Today is October 31st so I thought that it would be good to start off with an October 31st quiz today:
1) What historic event happened in Wittenburg on this date in 1517? (answer: Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church.)
2) True or False: Ghosts are mentioned in the Bible. (True, especially The Holy Ghost in the Authorized Version)
3) True or False: A king of Israel went to a witch to speak with the spirit of a dead person (True, 1 Samuel 28).
a. Bonus Marks name the King (Saul), the dead person (Samuel), and the witch (the Witch of Endor)
4) How many people can you name who the Bible records God used to raise others from the dead?
a. God used Elijah to raise the son of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:17-23),
b. God used Elisa to raise the Shunammite woman's son (2 Kings 4:32-37);
c. There was the man they through into Elisha’s grave (2 Kings 13:21)
d. Jesus raised:
i. the widow's son (Luke 7:12-15),
ii. Jairus' daughter (Luke 8:49-55),
iii. Lazarus (John 11:43,44),
e. God uses Peter to raise Dorcas (Acts 9:37-40)
f. Paul raised Eutychus (after he had bored him to death? Acts 20:9-12)
5) The man possessed by so many demons that they called themselves Legion, where did he live? (In the tombs, the graveyard near Gerasenes; Mark 5:1,2, Luke 8:26-27)
6) True or False: Jesus tells a parable about a haunted house? (True, Matthew 12:25-29, Mark 3:23-27, Luke 11:17-22)
The parable in Luke talks about a demon-possessed man and a demon-possessed house. Luke 11:24-26: “When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first.” The house is haunted by more demons than it was in the first place. This is in the Parable of the Haunted House.
There are many important things to come out of this Parable of the Haunted House. We obviously don’t have time today to spend on all of them. One of the key things to come out of this parable is that God is more important than anyone in the Christian’s life. This is highlighted in the Mark’s version (Mark 3:20-35). We are not to be distracted from serving the Lord by anyone – not even our family. This is very important.
About the Haunted House, Luke 11:17-18, “…Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall. If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? ...” And Luke 11:23, Jesus says, “He who is not with me is against me” Jesus is drawing the line here. He is being quite clear. Jesus has had a serious accusation levelled against him. He has been accused of exorcising demons by demonic power.
Jesus is accused of driving out demons by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of demons (Luke 11:15, Matthew 12:24, Mark 3:22). We are familiar with the term Beelzebub, right? Milton named one of his characters in ‘Paradise Lost’ Beelzebub. In Milton’s story he was the devil’s henchman but Beelzebub here in scriptures isn’t the right-hand man of the devil. Beelzebub is the devil himself. Beelzebub is another name for the Satan. We remember that the ancient Israelites – long before the time of Jesus’ birth– were often split between those who worshipped YHWH and those who worshipped a Canaanite god by the name of Baal. One of the names people who worshipped Baal used to call him was Baal-Zebul - which literally means ‘Baal the Prince’ (Cf. 2 Kings 1:6; Matthew 10:25; 12:24,27; Mark 3:22; Luke 11:15, 18-19). Knowing this, the people who didn’t worship Baal gave the Canaanite god a nickname. They called him Baal-Zebub, which sounds like Baal-Zebul, ‘Baal the Prince’, but in reality means Baal, Lord of the flies; Baal the pest; or Baal, Lord of the dung heap. It wasn’t a favourable name, Baal-Zebub. It was a derogatory name. By Jesus time, with Baal-worship relegated to the dustbin of history but they couldn’t let this good nickname go to waste though; so they applied it to the devil, Satan inherited this nickname. Beelzebub, in the first century CE, was a common derogatory name for Satan. Jesus in our text here is being accused of working for the devil.
In our society today we think nothing of people dressing up like evil characters or using the language of demon-possession and witchcraft: we hear it everyday on TV, radio, in pop culture and in casual colloquial language. There were on TV last night alone dozens of movies and TV shows trivializing or glorifying evil. It is so common in our contemporary Canadian society that many times we don’t even twig when we hear references to sorcery or divination but it was very different in Jesus’ day.
Witchcraft was punishable by death (1 Samuel 28:9, Galatians 5:20). These religious teachers who are accusing Jesus of being an agent of evil here cannot be left to make these remarks unchallenged. It must be addressed. They are accusing Jesus of divination, of witchcraft, of sorcery, and in those days people won’t stand by and let that evil go unchecked.
Jesus doesn’t stand by and let these accusations stand. Knowing their thoughts Jesus tells them: “…Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall. If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? I say this because you claim that I drive out demons by Beelzebub. Now if I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your followers drive them out? So then, they will be your judges” (Luke 11:17-19; cf. Matthew 12:15-17, Mark 3:23-26). Jesus tells them that if he is driving out evil with evil than his opponents are doing exactly the same thing when they perform exorcisms and even more than that Jesus says, one won’t and one can’t even drive out evil with evil: a house divided against itself will fall. Jesus says, Verses 21-22, “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armour in which the man trusted and divides up the spoils (Luke 11:21-22; cf. Matthew 12:29, Mark 3:27)” And, Verses 24-26, “When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first” (cf. TSA Doctrine 9). These are the only two options. A divided house cannot stand. So just like an American president said not too many years ago as they were embarking on one of their many wars, “You are either with us or against us.” Jesus says, Luke 11:23, “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters.”
Well, on this Halloween Day, on this Reformation Day, 2000 + years after the birth of our Lord, where do we stand? Are we with him or are we against him? Jesus defeated sin and death between the cross and the empty tomb (TSA Doctrine 6) but if we look back in our text to Luke 11:27, we notice that a woman who hears what Jesus is saying and who witnesses what Jesus is doing; she calls out to him, “Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.” Jesus then gives her an answer which should be our answer to the deliverance he has offered each of us through his death and resurrection. Jesus replies, Luke 11:28, “blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” Luke 11:23, “He who is not with me is against me.”
This is the choice set before us today. We can ask Jesus to sweep our life clean of the demons that haunt us – whatever it is that is troubling us - and he will. But in that we have to choose whom we will serve. We can serve ourselves, our own desires, we can serve the Enemy; we can invite the demons back in to haunt our lives again or we can serve the Lord and live life abundantly (TSA Docs 6 and 8).
Please remember too that any and all of us can ask our Lord Jesus to come and clean our haunted houses of whatever is haunting us. Even if he has already cleaned it once or a hundred times and we have subsequently messed it up. While we still have breath in our body, we can invite him back into our lives to clean them up and sort us out and then, we can continue on to receive the Lord’s blessing of eternal life, Luke 11:28, “blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” As we do this, we will continue in the blessing of the Holy Spirit. This is holiness and this holiness is available to all of us but we must make a choice (cf. TSA Doctrine 10). And, as Joshua said on the very border of the Promised Land, when faced with this very choice, Joshua said ‘as for me and my house we will serve the Lord’ (Joshua 24:15) and I pray that that will be the same response for each and all of us today.
Let us pray.
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