Matthew-038

We have studied the second part of Matthew 12:30, and saw that when the Lord Jesus said, “He that does not gather with me scatters,” he meant that each one of us either works for Christ or we work against Christ. In the spiritual life, neutrality does not exist. You cannot hold up a white flag or a neutral flag in spiritual warfare. So either we gather with him or scatter.

We also studied verses 31 and 32, and saw what blasphemy against the Spirit means.

Then verses 33 to 35 speak about good and evil, that there is always the same clear-cut choice: You are either on the side of good or on the side of evil. Either this evil is inside you, or goodness is. There is no neutrality. In all of the Lord’s teaching, there is nothing vague; it is always clear-cut.

Verses 36-37 deals with the way you speak. The Lord Jesus has already explained in the second part of verse 34 that, “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” Once we understand that principle, it is very easy to understand what verse 36 says:

Why should they render account for their words? Because words express what is in your heart. That is the principle already explained to us in verse 34. Then verse 37 says:

Your words will indicate whether there is an abundance of good or an abundance of evil in your heart.

An unclean spirit that is cast out can return

I have already expounded what the meaning of the sign of Jonah is from Matthew 12:38-42. So today, we come to verses 43-45.

These words of the Lord Jesus are truly so wonderful! And I hope that by God’s grace, when we have expounded this, you will have insight into what they mean. What does the passage mean? Here the Lord Jesus speaks of an unclean spirit that has gone out of a man. An unclean spirit is also an evil spirit, because verse 45 says, “Then he goes and brings with him seven other spirits more evil than himself” to enter and live in that man. When he has gone out of this man, he travels through waterless places, seeking rest. The prophet Isaiah says, “Thus says the Lord, there is no rest to the wicked.” (Isa. 48:22, 57:21) It is true of human beings as it is also true of evil spirits.

The evil spirit has no rest, no peace, and he travels through waterless places. What does “waterless” signify? There is no life. Where there is no water, there is no life; and where there is evil, there is no life. Life always goes with righteousness. You can never separate right­eousness from life. Let no one tell you that it doesn’t matter whether you, as a Christian, are righteous or not. That kind of teaching is a lie; it comes straight out of hell. Evil is the only place that is devoid of water, life, joy, and rest. Where there is righteousness, there is peace, life and rest.

Even the evil spirits don’t like restlessness any more than the sinner does. So this evil spirit, having wandered around for a considerable time, decides that he will go back to where he came from, to see if he can find some rest. Let us ask the question: If this evil spirit wanted to go back to where he came from, why did he leave? Why didn’t he just stay there? Surely, even a broken down house is better than a waterless place, a desert.

The answer to this is very simple, very clear. The Scripture doesn’t leave us in suspense. We need to look at it in the whole context of Matthew 12. The first basic principle of exposition is the principle of looking at the context. What does the whole context of Matthew 12 deal with? The power of the Holy Spirit of God works through Jesus to cast out the evil spirits, but in verse 24, the Pharisees and scribes accused the Lord Jesus of casting out demons under the name of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, the devil himself. So the Lord Jesus continues to address the issue of evil spirits with this illustration.

Here is a person who was once possessed by an unclean spirit, and the unclean spirit has been thrown out of this man by the power of God. No unclean spirit leaves of his own choice, and no man can free himself of the power of the evil spirit. If we could throw out the evil spirit ourselves, we wouldn’t need the power of God’s Holy Spirit working through the Lord Jesus, to save us from the power of evil.

“House” is the picture of a human body

The word “house” in the Bible, is a common picture of a person’s body. For example, in Matthew 7:24-25, the Lord Jesus speaks of building your house upon the rock, that is, you build your life upon the teaching of Jesus, so a house represents life. Or for example, in John 14:23, the Lord Jesus says that if any man obeys the Father, the Father and the Son will come to him and make their home in him, that is, live in him. The New Testament often speaks about Christians as the temple of the Holy Spirit of God, for example, 1 Corinthians 6:19. Or in Revelation 3:20, the Lord Jesus says “I stand at the door and knock; if any man opens, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” He stands at the door of your life and knocks, so that you may open your life for him to come in. Paul even speaks of his physical body as a tent saying, “Although this tent will be pulled down, it’s all right because I will have a new house in which to live. God is going to give me a new body” (2 Cor. 5:1-2). Scripture always compares the human body to a house.

This is the second principal of exegesis: always compare Scripture with Scripture. When you have a picture of a house, compare it with what this means elsewhere in Scripture. You don’t have to rush for a commentary. The Bible explains itself very clearly. If you don’t know the Bible well enough, a commentary may help you by explaining where the cross references are.

The Lord Jesus puts the picture very clearly before us here that we are either going to be the temple of God, or we are going to be the house of one or more unclean, evil spirits. There is no neutral ground between these two. Your body may be vacant of possession only for a short time, because soon, the evil spirit will come back. Even though he was thrown out by the power of God, he will return more powerfully if that house remains vacant. That means to say, either you are going to live under God’s power, or you are going to live un­der the power of Satan. That is what it means because whoever lives in the house is the person who runs the house; the person who owns the house has a certain authority. My house doesn’t tell me what to do. I choose what to do with my house. Therefore, another way of putting the picture is: Who runs your life? Who is your master?

No one is master of his life

No one is master of himself in this world. Anyone who thinks that he is master of himself has not yet understood the situation in this world and in this life. There are powers in this world far greater than you or me. You’d better understand yourself, know your own measure, then you will know how strong the enemy is (知已知彼, 必勝之道也 – zhi ji zhi bi, bi sheng zhi dao ye). If you don’t understand yourself, and you don’t understand your enemy, you are in for spiritual disaster. This is true in spiritual life as in military science.

You may say, as Confucius once said, (子曰, “敬鬼神而遠之” – zi yue, “jing gui shen er yuan zhi). This means, respect the devils and the spirits, and stay away from them. This advice sounds very good. The problem is that you may want to stay away from the devils and spirits, but they don’t want to stay away from you! You may put it in another way and say, “If it were up to me to respect the robbers and stay away from them, it would be quite simple. But the robbers don’t want to stay away from me, do they? So what can I do? I can say, ‘Look, I respect you. Will you kindly stay away from me?’” That isn’t going to impress any robber, is it? He is interested in your possessions, and he is going to get them. If you respect him, he desires your possessions even more as proof of that respect, isn’t it?

Confucius himself very humbly acknowledged that he did not understand too much about the spiritual world and spiritual life, and he was right. He was outstanding in many things in his generation, but to talk like this about the spiritual world is to fail to understand what spiritual life and spiritual power is about. It isn’t up to you to stay away from evil spirits; they will not stay away from you.

When we understand these things, we realize that the battle is waged between spiritual forces far greater than us. We are in between. We are going to be the victims, and this is what we already saw in Matthew 12:29 – “Or how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods?” There Satan is described as a strong man who has got human beings under his control, and the Lord Jesus comes to set us free. And how can Jesus set us free from the power of Satan? “He binds the strong man first, then indeed he may plunder his house” (cf. Lk. 11:21-22). The Lord Jesus came to bind Satan by the Spirit of God, so that we may be set free.

Once set free, not always set free

Here is the point of Matthew 12:43-45: The fact that you have been set free is no guarantee that you will remain free. This is the Lord Jesus’ teaching, not mine. I would like you to check every point of exegesis so that you can see that it is Jesus who is saying this, not me. And I don’t care what teaching anybody else has, I’m here to expound Scripture, not to grind a certain kind of doctrine which has no Scriptural basis. The whole point of this passage is, the Lord Jesus is warning that you may be free, but it’s no guarantee that you will stay free unless you take the necessary steps. Do you think that because Satan has been cast out of your life that he will stay out? Or is it up to you to say, “I don’t want you to come near me”? No, it doesn’t work as simply as that in the Christian life. You will need much more than that to be able to keep Satan at bay.

This evil spirit is cast out through Jesus by the power of God’s Spirit, and he wanders around, and returns to the house from which he was thrown out. When he looks at the house, a delightful sight meets his eyes. What was this delightful sight? Most encouraging to his heart is to find the house empty! It is a vacant, waiting to be possessed again! Thieves and robbers love nothing more than an empty house! They are not going to face any opposition. No wonder the police instructs, “Even if no one is in the house, leave the light on or use a timer that will switch the lights on and off to give the impression that someone is in the house.” Of course, you can fool human thieves in this way, but Satan is not going to be fooled by some timer that switches on and off. So you appear in church on Sunday and say to Satan, “Look here, I’m in church! I’ve switched the light on! And if that’s not good enough, I’ll appear at the Bible study, and I’ll switch it on again. I’ll switch my light on twice a week.” We can try this kind of game with Satan, but Satan knows whether your life is empty or full.

Look at this delightful sight at the end of verse 44: this evil spirit returns and finds the house empty. Not only is it empty, someone has done all his dirty work for him because it’s now been “swept,” which obviously means that it was a filthy place before. But now it is swept, tidied up, made clean. He cannot ask for much more than that! If someone comes to clear his garbage, wash the place down, that is just ideal for him! Even a person who is very filthy by nature very much enjoys what is clean, so long as someone else cleans it for him to enjoy, he has no objection. Unclean spirits also like what is clean.

Moreover, he finds it “put in order.” The term “put in order” is derived from the Greek word kosmeō, which is also the origin of the English word “cosmetics.” Essentially, it means “decorated,” and the ESV translates it as “put in order,” adhering to the root meaning of kosmeō. Additionally, the word “cosmos,” signifying a place of order, shares this origin. So the word means tidied up, decorated, painted. When you put cosmetics on your face, presumably that means you have put on some paint or powder to make it look nice. You suddenly develop rosy cheeks by putting on some rouge, and you have enlarged your eyes with an eyeliner and so forth. It is very nice-looking. So the evil spirit comes back and finds this delightful sight before his eyes. Here is a nice house, as good as new! He left it in a dilapidated state and now it is just lovely, and it is waiting to be possessed.

Does he rush into the house? No. Why doesn’t he just rush into the house and take possession of it immediately? Verse 45 tells us he doesn’t go into the house, but he goes away and finds seven other spirits more evil than himself! Now you will say, this evil spirit is really generous. He is actually willing to share his house with seven other more evil spirits. He is not so selfish as to think, “I’ll enjoy this beautiful house myself.” How can a fellow be evil and still be generous? Do you think that is the reason? Or maybe you think the evil spirit became a bit lonely, so he had to go out and get some company. He rushed off and found seven more evil spirits. Why should he find seven more evil than himself? What is the reason for that? The answer is simple: he got slung out the first time, so he’s going to bring in seven muscle boys to make sure that next time, it’s not going to be so easy to get booted out. It’s easier to throw out one muscular fellow, but throwing out seven is much more challenging!

These seven are more evil than himself, that is, they are spiritually more powerful than himself. That is how it operates in the spiritual world. The greater the degree of righteousness would indicate the greater the degree of spiritual power. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, perfect in holiness. No one is more powerful than the Holy Spirit.

Naturally, Satan is the most evil among them; the higher the spirit’s position in the hierarchy of evil, the more malevolent it is. For instance, in the kingdom of evil, a spirit's qualification for becoming Vice Prime Minister is based on how exceptionally evil it is; the more malevolent, the better. Satan, being the most evil, loves somebody like himself, the more evil the better. Notice, this evil spirit, and evil spirits are not stupid. I hope you have realized that by now, because he looked at this clean, empty house and said, “They did not have too much trouble slinging me out the first time.” He then went and acquired seven spirits even more wicked than himself, ensuring that this time he would remain and not be easily ousted.

The Lord Jesus says, “The last state of that man is worse than the first.” Notice the words, “of that man” already tell us what the house represents. He has already made it plain to us that the house is the man, even without all the cross references that I had mentioned. The Lord Jesus is speaking about one particular person—not about a Christian organization, or a society, but “that man”—whose last state becomes worse than his first. At the beginning, he was possessed by only one evil spirit, but now he is possessed by eight. The Lord Jesus says that his last state is not just eight times worse than his first; it is much more than eight times worse because the others are more evil than the first demon that possessed him.

What does the Lord Jesus want to teach to us? It is of utmost importance for us to understand a teaching which is simply not understood today. The Lord Jesus warns us: the fact that you were delivered from the power of Satan is no guarantee that you will remain free. Then what do you have to do?

You must have a right motive for believing in Jesus

Let us ask the question again: How was this person first freed from the evil spirit? We already saw that he had to be freed by the power of God. No one can set himself free. No one can save himself. What kind of person is set free from Satan? Why doesn’t God free everyone? I hope you know enough to say, “You need faith.” That, of course, is the answer. How was this person freed in the first place if he did not believe in Jesus, or call upon Jesus to free him? How could he be free? We saw the whole of Matthew 12 tells us that the power of the Spirit of God is working through Jesus to set men free. There is no other name under heaven by which we may be saved (Ac. 4:12). So it is through the name of Jesus that this man is saved from the power of Satan in the first place. How else could he be saved? Can you tell me another way by which people can be freed from the power of Satan? If you could tell me another way, then you would deny the statement that we read in Scripture, that Jesus is the only name by which we can be freed. Since we see that only through faith in Christ can we be set free, then don’t you see very clearly that this person was liberated because he believed in Jesus, and asked the Lord Jesus to free him from Satan’s power?

Why would anyone ask Jesus to free him from the power of Satan and sin? Because even the sinner finds sin oppressive; he finds it dry, joyless and restless to be under the power of sin. He wants to be free. And so how can you be liberated? You come to Jesus, since God has made his Son as the Savior of the world (1 Jo. 4:14), to set you free.

Why do people want to be free? They want the peace, joy and rest. This is how evangelists present the gospel today. I don’t want to present the gospel this way because I know the dangers. What will happen to a person if he becomes a Christian just because he wants peace and joy? What will happen to him once he gets hold of this peace and joy? Did he want to become a Christian because he was concerned about the truth, because he has learned to hate evil and love righteousness? No!

Like so many people who raise their hands at the conferences and make their decisions to come to Jesus, this man became a Christian because he wanted something for himself: he was tired of being oppressed by sin. So he came to Jesus. Any wise counselor would want to know what the motive of these people is: “Why did you raise your hand? Why do you want to know Jesus?” But no, today, evange­lists are willing to gather in Christians, and they say, “Are you willing to come to Jesus? Good! Come and kneel down. Accept Christ.” Then one month later, that person has gone further away. Two months later, he is even further away. After one year, you don’t even see him in church anymore. For most people, you don’t even have to wait one year before you don’t see their face in church again. What kind of evangelists and preachers do we have in the church today?

Are they so foolish that they cannot see beyond what is immediately in front of them? These people want peace and joy. If you offer them that, you can sweep in these conversions, because everyone is hungry for peace and joy. I don’t want to sweep people in. Do I want to sweep them in to lose them with the next tide? If they come in with a tide, they will go out with a tide.

There are people who just want to make use of God to free themselves from the bondage of sin that is making life hard for them. Certainly, everybody wants to be free from the bondage of sin, but do they also want to be under the authority of God? No. Just look at the Israelites. They wanted to get out of Egypt, but did they want to live under the rule of God? They were grumbling against God! So the whole generation perished in the wilderness. It’s good that you want to be free from sin, but is it because you don’t like sin, or is it just that you don’t like the consequences of sin? You don’t mind sin so much; you just don’t like its consequences. This happens if you have not understood the lesson that you cannot be free from the conse­quences of sin without being free from sin and remain permanently free from sin.

Many people raise their hands; they want to make a certain religious commitment; they go through a process of moral reform. For a time, they lead a slightly improved life. They have been “swept clean.” Some of the old sins are removed. There is a sudden “patching-up” process, and for a time, this person actually looks much nicer than before, even his behavior has changed to some extent. After all, the old house has been redecorated. Do you remember the word kosmeō for “put in order”? Everyone looks at him and says, “Oh yes, I can see you are much better than before! You’re a much kinder person.” There is nothing to be ashamed about the sweeping clean. It is God’s work. The one thing you must not think is that, this external sweeping clean and putting in order work will remain automatically.

This “Once saved, always saved” doctrine is the most dangerous doctrine that has come into the church these days, and I say it comes straight out of hell, because it has destroyed more people and caused more damage than I could dare to think about. In my ministry alone, I have seen people go to pieces spiritually, one after the other, because they thought, “I’m okay now.” Nothing is so dangerous as to think that you are fine. The moment you think you stand, that is when you fall, the apostle Paul told us (1 Cor. 10:12). But we are deaf in this generation. We have eyes that don’t see, and ears that don’t hear.

Notice the Lord Jesus’ chilling words in verse 45 at the end of this passage: “So shall it also be with this wicked generation.” He is actually saying this is what will constantly be happening in this evil generation. They want a “cosmetic Christianity.” They want to believe, to have salvation that costs them nothing, that involves no long-term change, or at least a change that doesn’t include the lordship of Christ in their lives. This man in the passage had faith or he could not be freed from the power of Satan, but he did not totally commit himself to the lordship of Christ. If you preach that kind of gospel, you are going to have disaster in your hands. I have also preached that kind of gospel before. I acknowledge my guilt before God because I didn’t know better, but I repented before God. I have seen the disaster of teaching in this way. We have to preach God’s Word.

I did not particularly choose this passage to preach on today. Notice that it is simply in the course of systematically expounding the Lord Jesus’ teaching that we have arrived at this passage today. I don’t choose from the Bible what passages I like to preach on; I have no preference. I just preach whatever we come to in the Word of God, and I aim, by God’s grace, to preach it faithfully and truly. If you don’t have ears to listen to what the Lord Jesus is saying to you, the blood guilt of others will be upon your hands. If you witness to them in that kind of way, or if those who are in training are going to preach the gospel in this superficial way, remember you are going to be guilty of their blood.

The Lord Jesus warns us, and I say to you, especially all those of you in training: Remember, “so shall it be also with this wicked generation.” This generation doesn’t want to listen to what the Lord Jesus has to say; they want to have the gospel their own way. As the apostle Paul warns us, in the last days, people will have teachers who will preach to them the things that they want to hear. They have ears which don’t want to listen to the truth. They want to be tickled by the fancies and the falsehoods that come from untrue exposition or no exposition at all (2 Tim. 4:3). In fact, the preaching in churches today is virtually non-expository. There are no more expository preachers left today. They only preach on themes.

Every promise of God is conditional

Think again: Are you of this generation that just wants to make use of God to be freed from sin for a time? If you are, that is foolishness because what you were freed from will come back to you again, and come back to you with seven-fold power, such that your last state will be worse than your first. I plead with you to understand this. And I would also like to plead with you to understand that no promise of God in the Bible is unconditional. If God makes a promise to you, and you don’t keep your part of the condition, the promise will be null and void. There are always books about promises, but do they state the conditions? No. If you try to claim a promise without fulfilling its condition, let me tell you honestly and faithfully, you will never get it. Even if a promise were made directly to you alone, and you did not fulfill the condition of that promise, that promise will be null and void.

God voided his promise even to his servant Eli

There are a lot of examples on this in the Scriptures, and I will give you just one example of Eli the priest in First Samuel Chapter 2. I am particularly saying that with a promise God made even to his servant, if that servant of God does not fulfill the conditions required, is not faithful to God, the promise is null and void. Notice what God says to Eli, the priest of God, in 1 Samuel 2:30 [NJB]:

To “go in and out before God” is the work of a priest; he goes into and out of the Holy Place in the temple. God declares that the priesthood he promised to Eli is forever, yet he has rescinded this promise to Eli. Eli and his household after him cannot go in and out before God forever, even though God had promised it to him forever.

Worse than that, his last state is worse than his first. God told Eli that his whole house would be wiped out in God’s judgment; he would have no descendents left. God says in verses 31-32:

Notice, the promise to serve God forever is now changed into a promise that forever, there would not be an old man in his house. They would all be wiped out by God. Verse 33 goes on:

God originally made a promise to Eli, his house, and his father’s house, that they would be priests forever. But every promise is on the understanding that you will be faithful. Eli was unfaithful to God as a priest. He was not a bad man. He was just generally speaking, unfaithful. He brought up his children poorly. He did not perform his priesthood properly, and he brought upon himself the wrath of God so that his whole house was to be wiped out.

“To whom much is given, of him much is required” (Lk. 12:48). If God gives you a lot, he requires a lot from you. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. That is Scriptural teaching.

God rescinded his promise to King Saul

God chose Saul to be king of Israel, and for his house to be king after him, generation after generation. That was a promise. But because Saul was unfaithful to God, the promise to him was rescinded. And not only this, but he and his family were also wiped out.

Now that sounds severe, but you must know that the Word of God says God is wonderful in his loving-kindness, and also don’t forget that he is holy. Today, the churches want to sweep away holiness. We only want to talk about love, not holiness. God’s love is holy. He will not tolerate sin among his people. The apostle Paul warned the Corinthian Church again and again, to “purge out the old leaven from among you.” (1 Cor. 5:6-7) Purge it out, otherwise the whole lump will be leavened, and must be thrown away.

Today, we have a diluted kind of gospel preaching. I would like you to look at God’s Word and decide for yourself which is and which is not God’s Word. That is why so much of my preaching is entirely Scriptural reference, so that your faith will be founded in God’s Word, and not in what I say.

Two important steps to salvation

The whole Scriptural teaching makes this point plain to us: we are either God’s house or we are going to be the house of Satan, possessed by one or more of his demons. You make your choice but there is no neutral ground whatever between these two. Right now, you are either God’s temple or you are Satan’s possession, one of the two. Although you are possessed by the evil spirit, it doesn’t mean that you cannot desire to be free. He possesses the house, your person, but he doesn’t possess your will. You can cry out to God to set you free. But let me warn you: when God sets you free, and you allow your house to remain a vacant possession, Satan will return again, and this time, with even greater power. This is the reason why it is virtually impossible to restore to salvation a person who has once known God, and has turned away from him. This is the warning in Hebrews 6:4-6, that you need to think about carefully. The gospel does not allow us to exploit God to our own advantage. We must observe this important truth

There are two important steps to salvation. You must take both steps if you are going to remain saved. Would you call a person who is freed from the power of Satan “saved” or “not saved”? Surely, you would say he is saved. He is saved from the power of Satan. This man who had the evil spirit slung out of him, was he saved or was he not saved? On the definition of the word “saved,” you have to say, “Yes, he was saved; he was saved from the power of Satan; he was saved from the unclean, evil spirit.” Although he was saved, does it mean he remained saved? When this evil spirit returned with seven other spirits more evil than itself, was he still saved? No, he came under bondage again. His last state was worse than his first. To have been a Christian and to fall away, is to end up worse than never having been a Christian at all.

This is the reason why in this church, we are so careful in accepting anyone for baptism. It is your welfare that I am concerned about. When I refuse you baptism, it’s not because I want to make things hard for you. It is out of sheer love for you, because I know if I accept you for baptism now, and you fall away, your last state will be worse than your first. That is why I would rather not accept you until you and I are clear before God that you are ready to be baptized. There are churches where anyone who wants to be baptized can be baptized. We won’t have that because of love for you. There is no problem if all we want is to have numbers in the church. But we want to build with spiritual quality, to build with gold, silver and precious stones. We don’t want to build a church with wood, hay and straw.

1. By faith, ask God to set you from the power of sin

Always remember clearly, there are two steps to salvation. The first step is by faith, ask God to sweep you clean of old sins, to set you free from the power of sin, and to change your behavior, like the house is swept clean, repainted, redecorated, restored to new beauty. It is God’s work that you are cleansed, the damage is rebuilt, and you are saved. But this external sweeping clean and putting in order, this patched-up newness will not remain automatically.

2. Ask for constant filling of God’s Holy Spirit to live out Christ in your life

The second step is even more important. What was the mistake with that house that was swept clean? It was left empty. Once you have been freed from Satan, you must never allow yourself to be left empty. You must let the Spirit of God fill you so that you become the temple of God. This means you must let Jesus be the Lord of your life – you must always commit to totally obey Jesus’ teaching and imitate his life. Then God will transform you to become a new person. Moreover, you must keep on asking the Spirit of God to fill you, otherwise your last state will be worse than the first.

Being filled with God’s Holy Spirit is not a higher stage in Christian life. It is fundamental to salvation. You would ask, “What’s that got to do with salvation?” It has everything to do with salvation. Without fullness of the Spirit of God, you won’t even survive. You don’t just have a little bit of the Spirit of God. Either the Spirit of God comes in to fill your life, or he doesn’t come at all.

Therefore, I plead with you to understand clearly the Word of God. You need to be filled with the Spirit of God, and when you are, Jesus is Lord in your life. The evidence of the filling is that Jesus is Lord in your life. In Scripture, wine and the filling of the Spirit are compared. Have you noticed that if you are filled with wine, it has a definite effect upon your life? You lose self-control. But when you are filled with the Spirit of God, the opposite effect takes place – he gives you self-control. When God’s Spirit fills you, he doesn’t depersonalize you; he makes you more truly the person than you ever were before. That is why the Scripture says: “Do not be filled with wine but be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18).

What is your present condition? You have believed in Jesus. Your house has been swept clean. You have been cleansed from sin, and praise God for that! There is a change in your life. Before, you were dilapidated, ugly, but now there is a new beauty. You have been decorated, put in order. But let me ask: Are you filled with the Spirit of God? Is Jesus Lord in your life? God gives his Spirit only to those who obey him, as we read in Acts 5:32. If you crown Jesus Lord in your life, then you’ll obey God unconditionally, and you’ll have the fullness of God’s Spirit. If Jesus is not Lord in your life, if you don’t obey Jesus’ teaching and follow his example of life that totally does the will of God, you won’t have the fullness of God’s Spirit. It’s as straightforward as that.

But don’t think that this filling of the Spirit, this total commitment, is some higher stage of the Christian life. It is this necessary second step in the process of salvation. Today, we are taught that all this is for superior Christians. It has nothing to do with salvation. That is not Scripture at all. Remember the Lord Jesus’ teaching, if you are not filled with the Spirit, the evil spirit will return with seven spirits more powerful, more evil than himself. Then you’ll really have had it, because what is said in Hebrews 6:4-6 will become real in your life:

This means it is virtually impossible to restore a person who has been freed from the power of Satan by the power of God’s Spirit.

When you have experienced the power of God working in your life by the throwing out of the evil spirit from your life, you cannot leave your life empty. You must obey the Lord Jesus’ teaching and follow his example of life, so that God’s Holy Spirit fills your life. Unless we are filled with the Spirit of God, we will soon fall victim to the powers of the evil one.

Therefore, in considering this teaching of the Lord Jesus, ask yourself: Which stage am I at now? Am I at stage one? Or have I also come to stage two? Am I filled with the Spirit of God? And will I be constantly filled with the Spirit of God?