Sermon Transcript:

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century one of the most significant threats was fire. In an effort to control fires and keep them from spreading, the policy was to prevent and extinguish every fire, even in the forests. At first, the approach appeared to be successful. Incidents of fire dropped sharply, but what went unnoticed was that beneath the surface, dead wood and brush were accumulating. The danger had not been removed. It was simply being stored up. The result was that eventually, when fires did come, they could not be contained. They moved more quickly and were far more destructive than before. 

Sometimes, in an effort to make things better, we can end up making them worse. Jesus says something similar can happen spiritually. A man may reform his conduct without ever being renewed in his heart. He may clean things up, put his life in order, and appear greatly improved. But if his heart remains without the Spirit of God, the final condition will be worse than the first. That is our main point this morning:

Reform without rebirth results in greater ruin.

We all probably know people who have cleaned up their lives. They stopped drinking, using drugs, sleeping around, gambling, or whatever the case may be. They became responsible. Respectable. Their lives became more orderly and less destructive. That is good.

Yet outward reform is not the same thing as spiritual life. A person can put his or her life in order and still be a stranger to God. They can overcome the outward expression of certain sins and yet remain unconverted. This is the situation with the Pharisees. They were extremely moral people, so moral in fact that they believed they were keeping the Law of God. Yet, there was no love in their hearts, so in reality, they were not even close to keeping the law. They were actually spiritually worse off than the sinners they looked down on.

Today, we expect the Pharisees to be the bad guys, but remember that for most people at the time, the Pharisees were the heroes. They were highly respected because they were seen as virtuous people who were unwilling to compromise on the law of God. They had a reputation for holiness, for always checking the Bible before doing anything. The average person would never have imagined they could measure up to their spiritual discipline.

They were not worshipping idols like so many of their ancestors had done. They were not compromising with pagan nations as Israel had so often done before. Their great concern was that they and the people of Israel would obey the law of God. That is why Jesus' words were so shocking. Rather than commend them, He condemns them. He calls them blind guides and whitewashed tombs. He says they looked righteous on the outside, but inwardly they were full of death and corruption. This is one of the great truths Jesus repeatedly emphasizes. Righteousness is not merely a matter of outward conduct. Truly good works can only flow from a heart that has been made new, because God judges not only our deeds, but the motives from which they spring.

Regardless of how much self-improvement may be evident, if the heart remains unchanged, the person is still in bondage to sin. In fact, the person who thinks he is righteous is in greater danger than the one who knows he is a sinner. 

Jesus is still confronting the crowd and the Pharisees who have seen the power of God with their own eyes and rejected it. They have heard the truth and refused it. They have been given greater light than Jonah's generation and greater wisdom than Solomon's day, yet they remain unmoved. The issue has never been a lack of evidence. The issue is a rebellious heart unwilling to submit to God.

Then Jesus gives an illustration warning to them about their do-it-yourself righteousness. It is a truth that we must hear as well, because our hearts are always tempted to depend too much upon ourselves. He begins in verse 43 by saying,

43 “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none.

His illustration features a demon. A spirit that is impure and defiling, unfit for service to God or to be in His presence. His point isn’t to give us a lesson on demons, so I don’t want to read too much into the details. There is an unhealthy infatuation some people have with the demonic. Entire so-called deliverance ministries are built on little more than speculation and an emphasis on things we are never commanded to do.

Don’t misunderstand me, demons are real. Jesus has cast out several already in Matthew. Satan and his forces are real, they oppose God, deceive sinners, and seek to destroy. The Bible does not allow us to dismiss the demonic as superstition. Yet neither does it encourage us to become preoccupied with it. The emphasis of Scripture is not on teaching Christians to hunt for demons behind every struggle, but on standing firm in Christ through faith, truth, prayer, and obedience. To be a biblical Christian is to have a supernatural worldview, unlike the materialism of our day, so much so that we understand that in living the ordinary life of faith, we are engaging in spiritual warfare.

The apostles did not teach believers to blame their sins on demons or to seek freedom through repeated deliverances. They called people to repentance, faith, and submission to Christ. The New Testament consistently presents God's Word, prayer, and the work of the Holy Spirit as the primary means by which people are delivered from Satan's power. These are the things the apostle Paul focuses on when he tells us to take up the full armor of God as we battle spiritual powers and principalities.

In fact, that is part of the very warning Jesus is about to give. Merely driving out a demon, or merely cleaning up a life, is not enough. The weapon the Bible gives us to drive out the devil is the Gospel. What is needed is a new heart filled with the Spirit of God. 

Jesus says the unclean spirit left the person and went to waterless places seeking rest. He does not explain why it left, or why it went into the desert. We do not know whether this is typical of unclean spirits or simply part of the illustration. The important point is that the spirit has left the man, it is restless and has not found another suitable place. 

44 Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ 

After finding no rest, the spirit decides to return. Notice that although the demon had left, it still believed it had a claim on its host, referring to the person as “my house.” No other spirit has moved in or claimed the place and so spiritually speaking, there has been no change in ownership. Jesus says,

And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. 

When the demon returns, interestingly, it finds the house swept and put in order. Something has changed. The man is no longer in the same condition he was before. Without the demon there, the man made some progress in straightening up his life. There has been a kind of cleansing, a kind of moral reform. The house has been tidied up. From a social and moral standpoint, the man appears to be in a better condition.

This fits perfectly with the warning Jesus has been giving throughout this chapter. The Pharisees were not openly immoral men. They were not drunks, thieves, or pagans. They were respectable, disciplined, and religious. Their lives appeared orderly and clean. They worked hard to improve themselves, even going to extremes. Like many people today, they reformed their conduct, but they still refused to submit to Christ.

There is never a lack of voices in the world calling men to reform themselves. This is the goal of most religions and philosophies. At the time of Jesus there were several groups, like the Essenes and the Pharisees, who were calling for moral reform.

It was a time of religious and political zeal. John the Baptist was surrounded by crowds who were confessing their sins and being baptized in preparation for the coming of the Messiah. Yet, many of these people ultimately did not follow Jesus because He was not what they expected. In the end, many were baptized with water, but never baptized with the Spirit. They were morally improved, but never born again. The house had been swept and put in order, but it remained empty.

That is the danger Jesus is warning about. It is possible to clean up your life without ever surrendering your heart to God. It is possible to become more ethical, more disciplined, more religious, and yet remain spiritually dead. Moralism is not enough. The house may be swept. It may be orderly. It may even appear beautiful. But if Christ is not there, it is still empty.

We see this all around us. There are socially upstanding and disciplined people in false religions such as Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Oneness Pentecostals. There are many morally upright people of integrity in churches that teach serious error, such as Roman Catholicism and Orthodox churches. All of these place a great deal of emphasis on outward righteousness, but morality is not regeneration, and religious devotion is not the new birth. A person may be outwardly upright and deeply committed to religion, yet still lack the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

Perhaps the greater danger is even closer to home. There are many people sitting in evangelical churches every Sunday who understand the right doctrines, attend worship services, avoid scandalous sins, and live respectable lives, yet have never been transformed by the Spirit of God. They have cleaned the house, but Christ does not dwell there. They have experienced reform, but not rebirth.

Though the outward state of the person appears to be improved, Jesus warns us that the danger is actually greater if the house remains unoccupied. He says,

45 Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation.”

Pursuing holiness apart from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit results in a greater ruin for the sinner. The demon brings with it seven more spirits more evil than itself. Seven is often used in Scripture to communicate fullness or completeness. Jesus is probably emphasizing the severity of the situation. The man's condition has become dramatically worse than before. What began as one unclean spirit has become a far deeper and complete bondage.

When the demons realize they can move in unopposed, at least by any power that can stop them, even more wicked spirits are attracted. The dominion of evil over the person has increased and they have fallen deeper into the grip of the domain of darkness. 

Jesus says this parable describes the people He is speaking to. They are an evil generation, unwilling to repent and believe, choosing instead to pursue a righteousness of their own. The result will be that their new state will be worse than before. Their attempts to save themselves will further enslave them to the devil.

Back in verse 24, the Pharisees accused Jesus of working by the power of Satan. Now Jesus exposes the terrible irony. It is not His kingdom that advances Satan's purposes, but theirs. In rejecting Christ and pursuing a righteousness of their own, they are leaving the house empty and opening themselves to greater bondage. They are hardened in their sin and their pride, thinking they need no mercy and empty of any for others.

This is the verdict: fallen human beings are not righteous, and there is nothing we can do to make ourselves righteous. We may pursue all sorts of religious or philosophical disciplines to modify our behavior, but the reality is that our struggle is not just against habits or behaviors, we are by nature under the influence of the kingdom of darkness.

The solution is not to sweep the house more carefully. The solution is not to become more religious. The solution is not to try harder to reform ourselves. What we need is the Spirit of God to dwell within us. The Bible teaches that what we need is not merely moral improvement, but union with Christ. We need Christ Himself to wash us clean and to dwell in us by His Spirit. We need a new heart, new desires, and a new nature. We need to be born again.

The Pharisee Nicodemus was the sort of man Jesus is warning about in our passage. His life was orderly. Disciplined. Religious. He was a leader and teacher. If anyone appeared to have his house swept and in order, it was Nicodemus. Yet Jesus tells him all of that is insufficient. The problem is not that the house needs cleaning. The problem is that it is empty. Therefore Jesus says to him in John 3:3,

3 … “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 

This new birth is not something we can do or cause to be done. It is the gracious work of the Holy Spirit. A couple verses later, Jesus tells Nicodemus,

5 … unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

This new birth then is the work of God to claim a person for Himself, delivering them from spiritual blindness and slavery to the flesh, opening their eyes so that they respond in faith and are united to Jesus Christ. It is through this union with Jesus that we are forgiven, counted righteous before God, and filled with the Holy Spirit.

This is the fulfillment of what God had promised Israel He would do. Under the old covenant, God revealed what righteousness looked like through the law. But there was no permanent indwelling of the Spirit and so they were unable to keep it. The demands of the law pointed them to their need for a new inner life. A new heart. This is what God promised He would do in the new covenant. Ezekiel 36:25–27, written 600 years before Nicodemus was born says,

25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

This was the promise all along. The Spirit of God would Himself dwell within His people, transforming their desires, and enabling them to walk in obedience. When we purchase a new home, what do we do? We clean it and begin to make changes to it so that it is a suitable dwelling place for us. We may paint or change the flooring. We begin to set things in order because we intend to live there. Believer, you were purchased for God by the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross. You belong to Him. He comes and evicts the squatters, and through His Spirit, He moves in and begins the renovations. 

Speaking of Jesus, the apostle Paul says in Titus 3:5–6,

5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior

Our growth in obedience and maturity is the result of the work of the Holy Spirit living within us. When we are united to Christ by faith, the Holy Spirit fills us and brings us into fellowship with the Father. The house is no longer empty, but is filled with the presence of God.

Theologian Joel Beeke wrote,

“The Holy Spirit opens the eyes of faith to enable the believer to apprehend the gospel of Christ, the Spirit manifests the glory of God in the believer’s heart and transforms the character and conduct of his life.”

Every blessing and every good fruit we have comes from our union with Christ and our participation through His Spirit. The whole of Christian life flows from the life of Christ in us through the Holy Spirit. Our righteousness before God is not something we achieve. It is something we receive. Through faith we are united to Christ, and His righteousness is counted as ours.

Having received this gift of forgiveness, the Spirit continues working in us, transforming us to be more like Jesus. It is His dwelling in us and our resting in Him that produces the only true and lasting spiritual improvement. Both our acceptance before God and our spiritual growth are gifts we receive in the Spirit by grace through faith in Christ. 1 John 4:12–13 tells us,

12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.

The Pharisees taught that righteousness comes by keeping the law through discipline and effort. The Bible shows us that it is love that fulfills the law. We do not seek to obey in order to earn the love of God, but because it has been given to us. Our selfish desires are changed to a love for God and a love for others. If we love our neighbor, we do not want to steal from them, lie to them, or harm them.

In the same way, a growing love for God frees us to pursue holiness as a joy rather than as a burden. If, for example, you are struggling with a sin in your life, the answer is not more religion, but more faith. Love is the believers motivation for obedience.

Suppose a man struggles with anxiety. He may tell himself a hundred times, "Stop worrying. Stop worrying. Stop worrying." Yet the fear remains. What changes him is not merely repeating commands to himself, but believing the promises of God. As he remembers that his heavenly Father loves him and knows his needs, that not even a sparrow falls to the ground apart from God's will, and that all things work together for good for those who love Him, fear begins to lose its grip. In the same way, sin is not overcome merely by stronger resolutions, but by believing God is good and keeps His promises.

To resist in faith is to believe that fellowship with God is better than whatever temporary pleasure the sin offers. It is to allow the Spirit to bring the word of God to bear on our struggles. When that happens, the devil is seen to be a liar and we are reminded that we already have victory in Jesus Christ. 

The battle has already been decided. We are not fighting for victory, but from victory. A defeated army may continue resisting for a time, but the war has already been won. So it is with us. We are not only forgiven, but we are already new creations in Christ Jesus. We look forward to the resurrection of our bodies, but resurrection power is already at work in us for we have been sealed by the Holy Spirit for the day of redemption.

This is what Jesus accomplished on the cross. He came down from heaven and became like us, so that we could be made like Him and be with Him in heaven. He lived a perfect life and offered it as a sacrifice to pay for the sins of everyone who will ever believe. Our faith, our forgiveness, our obedience, and our salvation as believers was paid for in the blood of Christ. He died in our place on the cross, and was raised three days later for our salvation.

The victory over sin is complete for believers. All we must do is live it out, which is done by faith. We place no confidence in cleaning ourselves up; we trust in God to enable us to do this. God does not buy a house and leave it empty. He moves in. Scripture says the Holy Spirit dwells within every believer. Our confidence comes from knowing that we are not left to live this new life in our own power, but through the Spirit that we have received from God.

That is why the apostle Paul encourages believers in Philippians 2:12–13, saying:

12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

To walk faithfully in this world is often difficult and it is filled at times with suffering and struggles, but we are not left without hope because we are not alone. God Himself is the one working in us, not only to do the good works we are called to do, but to grow in our desire to do them. As we grow, we become more like Jesus, and thus we become increasingly aligned with the will of God and love walking with Him in obedience.

It is an awesome thing to realize that almighty God has made us His dwelling place. We are His holy temple. This is no small thing, which is why the apostle says we work with fear and trembling. Not meaning that we are in terror, but we are in awe that God is with us in all we do. It is a sobering thought when we consider our sin, but it is a greatly encouraging thought when we consider what is promised.

We shall be raised in glory, without sin, beholding the face of our Lord and Savior for all eternity. This is all to the glory of God and accomplished through His power. I like how the preacher H.B. Charles said it:

“The Spirit of God works with the Word of God to make the people of God more like the Son of God.”

This leads tot he glory of God. That is what happens when we come to the Lord and He takes up residence within us. That is why the apostle Paul can say to those who partnered with Him in the faith in Philippians 1:6,

6 …I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Our confidence and assurance is not in anything we do to improve ourselves, but in God’s work to bring it to completion. Though we must work, in and under everything we do is the grace of God at work in us. True progress in holiness does not come from us cleaning up our own lives, but from God adopting us as His own and drawing us into fellowship with Him. Romans 8:12–15 says,

12 So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”

So, friends, may our lives be an outworking of the life of God within us. May it be evident in all we do that we are not empty on the inside, not merely putting on a show to look righteous, but that we have been filled with the love of God so that it sloshes over into our thoughts, our speech, and our deeds. 

When the devil tries to discourage us, may we be reminded that God does not dwell with us because we have made ourselves clean, but because He is merciful and gracious. Let us rest in the promises of the gospel so that they fuel our love for God and others. And when we stumble and Satan lays our sin before us, we can remind him that the penalty for sin is death, and we have already died in Christ. When the devil whispers in our ear that we are too weak to continue, we can rejoice that when we are weak, God is strong. When he tempts us to despair, we can take comfort knowing Jesus died for us and nothing in all the world can separate us from the love of Christ.

Let everyone who has faith rejoice that we are His and He is ours. This is the work of God, may we rejoice and rest in it. There is wonderful freedom and joy in understanding that our salvation does not depend on our strength, but on His. I would like to end today with a reflection from the Puritan Richard Sibbes that captures all this very well.

“Let us give up the government of our souls to the Spirit. It is for our safety to do so, as being wiser than ourselves who are unable to direct our own way. It is our liberty to be under a wisdom and goodness larger than our own. Let the Spirit think in us, desire in us, pray in us, live in us, do all in us; labor ever to be in such a frame as we may be fit for the Spirit to work upon.”