Is Jesus in League with Satan?

[00:00:00] But yeah, this is a long passage, but it's one thought, it's one set of ideas. And so I'm going to rip through it today, hopefully not get too bogged down. Let me look at the time and make sure that doesn't happen. [00:00:13] Great. Okay. So basically the question is, is Jesus in league with Satan? [00:00:22] And it's a good question. [00:00:24] Jesus takes the people who question him very seriously. He doesn't just say what would you know? And walk off. He doesn't have a haughty response. He goes into great detail to help us work out if he is in league with Satan or not. [00:00:39] And have you ever wondered if a power that you have come across is from God or not? Or have you ever wondered if a person is from God or not? It's a relevant question. I've thought of that before. [00:00:51] Once I knew someone who was doing something spiritually powerful deeds, it was real power, it was miraculous. [00:01:01] But something didn't add up and I just watched and waited. [00:01:06] And after a bit of time it became clear the person was of quite dubious character. They weren't connected to the rest of the church. [00:01:16] Their deeds had a long term effect that was not good and it ended up being very divisive and destructive. So I would say that that person, although loved by God, was not moving by the power of God. So it is possible to have spiritual power, but it to not be God's power. [00:01:36] Another example is a friend I have doesn't go to this church, so don't worry. But he's what you call rough as guts and very uncouth and people misread him because he says things that he shouldn't say. He's a bit naughty like that and he kind of likes that. But actually his heart is very good and he's a very good listener. He's very encouraging and caring. [00:02:07] He really is a serious follower of Jesus and it's worth listening to him. [00:02:12] So have you ever heard of the term the wise fool? [00:02:17] I told him he's a wise fool. He didn't like the fool bit. [00:02:22] But they seem foolish, but actually what they're saying is quite wise so it's worth listening. So it's not always straightforward to work out who's from God or what is from God. And this is an extended set of teachings that are about that. [00:02:40] Great. So what is the background? Here's a great picture of Jesus throwing a demon out of someone. The demon is a kind of black mist. I thought that was quite creative. [00:02:53] But you can see Jesus standing there, standing apart from Everybody else with a lot of power. I liked the picture, so I chose it. [00:03:03] But here we have an incident and a man has been brought to Jesus and he was in a bad way. [00:03:12] And Jesus did something quite incredible. [00:03:17] Nobody can really deny that he set this man free. [00:03:21] It says the man was demon possessed, that he was blind and he was mute. [00:03:27] So he was completely cut off from everyone around him. Not only was he not able to see, but he couldn't speak. [00:03:35] And he showed signs of being influenced by demonic power. [00:03:40] And it just says, without drama, without a sideshow. Oh yeah, Jesus just healed him. [00:03:48] Makes it sound easy, makes it sound like a small miracle. [00:03:53] It's almost nonchalant. [00:03:55] But the man suddenly could talk again, he could see again, and he was in his right mind. [00:04:01] It was a massive miracle in a few verses. And that's the setting for everything that follows after it. [00:04:09] The non religious people there, that is normal people, they respond accordingly. They said, wow, wow, what is going on here? This isn't your average miracle worker or prophet. Is this the Son of David we've been waiting for? [00:04:28] Only Messiah could do this kind of thing. [00:04:32] Has he come to set up the kingdom of God? That's my paraphrase. Could this be the Son of David? That's what it meant to them at that time. [00:04:40] But the Pharisees had a different response. [00:04:43] They didn't refute that a miracle had happened. [00:04:47] They didn't argue that. They said, oh yeah, this is a miracle. This is a triple miracle. Demons thrown out and people eyes opening. And also it's a miracle all right. [00:04:58] But Jesus wasn't one of their people. [00:05:02] He hadn't been given permission by them. He hadn't gone to their rabbinical schools. [00:05:09] They didn't want it to be from God. [00:05:12] So they said, well, yes, it is a powerful miracle, but it must be from Satan, because God couldn't possibly do something that they didn't agree with or, or that they hadn't endorsed. [00:05:26] And that's the situation. That's the background we have here. Now they use the term Baelzebul. Baelzebul, which is an interesting term. It comes originally from this verse, 2 Kings 1, 3. Only once in the Bible do you find this word slightly different. [00:05:48] And it was with Elijah. The angel of Yahweh said to Elijah the Tishbite, go up and meet the messengers of the King of Samaria and ask them, is it because there's no God in Israel that you're going off to consult BAAL Zebul, the God of Ekron? [00:06:06] And so this is a God of the Philistines, and it literally means, in Hebrew, BAAL Zevuv means the Lord of the flies. [00:06:19] And they're not actually sure why they called him that. It could be because flies come over carcasses. It could be because he's the Lord BAAL of the demons, which I think might be the case. But there isn't a lot written down about this. [00:06:38] So basically, though, what we know is baal's of Sebor or Bears a bull is the Greek version of this Hebrew term. And they're basically calling him Satan. And everybody knew that's what they were saying. He's in league with Satan. That's why he's doing incredible miracles. [00:06:57] And that is an incredible thing to say in the face of a powerful miracle. [00:07:04] What you would expect is they would take a step back and go, how? We haven't seen anything like this before. [00:07:12] That would be humility to say, I don't understand what's going on here. I need more information. [00:07:20] Or another teachability approach would be to go, where are you getting this power from? Please tell us who endorsed you. Oh, it was John the Baptist. Oh, it was the Holy Spirit who came on you. [00:07:35] So they don't do that. They just write him off. [00:07:38] But if Jesus is from God and he's doing things in the name of the Father by the power of the Spirit, they've just called God Satan. [00:07:47] And that is a little bit of a dangerous thing to do for a number of reasons. [00:07:54] In fact, what they've done is they've just called Jesus the Son of God, the name of one of the Canaanite gods that God had commanded their ancestors to remove from the land. [00:08:06] This is quite strange when you think about it. They've completely failed to recognize their own God, their own scriptures, their own prophecies, and I think you'd call it an astounding level of blindness. [00:08:20] But knowing myself, that's what humans, we can do. We can be blind to things. [00:08:30] So I'll go back because I don't want you to get bogged down there. [00:08:36] So then we have an extended passage, and Jesus gives all of these points, and I think they're really worth taking home and meditating on. I'm going to whip through them because there's six of them. [00:08:51] But there's incredible wisdom in it, and it's worth meditating on. So if any one of these points hits you today, take it home and spend time with the Lord. [00:09:03] So, number one, Jesus says, every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined. Every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he's divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? [00:09:22] Now that's very logical. That's actually military doctrine. I would say as well, if you start fighting on your yourselves, you're going to become weak. [00:09:33] So Jesus is saying, why would Satan fight Satan? What's the point of that? Is he that foolish? How would that benefit him? [00:09:40] He's taken their accusations seriously. [00:09:44] He's saying, yeah, okay, let's think about that. Satan's fighting Satan, how long's that going to go on for? [00:09:50] If Satan tears apart his own defenses, pulls down his strongholds, turns on his own allies, he won't need an enemy to come in and defeat him. He'll do it all by himself. [00:10:01] Would be a losing strategy. [00:10:03] And if you've ever been in a company or an institution that's turned on itself, you realize the wisdom of Jesus statement. [00:10:12] I have been in those situations, you know, when people go ah, on each other and Jesus does, it's interesting. He's not just talking about this situation, he's making a statement. [00:10:24] It's not just nations, but it's cities. [00:10:28] It's not just that, it's any household. [00:10:31] So you could put churches or businesses, you could put ministries, you could put marriages. [00:10:37] Anytime you turn in on yourselves and start attacking each other, it's like you're doomed. [00:10:43] Because if you attack each other, no one else has to attack you. I think Satan uses this strategy sometimes. [00:10:50] We say, united we stand, divided we fall. [00:10:54] And that's basically what Jesus is saying, don't attack your allies, recognize your allies. I think in the world of the reels that I get, this is not listened to. People attack their allies all of the time. They can't determine who is for them and who is against them. [00:11:14] Now the interesting thing is Satan was known by Jesus because everything that is created was created through him. [00:11:22] So Jesus knew Satan and he knew that Satan isn't that stupid. He's not stupid enough to attack himself and destroy himself. And Jesus had just had an incident in the desert with Satan and he knew what to do there. [00:11:40] The Pharisees didn't know Satan as well as Jesus did. [00:11:45] So number two, if I cast out demons by Satan, how do you know your people aren't doing the same? How do you know your people aren't throwing out demons in Satan's name? [00:11:57] So this is another explanation and it doesn't make a lot of sense to us because we don't really know what they were doing at the time of Jesus. But ancient writings have shown us that the Jews were practicing what we call exorcisms. [00:12:12] And it had started with David. Back in 1 Samuel 16, David would play the harp and worship God and demons would leave Saul. And that's the history. That's 3,000 years ago. Do you hear that first account? [00:12:28] At the time of Jesus, there was Jewish prayers that have been preserved in Greek magical papyri. [00:12:37] And they are the spells that Jews would make to cast out demons. [00:12:43] The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus wrote down a case that he saw. [00:12:48] And he said, the man put a ring that had a root of one of the sorts of roots mentioned by Solomon, and he put it at the nostrils of the demoniac so that the demon would come out of the nose. And he used the name of Solomon to cast out the demon. That's the kind of thing that the children of the Pharisees, the people of the Pharisees were doing. [00:13:15] In the apocryphal book Tobit, there's a story there of fish gall. Fish gall was burnt with incense along with prayers to drive a demon out. [00:13:27] Now, you compare that to what Jesus said. What Jesus did, he said, come out, and it would come out. It's a much more powerful miracle without incantations and silliness. Fish galls, you don't need all of that. Now, the thing about it is, Josephus saw a demon come out of somebody through those silly incantations because they were the people of God and they were moving by the power of God. So Jesus is saying, if your people can cast out demons with silly incantations, how much more can I do it? [00:14:06] I'm not sure if that's very clear, but that's kind of the reasoning. [00:14:14] And he puts it in a negative. He says, okay, if I'm casting out demons by Satan, who is it that your people are casting out by? [00:14:27] I promised to move it along, so I'm going to move it along. [00:14:31] It's quite logical. You can see he's building a case. [00:14:36] And the third one is another military strategy. You have to overpower the defence personnel before you annex their land. [00:14:46] It's like saying you can't eat honey unless you first pacify the bees and take the honey. [00:14:53] It's like, if I'm taking honey, somebody's dealt with the bees. [00:14:57] You can't plunder somebody else's things unless you've neutralized them. [00:15:04] And so why am I able to do this? He's saying it's a sign, not that I'm in league with Satan. But I've neutralized Satan. [00:15:13] It's quite a powerful statement. And what he does is here, we don't know it, but he's quoting. He's referring back to a passage in Isaiah where God says, can plunder be taken from warriors or captives be rescued from the fierce? But this is what Yahweh says. Yes. Captives will be taken from warriors, plunder retrieved from the fierce. I will contend with those who contend with you and your children. I will save. Jesus is saying, I am fulfilling this in front of your eyes, and you're calling it Satan. But this was prophesied that the strong man would be bound up and his goods would be stolen from him. [00:16:00] So Jesus is getting a bit stronger here and claiming to be fulfilling Old Testament scripture. [00:16:08] Now the question is, when did Jesus bind up the strongman? [00:16:13] And you know, in the commentaries, it's pretty much agreed that it happened in the wilderness, when Jesus was in the wilderness. [00:16:22] It's like a mirror image of Adam and Eve in the garden. [00:16:27] Jesus is alone in the wilderness. Adam and Eve are in the garden. And Satan came along and tempted Adam and Eve and they sinned. [00:16:35] They were only allowed to not do what one thing. They did it. [00:16:41] You think about that. You know, how many sins are we tempted to do? Now, Adam and Eve had it easy. One thing. Don't do that. One thing. They couldn't do it. That's just so. That's human nature. [00:16:54] But Jesus was in the wilderness. And it says that he was the last Adam. There was the first Adam that was the last Adam. [00:17:01] And the last Adam did not give into temptation. [00:17:05] He fasted and he was praying and he said no. And we have an example of at least three temptations. But it says he was tempted in every way, but without sin. [00:17:18] So Jesus bound up Satan. Satan's power had come when humans had bowed down and said yes to Satan. [00:17:28] Satan got a lot of power out of that. And Jesus calls him the Lord of this world, the ruler of this world. [00:17:36] But he didn't have any power over Jesus because Jesus didn't bow down to him. [00:17:43] So what Jesus is saying is what you're seeing here is a fulfillment of the prophecies. I've come and I've overcome Satan, and now I'm plundering his goods. And now I'm doing what was prophesied. I'm setting your children free. [00:17:57] Praise the Lord. [00:18:01] Okay, now the temperature's going up a bit here. [00:18:04] And I've summarized this as Jesus saying to them, so do you know who I am? Do you know who you're actually calling Satan here. And it's not in an offensive way. Jesus isn't attacking them to offend them and have a big, you know, adversarial confrontation. [00:18:25] But he does get stronger in what he's saying, and his logic is quite clear. [00:18:30] What he's saying is, this mistake you've made, it's not just a little mistake. It's not just a little faux pas. It's a fatal misjudgment that will lead you into perpetual unforgiveness before God. [00:18:45] And you've got to say that quite clearly. So sometimes you think Jesus is quite rude. [00:18:52] He can come across to us as rude, but in his context, he wasn't. He. Everybody spoke like that back then. [00:19:00] But what he's saying is really clear to them. He explains to them that they're in big trouble if they continue down that path. And he doesn't want them to continue down that path. [00:19:13] And what he says here is, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven. [00:19:20] But blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, that's a different issue altogether, can't be forgiven. Anyone who speaks the word against the Son of Man will be forgiven. Anyone who speaks against the Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. So you go, whoa, okay, better not commit that sin. [00:19:39] Let's work out. And you know, I lost night's sleep over this back in the day when I was first trying to work out what it was. [00:19:46] But it's quite simple. If you can't tell the difference between the works of God and the works of Satan, and you call what is of God Satan, how can you be saved? Your whole system of discernment is so completely misaligned. You meet God and you call him Satan. [00:20:05] And that's not an easy mistake to make. That's not something you're going to accidentally do. This was quite a high level of resistance the Pharisees were bringing to Jesus. It was a hardness of heart, like you see the Pharaoh. [00:20:23] It's not just accidentally, whoops, I've committed the eternal sin. [00:20:28] So let's think about that in front of their eyes. [00:20:32] Jesus had completely restored a man's life to him. [00:20:36] He gave him his seeing back, gave him a way to speak back, gave him control of his faculties, control of his mind. It was very clearly an act of goodness. [00:20:50] There's nothing evil in what Jesus did. [00:20:55] Can you imagine the parents when their son's eyes are opened and he speaks again and he's in his right mind? The parents, brothers and sisters, they've remembered that for the rest of their life. He's restored this man who can now work, he can now get married, he can. He can now have children, he can now contribute to society. [00:21:18] Sheer, merciful, free of charge. Goodness by Jesus for one man. And they go, must be Satan. That's not an easy mistake to make. [00:21:34] So what they should have done is just look at the evidence and entertain the clear and most obvious conclusion. This outrageous goodness was an act of God in front of them, and it was a sign that Jesus was exactly who he was saying he was, the Messiah. [00:21:53] They were in a very dangerous place. And Jesus says to them, please don't do this. He says, you know, you can sin against me if you want. You can call me whatever. I don't care. I forgive you. It's not a big deal. [00:22:05] I'm not that easy to offend. [00:22:07] People, make mistakes. [00:22:09] He says, but the Holy Spirit is different, because what it is, is you're calling good evil. How can you be saved by God if you reject God? [00:22:25] And now I really want you to take these next words home and meditate on them, because I've found these to be such powerful words that are the key to all discernment in a Christian life. [00:22:40] So within these words, Jesus gets to the heart of it, and he says this. The way to judge anything is by its fruit. [00:22:55] And that's all you have to remember today. Go home. Go. What did Stephen speak about? He said, jesus said, judge a tree for by its fruit. [00:23:04] Because what that tells us is when we judge things, when we discern things, we don't judge by the clothes, the smile, the charisma, the power, the money, the gender, the job, the title, the race of the person we judge by the fruit. [00:23:23] So that is so important because it's so easy. Like, you think of the guy who I mentioned, who was doing powerful acts that were miraculous people, spiritually powerful. [00:23:33] If I judge by power or charisma, he had it. [00:23:37] But if I judge by fruit, by the words and the actions that keep coming out, keep coming out, then it was very clearly not of God. [00:23:48] So that's what he said. If the Pharisees had come along and judged him by the fruit, they wouldn't have made that mistake. [00:23:58] So we don't have to just believe everything we see. We sit back and we watch the actions over time. We listen to the words over time. [00:24:08] Is it fruit that is good coming out of a heart that is good? We're not looking for perfection in people, though, because nobody's going to. None of us have perfectly good fruit all of the time. But it just means, generally speaking, are we consistently doing that? [00:24:22] And it's not just for judging others. This is for ourselves. If out of our hearts keeps coming this bad stuff, then we need to deal with it at the root. We need to look at that and take it to God and deal with it. And so it's not about what's just happening on the outside. And the Pharisees had the opposite approach. [00:24:45] They said, if we look good on the outside, we must be okay, but on the inside, they were not okay. [00:24:53] Now we can't change ourselves by our own strength. [00:24:57] So it's not about that, but it's about recognizing the fruit. That if fruit keeps coming out of our life, that is not godly. Then we take it to each other and we say, I got this problem. Can you help me with it? We humble ourselves, we confess our sins, we get advice, we get help, we deal with it. [00:25:18] So, yeah, my other friend that I mentioned at the beginning, you know, he says some pretty outrageous things, but the fruit of his life is systematically, systemically good. [00:25:35] And so right here at the end, Jesus, we always put. Because of our Greek, the Greek influence on our education, we put the conclusion at the end. [00:25:47] But the Hebrews would put it in the middle. And right in the middle, there you have verse 28. Jesus says, if the Spirit of God is. If it's by the spirit of God I drive out demons and the kingdom of God has come upon you. [00:26:02] And that's the bottom line is, okay, you've just called, you've called God Satan. But if you're wrong, I'm the Messiah and I've brought the kingdom of God. [00:26:16] So if Jesus is the Messiah, we should follow him. If he's offering the kingdom of God, we should enter it. If he's calling us to follow him, let's drop everything and follow him. [00:26:29] So what can we do about this? [00:26:31] It's kind of covering a lot in a short time. [00:26:35] One thing is to realize, you know, this whole section is there because Jesus welcomes being questioned. He said, question me, blaspheme me if you want. I'm okay with that. [00:26:47] He's not saying don't think about anything. He's going into great detail of how you should think. [00:26:54] And so Jesus is encouraging us to think. [00:26:58] And so the first thing I think we can take from it is let's move consistently towards becoming people who have true judgment, who don't just judge by the outward kind of externals, but look at what's coming from the inside. [00:27:18] For me, I went to university for a long time and you do get taught a certain way of thinking that is called critical but not negative critical, like looking at evidence all of the time. Evidence, evidence, evidence. And you get this, you brain gets honed by that. But it's very easy then to the X ray vision at everything. [00:27:42] And that can not be helpful at times because God is graceful and merciful. So I've had to do work on myself. [00:27:52] It's like winding up a big machine and then you can't turn it off. [00:27:58] And so let judgment be true. It's not just to be, just not the negative critical rejection of things that happens automatically. [00:28:13] So we all have our favorite theories, our favorite topics. These days everybody's got their favorite preacher that they listen to online and we all do that. We've really got to make sure because of the filter bubble experience that we don't mistake our pet opinions as gospel. [00:28:35] There are certain things that you must do to be saved. Believe in Jesus Christ, put your faith in him and you'll be saved. Another thing is that we're on a road of sanctification. We have to be working on what's in our hearts, reaching out to others with the gospel, things that are not essential, if you make them essential, we turn on ourselves and we fight. [00:29:02] So let's not do that. Let's make our judgment true and distinguish between primary issues and non primary. [00:29:10] And the last thing is let's pay attention to the fruit of our own hearts to become the kind of people. [00:29:17] Let's pay attention to the kind of people we're becoming. Because if you think about it, what lasts forever, character lasts forever. [00:29:26] When we die, we think we suddenly wake up and we're all perfect. But the Bible doesn't say that. [00:29:32] So the amount of time we spend with the Lord results in character change, results in who we are in the next world as something to think about. A little bit of a challenge, that one. [00:29:46] But if we walk in criticism and judgment and lack grace, condemn other people, it's the wrong fruit. [00:29:54] Go and spend time with Jesus. Find ways for him to transform you. [00:30:00] Take it to others. [00:30:02] I was involved in prayer ministry for a long time. And that's all you did for a while is like, what's talking about these things and getting prayer and getting help. And it was a big help for me. [00:30:15] Okay, so that's basically what Jesus said. So let's pray. [00:30:23] Lord Jesus, we just thank you that you spent a lot of time explaining these things. To us why we can know that you aren't in league with Satan. But you had come and you had bound him up, and you were delivering people in powerful acts of free grace, mercy and power. [00:30:43] We thank you that you are good and that you want us to become good at judging things for ourselves and to become like you in that. Lord, I just pray that your spirit would touch each of us. [00:30:56] And anything from your word, that you'd like to work more in us, that you would do that, Lord, you're a good God. And we thank you that you came, you set the captives free, and you're still doing it today. It's in your name, Lord, we pray. Amen.