for everyone and we should see them as people who believe things that are of the Devil. Our goal is to help them to see the error of that and to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. In other words, they are not an enemy to be destroyed but P.O.W.s to be released.
- It is shameful that we have created such hostility within our hearts toward those we are supposed to love and want to see saved.
- John 3:16 is the most famous verse but in this case John 3:17 shares the more relevant truth: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” Our job and our mission is not condemnation but invitation. Our job and our mission is not how can we win America but how can we win souls.
- The price of our culture war has been to alienate from the gospel the very people we were tasked with saving.
