Response Required

Sermon Transcript

Pendulums tend to swing, and we are prone to extremes. When I first became a Christian about 20 years ago, it was common to hear Christians say things like, “Being a Christian isn’t just about going through the motions; you have to really believe it.” If anything, I hear some encouragement to, in a sense, “go through the motions.” There was a popular 2016 book called You are What you Love, with the subtitle “The Spiritual Power of Habit,” the idea being if you go through the motions of the Christian liturgy, that will have some positive spiritual effect on you. There’s also been a low-key trend in recent years of conversions to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, religions in which it feels like your role is simply to come and receive the grace poured out by the church. But is it important that we also look inward, and examine ourselves to assess our response to the motions we’re going through? More importantly, is it important that we look inward, and examine our response to Jesus?  

 

In this passage we see that there is, and Jesus himself exhorts us to do so. In the middle we read of yet another time in Luke’s Gospel when crowds began to increase, and as has so often been the case, when Jesus sees the crowds beginning to increase, he stops to warn them to consider their response. I’ve often quoted the Scottish pastor Robert Murray M’Cheyne who said, “For every one look you take at yourself, take ten looks at Christ.” I still think that’s good advice. But you do still need to look at yourself occasionally, because it is possible to be in close proximity to Jesus and his words, while not only failing to be saved by them, but ending up worse, with a harder heart, than before you heard them. So be careful how you respond to Jesus, and this passage gives us five reasons to do so: If you’re not for him, you’re against him. If you don’t have him, evil will have you. If you’re only near him, you haven’t received him. If he doesn’t seem like enough, God won’t send you anything more. And finally, if you would see him rightly, you need open eyes.

 

If you’re not for him, you’re against him (14-23)

 

Our passage today begins with a brief story of Jesus casting out a demon that was mute, which means it made the man in whom it dwelled mute, unable to speak. When the demon had gone out, we’re told that the mute man spoke, and the people marveled. We’ve already seen Jesus make a dead man get up in Luke’s Gospel; that’s one thing dead men don’t do, except by the power of Jesus. Now here we see a mute man speak; that’s one thing mute men don’t do, except by the power of Jesus, and thus it makes sense that the people marveled. Luke has already recorded many similar accounts in his Gospel–we, the readers, already know in a sense that this is what Jesus does, so he speeds ahead to what he wants to emphasize in this section: The response.

 

The people marveled, but, verse 15 tells us, some of them said, “He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of demons,” while others, to test him, kept seeking from him a sign from heaven. He addresses the second group, those who kept seeking from him a sign from heaven, beginning in verse 29, but he addresses the first group, those who say he casts out demons by Beelzebul, next. Beelzebul comes from the name of a foreign god–it means “Lord of the flies,” so if you’re familiar with the William Golding novel or the recent Netflix series based on it, this is where the name comes from. It was one of the titles people at the time used for the prince of demons, who Jesus calls Satan in verse 18, which would be the more common name we’d use for him today. Who is able to make mute men speak, after all? Of course, God is, but, if for some reason you didn’t want to recognize Jesus as acting with the power of God, who else might you attribute such an action to? It would have to be another being of similar power; it couldn’t be a mere human. And we know from the Bible that Satan is also a very powerful spiritual being. Revelation 13:13 tells us that he “performs great signs.” So if Jesus isn’t casting out demons by the power of God, by whom is he casting them out? Satan, some say.

 

Apparently they didn’t say this directly to him, but Jesus, knowing their thoughts, verse 17 tells us, spoke to them, and pointed out the absurdity of their claim. Satan is the prince of demons, and what do his demons do? They do things like make people mute. Does it really make sense, then, that Satan would use his power to enable mute men to speak? No; Satan is evil, but he’s not stupid. He knows as well as anyone that a house divided against itself cannot stand; Jesus said that before President Lincoln did.

 

If he’s not casting out demons by the power of Satan, though, then that leaves the alternative Jesus states in verse 20: By the finger of God. This phrase “the finger of God” harkens back to another time in the Bible where it wasn’t clear whose power was really operative. There was a time over a thousand years earlier when God’s people were in slavery in Egypt and God sent two of them, Moses and Aaron, to the Egyptian ruler, to demand that he let the people of Israel go from their slavery. When he refused, God sent plagues on Egypt through Aaron. So first Aaron lifted up his staff, and made the water of the Nile River in Egypt turn to blood, but then the Egyptian magicians did the same by their secret arts (Exodus 7:22). Then Aaron made frogs come up over the land, but again the Egyptian magicians did the same by their secret arts (Exodus 8:7). God is not the only powerful being in the spiritual realm. Then for the third plague Aaron made gnats to cover the people and beasts of the land, but magicians could not do this by their secret arts, and they said to the Egyptian ruler, “This is the finger of God” (Exodus 8:19). In other words, this can only be done by the one spiritual being with all power: God. And what that meant for the kingdom of Egypt, was that it was in fact the kingdom of God with whom they were in conflict. They were up against a power they could not overcome.

 

So Jesus says here that if in his day he casts out demons by the finger of God, the kingdom of God has come upon them. In Jesus, the very power of God was now operative, and there to reclaim the territory that was rightfully his, which he begins doing by casting out the demonic spirits from it. He gives an illustration beginning in verse 21: When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are safe, but when one stronger than him attacks him and overcomes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides his spoil. In this illustration, Satan is the strong man, who has been keeping people in captivity as his spoil, but now, Jesus says, one stronger than he has come, and he is now attacking and overcoming him.

 

And when a battle comes to a territory, what does that mean for the people in that territory? They must choose sides. So Jesus says next in verse 23, “Whoever is not with me is against me.” Imagine someone breaks into your home with the stated intention of claiming the property for himself. Neutrality is not possible–either you can fight back, or you can submit to him and let him have it. In most cases you’d probably prefer to defend your house, but imagine instead that you lived in a house that was ruled by a tyrant, and the one coming was coming to destroy him and liberate you from his power. That’s what Jesus is doing. Satan is the one who brought muteness, paralysis, death; Jesus comes to set us free from those things! But if you don’t consciously change your allegiance and submit to him, then in reality, you’re against him.

 

If you’re here and you aren’t a Christian, I understand you may not feel like you are against Jesus. You may be taking your time to evaluate his claims, and on some level that makes sense. But you do need to face what Jesus says here honestly: Whoever is not with me is against me. And the reason it’s so important to get that is because he will come again, and on that day, whoever is not gathered with him will be scattered, as he says here, cast out of the new heavens and new earth he’s bringing, like a tenant who refused to submit to the new owner of the house. 

 

So also, brothers and sisters, when we encounter hard words from Jesus, do we kid ourselves into thinking that we can remain neutral about them? When you become convinced that the Bible teaches something, but then you still resist believing it, do you recognize that every moment you do so, you are opposing Jesus? Or when we sin, what are we doing? We are opposing Jesus. Pastor Ray Ortlund, in his helpful book The Death of Porn, suggests that we even make that part of our confession of sin: Try saying something like, “God, I confess that today I played for team Satan” when you confess your sins. Sins are not mere mistakes or relapses. Sin is a shot across the line from the kingdom of Satan toward the kingdom of God, and when you sin, you pull the trigger. The first group of responders to Jesus in this passage saw him cast out a demon from a mute man, and still they claimed he did it by the power of Beelzebul. Be careful how you respond to Jesus. You too may sit under his word, and even witness something of his power, while remaining against him. 

 

In fact, even those Jesus cast demons out of can remain against him. Be careful how you respond to Jesus, next because if you don’t have him, evil will have you.  

 

If you don’t have him, evil will have you (24-26)

 

We looked at Jesus’ illustration of a strong man holding people captive, who he then comes to rescue by defeating the strong man and assuming authority over the house. In Jesus’ illustration there are two basic options: Either the tyrant who steals, kills, and destroys keeps ruling, or the stronger man who comes to make the mute speak, the paralyzed walk, and the dead live comes, ousts him, and rules. But modern people at this point may sense a desire for a third option: Rather than leaving Satan in power, or taking power himself, why doesn’t Jesus free people from the power of Satan, and then leave them to do what they want? Why’s he have to be in charge rather than Satan? This would be like someone breaking into a house to free people from a tyrant, and then instead of taking over the house, they return the house to the people, to do with it what they please. In many cases in human society that would be the most loving and just thing to do, but Jesus considers that scenario in verses 24-26, and shows that it would not be the most loving and just thing for him to do.

 

He says when an unclean spirit is cast out from a person, it goes and seeks somewhere else to dwell. The Bible doesn’t tell us everything we may want to know about how the spiritual realm works, and excessive curiosity about it is one of the classic ways Christians take their eyes off Jesus. But it does tell us what we need to know, and here it says the way unclean spirits operate is they look for a place on earth to rest, and in the event they find none, they return to the person from whom they were cast out. If when they return, they find nothing has taken their place, they bring seven more demons with them, the number seven there symbolizing completeness as it so often does in the Bible, with the result that the last state of the person is worse than the first.

 

What sort of situation is Jesus envisioning here? He’s envisioning someone from whom he casts out a demon, but who never submits to him as Lord. They try to be neutral–no longer demon possessed, but also not united to Christ, the very thing most moderns want–but nature abhors a vacuum. True anarchy never lasts. Eventually the demon comes back, except this time it’s even worse than the first time! It’s true that today in America we don’t generally see the same kind of bodily manifestations of demonic activity that we read of in the Gospels. When Jesus was incarnate on earth, the battle between the kingdoms reached a kind of visible climax, and Jesus was victorious, such that now especially in places where the gospel has spread, like America, demonic activity doesn’t generally take the form of bodily manifestations like muteness. 

 

But that doesn’t mean the spiritual realm doesn’t exist or doesn’t exert influence over the material realm; almost no one believes that. I mentioned last week that still only 5% of Americans are atheists. And why is evil still so common, after all? Back to Lord of the Flies; do you know why William Golding wrote that novel? He read a book about the supposed civilizing influence of British colonialism, and asked his wife whether it would be a good idea if someone “wrote a book about children on an island, children who behave in the way children really would behave?” Without giving away the ending, suffice it to say that in much of the book the children don’t act like well civilized humans–they act like sinners. Why? Because even when an unclean spirit is cast out from a person, the person’s heart is still loaded with sinful desires that incline them toward the kingdom of darkness. So James 1:14 says “Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires.” 

 

An unclean spirit still finds a welcoming home in the heart of anyone who has not consciously turned to Christ, and in the case of those who were previously exposed to Christ, who perhaps even received some benefit from him, like being set free from a demon, that final state is worse than the first. At least with those who have not yet been exposed to Christ, there is hope that once they are, they will turn from their sins and submit to him. But for those who have already seen him do something like make a mute man speak, who themselves were the mute man who was enabled to speak, to still persist in rejecting him–it says something very concerning about the hardness of their hearts. 

 

This happens today in various ways. Some grow up with Christian parents, and so are exposed to the word of Christ from a young age, and are protected from the more severe sorrows that those who walk in flagrant sin experience. They never personally trust Christ, but they often think of themselves as Christians because they grew up in it, they haven’t become atheists, and they still go to church occasionally. In some ways that’s a worse condition than someone who’s never heard the gospel before. In vaccination, doctors give someone enough of a disease that they develop an immunity to it, and that’s what happens to such people: They’ve received just enough Christianity that they’re now immune to it. They won’t be converted because they think they already are, while in reality sin is in the driver’s seat of their lives, and they remain slaves in the kingdom of Satan.

 

A similar thing can happen to an adult who experiences some benefits from Christianity without ever coming to Christ. There are a lot of powerful truths in Christianity, there’s a beautiful community it creates, there are certain disciplines it brings into your life that bear good fruit. Christianity can help someone with their alcoholism, their loneliness, or their mental health. But be careful that you don’t take such benefits from it without personally receiving Christ. It’s only when his Spirit fills your heart that the demons come back and find there are no vacancies. So J.C. Ryle writes: “We must not only be moralized, but spiritualized. We must not only be reformed, but born again.” Be careful to ensure that this work is done in your heart. If you don’t have Christ, and have him truly, evil will have you.

 

And next, be careful how you respond to Jesus because if you are only near him, you haven’t received him.

 

If you are only near him, you haven’t received him (27-28)

 

As he said these things, verse 27 tells us that a woman in the crowd was apparently impressed with his teaching, and no doubt also with the work he’d done to make the mute man speak. So she says, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed.” It’s hard to fathom a greater nearness to Jesus than the womb that bore him, and the breasts at which he nursed. And while Jesus doesn’t necessarily deny that there is some blessedness to such a role, he certainly downplays it, and points in a different direction for true blessedness: Blessed rather, he says, are those who hear the word of God and keep it. Even Mary, he says, is only ultimately blessed because she heard the word of God and kept it, and so also for us, true blessedness only comes to us if we not only have proximity to Jesus through the things like church or family, but if we hear the word of God and keep it.

 

Do you recognize what a blessing it is to even hear the word of God? Estimates are that there are still over a thousand languages in the world into which the Bible has not been translated. People who understand only those languages have never heard the word of God. Even in English speaking countries, many grow up in unbelieving homes with no Bible, no parents taking them to church, no exposure to the word of God. Gareth and I were sharing the gospel with a neighbor last week, and when we asked her what she thought the basic message of Christianity was, she admitted that she really had no idea. In some places that have Bibles in their language, gathering to read it aloud is dangerous. We’ll share an update and pray for our brothers and sisters in Northern India at our prayer service this evening, who continue to face harassment and threats when they gather, and have to sometimes not gather at all on a Sunday or constantly change their location.

 

Yet we have access to God’s word in written form in printed Bibles, and even on Bible apps. We have access to recordings of the Bible; we can listen to it being read aloud in our headphones. And we have the blessing of being able to gather without harassment to read the Bible aloud and hear biblical preaching. If we think great blessing comes from exercise, we’ll find ways to do it. If we think great blessing comes from studying, we’ll find time to do it. If we think great blessing comes from entertainment, we’ll find time for it. But Jesus says great blessing comes from hearing the word of God; how will you make time for it?

 

But, importantly, Jesus doesn’t merely say that those are blessed who hear the word of God; he says those are blessed who hear the word of God and keep it. To hear God’s word but not do it is worthless; in fact, to his earlier point, that can leave us in a worse condition than those who have not heard. Christians should never adopt an attitude of hearing the word of God and saying to themselves, “Well yes I know the Bible says that, but nobody really does that.” Jesus suggests here that the norm for his people is that they hear the word of God and keep it. This is what it looks like to be for Jesus, and not against him: Hearing the word of God and keeping it. Remember when the voice came from heaven it said, “This is my son, my chosen one; listen to him.” His words are the words of God, and the words of God are his words. So Jesus says elsewhere: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

 

Mary might have borne him in her womb and nursed him at her breasts, but if she didn’t hear the word of God and keep it, she would not have been truly blessed. Be careful that you are not leaning on nearness to Jesus while neglecting to listen to his word. Be careful that you are not listening to his word without keeping it. 

 

And be careful how you respond to Jesus, next because if he doesn’t seem like enough, God won’t send you anything more.

 

If he doesn’t seem like enough, God won’t send you anything more (29-32)

 

Now finally after addressing this woman’s comment, Jesus addressed the second set of objectors in the crowd the day he delivered that mute man from a demon. Remember the second group back in verse 16 “kept seeking from him a sign from heaven.” The irony is of course palpable, because he just gave them a sign: He enabled a mute man to speak. In the next verse he gives another sign of his divine identity when he shows that he could read the minds of his audience. But they specifically wanted a sign from heaven, perhaps for Jesus to call down fire from heaven (cf. Luke 9:54), or as someone today might say, that if God would just write in the sky, “Jesus is Lord” or speak with an audible voice from heaven, they would believe in Christ.

 

But you don’t really understand the power of unbelief if you think that’s true. In this story people see Jesus make a mute man speak, and instead of saying, “ok you really are the Son of God,” some ascribe it to Satan, and others demand yet another sign. He’s raised the dead, he’s made a paralyzed man walk, he’s healed a man of leprosy just by touching him, and still there’s people saying, “But if you just gave me one more sign, then I’d believe.” Does anyone really think that if the clouds did form today to say, “Jesus is Lord” that there wouldn’t be a significant contingent of the population talking about trying to explain it away by positing a scientific mechanism, or ascribing it to some trick on the part of Christians? Suffice it to say responses like that are far more likely than large-scale conversion to Christ.

 

So Jesus says in verse 29, “This generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” Jonah was a prophet who lived hundreds of years before Jesus, and he was somewhat unique among the prophets for many reasons, most famously because he was swallowed and lived inside the belly of a large fish for three days. But another reason is because God sent him to a foreign people, the people of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria at the time, rather than sending him to the people of Israel, which is who God normally sent his prophets to. But God sent Jonah to Nineveh to announce to them God’s coming judgment on their city, in hope of their repentance. Now bear in mind to the people of Nineveh, Jonah was a complete stranger. Furthermore, he was part of an enemy nation of theirs. And God sent him to preach, with no miraculous signs to accompany his preaching. Jonah didn’t turn any rivers into blood, he didn’t send any gnats, he didn’t cast out any demons, and he didn’t call down any fire from heaven. All he did was he preached the word of God: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (Jonah 3:4). That’s it; that’s the whole sermon recorded for us in scripture. What was the sign that God wanted the Ninevites to repent? He sent Jonah to them, to warn them that in forty days their city would be overthrown. If God was unconcerned about them, God wouldn’t have sent Jonah. But the fact that he did was the sign from heaven that they should repent.

 

And guess what? They did! After that eight-word sermon recorded in Jonah 3:4, here’s what we read next in Jonah 3:5 – “And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.” So Jesus says here that though the people of Nineveh had no sign but the preaching of Jonah, that preaching was enough to work in them repentance! He appeals to another biblical example: The queen of the south. This is another non-Israelite, who we read in 1 Kings 10 travelled from over a thousand miles away, what Jesus calls here “the ends of the earth,” to hear the wisdom of Solomon. She got no sign from heaven, and yet she travelled from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. 

 

Now compare that to the situation of Jesus’ audience: They don’t have to travel from the ends of the earth! Jesus is right in front of them, and he is greater than Solomon! Solomon was wise because he prayed, asked God for wisdom, and God granted it to him, but Jesus is the one in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col 2:3). The Ninevites repented at the preaching of Jonah, and Jonah was a merely human prophet! The sign God gave them was that he sent Jonah, but the sign he gave Jesus’ generation is that he sent his son! Jonah preached God’s word because God gave him his word; Jesus preached God’s Word because Jesus is God’s Word (John 1:1-14). The people demanded a sign from heaven, but Jesus was the sign, literally sent from heaven, to them.

 

The queen of the south and the Ninevites prove that the problem isn’t with the amount of available evidence. They travelled from the ends of the earth and repented with much less evidence, in the presence of a lesser wisdom and a lesser prophet. So also we should never think that the problem with our faith is a lack of evidence. Ryle again points out how “We are all naturally inclined to attach great importance to a religion of sight, and sense, and touch, and eye, and ear. We love a sensuous, tangible, material Christianity, better than one of faith,” but the queen of the south and the Ninevites show us the way of faith, the blessedness of which Jesus just spoke: Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it. God has given us in his word everything we need for true blessedness and a firm foundation for our faith. It is the sign from heaven, calling us to repent and believe in Jesus. The question is what we will do with it, and that’s where our passage today ends.

 

Be careful how you respond to Jesus because if you would see him rightly, you need open eyes.

 

If you would see him rightly, you need open eyes (33-36)

 

In verse 33 Jesus returns to a saying he uses multiple times in different contexts: “No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light.” In this case, he’s using it to point out how he is shining the light of himself openly for all to see. But, even a light that is on a stand for all to see only makes it into someone’s body if their eye is healthy. The light is already there, so if your eye is healthy, the light will get in. But if your eye is diseased, like let’s say you’re blind, then your brain won’t perceive the light, no matter how bright the lamp outside your body.

 

So Jesus says in verse 35 to “be careful lest the light in you be darkness.” Now, obviously Jesus isn’t talking about physical vision here; he’s talking about spiritual perception, and he’s saying that even though he is shining his light clearly, people tend to see him how they want to see him. Those with bad eyes, who don’t want to see him for who he really is, see him as acting with the power of Satan. But if your eye is good, if it’s really open, then the light is shining, and you will be able to recognize him for who he is.

 

When trying to get to know Jesus, here’s a surefire way to mess that up: Come in with all kinds of conditions. “Ok, I’ll consider following Jesus if…” “I’ll consider following Jesus if I don’t have to believe in unscientific ideas like an invisible, omnipresent God, if I can still keep all the friends I like, if I can still hold all my views on sexuality, if I can kinda just be partially committed to him.” Do you see what you’re doing if you do that? It’s like you’re putting on blinders, only looking through a very narrow lens, and then saying, “Only if I see Jesus fits into this narrow lens will I see him.” Well but what if he’s not that? Do you want to know the real Christ, or do you want to project your own prejudices and call the result Christ?

 

Jesus is saying if you’ll just come to me open, if you’ll just take the junk out of your eyes, if you’ll take off the blinders, the light is shining clearly, and you’ll see it. And even now the same is true. We have the same accounts of Jesus raising the dead, casting out demons, and giving speech to the mute. Do you think they are just fairy tales? They aren’t written like fairy tales; they’re written like history books. Luke said at the beginning of this book that he was writing of the things that had been accomplished among them according to the eyewitnesses (Luke 1:1-4). You could say he made it all up, but he wrote it within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. You know what happens today when people publish an account of events that didn’t happen during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses? The eyewitnesses go public and say, “That didn’t happen!” Where are those saying these things didn’t happen? And how’d the writings of Christians attract so many followers as to remain in circulation 2000 years later if a bunch of people were around who knew they were fabrications? 

 

The light is shining, and yet all of us must admit that we were born with bad eyesight. There is something in all of us that resists the light, that, as Ryle said, prefers a sensible, tangible, material religion, rather than one of faith, and yet no matter how much sensible, tangible, material evidence God gives us, something still holds something back, and is unwilling to just trust Jesus. But here’s the incredible thing about Jesus: He’s clear that the one who isn’t for him is against him, but he doesn’t jump right to condemning those who are against him. Our story today doesn’t end with Jesus consigning his opponents to hell, nor does Luke’s Gospel even end that way.

 

Instead, Luke’s Gospel ends with these opponents’ opposition intensifying. Those who weren’t with him showed just how much they were against him when they went so far as to nail him to a cross, and yet from the cross, do you know what Jesus did? He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34), or, in other words, “Father, forgive them; their eyes are bad! They’re blind!” Though our blindness is our fault, though our blindness is a culpable blindness, Jesus has mercy on it, and when Jesus rose from the dead, he went to these very opponents, the people who crucified him, and offered them forgiveness. Then he sent his apostles to the nations, to, as scripture says, “open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:18).

 

So if you’re here today and you aren’t a Christian, what sign has God given you? You’re here today, aren’t you? You’re hearing his word, aren’t you? Confess your blindness, ask him to open your eyes, and turn to Christ, who will turn you from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that you may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in him. Turn to him, and in the words of our concluding verse, your whole body will be full of light, and there will be no room for Satan or his demons to take up residence in you. And brothers and sisters, keep turning to him. Don’t let disease creep into your eyes. Be very careful not to drift from his word, or to get used to hearing it and not keeping it. If you’re not with him, you’re against him. If you don’t have him, evil will have you. But if you have him, he will fill you with his light, and give you the final victory over Satan and his demons.