Following the Way of Jesus - Series in Matthew's Gospel.

The Character of the King - He Reforms to Relate!

Matthew 12:43–45 (NIV84)

“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 unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it 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. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”

There is a danger that we can engage in a moral self-reformation that makes us look good on the outside but that makes no difference to the inside - This is the Dorrian Gray problem:

You may be aware of the book “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar WIlde. The extremely handsome, young Dorian is seduced into thinking that he can sin without suffering evil. Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian’s charming abd witty benefactor but also his malevolent tempter suggests to him that “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it”, a famous phrase from the book. “Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us”, says Lord Henry. He claims that, “The body sins once, and has done with its sin”....”Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret”.

He follows the advice to “Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.” He does but he is not entirely happy as revealed when his artist friend, Basil Havilard paints his portraitdepicted. Basil captures his beauty but Dorian, whilst cpativated by it is also jealous of it! He explains this to Basil saying, “I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly!”

And so Dorian sells his soul to the devil in exchange for “eternal youth.” , as he remains young on the outside, it is the portrait that grows old and not only so, it reflects the horror of his vile, hedonistic and murderous lifestyle until it has to be locked away and covered up in the attic so that no one will discover Dorian’s monstrous true-self!

But Dorian attempts moral reform without real repentance. In his final moments, he appears to repent the murder of Basil, the suicides of Sibyl Vane and Alan Campbell, and his countless other sins by refraining from seducing and ruining a naïve village girl. The discrepancy between the enormity of his crimes and this minor act of contrition is too great. Furthermore, he realizes that he does not want to confess his sins but rather have them simply go away. The portrait reflects this hypocrisy and drives him to his final, desperate act. He decides it is better to destroy the last evidence of his sin—the painting of his soul—than face up to his own depravity.

But the depravity he seeks to destroy is, in essence, himself; therefore, by killing it, he kills himself. His attempt to live life without moral restraint and reform is too costly and as the book draws to a conclusion, we discover that “The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought and sold and bartered away.”

It is hardly surprising that Victorian Britain thought of Wilde’s book as immoral, but Wilde had a point when he observed that, “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” He defended the book to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes, , when he said in 1891: “I cannot understand how they can treat Dorian Gray as immoral”. He described it in a letter to the St. James Gazette journal, as “a story with a moral. And the moral is this: All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment”.

“All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment”. - Moral failure and moral success in terms of improving oneself and becoming proud of one’s moral progress can be equally dangerous spiritually!

The Danger of Self-Righteousness:

Jesus warned people of this illustrates this in the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector: (Luke 18:11–14).

“God, I thank you that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax-gatherer. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get”

In his own eyes he is already right with God and needs nothing from God and so he gets nothing from God! - He can’t complain really can he?(cf. Matt. 19:20).

But, in contrast, God can do a great deal for the person who, like the tax-collector, cries out, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner!” He is the person who goes “down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, but he who humbles himself shall be exalted” (Luke 18:13–14).

The problem is that self-righteousness can be so deceptive of our own true condition before God and judgmental of other peopl’s true condition before God. By itself, morality leads to self-righteousness and is a very dangerous thing.

Jesus wants us to reform in order to relate to Him. He does not want us to outwardly good, without chaning the way we truly are on the inside! He must change us on the inside or the we will like the Pharisees be “whitewashed tombs” full of “dead man’s bones and full of uncleaness”

This was applicable to the Pharisees as Jesus makes clear in Matthew 23:2-5

“The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. “Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long.”

Looking good on the outside - a moral reform - is not enough if the inside remains changed. In this sense appearing to be religious and good is as dangerous for society as being openly wicked and immoral.

Jesus said of these very moralistic, outwardly righteous group of people “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. (Matt. 23:25–28). 

“There has never been a group of men more committed to a demanding religious and moral code than the Pharisees and never a group of men so far from God.”(John MacArthur jr).

Beware of Self-Rigteousness!

Self-righteousness can desensitize a person to sin to the point that he is not aware that his very soul is rotting away under demonic corruption. (so the Portrait of Dorian Gray).

Self-righteousness is obsessed with cleaning up the life of itself and otehrs not to glorify God but to validae self - “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,” Jesus said, “because you travel about on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves” (Matt. 23:15).

This is the great danger the Church faces because to approve of moral actions is good and to call for moral reform is vital but to preach morality, even according to biblical standards of behavior, but not salvation through Christ promotes a religion that drives men further from God than they were before they reformed.

It is much easier to reach someone who is overwhelmed with a true sense of His sin than someone who is overwhelmed with a false sense of his righteousness. That is why Jesus said, “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt. 9:13). Christ could not reach them, because they thought they had no need of any spiritual help, least of all salvation from sin.

Peter takes this up and warns the Church about perople who “after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment delivered to them. It has happened to them according to the true proverb, ‘A dog returns to its own vomit,’ and, ‘A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire’ ” (2 Pet. 2:20–22).

The reformed but unconverted person will eventually revert to sinful ways for the same reason that the dog returns to its vomit and the washed sow returns to the mud wallow—because in each case the original nature has not been changed. Jesus’ parable applied to Israel as a nation, to this evil generation, as well as to individual Jews.

The principle is this, outer reformation without inner transformation brings susceptibility to even worse evil than that from which one turned away.

2. The Danger of Reform without Relationship:

This passage is, to say the least an unusual account and it forces us to ask the question, “What kind of teaching is this?” in terms of its genre?

Is it a parable, as R.T France suggests, one which is analogous of what will happen to the Pharisees and those Jews who reject Jesus? Does the removal of the demon and the cleaning and sweeping of the house represent their efforts at getting rid of anything in their lives that they regard as “unclean” or “immoral”? And is it therefore warning against the limitations of this process? That moral reformation might rid you of something unclean but if you don;t fill the house with somethign better, you are open toe ven worse, corrupting and unclean ifnfluences as a result.

Or is Jesus likening, Israel to a “house” - the “lost sheep of the house of Israel” who, for all the privilege of having the law of God which permits them to clean the house and make it habitable for use, are now in danger of an even worse condition than before, becasue Jesus has appeared to tehma s their Saviour and King but in their rejection of Him, they are committing the “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” and opening themselves up to an even worse spiritual condition in not taking advantage of the window of opportunity presented by his coming.

Is it in some sense an illustration of a very real, potential condition where the individual who experience some demonic deliverance, but are left “empty” because they do not replace the influence of evil with the presence of the Holy Spirit and as a result fail to follow through on spiritual opportunity for freedom and become entangled again by even worse demonic possession?

Whatever, and they all have at least some truth about them, “the parable gives a vividly humorous account of the experiences and tactics of the expelled unclean spirit, but its point is in the condition of the house”(R. T. France)

The Strange Story of an Unclean Spirit! - A look at the parable!

The main character in this illustration is “an unclean spirit”, whose specific evil characteristics are not identified. An “unclean spirit” is a demon, a fallen angel, a member of Satan’s host of supernatural, evil servants.

“Unclean” represents the wicked, vile nature of all demon spirits; but this parable suggests that they are not equally evil, because this “unclean spirit”, has companions described as “seven other spirits more wicked than itself”

This “unclean spirit comes out of the man”, presumably due to an exorcism, so that the demon no longer had control over the man. However, just as many people were cleansed and healed by Jesus, but some did not trust in Him for salvation(e.g. the 10 Lepers), this man was temporarily freed from the demon’s presence and influence but not ultimately changed! - This reminds us that receiving “signs” does not always lead to true salvation!

After he left the man, this demon “goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it.” Demons are often linked to the wilderness in the popular mindset, dry barren places.

“Demons have an affinity for such places”(D.A. Carson) (see Isa 13:19-21;Rev 18:1-3). Being spirits, they do not need food and water as human beings do, and therefore waterless places here figuratively represents desolation, barrenness, and extreme discomfort.

However, demons are not relaxed or content! In its own corrupt way the demon "seeking rest” and yet, it “does not find it.” so it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it 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.

Perhaps the restlessness of the demon is due to the fact that it could not express its evil nature through inanimate, lifeless things. it could not torment or possess and corrupt the human being and carry out its evil intent, so it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ It appears from this and many other passages in the New Testament, that demons prefer to indwell human beings and even if necessary, animals (see Matt. 8:31), rather than exist as unattached beings in Satan’s evil realm.

‘I will return to the house I left.’ indicates a strong sense of ownership and possessiveness and the fact that it was able to regain entrance so easily proves the boast was not vain.

The house was “unoccupied, swept clean and put in order." That the man’s house was unoccupied, either by another demon or even the Spirit of God, suggests that a genuine moral reformation had taken place, that the life was cleaned up but still, the change was alas temporary and the house was eventually retaken and subject to even worse possession than before!

Note that the evil spirit does not need to break down the door, but rather he finds the house empty and open already, and all things ready for his entertainment. Too many of us are not resistant enough to evil influence. We can open doors in welcome to evil influence too easily and these can tempt and damge top readily!

Note: “the seven other spirits” - seven is the number of perfection! These are needed to help him effect entry to the inhospitable territory of a clean ‘house’, and to make it unclean enough to live in again!

“They go in and live there.” - Greek Katoikeō, meaning “to live”, carrying out the idea of dwelling and settling down. It is the same verb Paul used as he prayed for the Ephesians, “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (Eph. 3:17). Christ lives in our hearts, but if He is not in our hearts, then we are vulnerable to unclean and evil influences.

“The last state of that man becomes worse than the first” because tragically he has tried so hard to be righteous but not in order to please God, but to promote his own sense of worthiness and self-righteousness!

The man was “Furnished, but vacant:—The central lesson of this text is this: that reformation is not necessarily salvation—that, indeed, reformation without godliness may bring a curse rather than a blessing.”(Joseph Exell)

Now let’s connect this parable with what preceded it:

the exorcism scene echoes Matt 12:22–29 in which Jesus drove out a demon frpom a “blind and mute” man and was accused of doing this through the power of “Beelzebub, prince of demons”. To which Jesus replied, “Every Kingdom divided against itself will fall. If Satan drives out Satan how then can his Kingdom stand?”

The application in Matt 12:45 “This is how it will be with this wicked generation” mirrors the application of Matt 12:39 “a wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign.” Their lack of genuine repentance, even the dishonesty of their asking, hinting at real genuine interest but in reality looking for an excuse to reject and murder Jesus, shows that are “against” Him! (see Matth 12:30).

This “evil generation” could be ‘cleansed’ by Jesus’ ministry among them, but a repentance which does not lead to a new allegiance leaves a void which the devil will exploit.

Even if we pride ourselves on being outwardy good and righteous, its what’s on the inside that counts! Evil spirits can occupy a reformed but Christless life just as much as they can occupy an unclean, immoral and wantonly wicked life!

Beware of the Empty Life!

Bob Dylan wrote: “We’ve all gotta serve someone”! JOshua commanded, “Choose this day, whom you will serve!” This man had swept his house and made it clean, but he was in fact ripe for takeover!

LIke Cain who thought he was free and independent once he’d gotten rid of his awful brother, discovered that “sin is crouching at the door, it desires to control you, but you must resist it!”

An empty life is not a safe life! If we open ourselves up to evil influence by indulging in sinful What thrills our hearst also occupies our hearts!

Behold Jesus standing and knocking at the door of your life!

“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”

Jesus wants us not merely to reform but to relate! He cleans up our lives not so that we can look good but so that we can become a temple of God’s holy Spirit and “filled with all the fulness of God.”

Listen to thesse words: - Eph 3:14-21

“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

This is not just, “I know Jesus loves me” it is KNOWING His love in all its fullness that “you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

Perhaps this is where your emptiness can be found! You are not interested in the sins fo the flesh, you don’t want the empty way of life handed on to you by your fathers BUT you feel empty and uncertain about Jesus. You have heard of Him and heard of His power but you have not yet experienced it. Let Him fill your life with His presence. Let Him become your joy and treasure. Look up to Him and invite Him in to that you may “have life in all its fulness”!