HOW TO DEMON-PROOF YOUR LIFE
INTRODUCTION: In December 1975, George and Kathleen Lutz and their three children moved into 112 Ocean Avenue, a large Dutch Colonial House in a suburban neighborhood located on the south shore of Long Island, New York. Thirteen months before the Lutzes moved in, Ronald DeFeo, Jr. had shot and killed six members of his family at the house. After 28 days, the Lutzes left the house, claiming to have been terrorized by paranormal phenomena while living there. The Lutz’s wrote a best-selling book about the incident. Does anyone want to guess the title of the book? The Amityville Horror.
Allusions to “haunted houses” have been written about for centuries going back to the time of the ancient Romans (Pliny the younger) and continuing to the present day with authors such as the Lutz’s and many others. The plot lines take many twists and turns but few of them are as chilling as the six sentences spoken by Jesus on the subject in Matthew chapter twelve. The words of Jesus arrest our attention and demand our consideration because the haunted house in his teaching is a HUMAN BEING.
Matthew 12:43-45 “When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation."
I think we’d all agree that we don’t want to find ourselves in that condition and fortunately, we don’t have to. We do not have to be at the mercy of evil spirits in our lives. Many of us have alarms systems (or firearms) to make our houses “burglar-proof.” We bring in the Orkin-man to make our houses “bug-proof.” We have reinforced windows and roofs to make our houses hurricane proof. We plug in glade-fresheners and deodorizers to make our houses “stink-proof.” But what are we doing to make our houses DEMON-proof? Thanks to God, your house can be demon-proof, and understand that when I say “house” I’m talking about your life and mine. OUR lives can be demon-proof. Today we’re going to talk about how to demon-proof your life.
I. DEMON-PROOF YOUR LIFE BY ACCEPTING THE REALITY OF DEMONS
Matthew 12:43 “When an evil spirit comes out of man…”
Evil spirits, or demons, are a reality. Failure to acknowledge their existence is to increase our vulnerability to them.
Quote: C.S. Lewis said that there are two equal and opposite errors that we can fall into about the demons. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.
ILLUSTRATION: Johnny lived in Louisiana and was constantly getting into trouble. One day just before the school bus arrived he pushed the outhouse into the bayou, then got on the bus and went to school. When he returned home his father was waiting for him with a belt. “Son did you push the outhouse into the bayou?” Johnny said, “I cannot tell a lie, I did it.” “Bend over for your spanking.” Johnny objected. “When George Washington told the truth about chopping down the cherry tree, he didn’t get a spanking!” Dad responded, “But George Washington’s father wasn’t in the Cherry tree when he chopped it down!”
Sometimes people get into big trouble spiritually because they don’t take the reality of the spiritual realm seriously. They play with Ouija boards, or have their fortune told, or their palm’s read, or participate in a séance or read their horoscope. They think it’s all a big game like pushing over the outhouse. But they don’t realize there’s someone in the outhouse.
Jude 1:8-10 “In the very same way, these dreamers pollute their own bodies, reject authority and slander celestial beings…these men speak abusively against whatever they do not understand—these are the very things that destroy them.”
As Sun Tzu says in “The Art of War”: “Know your enemy.” So what do we know about the origin, nature and reality of demons?
Like Satan, demons are angels who sinned against God.
Jude 1:6 “And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day.”
II Peter 2:4 “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment.”
Demons are fallen angels. They are created beings that had a beginning. They are not the evil equivalent to God. They are opposed to God, but they are not equal to God. They are not omnipresent – they can’t be everywhere at once. Neither are they omniscient, having all knowledge. There’s no reason to believe that they know our thoughts as God knows our thoughts. That’s a characteristic of God. They are not physical they are spiritual beings and as such are non-material and invisible. They dwell in a spiritual dimension of God’s creation and it is an invisible dimension. As fallen angels, demons are powerful beings that are able to interface with our dimension of creation. Their leader is Satan who is called the “prince of demons” (Matthew 12:22ff). Remember that Satan himself is a demon. He is probably equivalent to an archangel as far as authority and power. The lesser demons are subservient to Satan and are referred to as shades, evil spirits, and unclean spirits. There are scriptures that indicate they have an organizational hierarchy. Demons were a reality when Jesus gave these cautionary words two thousand years ago and they continue to be a reality today.
II. DEMON-PROOF YOUR LIFE BY RECOGNIZING THE ANTAGONISM OF DEMONS
Matthew 12:45 “And the final condition of that man is worse than the first.”
Demons are our enemies. They are against us. They are out to destroy our lives. The name Satan literally means “adversary.” He is primarily God’s adversary but secondarily he is our adversary as well. The designation “devil” signifies “slanderer.” The devil slanders God before men and men before God. His general goal is to disrupt and defeat God’s plan in whatever way possible. Satan and the demons hate you simply because God loves you and they hate anything God loves. Satan opposed God by trying to corrupt man in the garden, but God had a plan for this. Then he sought to disrupt God’s plan by opposing Jesus’ earthly ministry. He tried to kill Jesus as an infant. He tried to tempt Jesus from his mission in the wilderness. Then, working through Judas, he brought about Jesus’ death, thinking this would work but he hadn’t planned on the resurrection. Satan now seeks to thwart God’s plan by preventing the salvation of every individual. You and I are the objects of his attention and efforts.
I Peter 5:8 “Be self-controlled and alert. YOUR ENEMY THE DEVIL prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”
But how does Satan, a finite creature, go about his purpose of destroying our lives? Remember, he is not God; he is not omnipresent. He does it through his demons.
Satan and his demons attack us in three main areas – our minds, our wills and our bodies.
1) He attacks our minds through false teaching. His main weapon is deception. Satan and his demons are behind false teaching including world religions and idolatry. It is so commonly suggested these days that all religions are basically the same and lead to the same place but nothing could be further from the truth.
I Timothy 4:1 “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.”
I Corinthians 10:20 “No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons.”
2) Secondly, Satan and his demons attack our wills through temptation. Satan is EVIL and he wants to make us like himself. He wants us to share in his sin so we can share in his condemnation. So he puts the pressure on us to sin.
I John 3:8a “He who does what is sinful is of the devil because the devil has been sinning from the beginning.”
3) Finally, Satan attacks the body through actual presence and control – sometimes called demonization or demon-possession. As you know, there are many examples of this in the Bible including the illustration that Jesus used in our sermon text today. People who were demonized often experienced physical symptoms as a result including blindness, deafness, mute, convulsions, physical deformity, and suicidal mania.
At this point I want to pause and reflect. I think most of the Christians here would agree that Satan and his demons still exist today. They are still active inspiring false teaching. They are still active in the area of temptation. But, are they still active in the area of demonization? Are people still being possessed, or demonized today?
I’m going to answer that question in next week’s sermon – haunted house part II. Whatever your expectations are, I can almost promise you I’m not going to say what you expect. You NEED to hear my message next week because part two is specifically directed to Christians. For now, I want to tell a story and move on to my final point.
ILLUSTRATION: Once, a dog lost his way deep into the jungle. He almost fainted to see a lion coming straight to him in the very near distance. He thought, "I’m going to die today.” There were some bones lying close by, however. He turned his back towards the lion and started pretending as if was eating the bones. When lion was very close to him he cried out loudly "Wow, what fun eating a lion, by chance if I can get another one, it will be a treat." The lion thought, “What a dangerous dog!!!!! He kills lions and eats them. Let me run away from here and save my life." Now, there was a Monkey hiding on the tree there watching the entire show. He thought, "It's a good chance to tell the truth to the lion. Lion will become my friend and I will not have to run saving my life from him.” He ran to inform the entire episode to Lion. The dog had seen him going and quickly understood the ploy. Both lion and monkey were coming back to the dog and the lion was furious. When the lion was very close to him he again cried out loudly, “It has been half an hour since I sent that silly monkey to fetch me another lion. What’s keeping him?”
The moral of the story is if you’re going up against the lion don’t monkey around. When you’re going up against a lion, you need to have an edge; you need a little help; you need an advantage. The Bible says that our enemy, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Without God’s help no one stands a chance. That brings me to my final point.
III. DEMON-PROOF YOUR LIFE BY ALIGNING WITH THE VANQUISHER OF DEMONS
Matthew 12:43-45 “When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied.”
Do you see what this poor guys problem is? His house is vacant. When the evil spirit left he had a perfect opportunity to install a nice beefy security guard, but he didn’t do that. He left it vacant. The evil spirit returned, found it vacant, and moved right back in with a posse of his evil companions.
ILLUSTRATION: When I go on vacation, I never tell anyone before I go. I always sneak out of town. Because I don’t see any sense in broadcasting to the whole world “Attention burglars, my house is going to be vacant for the next two weeks. COME ON DOWN!” Tami and I were gone to California for two weeks in September but we didn’t announce it here in church that we were going or for how long. Do we not trust you? Actually, we do trust you it’s your brother-in-law Luigi we don’t trust. But you get the point. It’s not wise to leave the house vacant.
If I’m not a Christian, my house is vacant spiritually speaking. If I’m not a Christian then I’m a dog going up against a lion and I don’t even have a bone to distract him with. I don’t have a chance.
The Bible teaches that with Jesus we have nothing to fear from the devil and his demons.
Luke 11:21 “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe.” That “strong man” of course, is Jesus. When we belong to Jesus our house is as safe and secure as a brinks security system.
I John 3:8b “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.”
Ephesians 6:10-13 “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”
But we must align ourselves with Jesus and that starts with salvation. There’s more to it than getting saved and I’ll be talking about that next week, but at the very least, we must enter into Christ, we must clothe ourselves with Christ, we must fill our house with the HOLY SPIRIT, in order to take our stand against Satan in HIS strength and in HIS power.
That means faith, repentance and baptism.
