by Dave Wilkinson

Matthew 12:29,43-45

September 8, 2002

A few years ago I read in the paper the true story about a day in the life of a middle-aged woman in Fulton, Kentucky. She was sitting in her den when a small black snake crawled across the floor and under the couch.

This lady, who was deathly afraid of snakes, promptly ran to the bathroom where her husband was taking a shower. The man of the house ran into the den with a towel around his waist. He took a broom handle and began poking under the couch.

At that point, the family dog came into the room, saw the action, and became excited. He ran over to help and touched his cold nose to the back of the man's heel. Instead of realizing what had happened, the man surmised that the snake had gotten behind him and bitten him on the heel. He fainted dead away.

The wife sprang into action. She concluded that her husband had had a heart attack from the physical exertion of trying to kill the snake. She ran from the house to a hospital emergency room a block away. The ambulance drivers arrived and placed the now semi-conscious man on the stretcher. But as they were carrying him out the door, the snake reappeared from beneath the couch. At this point, one of the medics was so startled that he dropped his end of the stretcher and broke the husband’s leg.

There are some days when nothing goes right -- like the man Jesus describes in the Parable of the Empty House.

Read Matthew 12:29, 43-45

As the twelfth chapter of Matthew begins, Jesus' disciples are picking grain as they walk through a field. They are rubbing the heads of grain in their hands to extract the kernels of wheat.

This is perfectly acceptable under the civil law. They aren't stealing. The trouble is that this is the Sabbath and, according to the Pharisees, Jesus' disciples are violating the religious laws against working on the Sabbath. They aren't just snacking, they're harvesting.

Jesus defends his disciples. Does he ever. He tells the Pharisees that He is greater than the temple and that He is the "Lord of the Sabbath." He then proceeds to heal a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath to demonstrate his Lordship.

The Pharisees are enraged. Matthew says that "the Pharisees went out and counseled together against Jesus, as to how they might destroy Him."

Jesus, however, doesn't care. He goes right on healing on the Sabbath. One of the people he heals is a man who is possessed by a demon. This presents the people and the Pharisees with a choice. What are they to make of this Jesus? The people at least ask the right question: "This man cannot be the Son of David, can He?" "But the Pharisees don't ask that question. They think they have the explanation for Jesus' power: "This man casts out demons only by Baalzebul the ruler of demons." In other words, they are saying that Jesus' power and authority come not from God but from Baalzebul -- the "Lord of the Flies," the ruler of demons.

That's the only option they have. Otherwise, they will have to admit that Jesus' power comes from God and they all know that this is impossible because Jesus doesn't agree with them and keep all their Sabbath rules.

Jesus doesn't get angry at their slander. He simply points out that their statement is illogical. If he is casting out demons with the help of the ruler of demons then the demonic kingdom is fighting against itself. "Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city or house divided against itself shall not stand."

Then, in verse 28, he invites them to consider the tremendous alternative: "But if I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you."

I love that phrase, "the finger of God. It demonstrates the difference in power between the divine and the demonic. It's not even the arm of God. It's the finger of God. Thwick!

Jesus invites the Pharisees to take off their self-generated blinders. Then they can respond to him, not as an enemy, but as the bringer of the love, mercy and grace of God.

To hammer home His point Jesus says: "Look at it another way. How can anyone enter the strong man's house and carry off his property, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house." We'll look at this verse more in a few moments.

Jesus asks the Pharisees to stop and consider the alternative to what they believe about Him. But they refuse. So, beginning in verse 41, he warns them about the certainty of judgement for their refusal to see. Then, in the Parable of the Empty House, he presents them with a biting analysis of their generation and, I must admit, our generation as well.

Jesus tells a story of an unclean spirit -- a demonic tool of Satan -- who for some undisclosed reason decides to leave the man in whom it is dwelling. It goes into the wilderness -- kind of a Club Med for demons -- searching for another place.

We are not told what this other place is. All Jesus tells us is that the demon doesn't find what it is looking for. It then says: "I will return to my house from whence I came."

In his book How to Win Over Worry, John Haggai tells of a mother of eight children who walked in one day to find five of her youngest children in a little huddle just as quiet as they could be. You know, if you find five children in a huddle and they're quiet, you've got troubles. She walked up behind them. They were oblivious of her presence. She did not want to disturb them but she wanted to see what they were so interested in. She could not believe what she saw. Right in the middle of the five children were several baby skunks. Now what did the mother do? She did what any good mother would do. Run!!! Run children!!! and they instantly obeyed her -- every one of them grabbing a skunk and running away. Let me tell you. Her troubles were just beginning.

Well this man's troubles, too, were just beginning. Jesus says that the demon comes and finds the house unoccupied, swept and put in order, so it goes and gets seven of its demon buddies -- each more wicked than itself -- and they move in. Jesus says that the "last state of that man becomes worse than the first" -- the man has been repossessed . Jesus then concludes: "That is the way it will also be with this evil generation.

At first reading this parable seems terribly negative. Jesus illustrates the power and persistence of evil in a grisly way. Notice the possessive way in which the demon refers to the life of a human being as "my house." Jesus says that this man's life was empty. The demon is free to re-enter the empty life. And he rounds up seven other demons to live with him. With fiendish glee the eight spirits move into every crevice and corner.

Let's look at what Jesus is saying to us through this parable. He is saying first of all that we think that we belong to ourselves and we don't. No doubt the man in the parable thought that he was the master of his own destiny. He liked to put Frank Sinatra's "I Did it My Way" on the stereo and hum along. But the demon knew better. It said: "it is my house." When it returns, it finds it not filled by the man who thinks he owns it, but empty -- ready to be taken over once again.

The point is clear. A personality that has been purged of evil must be filled. Something else must fill the emptiness. If not, "The last state of that man becomes worse than the first."

This parable seems to teach us more about the demonic than it does about God. And yet, through this parable, Jesus leads us into discovery of one of the most wonderful truths about God -- that it is God's desire to fill us with himself.

This is why Jesus came -- "Emmanuel, God with us," creating a new kind of people in whom he could live. God came in Jesus Christ to call "a kingdom of priests, a people for his own possession." In Jesus, the ancient prophecy of Zechariah 2:11 is fulfilled: "Then I will dwell in your midst."

But the trouble with this man in the parable is that he isn't filled. He's empty. And that makes him vulnerable.

The second point this parable makes is that we think cleaning up our act is enough and it isn't. In the parable, a cleaned up life just akes the man more attractive and vulnerable. Whether you believe in literal demons or not doesn't matter. It's a fact of life -- a spiritual reality -- that negative virtue -- a focus primarily on the things we don't do -- is dangerous.

The Pharisees, for example, have lots of negative virtue. They are proud of the things they don't do. They don't hang around with loose women. They have, in their opinion, cleansed themselves of lust. But because they aren't filled with the positive virtue of love, they have let in arrogance, judgementalism, pride and blindness without even knowing it.

Negative virtue alone leaves us basically empty. We do our best to clean up our lives and other people's lives. But we know more about what we are against than what we are for. We have a ton of "don'ts" but little power to do "oughts." Is that too harsh? Maybe. But how else do you explain the lack of warmth and joy and love among so many Christians? There are individuals, congregations, and whole denominations dedicated to sweeping themselves out and keeping the place in order but who seem to have little place for being life-affirming, contagious, enabling lovers of people. We think moral reformation is enough and it isn't. We need to be filled with the love of God.

Anyone who has tried home mechanics will appreciate a parody of self-help books that appeared some years ago in Mechanix Illustrated. It was written for people who need help getting the old car started.

"All you have to do," it declared, "is track down the malfunction. The trouble has to be in the ignition, fuel, battery, electrical system, carburetor, battery cable, starter relay, starter solenoid, or the starter itself. (You might have a bent armature or a loose pole show binding on the armature.) All you have to do is check out each system. For instance, start with the battery and its connections. Disconnect the wire from the s terminal of the solenoid and run a jumper from the positive battery post to the s terminal. If the starter now cranks, the problem is in the circuit from the key switch up to the solenoid. To isolate a faulty relay from a bad neutral safety switch, just disconnect the wire from the S terminal -- the thin wire -- and run a jumper from the positive terminal to this one on the relay. This is unless you have a Chrysler product; its relay is located on the firewall at the left side and has four terminals. Then, too, if you have a Lincoln or Thunderbird the relay system presents special problems, and you might better call the garage."

That's the same thing we get into with attempts to clean up our own acts. We can spend a lifetime working on it and it still won't work. In this parable Jesus is saying that we "might better call the garage" -- and He's the garage. You see, it's not just sweeping out but re-creation and renewal that Jesus brings. The man in the parable is typical of incomplete repentance. He thinks he can keep his inner house tidy and still be in charge. He wants release from guilt without full participation in the kingdom.

In a way, this kind of incomplete faith is worse than no faith, for such half-way people know enough about God to know how to resist his claims and harden themselves against Him. And, for some, the best hiding place seems to be in church where they can demonstrate a form of religion without having to give up any of their self-willed independence.

But Jesus didn't come to make us into nice, orderly people. He came to make us a new creation. So even as we pray and hope for peace, as we prayed earlier in the service, we recognize that real peace cannot come until God changes hearts from the inside out.

That is the third point of this parable. We don't grasp the completeness of what Jesus has done and we should.

In Isaiah 49:24-25, we find a prophecy that Jesus echoes in Matthew 12. Isaiah asks: "Can the prey be taken from the mighty man, or the captives of a tyrant be rescued? Surely, thus says the Lord, even the captives of the mighty man will be taken away, and the prey of the tyrant will be rescued; for I will contend with the one who contends with you, and I will save your sons."

With this prophecy in mind, Jesus asks the Pharisees in Matthew 12:29: "Can anyone enter the strong man's house and carry off his property, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house."

Jesus pictures Satan, the prince of this world, as a strong man. J..B. Phillips translates the similar phrase in Luke: "A strong man armed to the teeth." Jesus pictures humanity as enslaved -- the property of the strong man. He says that he has come in fulfillment of prophecy to bind the strong man and set men and women free. In Colossians, Paul declares that this is a primary result of the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus -- that God "has delivered us from the power of darkness and has transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son." Jesus met Paul on the Damascus road and sent him into the world with this charge: "to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God." (Acts 26:18).

Compared with the renovation God has in mind, our efforts to improve our own lives apart from God are as trivial as sweeping a warehouse slated for the wrecking ball. But God makes all things new.

The cross forgives and cleanses our sin. We can know that we belong to God and are alive forever. That's the foundation. But the other half of the truth is that we are delivered from our past to be God's dwelling in the present.

The big question is this: how shall you and I respond to the victory that Jesus Christ has won at the cost of His own blood?

One thing is sure. We cannot be neutral. This parable of the empty house warns us against neutrality. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so spiritual nature abhors a vacuum. If we will not be filled with Jesus then we must be filled with something else. And anything but Jesus will finally leave our "last state" worse than our first. Because there is no middle ground.