This morning I heard a sermon on expectations. Oddly enough one of the main verses that was referenced was Luke 11:24-26:
24“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.’25When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. 26Then 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.”
Even now I am struggling to accurately remember how that verse fit in with the topic, but I believe in the context of the first part of Luke 11 the verse can be applied to God’s expectations of how we should grow. Those three verses are not really about demon possession at all even though Jesus had just performed an exorcism. There is a lesson to be learned from this verse regarding whether or not there are still demon possessions but the main lesson has to do with our hearts, our “Wellspring of life”. The typical lesson taught from these verses is that when you remove sin and sinful habits from your life you must replace those things with something of value or you will revert to more sinful state than you were at previously. This is a good lesson to learn, but let’s skew it a little bit and examine it using some of the previous verses from Luke 11.
21“When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. 22But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up the spoils.
23“He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters. – Luke 11:21-23
When you combine verses 21-26 I believe you get a hybrid teaching. In essence Jesus is saying you may be strong, but there will always be someone stronger (the Devil), and if you are not being guarded by Jesus, your house (soul, heart, accomplishments) will be taken away and scattered among the wicked. Therefore, when you find places in your heart that are sinful and weak, you must remove those and fill them with the Word or you will allow more sin and evil to enter your heart.
It always amazes me when I think on men, who I thought were strong, but eventually left the Lord. In keeping with the lesson in Luke 11, their hearts and their spiritual accomplishments are stolen and scattered. Their hard work, struggling and patience in the Lord becomes of no value to them. Of course there are still other who were a part of their lives who continue to benefit from their toils, but not them.
BUT, and this is an important addendum to the above moral lesson, this verse isn’t just talking about the complete destruction of a person’s faith and heart. Even if you are still in the Lord you can have your heart broken into and stolen from. The valuable possessions of your heart can be taken and scattered, rendering them useless to you. I can’t count how many times my anger or sinful attitude has interfered with my duties as a Christian. How many people, who knew I was a Christian, have seen my public sin and thought to themselves “he’s just one of those typical hypocrite Christians”? I know it’s happened, and you know what? There’s where my valuable possessions have been stolen and scattered by the Devil. My positive influence, or the potential to be a Light to the world is destroyed in those moments because of sin.
God expects that we are going to have quite a bit of house cleaning to do. He expects that we will have vulnerabilities and weaknesses that will open our hearts to the Devil and his cunning and divisive plans. But here in Luke 11 we have the Son of God saying “I am here to give you a way to avoid all of this”. One of my greatest hesitations in having children comes from the lesson of these verses, with a few sinful words and sinful actions I can undo and scatter a lot of hard work as a parent. I have already experienced that as a husband and been the victim of other Christian’s destructive sin.
There are so many lessons that could branch off of those verses, but back to the lesson of “expectations”, I need to remember God’s expectations in all of my roles as a Christian. If you have read my posts on my personal struggles, this verse makes it very apparent that even after the hard task of simply removing sin from my heart I must also labor to replace that sin with the character and morality that is tune with God’s expectations.
One Comment
Is this new? You really are a great writer–we hope you keep up the good work! We are sending a copy of this to John.