The Silent Danger of an Empty Christian Life- How to Stay Filled With Christ (DCLC1984)

If you have this book (The Life of Christ in Stereo: The Four Gospels Combined As One), it won’t be adequate for you tonight. I have always felt that the gentleman who wrote this book did a work of genius, but I’ve always been mystified as to why he puts Matthew 13 near the beginning and then puts Matthew 12 well past the middle of the book. I’m going to pick up Matthew 12 and put it back here where Matthew 13 is. I want to read an incident from the Lord’s life, and you’ll find it in your Bible in Matthew 12:43. Alright, I think I’ll read just a little bit. I’m on page 116 if you have the whole book.

I’m going to go back and pick up a passage that goes with it. Just before that, it’s on page 115, if you have the whole book. Yet some of them, the Pharisees, on hearing it, said, “This fellow does not cast out, this fellow does not cast out the demons. It is only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons.” But Jesus, knowing their faults, said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and a city or house divided against itself will in no case stand.” And so if Satan has cast out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then shall his kingdom stand?

Now then, I’m going to pick up Matthew 12:43. When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest. And finding none, it then says, “I will return to my house out of which I came.” And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and decorated. Then it goes and takes along with its seven other spirits, more wicked than itself, and they enter the dwelling there, and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. Thus also shall it be with this wicked generation.”

I think you would agree with me. This is a passage of scripture that none of us would normally turn to for edification. This certainly seems to be no place to be talking about the fellowship of the Father with the Son. I will even have to say that because of a concern, a burden I have on my heart for some of you, I think tonight I’m going to do a little applying. I’ve tried to hold it until now without application.

I think you first have to see the scene. The Lord is ministering. He’s somewhere in Galilee. The Pharisees are quite upset with Him about the Sabbath and many other things. Now, not being able to explain why He has this power upon Him, they say it’s of the devil. I would urge us all never to say that unless somebody has declared that He has done it by the devil; then you can go ahead and agree with him. But I doubt that there is a brother or sister in here who has been a Christian 20 or 25 or 30 years, but somebody has said that accusation against you. Would you not say that? And it hurt, didn’t it? It hurt, didn’t it? So why do you want to say it about someone else? Because it hurts them, too. You don’t know, and I don’t know. None of us knows. We really don’t know. It’s not too smart to be so smart that you can know what is the Lord and what is not the Lord. The Pharisees were really good at this, and their grandchildren live today. When you can’t explain something wonderful going on, you just call it the devil.

I want to say a word to you, charismatics. When I was a little kid growing up, charismatics were being criticized everywhere, and some really rough things were being said about you. About seven or eight years ago, you got in the saddle. You moved from being the persecuted minority to the point that the charismatics are now dominating evangelical Christianity…and guess what you’re doing? Now, you’re persecuting. Whereas when I was a kid, you were the persecutee; now you’re the persecutor. You shouldn’t do that. So don’t do it anymore.

The Pharisees are standing there and saying this to the Lord. He knows about the Lord. He knows within Him this is going on. There is obviously fellowship going on between Himself and the Father. I am going to hold that part until the end, but I would like to make some applications here. Here is a very strange story, if ever there was one. I think we have to realize how true that story was in its temporal setting. I think the Lord had a sense, a knowing of what would happen in the near future at the hands of those very men. So let us look at the very men who made this statement, and see if we can learn a lesson for our own lives.

These men, the word Pharisee…to us…if we had little dials hooked up to us and you said the word Pharisee, our little register would just do like this; it’s a negative word, an extremely negative word for all of us. But they didn’t feel that way about themselves. They were the Christians of that generation. And that’s not all. I have a notion that a lot of them had a lot of things to say about how they became Pharisees. You’re not born a Pharisee. You’re molded into a Pharisee. You don’t go out and do all those religious things unless you have some sort of motivation. That’s tough being a Pharisee. Those of you who are ex-Pharisees, and I hope there are some here, you’ve given up the law. How many of you have really been not only a follower of those in the law, but you have been a Moses? You have been leading people into the law. You have preached against sin.

Well, when I was much younger in the Lord, I heard about a church where the pastor preached against high heels. The ladies in the church responded immediately, and they wanted to know where a high heel stopped being a high heel and when it became a low heel. The pastor’s wife got a ruler and helped the sisters measure the shoe so they could figure out what was and wasn’t. That is legalism. Nobody will admit it now, but do we have any ex-legalists here? Oh, 1, 2, two honest people. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

You have to really have a lot of enthusiasm to be a legalist. You have got to have some kind of testimony. Even if you grew up in a very righteous background or maybe you came out of a very unrighteous background, to become very concerned about right and wrong, you have to have a good reason for it. I think I’m trying to say to you that there were men who could give you a testimony of past experience with God, that they began with God. Some way, whether internal, of course, probably not, but they were Jews, and the Jewish religion was still the established faith of that hour. They had seen something of God, and it drove them. It drove them in the wrong direction. True. But it drove them. They had cleaned up their lives, and they were seeking, according to their knowledge, to be faithful to the God whom they understood. That is correct. Or to put it in another way, they had cast out the demon, and they had cleaned up their house.

We’re not going to get into demons tonight. Obviously…some of you won’t agree with this… obviously, this is a picture. Some of you may say, “No, this has really happened.” Obviously, in the judgment of a Baptist, this is a picture. To you, perhaps it’s not, but here are Pharisees who have cast out their demon, and they have made their house whole. They did something that was probably pleasing to God at one time. Something was taken out of their life, and they immediately began to concentrate on cleaning up an empty interior. I’m going to repeat that: something positive, good, wonderful, and godly happened in their lives. Something was left behind that should have been left behind, and they began concentrating on cleaning up an empty inward being.