Jesus' Power Source - Luke 11:14-28

Lord Jesus, God, I thank you for this family of faith.

Lord, thank you that you're the name above all names, God.

Thank you for giving us breath in our lungs this morning.

I pray, Lord Jesus, that you get the exaltation and worship that you deserve from us today.

And for those that are considering you, God, I pray that you would speak to them.

Pray that you would answer their questions.

Holy Spirit, we invite you in to speak through your word.

We love you, and we don't take you for granted.

In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, feel free to take a seat.

Welcome to Skyline Church.

If you're new here today, super glad that you're here.

We're a newish church, about two and a half years in, meeting publicly.

Thank God for AC in this building.

Hallways don't have AC, but this room does.

Thank you, God.

Okay, uh, there is an amazing movie.

By the way, my name's Adam.

I'm one of the pastors here.

There is an amazing movie made in the year of 1988, called Stand and Deliver.

And if you're a teacher here, uh you know exactly what this movie is.

I was talking to some of the teachers, and they're all like, oh, this is a standard movie that you must watch when you're a teacher.

And Stand and Deliver is a true story.

It's about a high school called James Garfield High School in East LA, not super far from where Joni and I went to undergrad.

And there is this guy, it's a real guy, named Jaime Escalante, and basically the school hires him to come in and teach remedial math.

And, you know, there's a lot of low-income students at the school.

It's like 80% free and reduced lunch.

And he kind of comes in, they're like, hey, we want you to teach remedial math.

And he's like, no, like, there's no reason that these students can't eventually do AP calculus.

And they're like, no, no, no, no, no.

Like, we're just glad that these students are showing up.

Like, all we need you to do is teach remedial math.

And he's like, nah, we're not doing that.

And in real life, it takes about eight years.

But in the movie, it's about two years that they start to work towards this goal.

And basically, the conflict of the movie hits its peak when all of a sudden they've worked towards it and they got 15, 18 students in this AP calculus class.

I wasn't smart enough at math to do AP calculus, but maybe some of you were.

But there's about 18 students in this school that no one would expect in this AP calculus class.

They do the AP test, which is like, you know, if you pass this test, you get college credit in high school for math.

You get to skip stuff in college.

And all of the students pass.

And I don't know if you did any AP classes in high school, but like almost even the easiest AP class, like, never all the students pass.

And they all passed.

And then the testing commission is like, this is weird.

There's no reason that this school should have this many students passing AP calculus.

You cheated.

And they come to the students, this is a real story.

They come to the students, they're like, you guys need to take this test again because y'all made similar mistakes.

There's really not a lot of reason to think that this kind of result would come out of a school like this.

Now, I don't know about you, but if this is me and I'm like a high schooler, worked my butt off for AP Calc, I pass the test.

And by the way, I've probably overcome a lot of a lot more than what maybe a typical American high school student has had to overcome.

This school, by the way, is like 80% Mexican-American immigrant families.

And if I'm if this is me and I pass this AP Calc test and they're like, you cheated, I'm going ballistic, bro.

I don't know about you, but I'm like, are you kidding me?

Nonetheless, they're like, if you want the credit that you worked for, you gotta take it, and it's gonna be extra proctor.

There's gonna be extra teachers walking around, and you gotta pass again.

And by the way, it's a little bit harder.

So they do it.

They get into a class, they take it again, and every single student passes again.

Now, being falsely accused, I mean, there's a lot of things that are an injustice out there, but being falsely accused is like a particularly nefarious one, a particularly painful one because it's like, yo, I'm already a sinner, I already make mistakes in my life, so I'm trying to add stuff I didn't do to my resume, okay?

False accusation is a particularly terrible injustice to experience.

And, you know, at least for me, I don't know about you, but this has happened to me maybe before in my life, but I've also done this.

In fact, I did this a week ago.

Granted, the stakes were smaller.

My son and my daughter, we tell them, don't go through the glass door into the backyard, because if you do, if you open it up, tons of flies come in, no one wants to deal with that.

Go through this other door, right?

So the other day, I've been telling this for months.

And the other day, I see the sliding glass door wide open, and the fly invasion is happening.

And I'm like, Noah, get over here.

And he comes over, I'm like, what is this, bud?

And he's like, I didn't, Dad, I didn't do that.

I shut the door.

I usually lock it, I don't go through that door.

And I'm like, you're and as I'm saying it, I remember, I left it open.

But that didn't deter me.

I was like, listen, bud, you're on thin ice.

No, I'm kidding.

Basically, I immediately was like, oh, okay, you're right, but I actually think dad left that open.

I'm really sorry.

And so this is just a thing that happens in our life.

Sometimes it happens to us, sometimes we participate in it even if we don't want to.

And what we're gonna see in our text today is the Lord Jesus experienced the same thing.

In fact, he is gonna get falsely accused about where his power comes from.

No one's denying it at this point.

Healing hundreds of people, demons are coming out of people, incredible other miracles, food being multiplied.

No one's denying his power, but a false accusation is gonna come in about where it comes from.

In fact, they're gonna say that it comes from the Lord of darkness, Satan.

And I think the main idea that you're gonna see is just this that Jesus' power source is divine, and he invites us into freedom.

So if you're following along on the on the sermon sheets today, the main idea is that Jesus' power source is divine, and he invites us into freedom.

So I'm gonna read the text here.

It's Luke 11, uh fourteen through twenty-eight.

So Luke 11, uh chapter chapter 11, verses 14 through 28.

I'm gonna have it up here on the screen in the ESV version.

This is what it says.

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 Beauzibal, 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 Bealzebel.

If I cast out demons by Bealzebel, 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.

When a strong man fully armed guards his own palace, his goods are safe.

But when one stronger than he attacks him and overcomes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted, and divides his spoil.

Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places, seeking rest, and finding none, it says, I will return to my house from which I came.

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

Then it goes and brings 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.

As he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed.

And he said, Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.

Now, perhaps some of us, no doubt, at this point, after reading this text, are thinking something along the lines of another demon passage, Adam?

I see what you're doing here.

We've had a couple different stories now in the Gospel of Luke.

We're about halfway through the gospel.

Jesus has authority over demons.

We've seen it multiple times.

The demonized man of the garrison is the most demonized guy in the Bible.

We've seen a couple different stories now in Luke, and here is yet another one.

And maybe you're out there thinking, I knew it.

You're just a clickbaity pastor.

I'm just gonna watch your jeans, they're gonna get tighter and tighter, and you'll get clickbaitier and clickbaitier.

To which I would say, first of all, I don't wear tight jeans, I wear stretchy jeans because they're objectively more comfortable.

And the second thing that I would say is, if that is what you're thinking now, and yet another demon passage, what I would remind you of is one of our big values at this church is what's called expositional preaching.

What do I mean by that?

I mean we preach through the Bible, and when we preach, our highest goal, one of our highest goals, is that the main idea of the text that we preach is the main idea of the sermon.

We expose the Bible, expositional preaching, main idea of text, main idea of sermon.

But one of the other things that we are committed to at this church is what you might call sequential preaching, verse by verse preaching through whole books of the Bible.

And if at this point, halfway through the book of Luke, you're starting to think to yourself, what the heck?

Another demon passage, what is going on here?

Maybe instead of, you know, the whole point of preaching expositionally in verse by verse is so that we can't manipulate the text, so that it gets to emphasize what it wants to emphasize and talk about what it wants to talk about as often as it wants to talk about it.

And so maybe if at this point you're thinking, what the heck, this is like the tenth exorcism, maybe what the scripture is saying to you is that maybe your view of reality is a little bit out of balance.

You know, we were working, or my brother has uh glasses, and like one of his eyeglasses is like way more of a zoom in than his other, and he's like walking around without him, he's completely unbalanced, he can't see anything, puts his glasses on, it's like half zoom one, no zoom the other, and he can see perfectly.

It brings his vision back into balance.

This is what the scripture does for us.

We grow up in a family, we grow up in a culture, we grow up in a time, and it says certain things about reality, but we come back to the Bible and it brings us the balance that it wants.

And so, if at this point you're wondering what the heck, there's so many demon passages and exorcism, Jesus has authority over the spiritual enemy, why does it talk about it so much?

Perhaps at this point, you should open your heart to letting the scripture shape your worldview a little bit more in the direction it seems to want to rather than the other way around.

And this text begins with a man who cannot speak.

He's mute.

The great Kent Hughes, the Dr.

Kent Hughes, I was reading one of his commentaries on this, and he points out that the the suffering of this man is even worse than you presume, because at this point in time, if the statistics hold, about 5% of you know um Israelites at this time are literate and can write.

And so probably this man can't even write.

So not only can he not speak, he can't even write, which means his ability to communicate is just severely, severely limited.

I mean, think about how isolating a life like that would be.

And Jesus comes in.

He sees what's going on, and he goes to the root issue.

We've already seen the Lord heal some people physiologically.

The woman with the issue of blood, what's happening?

Some kind of internal hemorrhage, the cause of which is physiological, it's biological.

She touches Jesus' cloak, the her insides get healed immediately.

Other times, that's not the root issue.

It's a spiritual root issue.

And what we see from Jesus in this text is the same thing that we see in all the others.

He goes to this person who's in suffering and pain, he feels compassion, and he goes to the root issue.

For this man is spiritual.

For this man, he's under spiritual oppression such that he cannot even talk.

It's a demon.

And the Lord Jesus came to set the captives free.

And that's exactly what he does.

Sets the man free, the man speaks, his whole life changes.

We don't even hear about that, but you know that it's true.

And then the false accusations begin.

And it's a particularly brutal one for the Lord.

Like, imagine seeing Jesus or even being him in this situation, this poor man, mute, can't write.

If you believe that some of the other parallel stories of this gospel are true, he's also blind.

I think.

I think it's blind, not deaf.

Two things.

And um, they say, yeah, he casted out this demon by the prince of demons.

In other words, the reason the demons are obeying him is because he's in league with the Lord of darkness himself, the prince of demons, Beauzible, which is a particularly kind of terrible and stunning accusation, because it's like, yo, Jesus is here healing this guy.

And this whole guy's whole life changes.

And there's people watching that go, you did that because you're in league with the most evil being in reality.

What?

How did we get here?

And so verse 15, and they accuse him that he casts out this demon by the power of Bealzebol.

Great name, don't recommend it for your kids, okay?

Um, Bealzebol comes from mostly the book of 2 Kings.

There is a god of the Canaanite city of Ekron, and that God's name is Balzabul, Baalzebub, with a B at the end and two A's at the beginning.

And basically, the word means Lord of the flies.

So this like variant on it, Biazabul, it what it seems to be is a word that the Jews have co-opted to talk about Satan, the prince of demons.

And the word kind of means uh Lord of dung.

So it's it's kind of like a derogatory name for Satan.

Like you heard of the Prince of Peace, you heard of the Prince of Poop.

That's kind of like what they're talking about here, right?

And we as Christians, by the way, we don't do this, we don't disparage the spiritual enemy.

You can read about how in the book of Jude, when the archangel Michael is contending with Satan over the body of Moses, what's going on there?

Nobody knows.

But what we do know is he doesn't slander Satan.

He says, the Lord rebuke you.

And so this is not something that we as Christians do, but it's what they're doing, Bielzah Bull.

This is the Lord of Dung.

He's Satan, he's the Prince of Darkness.

And the Lord, though, he doesn't retaliate, he decides to reason with them.

I just want to point out his response.

Because, like, you know, whether it's those students back at James Garfield High School, like, I mean, you've probably retaliated at something before in your life, and in the midst of a particularly heinous accusation, as Jesus is healing someone, he decides not to retaliate, but to reason with them.

He wants to persuade them, he wants to change their minds that they see it wrongly.

And so he gives two arguments.

The first argument comes from verses 17 through 18.

This is what he says.

He says, You say that I'm doing this by Bealzebub, the Prince of Dons, but a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand.

In other words, I'm throwing demons out of people.

Satan wants people to have demons.

So what's going on here?

A kingdom divided against itself will not quickly stand.

There's like a million examples of this throughout history.

I'm doing this podcast right now on Alexander the Great, to the shock of none of you.

And basically, one of the things that happens is Alexander conquers the known world, at least that time to him.

And what happens is as soon as he dies, there is no heir.

And so his three most powerful generals immediately divide up the kingdom, and they immediately walk into 40 years of war with each other.

And so what happens is the second that the kingdom gets divided, the kingdom splits.

There's literally 50 examples from history that you could give about this exact principle in real life that Jesus is saying.

And he's he's look, he's basically like, how many demons, bro?

You can tell they don't want to come out.

How many got to see me cast out to realize that I'm on a different team?

It makes absolutely no sense.

Argument number one.

Argument number two, verse 19.

Then he goes, and by the way, if I'm casting out demons by the power of Beazbol, the power of Satan, then by what power are your sons casting them out?

In other words, if you condemn me, that I'm throwing them out by the power of Satan, then you're also condemning your own sons who do this.

So it's interesting, because in the Old Testament, there really is not really an exorcism thing that doesn't happen.

But you can start to read in inter-testamental literature, the time between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament, that Jews start to do this.

They start to develop rituals and rites to cast out evil spirits.

You can read about it in Tobit and some other things.

And basically, at this point in time when Jesus is walking around, it seems like it was happening at some level, to some degree.

And he's basically like, look, if you condemn me and say that I'm doing it by the power of Satan, then you condemn your very own sons, and then they will rightfully be your judges.

That's his second argument.

Again, he's reasoning with them, he's not retaliating with them.

And then finally, he he tells them where the his power does come from.

You know, uh I I didn't say I meant to say this at the beginning, but I think this text is actually best explored by asking it three questions.

And the first question that we're asking is, what is the power source of Jesus' kingdom?

This is point number one.

And he answers it in verse 20.

In verse 20, he says, If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

He's saying that his power by which he's casting out demons is the power of God himself.

And this phrase, the finger of God, I love.

It's so cheeky and just brilliant of Jesus.

The reason is because the first time that the phrase shows up is in the book of Exodus.

And if you know the story of Exodus, God's people, the Israelites, are enslaved in Egypt.

God has told them, I've promised you a land, you're gonna become my people, I'm gonna use you to represent me to the rest of the earth.

All the families of the earth are gonna be blessed through you, people of Israel, the offspring of Abraham.

But they're enslaved in Egypt.

What's going on?

Well, he sends Moses, you're gonna set my people free, Pharaoh's gonna resist you, but I'm gonna bring you out into the promised land.

And so Moses starts doing wonders against the nation of Egypt, plagues, to cause Pharaoh to let him go.

And they all they get through one plague, and Pharaoh's magicians can copy it.

Plague number two, Pharaoh's magicians can even copy that.

Plague number three, they can't.

And then in Exodus, I think it's verse chapter 8, 19, the magicians come up to Pharaoh and they're like, We can't do this.

This is the finger of God.

And it's so amazing because essentially what Jesus is saying is, hey, you know the finger of God?

Remember in Exodus when God's literal enemies could figure out that it was God's power after only two plagues?

Where are you at?

That's basically what he's saying.

He does this, Jesus' power source is divine.

He casts out Satan by the finger of God.

God is behind it, just like the magicians could recognize in in the book of Exodus.

And so to answer this first question, we see that Jesus' power is divine.

It's from God, but then Jesus switches to answering another question.

What is the posture of Jesus' kingdom?

The disposition, the stance, the the attitude towards what is the posture of Jesus' kingdom?

We see this in verses 21 through 23.

Jesus enters into this little parable, this little story about the strong man.

Did you notice this?

It's a really simple parable.

Jesus is basically like when a strong man, aka Satan, okay, guards his palace.

What's Satan's palace?

The world.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus will literally say that Satan is the prince of this world.

When a strong man is in his palace, his goods are safe.

And what are his goods?

What are Satan's goods?

Well, no doubt, resources, money, even real estate to some degree.

But probably primarily what he's talking about is a people.

I mean, that's the whole literary context here, is it not?

Like Jesus just prides someone, a person, out of the grip of Satan's power.

And so when it says that the strong man guards his palace, his goods are safe, the people that are enslaved and chained in bondage in Satan's kingdom are safe.

And then Jesus goes on.

And he goes, When one stronger shows up, aka Jesus, he overcomes him and takes his things.

I love Jesus, right?

He's literally just saying, I am stronger than Satan.

It's literally what Jesus is saying right here.

You ever come up against someone stronger than you?

Doesn't have to be physically or it could be any category of life, really.

I mean, I remember I was in college and I had discovered the gym, senior year of high school.

I'd put on all this muscle mass.

I was feeling really high and hot on myself, to be honest.

Playing some rec flag football, okay?

And I'm like, put me on the offensive line.

I'm 5'11, nobody is getting past me.

And this gigantic dude winds up on the other side of me.

And I'm like, it's game over.

Ball hikes, this dude hits me so hard, it separates my shoulder out and causes a stinger.

If you don't know what a stinger is, it's basically like a traumatic event to the nerve that runs down your arm, and it causes your arm to go totally dead for like five minutes.

So I get hit, the plague over my arm like got mildly dislocated, and then the nerve got like a like smashed.

And so it just is like dead.

And I'm like, my arm is it's broke, it doesn't work.

Literally, one play into the game, my arm is sitting there and not working.

It was like such a wake-up call.

It was crazy.

So, and here's the thing: when someone's stronger than you, they have the ability to do things that you can't.

They can impress their will upon you.

They can do that for injustice, or they can do that for justice.

And what we see the Lord Jesus doing here is using it to love someone, using it for justice.

Jesus is saying, I have come to take what is mine, and I'm robbing Satan blind.

That's literally what he's saying.

It's crazy.

And to say that he's stronger than Satan, I love how humbly he said.

This is only the Lord.

I am that when a stronger man comes, his goods are taken from him, right?

This is what Jesus is saying, I'm stronger than Satan.

And when he says this, he's not saying like Satan's 5'11, I'm 6'5.

He's not saying I can do more squats than Satan.

Like the difference between Jesus and Satan is literally the difference of creator and creation.

This is not yinning yang, not like a uh a jujitsu wrestling match, maybe half the time you win, half the time the other win.

It's not France, they're kicking everyone's butt in the World Cup, but maybe sometimes this other team can win.

No, no, no.

The creator-creation distinction is by nature, philosophically, infinite.

God is what's the word I'm looking for?

Transcendent.

It means that he's above, sits ontologically above and beyond his creation in a unique way.

So because Jesus is God, he is divine, and has added human nature to his divine nature, Jesus has all the power of divinity, but also represents us and is living the life that we live.

And so for him to say he's stronger than Satan is the understatement of the literal century.

And he's come to take what is his.

And what we see here, to answer the question of point number two, what is the posture of Jesus' kingdom?

The very clear and obvious answer is that it's one of offense.

You see in this?

It's one of offense.

Look, he's taking Satan's stuff because he's stronger than him.

Look, sometimes there's a place for a defensive posture.

We see this in some place in the Bible, Ephesians 6, stand firm with the armor of God, the shield of faith, the breastplate of righteousness, stand firm against the flaming darts of the evil one.

There is a time for a defensive posture as a Christian in the kingdom of God.

But what Jesus is talking about here is taking ground.

Do you see it?

Do you see the very clear indication of tone and posture that's coming from Jesus and his kingdom towards the kingdom of darkness?

And it's like not a small, it's not small things, it's big things.

The other day I was I was uh I was texting someone and I texted the word Satan, and then my autocorrect capitalized it to capital S.

And I was like, backspace, backspace, lowercase s.

What now?

Right?

Like that is not what we're talking about.

Okay?

We're talking about taking ground.

We're talking about setting captives free.

To be even more specific, we're talking about destroying systems of injustice.

We're talking about making peace where there's disunity.

We're talking about correcting evil in our workplaces because we see it and we're a part of it.

This is what it means to push back the kingdom of darkness.

We're talking about taking care of the vulnerable who are used and abused by people in society.

We're talking about setting the captives free.

People in spiritual bondage.

This man's demonized.

He has a demon inside of him, but not all spiritual oppression is that.

Sometimes it's external, not internal.

He's talking about setting people free from all these types of things.

This is what it means to have an offensive posture.

People oppressed and possessed by the demonic.

We're taking all manifestations of Satan's ground, and we have an offensive posture.

Do you see how clearly Jesus wants us to see this?

In that he is not just the stronger man, thus he's the strongest man.

That's why we're here.

Not to sit placidly on things that we already have, but to take ground.

So my question to you is where is he calling you into the fray?

Maybe some of those things that I mentioned, maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's some kind of sin in your own heart.

Where is he calling you in to fray?

I'm not saying it's gonna be easy.

It's never been easy for me to take ground from Satan in all these manifestations.

And why, while we might lose some battles, the war is won.

The war is already won because of the work of Christ.

In the good news of the gospel, victory has already happened.

And its reality is being played out across the world until he comes again and it comes incomplete.

Where do you sense the kingdom of darkness, any manifestation of it?

And where do you sense, if you follow Jesus, him calling you in to take ground?

I don't mean being an a-hole.

I don't mean you jumping on some weird political hobby horse and you telling people some random fight about some random debatable political issue.

I'm talking about the kingdom of heaven.

I'm talking about doing it with the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.

This is what the kingdom of heaven looks like when it advances, when it's being on offense.

And it cares about kingdom priorities.

What is the power source of Jesus' kingdom?

It's divine.

What is the posture of Jesus' kingdom?

It's on offense.

The third question: What is the path to being free in the kingdom?

So the text ends with this wild teaching, this wild doctrine where Jesus is like, so when a per when a spirit comes out of a person, it travels through waterless places.

It's like the desert.

There's a lot of times in the Bible where the desert is associated with the demonic.

He says, It travels through waterless places, and then this weird phenomenon happens.

The demon says to itself, I will go back to the place from which I came.

And then it comes back, and if it finds the house, aka the person, swept clean, in other words, inviting, the other gospel accounts will add empty.

If it finds the person empty, then it comes back, and the state of the person then is worse than the beginning.

They become more demonized.

When it says it's swept and put in order, it's talking about their spiritual life, their inner life.

It's open to oppression.

The fruit of God's presence is not there.

It isn't characterizing them.

There's doors open for the spiritual enemy to oppress and attack.

And in verse 27, 28, the last two verses are about this too.

Maybe you saw this at the very end, where like he's talking, and then like some woman just lifts her voice, Blessed is the womb that gave birth to you.

What in the world is happening?

What is this about?

Forever I was like so confused.

I thought it was just like a standalone, like, is this just like a proverb?

Like, what's going on here?

But but if, again, the Bible is careful to show you what it means.

Look at the literary context.

Look at verse uh verse um 28.

It says, no, no, no, verse 27, as he said these things, it's connecting what happens there to everything he said before.

The mute man has been set free, he's been healed.

Jesus is trying to persuade what we find out in other gospel accounts is the Pharisees, it's the Pharisees doing this to him.

He's trying to persuade them, reason with them.

And then he gives us teaching on what happens when a spirit goes out of a person, and then someone's like, Blessed is the wound, the poor.

And and what's so what's happening is it these two accounts are connected, they're in the same moment as he said these things, as he's talking about that, the woman interrupts.

And so what what after I studied this, I think what's what's pretty clearly happening here is is uh is as the kids would say, she's glazing him.

In other words, like she's listening to him talk, and she goes, Man, blessed is the womb that gave birth to you.

Like, what it would have would have been to have you as a son.

But then Jesus, who has been flying this plane, teaching about doctrines of demons because he wants people to be set free, came to bring freedom.

A core to the gospel is freedom.

And this distraction happens, which, by the way, is not a weird thing to happen when you're talking about the things about the spiritual realm, Satan and demons, setting people free, taking like ground, whether it's at work or other places, distractions and weird stuff happens that tries to stop it.

But Jesus stays in the cockpit and lands the plane he was flying.

He says, Blessed rather are those that hear the word of God and keep it.

Which is not at all a surprising thing for him to say.

He's talking about obedience.

Obedience to the word of God is protection.

The way that James will say it in the book of James, he says, Submit yourselves therefore to God, resist Satan and he will flee from you.

Those things are back to back.

Submit yourself, therefore, to God, keep his word.

Resist Satan and he will flee from you.

The way that Paul says it in Ephesians 6, like we mentioned earlier, the breastplate of righteousness.

This is a defensive battlement.

But it's not just a literal breastplate.

What is it?

It's a breastplate of righteousness.

Your righteousness is that defense to you.

Same thing with the belt of truth, the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, the shoes ready for the gospel of peace.

Wait, you're saying evangelism is a defensive thing?

Yes.

Didn't think that was coming, did you?

Evangelism is part of your defensive protection.

And what he's saying is that the path to freedom is hearing the word of God and keeping it.

He wants his people to be protected, to be free, and he's finishing up this teaching about this topic.

And I remember reading this biography last year about this guy named William Duma, amazing pastor in South Africa.

He was famous for uh God gave him the power to heal people, God gave him authority over evil spirits, and so people would come to him to be healed.

And this man comes, I want to say the man was from India, and he felt like he was experiencing demonization, and he was like, Can you set me free?

And Duma's like, Well, are you gonna follow Jesus?

And the guy was like, Well, no, like I'm a Hindu.

I think he says he's a Hindu.

And Duma's like, Well, then I can't help you.

Like, he no doubt he talks about this text because he doesn't want the man's next state to be worse than the first.

And he's like, Look, I the only thing that I can do is dispense the power and authority of Jesus.

And so if that's not a person that you want in your life, there's nothing I can do for it.

Obedience to Jesus, hearing his word and keeping it, brings us freedom.

And it's important for us as Christians, as we take ground for the kingdom, to regularly repent of sin, to regularly hear and turn.

This should be the most natural muscle for us as Christians.

Hear the word of God and turn towards it.

This is this is freedom from spiritual oppression.

And I want you to remember that a huge part of the gospel is that Jesus came to bring freedom, to break spiritual oppression of all kinds.

And so now really the main idea becomes clear that the power source of Jesus is divine, and he invites us in to freedom.

How amazing that in the gospel we not only get to be free, but to help others become free.

We're alongside the strongest one, taking the ground for his kingdom.

What an amazing thing to get to be a part of.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father.

God, I pray that you would just shape our perspective towards the right balance.

Lord, we don't want to see a demon under every rock.

We just want to know which rocks they're under.

We don't want to be imbalanced, influenced by culture in a way that we shouldn't be.

We want to see what you would have us see in our time and our place, given the temptations and what we grew up in.

Lord Jesus, what a gift it is to be a part of setting people free alongside you.

Lord, even though it's hard to take ground, and war is never fun.

One day you will bring it to an end.

And the war is already won.

Lord Jesus, fill us with the confidence that comes with a gospel of peace.

That victory is not only assured, it's already happened.

Lord Jesus, let us be a part of serving people in this way as you have intended.

The way that you were.

Let us hear your word and keep it.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Zach Zach is going to pray a corporate prayer on our behalf.

Yeah, we just thank you for your word, which is given to us.

We just pray over this church, we pray over Skyline, that we would be people that are doers of the word and not just hearers.

And we pray that just for protection against this kingdom of darkness, um, that would seek to um hold on to those who are in captivity.

And we pray also that we would have the courage, uh, as you see your word says that you have not given us a spirit of fear.

But we pray that we would have the courage to work alongside you um in setting the captives free.

We also pray, Father, that in your grace and your mercy that you would anoint us for this work.

We pray that we would see the good works that you have laid out before us to do to expand your kingdom alongside you, and we pray that we would step out in obedience to do those things.

And finally, Father, we just ask that you would just instill in us that deep compassion that Jesus had for those who were in captivity.

Would we also be likewise stirred with compassion for those who are oppressed, um, in need of your love, in need of your um the knowledge of you, but also in in desperate need to be set free um from the kingdom of darkness and the things that oppress them.

Father, we just pray these things in your name.

Amen.