The Kingdom of God has Come
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
I’m not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination. But I remember some from my high school classes. Two big ideas that I remember is the scientific method, in which one asks a questions, observes the situation, develops a hypothesis, conducts experiments, and then comes to a conclusion. That’s one thing. The second is that we need to be careful about holding tight to our hypotheses lest we develop confirmation bias.
If we want our hypothesis to be correct so badly, experiments begin to be skewed and conclusions begin to be rejected. This happens everywhere, not just in science. This can happen with a birthday party. We develop this idea of what a good and fun party should look like. We want it to be “this.” And if it isn’t “this” then it wasn’t really a party. Do you know what it was? It was a disaster!
We have an idea about a date night. It’s going to be this and that and we’re going to do this and that. And this and that doesn’t happen the way we were picturing it in our minds eye. And so we reject any notion that date night was a success because it went against our original guess as to how it should go.
But what about God’s kingdom? Can, after studying God’s Word, can we develop an idea of what it will look like, how it will be introduced, and how God will work in it? Certainly. But can we hold so tight to those hypotheses that when things don’t work as we had guessed, that we reject the way God planned it? Absolutely. And we see that with the religious leaders in Jesus’s day.
They had been seeing Jesus perform miracles and had heard Jesus teaching for quite some time. Who was this man? Whose authority did he have? Where did his power come from? What was he doing? All these questions, and upon observing him, they developed a hypothesis, they even tried to do some experiments and tests, and today they were about to state their findings.
Jesus had just performed a miracle and an explanation had to be given as to how. There had to be a solution to the question of how and why.
So as we open up the text this morning, I hope we see that there are only two solutions to Jesus’s miracle. The first is that Jesus is empowered by Satan. The second is that Jesus is empowered by the Spirit. And if that is the case, then one had better choose, which side he wants to be one.
Now he was casting out a demon that was mute. When the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke, and the people marveled.
But 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.
But he, knowing their thoughts, said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls.
And if Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that I cast out demons by Beelzebul.
And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges.
But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
Empowered by Satan
Empowered by Satan
The first solution to Jesus’s miracle is that Jesus was empowered by Satan to perform it.
Now we just read what the miracle was. Jesus had just exorcised a demon from a man that had caused him to be mute. So he goes from having the inability to speak, to suddenly having the ability to speak and the people go crazy! Not only has Jesus loosed the tongue of the mute, but in doing so, he set everyone else’s tongues to wagging too! “Oh my goodness, David, did you see that!?” “I can’t believe what I’m hearing, Micah! It’s a miracle.” And it would seem that the Jewish leaders wanted to squash the fury rather quickly and so some of them made the proclamation that Jesus was casting out demons by the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons.
Beelzebul is a combination of two Hebrew words. Baal and Zebul. Baal means “Lord.” Zebul means “exalted or high,” often associated with a place. If you remember, one of the tribes of Israel, a son of Jacob, was named Zebulun. The reason was because Leah thought that since he was her sixth son born to her, Jacob would see how God had exalted her standing.
So Beelzebul literally mean the lord of a high place. Luke explained it by saying that he is the prince of demons. Paul would say something similar. In
in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—
Same idea right? Ruler of high places, prince of the power of the air. At times, they’d change the name from Beelzebul to the more well-known Beelzebub which means Lord of the Flies.
But either way, the idea is that Jesus was casting out demons by the power of Satan.
But then, there were some who were trying to take a middle of the road approach by asking him for a sign from heaven. Jesus wasn’t going to fall for that. He wasn’t going to allow for a middle of the road approach. We’ll talk about that more next week.
What these leaders were saying was that Jesus was a representative of Satan, not God. He was the servant of Satan, not the Son of God. Jesus was literally being demonized.
And that so often is the tactic is it not? When someone does something or states something that goes against the preconceived notions—out hypothesis—of what God’s kingdom looks like, that person gets demonized for it. Their ideas are denigrated. Their actions are condemned. Their words are twisted. It’s easy to demonize. It doesn’t take much effort. It doesn’t take much thought. It’s almost second nature.
But Jesus refused to be demonized. In response, Jesus first shows how defective their thoughts and statements were and then shows how duplicitous they were. First we see how defective the thoughts and statements were.
But he, knowing their thoughts, said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls.
Jesus hit his opposers with some hard truth.
The oldest tactic in the book is to bring about division from within. God would even utilize this tactic in the Old Testament. You may remember when Gideon fought the Midianites, we read
Judges 7:22 (ESV)
When they blew the 300 trumpets, the Lord set every man’s sword against his comrade and against all the army. And the army fled as far as Beth-shittah toward Zererah, as far as the border of Abel-meholah, by Tabbath.
Or When Saul fought the Philistines
Then Saul and all the people who were with him rallied and went into the battle. And behold, every Philistine’s sword was against his fellow, and there was very great confusion.
Or perhaps the greatest victory when King Jehoshaphat was faced with an allied force of the Ammonites, Moabites, and Seirites.
And when they began to sing and praise, the Lord set an ambush against the men of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah, so that they were routed.
For the men of Ammon and Moab rose against the inhabitants of Mount Seir, devoting them to destruction, and when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, they all helped to destroy one another.
When Judah came to the watchtower of the wilderness, they looked toward the horde, and behold, there were dead bodies lying on the ground; none had escaped.
We’ve all had those ideas that sounded good in the head but when we spoke them out loud, we realized how defective the idea was. So it must have been for these Jewish leaders. For Satan to cast out his own demons was to declare war against his own generals. It would be self-defeating and it would be an inevitable fall of his kingdom.
Defective thinking, leads to destructive talk. It influences or confuses people as we see with those who put Jesus to the test by asking for a sign from heaven. They just saw a demon cast out—a sign from heaven, but because of the defective thinking and destructive talk, they weren’t sure anymore and so they kept asking for a sign. If not for Jesus’s sure confidence in who he was and what his mission was—in other words if Jesus were only human, it very well may have been destructive to him as well. But Jesus was sure of himself and his mission.
Perhaps you have experienced such time when someone spoke words that crushed your spirit, confused you as to what God has called you to. They spoke without really thinking through what they were saying. And their words have left destruction in their wake.
And so Jesus went on to show that not only were their thoughts defective and words destructive, but they were also duplicitous. They spoke negatively about Jesus casting out demons but apparently spoke positively when their own disciples were doing the same thing, but in a different way.
Other than Jesus, who just simply told the demons to go, the way everyone exorcised a demon was through incantations, invoking someone else’s authority, and the like. No one had the power just to send a demon out of a person by telling it to go. No one but Jesus.
So Jesus asked,
And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges.
If the leaders were so sure that casting out demons was the devil’s work, then they’d need to answer for their own disciples. Surely, they would never accuse their own followers of being empowered by Satan, so why would they say it about Jesus? Was it just simply the fact that Jesus didn’t fit their mold as to what the Messiah would be or the kingdom he spoke of just didn’t look like what they had imagined?
They believed rightly that God was using their own students to cast out demons. They believed wrongly that Jesus was empowered by Satan. Two formerly demon-possessed men could be standing before them. One healed by Jesus and the other healed by one of their own. The one healed by their own would have been deemed free by the power of God while Jesus’s would be condemned as freed by the power of Satan. It was duplicitous. And they’d be judged for it by their very own disciples.
God hates duplicity. He hates it when we judge one person by one set of standards and another by an altogether different standard.
“You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, a large and a small.
You shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, a large and a small.
A full and fair weight you shall have, a full and fair measure you shall have, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
For all who do such things, all who act dishonestly, are an abomination to the Lord your God.
A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight.
We do realize that God’s not just talking about scales and balances, don’t we? He’s talking about how we measure one another. He’s referring to the judgment we make upon each other. Duplicity has no place among God’s people. It’s an abomination.
Notice by implication that Jesus is being consistent. He’s already made it clear that Satan would not be casting out his own demons. Thus, there is only one other way to cast them out: by the power of the Spirit. God worked through these men to cast out demons. They did not have the same authority as Jesus. They didn’t have the same power as Jesus. But the same God would cast demons out through his Son must also be the God who cast out the demons through these students of these leaders.
Beloved, we need to understand that not every ministry is going to look the same. Not every worship service will be alike. Just because someone else’s ministry looks different than yours or mine, or some other worship service sounds different than ours, does not mean that theirs is any less of God than ours. Nor does it mean that ours is any less or more God-honoring than theirs. We say that we know that and understand that, but then out come the accusations that large churches are full of theological light-weights and they say that small churches are just dead or dying. The honest truth is that we could learn a thing or two from each other. We had best be careful about what we say, lest we speak out of both sides of our mouths.
Empowered by the Spirit
Empowered by the Spirit
So the first solution as to how the man was healed was that it happened because Jesus was empowered by Satan. Jesus quickly squashed that idea. Therefore, there is only one other solution. Jesus was empowered by the Spirit. Jesus spent most of his time combating the idea that he was from Satan, and we are doing the same. This point will be shorter, but it is important nonetheless.
But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
The “finger of God” is a euphemism for God’s power, God’s Spirit and we know that as we see Matthew substituting the word “Spirit” for “finger” in his account. And the “if” in this verse is not to raise any doubts. We use this kind of language all the time. The idea is that Jesus’s power is unique. Yes, the disciples of these leaders were casting out demons, but Jesus was doing this with a special power and authority that no one could duplicate.
You may remember that when Moses first confronted Pharaoh, he turned his staff into a serpent, but Pharaoh’s magicians did the same. Then he turned water to blood, and Pharaoh’s magicians did the same. Then frogs came up and invaded Egypt, but Pharaoh’s magicians did the same. But finally, Moses and Aaron called forth gnats and the magicians couldn’t do what they had done.
Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” But Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said.
Thus, Jesus was unique even among the exorcists in Palestine. But the big consequence here is that if Jesus is performing such miracles by the Spirit, it means that God’s kingdom has come upon these observers. Jesus said, this is the proof—my works that I am doing by the power of God, the Spirit of God—is proof that God’s kingdom has come upon you.
It wasn’t what they were expecting. It wasn’t what they had been looking for. It wasn’t what they thought it would be about. It was altogether different. It didn’t align with their hypothesis. It didn’t match their traditions. Could they, would they, reach out and receive God’s kingdom?
Each of us have our views and probably no two are exactly alike when it comes to what we expect God’s kingdom to look like. But there are big picture ideas that would be the same. What if God doesn’t work by our expectations, our hypotheses? What if he doesn’t work by our traditions?
Nothing Jesus did was outside of biblical truth. Everything he did was in line with Scripture, but it was outside the way that the Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes read the Scriptures. To each group, “This” was how the kingdom was supposed to look. “This” was how the kingdom was supposed to be inaugurated. “This” was how the kingdom was to gain power. And we do the same thing.
But God’s kingdom comes about God’s way. It will certainly be in line with God’s Word. But we must be careful about being so tightfisted with our own notions about how, when, where it will be.
This was a make or break moment. Jesus put the choice right in front of them. Would they, could they accept what Jesus was doing and what Jesus was saying, or would their hearts remain hardened against him like Pharaoh’s against Moses? Could they accept that God’s kingdom wasn’t coming the way they expected or even the way that they wanted?
There were only two kingdoms they could be a part of. If they rejected the kingdom of God that Jesus was ushering in and proven by Jesus’s miracles, then there was only one other kingdom left for them. There’s no other choice.
Such was true for them. Such is true for us.
We are promised that the kingdom will be consummated when Christ Jesus returns. And that the only way we can be part of that kingdom is to truly know and treasure Jesus before that day comes.
Those who were part of this crowd knew Jesus personally, but they did not treasure him. Some were openly hostile to him. Those are the ones we talked about today mostly. But there were others who were cool toward him. They didn’t really know what to think. Give us a sign from heaven so we can know for sure. This was not a people who trusted him or treasured him. They were on the fence.
Jesus told them that the kingdom of God was upon them. It was standing right in front of them. It wasn’t the Prince of demons before them. It was the Prince of Peace! Would they accept him? Would they love him? Treasure him and so enter into the kingdom that had come upon them?
Will you?
Conclusion
Conclusion
As we finish with this section of Luke, we’ve seen that God’s kingdom and how God moves in it and through it, while it always is in line with God’s Word is not always in line with our thoughts. And our thoughts must be that which changes. God isn’t going to do it. His word isn’t going to do it. Defective thinking leads to destructive words. And so we must be careful with both our thoughts and our speech. We must be very careful that if we speak against one’s ministry, one’s church, one’s worship service, that we are crystal clear that those against whom we speak are going against God’s Word not just against our preference.
But we’ve also seen that Jesus clearly taught there were only two kingdoms: Satan’s and God’s. The choice was clear: Jesus was either empowered by Satan and thus part of that kingdom or he was empowered by the Spirit and therefore part of God’s kingdom. To reject Jesus as the Son of God was to put him into the kingdom of Satan.
As John clearly taught
No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.
The kingdom of God has come. Will you enter by confessing Jesus as the Son or will you stay in the second kingdom: the domain of darkness—the Kingdom of the Prince of demons?