Plundering Satan's House: Matthew 12:38-50 - Matthew: Kingdom of God Revolution

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Anytime the kingdom of God comes, he makes the enemy's camp nervous.

We see it right now in our news media, we see it right now in Hollywood, we see it right now in the values of our culture and how it's changing.

And the reason is, it's because Christians that are spirit-filled and word-rooted, word-rooted, spirit-filled Christians make the enemy nervous.

And when we come with the kingdom of God, that's always stronger.

And listen, church, we should be making our city nervous where we come with the kingdom of God.

And so God comes, he always comes stronger than the enemy.

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We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We are going through the book of Matthew or in Matthew chapter 12, and what's happening in Matthew chapter 12 is that Jesus is increasingly being challenged by the Pharisees.

Matthew 12 · chapter mention Matthew 12 · chapter mention

He's being challenged in his thought processes, in his worldview, and in his vision of the kingdom of God.

And it's not unlike a picture of the coming kingdom where the light gets brighter, like the sun's coming up right now, the light gets brighter.

Also, the darkness gets darker.

You can't see it right now, but if you were to look into this canyon over here, it's actually, see?

Look at all those amens.

I don't have any amens right now, like I'm used to.

So I got Canadian geese amens happening right now.

But the the darkness is getting darker as the light gets brighter.

And so Jesus, as he's coming with the kingdom, the Pharisees are getting ticked off.

They're really getting upset.

And actually, we're coming into a phase here in Matthew.

We're really at about the halfway point where the rest of Matthew, Jesus begins to talk a lot in parables.

You'll see that next week when we go into the probably the most famous parable of all, which is the parable of the sower and the seed in Matthew 13 next week.

But Jesus is now going to move into a new phase of his ministry where because he's being challenged, he actually gets more mysterious.

He actually gets more cryptic about the meaning of the kingdom of God.

So they have challenged him and challenged him and come against him.

I want you to go back to verses 28 and 29.

We had those last week, but I want to camp on this.

And I'm actually, I'm actually calling this, this message today, plundering Satan's house.

Plundering Satan's house.

Jesus says, Matthew 12, 28, but if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.

Or how can one enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man and then he will plunder his house?

Here's the deal the strongest always win.

The spoils go to the stronger.

And Jesus is saying to the Pharisees, he's saying, I have come to plunder Satan's house.

Remember, they just accused him of casting out demons by the Philistine God Beelzebub.

He comes back and he says, Look, when I cast out demons, I am driving back darkness.

I am plundering the house of the enemy.

And men and women, when the kingdom of God comes into your life, when the kingdom of God comes into a city, when the kingdom of God comes through a church plant, when the kingdom of God comes through a family, it plunders the enemy.

It drives the enemy out.

And that's what Jesus is talking about here.

And as he moves closer to the cross, as he moves his way from Galilee down into later Jerusalem, and he's coming in, he's gonna die on the cross for the sins of the world, he is plundering Satan's house.

Listen, the kingdom of God is always stronger than Satan.

The kingdom of God is always stronger than demons.

And when you see a person get saved, when I got saved, when when us out here that are on the bank right now filming this, when we all came to know the Lord, the kingdom of God, the king in the kingdom, came into our life and began to plunder the house, plunder the works of the enemy because Jesus is always stronger.

Jesus is always stronger.

And listen, anytime the kingdom of God comes, he makes the enemy's camp nervous.

He really does.

We see it right now in our news media, we see it right now in Hollywood, we see it right now in the values of our culture and how it's changing.

And the reason is, it's because Christians that are spirit-filled and word-rooted, word-rooted, spirit-filled Christians make the enemy nervous.

And when we come with the kingdom of God, that's always stronger.

And listen, church, here's the key for us at the road.

We should be making the city of Colorado Springs nervous.

We should be making our city nervous where we come with the kingdom of God.

And so God comes, He always comes stronger than the enemy.

So Jesus is telling him that.

So we pick it up here this morning in verse 38.

Verse 38 of Matthew 12.

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.

This is hilarious to me.

So here we go.

He's just healed the guy with a withered hand.

He just cast out a demon out of a guy who is deaf and mute, and they want a sign.

Are you kidding me?

I mean, they didn't bring him a guy with like a headache.

Oh, can you heal this guy with a saying?

Oh, my headache's gone.

Whoa.

No, I mean, this guy's deaf.

He's mute.

He's demon-possessed.

Jesus cast out the demon right in front of him.

Just before that, we got a withered hand.

He heals his hand, boom, and we're talking, uh, you know, it's like this, and then wow, it's like that.

And they say, can you show us a sign?

I mean, it's it's ridiculous.

It's ridiculous, you guys.

So that's the way it is.

That's the way people are.

They want to see signs and wonders.

And it's always signs and wonders.

Listen, listen, I have been around more signs and wonders than probably hardly anyone I know.

I've seen people healed, I've cast out demons, I've never seen anybody raise from the dead.

That's one that I want to see.

I haven't seen that.

But here's the deal: even with that kind of signs and wonders, that is not what cuts it in the long run in walking with Christ.

Walking with Christ is a life of obedience.

So listen to Jesus' response to their desire for a sign.

Really interesting.

Verse 39.

But he answered and said to them, An evil and adulterous generation.

You kidding me?

He's saying you're evil and adulterous, if that's all you're looking for, is some kind of a sign and a wonder.

This evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign.

No sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.

So what he's about to tell us is there is one sign.

There is one sign and wonder that pervades all of them.

That is the rubric by which any healing happens, any demon being cast out.

Any person that you've ever heard of that's been raised from the dead is based on the sign of Jonah.

So let's read on.

For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so, listen, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Really, really interesting passage.

First of all, he the main point here is that he's saying that Jonah is a type of resurrection.

Just as Jonah was swallowed by a whale and then came out, you know, all whitewashed and probably pretty weird looking when he shows up at Nineveh and just probably freaked everybody out, you know, looked like Boo Radley and to kill a mocking bird.

I mean, all white and everything comes out like that, and they see that.

That's the sign.

The sign is the resurrection.

But what he says here is super interesting because he speaks of the sign of Jesus being in the whale, in the belly of a whale, for three days and three nights.

So what's going on there?

There's a lot of controversy here.

And I personally do not agree with those that teach about Jesus descending into hell to somehow be cleansed of sin.

But I do believe, and it's one of the reasons why I had us say the apostles' creed at the beginning, I do believe Jesus descended into hell.

But what I believe, based on Luke 16 and 1 Peter 3, is that Jesus went into paradise in a form of the way paradise and Hades was set up in Old Testament times, where the Old Testament saints of faith went to paradise.

Abraham's bosom is what it's called, where you could see the two.

You could see Hades from paradise, and this is found in Luke 16, that Jesus came and he preached the gospel there.

In 1 Peter 3, we read a very, very cryptic passage.

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.

He was put to death in the body, but made alive in the spirit.

Now listen to this, verse 19.

After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits.

So we believe, I believe, and many in the body of Christ, Calvin believed this, the early church believed this, that Jesus, when he expired on the cross, and remember he said to the thief, Today you'll be with me in where?

Paradise, that he literally died.

At that point, he went into paradise.

And in paradise, he proclaimed the gospel even to departed spirits.

And if you recall, there was an earthquake when he died, and it talks about saints of old were resurrected.

So Christ came in.

And so let's look at, if you have your Bibles, look at Luke 16, and this is one of the best examples of what I'm talking about with the story of the rich man and Lazarus.

So this is Luke 16, 19.

There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day.

But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table.

Moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores.

Verse 22.

So it was that the beggar died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom, so we would call paradise.

The rich man also died, and he was buried.

And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes, and he saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom in paradise.

Then he cried, he said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I'm tormented in this flame.

But Abraham said, Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things.

And so he goes on and explains.

And you can read the rest.

But what we're what I'm saying here is that during those three days, Jesus went into paradise in Hades.

He proclaimed the gospel there, and something supernatural happened during that time that actually, in the spiritual sense, affected the physical universe, and there was like an earthquake.

And everybody felt it.

You know, there was darkness that came upon the land.

There was then an earthquake, and with that earthquake, uh bodies were raised from the dead.

And so that's what I believe is a sign and a wonder during the resurrection that Jesus is speaking of here prophetically of what's about to happen.

Look at verse 41.

The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah.

And indeed, a greater than Jonah is here.

So it's a sign of the resurrection, but think about think about Jonah.

Jonah's got to be one of the most depressed evangelists of all time.

God tells him to go to Nineveh.

He goes, I don't want to go to Nineveh, I hate Nineveh.

Those guys are jerks.

And he makes him go.

He runs from God, gets swallowed by a whale, gets vomited by a whale, and then he comes and he doesn't even like them.

He doesn't even like the place.

He's pouting the whole time.

And all he says is, 40 days and judgment comes.

40 days and judgment comes.

I mean, he didn't talk about grace.

He didn't talk about God's love.

He didn't talk about forgiveness.

He just said, 40 days and judgment comes.

And remember what happened?

They repented.

I mean, the Ninevehes repent.

And God doesn't judge the city.

And then when all that happens, Jonah goes and sits down and pouts about that.

Well, here's the point.

The point is, with that message, 40 days and judgment comes, the entire city repents, and God doesn't judge them.

He's like, men and women, look, that's a sign to you.

You've had my grace now for three years.

You've had my forgiveness spoken of for three years.

You've had me, I've given you the Sermon on the Mount.

I have I've spoken of the love of God and forgiveness and care, and you won't repent.

And yet Jonah comes and he says, 40 days and judgment comes.

And at least they repented.

And then he's not done.

He says this.

Well, wait, there's more.

The queen of the south, so he's speaking of the queen of Sheba, will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and indeed something greater than Solomon is here.

So here's the Queen of Sheba.

She hears about the riches and the wealth of Solomon, and just based on hearsay, she travels from Egypt all the way to Jerusalem to meet Solomon.

You can read about it in 2 Samuel.

And so under hearsay, under 40 days and judgment comes, these people gave themselves to God to listen and to understand the things of the kingdom, obviously, in an Old Testament sense.

And here I am.

I'm the King of Kings.

I'm your Messiah.

I'm here right now.

Something greater is here.

I'm plundering Satan's house.

I'm showing you every day.

I'm healing the sick.

I'm casting out demons.

I'm preaching good news of the kingdom of God.

And you won't change.

You won't repent.

Church, think about it.

Think about America right now.

I mean, there's never been a nation in the world that has had so much opportunity to repent, so much opportunity to come to Christ, so much understanding of the kingdom, so many ways to hear the gospel in loving and joyful and graceful ways than we have right now.

And people won't repent.

And Jesus is coming, he's saying, look, I want to come in and I want to clean your house.

You that are listening today, if you need a house cleaning, come to Jesus.

You come to Jesus, he'll clean house.

He is stronger than any addiction you have.

He is stronger than any struggle in your life.

He is stronger than the divorce proceedings that you're in.

He is stronger than that spouse that's had an affair.

He is stronger than your gambling addiction or your drug addiction or your alcohol addiction or whatever your addiction is.

Christ can come and plunder the house of that addiction and clean you up.

He can.

He's been doing it for 2,000 years.

And I've been a part of seeing thousands get saved, set free, delivered into new life.

That's what he's saying.

He's saying, look, it's right here.

I'm right there.

I'm knocking at the door.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

If anyone hears my voice and opens that door, I will come into him and I will do a house cleaning.

I will come and set you free in a new and powerful way.

That's what he's saying to Israel right here.

That's what he's saying to us here today.

So then he he takes it into another rim now to the Pharisees, and he says, This When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, and seeking rest he finds none.

Then he says, I will return to my house from which I came.

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

Then he goes and he takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first.

So shall it also be with this wicked generation.

Jesus is saying, Israel is like this that look, you gave up idolatry.

You worship one God, and that is awesome.

You cleaned house, but you haven't let me in.

You haven't let me in.

Yes, God has cleaned house, but if you don't allow me in, it's gonna be worse for you.

And if we look at the history of Israel, it has been worse for them.

I mean, no nation in the world, the Jews, no ethnic group, has been through more pain through the years than the Jews have.

When we look at just, I mean we can look through all through history, different exterminations of the Jews.

They've they've cleaned the house in the sense that they love God's word.

Some of them do, some of them don't, but you've got God's word, you've got the prophets.

Great history of God's deliverance found in the prophetic word of the Old Testament, becoming a nation in 1948, and all that's happened with that, it's it's just it's amazing.

But then, but then what the enemy has done to the Jews, because Satan hates the Jewish nation, God's chosen people.

And he's saying, look, you've got to invite me in.

You've got to let the kingdom come in, or it's gonna be worse than it was before.

And we see that in in our nation's history with prohibition, for example.

I mean, prohibition coming in, kind of cleaning house with alcohol, but not replacing it.

You know, here's the deal: you can have reformation and not revival.

If you have reformation without revival, it's worse.

It actually gets worse than it was.

And if you know anything about prohibition in the 1930s and what happened, it got worse.

I mean, I mean, the mafia grew in power.

Um, all kinds of crimes were committed during that time to have a black market with alcohol because here's the deal: reformation doesn't change anything.

We need revival.

We need Jesus to come and bring his revival power into our lives.

So, men and women, we don't need greater reformation, we need revival in our lives.

We need Christ to come in and not just live a moral life.

That's what I see here as part of this is yeah, you can clean out your house and be able to live a real moral life, but it actually could become worse if it's not replaced with the kingdom of God.

While he was still talking to the multitudes, verse 46.

Behold, his mother and brother stood outside seeking to speak with him.

So some parts of the church talk about the perpetual virginity of Mary.

She definitely wasn't perpetually a virgin, she had kids, brothers and sisters.

Um Jesus had brothers and sisters, she had more children.

It's obvious here that she did.

And so James and Jude are there, probably, I'm sure, with the four brothers and then sisters that were there to speak to him.

And by the way, let me just say this: you know, where certain parts of the church basically worship Mary, I would say that the error of that is obvious to us as evangelicals, but we as evangelicals have also not really revered Mary.

And I mean, she brought Jesus into the world.

We know that she was there at the resurrection, she was right there at the cross, and she became an ardent follower of her son, the son of God, in her life.

And so I think there's a there's also a place of honor for Mary.

So Mary comes, and I think they're confused.

We know from scripture that they don't believe that he's the Messiah yet, and so I think they're confused.

They've been hearing about their son.

He says he's acting like he's God, and I I think probably the Pharisees kind of got, hey, hey, Mary, your your son's over here.

Can you come and talk to him?

Because he's acting really super weird.

He's saying he's the Lord of the harvest.

He's saying that he's the Lord of the Sabbath.

Can you can you have a word with him?

Well, Jesus is.

Response here is telling.

Verse 47.

Then one said to him, Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside seeking to speak with you.

But he answered and said to the one who told him, Who is my mother and who are my brothers?

And he stretched out his hand toward his disciples and said, Here are my mother and my brothers, for whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.

Many women, you know, in my my story, my journey, came to know the Lord at University of Georgia, and then went on the mission field to Japan.

And so for almost ten years, was on the mission field, except for furloughs, came back and saw, Liz and I saw our physical family.

And then after that, I went to graduate school in Southern California, and then I came here to Colorado Springs and planted uh two churches.

But we've never lived really close to our family.

Uh the physicality of our uh setting where God's called us has always had us uh 20 hours or so away, and obviously much further when we were in the Orient.

So when I read this, it's so easy to relate to.

And you at the road really are our family.

You're our moms and our dads and our brothers and sisters.

And if you've never discovered the great joy of being in a family, a church family, where you have brothers and sisters and moms and dads, man, join the road, become a part of the road, or join some church that that's near you.

If you're listening to us online in another state or another country, find a good local church because man, the local church is where the action is.

The local church is where he, the closest, the closest thing to heaven, believe it or not, is the local church.

So brothers and sisters are redefined in a whole different way, men and women.

You have your blood, brothers and sisters in your family.

It's beautiful, it's wonderful, it's designed by God to be that way.

But the deeper relationships for the Jesus follower often come from those in the local church.

And as you're growing in the Lord and you're becoming more passionate about his word and his kingdom of God, it may not always be so great in your family.

I know some of you have actually been through persecution primarily from your family.

I know that even in my family, you know, it was a little bit of confusion as my brother and I got saved, and we're kind of getting radical and weird and crazy, and they think you're a weirdo now.

Because, you know, we're always talking about Jesus.

Like, okay, okay, you know, go on Sundays and do your thing on Sundays.

That's great, but why are you guys always talking about it?

I mean, this is weird.

And then we're going on projects, like we're going to Japan, or you know, I met my wife Liz in China, we were smuggling Bibles.

How weird is that?

And then I'm smuggling Bibles in Eastern Europe in the Iron Curtain days, and how weird is that?

And then we go to Newport Beach, California, and everybody thinks I'm going there to surf, and I did, but I really went there to witness for Christ, and I was a part of this summer project with all these fired up, spirit-filled youth, and we're out on the beach sharing Jesus with people with this little mustard-colored booklet.

I mean, how weird is that?

And then I become a pastor, and how weird is that?

And so, yeah, you're just gonna be considered a weirdo in your family.

But if you start hanging out with people who are also weird, then you start having weirdo family.

You got a weirdo family.

The road's a weird family.

If you haven't figured that out, come visit us because we're weird, because we love Jesus.

We're passionate about Jesus, we're passionate about worship, we're passionate about prayer, we're passionate about the kingdom, and also we're passionate about plundering Satan's house.

We want to see Satan's house plundered in every person's life.

Look, the spoils go to the stronger.

And if alcoholism, if gambling, if sex is the strongest thing in your life, then you're just gonna plunder your house.

You're gonna plunder your house with that kind of stuff, and you're gonna be miserable, depressed, and anxiety-ridden.

Or you can invite a greater power in the love, the grace, and the joy that comes through knowing Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, and he will start to gradually and sometimes miraculously overnight, sometimes, set you free.

Because that's what he does.

When the kingdom of God comes, he casts out demons.

When the kingdom of God, he casts out addictions.

When the kingdom of God comes, he takes depressed, anxiety-ridden, uh, addiction-driven people, and he turns them into free, joyful, righteousness, peaceful saints.

How does he do it?

It's supernatural.

It's God working through his word, through the power of the Holy Spirit, that sets us free.

So, men and women, Christ came to plunder Satan's house.

And that's what he's doing now.

The rest of Matthew is just him plundering and plundering.

And in the last days, just like this sun rising right here over this mountain in this beautiful, on the side of this beautiful river, in this uh, in this canyon, darkness gets darker as light gets brighter.

So let's keep following after Jesus.

Let's go after him and may the light shine through us here in Colorado Springs.

And every job we have and all that we do, be a witness, a joyful, effervescent, caring, loving, grace-filled witness for Christ.

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We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

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