Pastor Debbie and I were sitting at summer camp when a person approached the table. As we talked we asked how they enjoyed the big outdoor Memorial Day Rally we had conducted several weeks earlier. He said, “Well, it was okay but I didn’t like the rain”.
Yup, never going to make everyone happy.
Love this quote:
“If you want to make everyone happy, don’t be a leader, sell ice cream.” Steve Jobs
None of us will be able to rise to the place of effectiveness if we always seek to please others.
Here’s another great quote:
“You can’t make everyone happy. You’re not pizza”.
I also think that some people think their job is to find fault with everything anyone else does.
I would be hesitant about listening to a person that hasn’t done it or currently is doing nothing.
“Don’t listen to criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from.”
What might be the dangers of being a people pleaser?
- Fail to please God as many desires of men are sinful or unhealthy
- Never become what God called you to be and do
- Failure to follow example of Jesus who was compassionate but didn’t live to please men.
Jesus was killed because he spoke the truth to religious power who didn’t want to lose it.
Note: Jesus doesn’t answer prayers that could lead to our harm or are not in agreement with His purposes.
How do we know if we are a people pleaser?
- You almost never get finished what you need to because you are responding to people’s requests.
- You hide your real opinions and outwardly agree with others.
Eph 4:15, “speak the truth in love” the context is in correcting wrong ideas and doctrine.
- You over-apologize, even for things that aren’t your fault.
- You feel responsible for how others feel. We are responsible for how we feel as adults.
- You find it almost impossible to say “no” when you’re asked for something. It’s pure agony for you.
- You need people to praise you to feel relaxed and content.
- You abandon your personal values to avoid conflict. “Just to keep the peace I will give in”
- Indecisiveness: Lack of decision making because of perceived pushback
- Poor communication: not being explicit, forthright and clear when communicating to your team. You are political giving directives that can be interpretated different ways.
- Lack of direction: Fluid goals and objectives. As soon as you get pushback you change direction.
How did we become a people pleaser?
- High need to be accepted and affirmed
- During childhood we got idea that to be loved we had to make others happy. Maybe everyone walked on eggshells to keep a parent or sibling happy.
- We become weary with dealing with hard situations or the demands of life
How do we stop living to please people?
- Remind yourself that you will never achieve what God intends for your life.
- Know that it is nearly impossible to please people for long. People are often pleased one moment and dissatisfied the next.
Remember…
Some of the same people that welcomed Jesus during the Triumphal Entry on Palm Sunday may have stood below Pilate and yelled “Give us Barabbas! Crucify Jesus!”
Pilate had Jesus crucified to “satisfy the crowd” in Mark 15:11-15. It was more expedient for him to give in to the crowd than do what was right.
- Trust this, “Fearing people is a dangerous trap, but trusting the Lord means safety.” Proverbs 29:25
- Learn from Paul’s example in 1 Thess 2:2-12. Read and observe.
2 You know how badly we had been treated at Philippi just before we came to you and how much we suffered there. Yet our God gave us the courage to declare his Good News to you boldly, in spite of great opposition. 3 So you can see we were not preaching with any deceit or impure motives or trickery.
4 For we speak as messengers approved by God to be entrusted with the Good News. Our purpose is to please God, not people. He alone examines the motives of our hearts. 5 Never once did we try to win you with flattery, as you well know. And God is our witness that we were not pretending to be your friends just to get your money! 6 As for human praise, we have never sought it from you or anyone else.
7 As apostles of Christ we certainly had a right to make some demands of you, but instead we were like children[b] among you. Or we were like a mother feeding and caring for her own children. 8 We loved you so much that we shared with you not only God’s Good News but our own lives, too.
9 Don’t you remember, dear brothers and sisters, how hard we worked among you? Night and day we toiled to earn a living so that we would not be a burden to any of you as we preached God’s Good News to you. 10 You yourselves are our witnesses—and so is God—that we were devout and honest and faultless toward all of you believers. 11 And you know that we treated each of you as a father treats his own children. 12 We pleaded with you, encouraged you, and urged you to live your lives in a way that God would consider worthy. For he called you to share in his Kingdom and glory.
These were the marks of his ministry to God’s people:
- He had pure motives.
- He didn’t attempt to deceive.
- He felt confident in God’s approval of him as a man entrusted with the gospel.
- He sought to please God, not men.
- He recognized that God tested his heart.
- He didn’t use flattery or embrace greed.
- He didn’t seek glory from people.
- He didn’t exercise his authority as an apostolic worker.
- He shared himself, not just the gospel, with the believing communities.
- He paid his own way so that he wasn’t a burden on any church or individual.
- He conducted himself in a holy, righteous, and blameless manner.
- Like a mother caring for her children, he was gentle and affectionate toward the believers.
- Like a father, he exhorted, encouraged, and charged the believers to walk worthy of God.
Action Steps
- Write down your core values and important priorities and ask God for the strength to honor them
- Practice saying no with grace and kindness. “I wish I could assist with that but am unable to at this time”.
- Remind yourself with posted scriptures from Col 3:23, Eph 6:1 and 1 Cor 10:31
“Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people”, COLOSSIANS 3:23
“Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people”, EPHESIANS 6:7.
“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God”, 1 CORINTHIANS 10:31
Acts 4 in front of religious leaders, Peter and John replied, “Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than him? 20 We cannot stop telling about everything we have seen and heard.”
Law 3. Beware the Empty House
I love when the grass at my house grows green and thick but I know I must do a couple of things at least in order to assist with the process. I typically use a multistep fertilizer that first prevents weeds and crabgrass and then enables the grass to grow.
If you use one without the other the grass will not grow well.
Spiritually a basic 2 step process must be used to cause your spiritual life to grow.
Jesus was in an intense conversation with the Pharisees a religious sect of Judaism at the time that prided themselves in knowing the Law of Moses, creating new laws to keep people in line and drawing attention to how amazing they were.
In Matthew 12:38-45 the former tax collector records an exchange with the Pharisees where they want evidence of who he is. Jesus refuses to play along but instead tells them that their religious practice actually makes them worst.
He then says something pretty wild.
“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, 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 person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.” MATTHEW 12:43-45
There is both a direct teaching here as well as a principle.
Principle
When we clean up our lives and put our houses in order (get religious or even invite Jesus into our lives), it’s critical that we have a steady influx of God’s life coming into our hearts.
Put another way, whenever you taken someonthing out of your life you must choose to fill it with the right thing.
Put Off-Put On in Colossians 3:5-17
5 So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires. Don’t be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world. 6 Because of these sins, the anger of God is coming.[b] 7 You used to do these things when your life was still part of this world. 8 But now is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, and dirty language. 9 Don’t lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds.
10 Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. 11 In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile,[c] circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized,[d] slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.
12 Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. 13 Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. 14 Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful.
16 Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives. Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives. Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts. 17 And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.”
If we remove something from our lives we must determine what we will fill it with.
Indirect Teaching on Demons
Demons are spirits that seek to carry out Satan’s agenda of robbing, killing and stealing through the control of humans. If cast out of a person that will seek to find a new person to inhabit.
Even those from whom Jesus has cast out demons must become true disciples or they will revert to an even worse condition than before: they will be inhabited by even more demonic spirits.
Direct Teaching to this Generation
The Messiah stands before the scribes and Pharisees. He has just miraculously healed a man of demon possession. The Pharisees have physical, tangible, visible evidence that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah. Will they believe? No. They go crazy trying to offer some other explanation. Instead they practice religion and making their lives pure but fail to embrace Jesus to fill their lives.
When we experience spiritual healing we must fully embrace Jesus into our lives in every aspect less we find ourselves caught in even greater sin.
Action Point
- Always 2 steps. Choose to remove/prevent. Choose to replace/fill.
- What would be examples of this in our lives?
END
Jesus then likens this demon-possessed man to this present, evil generation. He says that is the way it will also be with this evil generation. What does Jesus mean by this comparison?
This parable fitly suited them, the Scribes and Pharisees, and the men of that generation, from whom in some measure the unclean spirit might be said to depart through the doctrine, and miracles of Christ, to go into the Gentile world; but being followed there with the preaching of the Gospel by the apostles, returns to the Jews, and fills them with more malice, blasphemy, and blindness, than ever, which issued in their utter ruin and destruction; of which this parable may be justly thought to be prophetical.
He may be trying to describe the nation of Judea. The account that Jesus just gave about the man, the unclean spirit, and the seven other wicked spirits may have allegorical meaning in addition to being a literal description of supernatural evil.
The metaphor might be as follows. The man is Judea, or the spiritual leaders of Israel, such as the scribes and Pharisees. The unclean spirit is the sin of pagan idolatry, which the children of Israel and both the Northern and Southern kingdoms constantly struggled with until the Babylonian exile. The casting out of the spirit is the Babylonian exile and return under Ezra, Nehemiah, and later the Maccabees when the Jews renewed their commitment to the Law and God’s commandments.
But even as they externally pretended to keep the Law, they did not do so, because they did not obey from the heart. They neglected the core teachings and spirit of the Law. Even as they praised God with their words and external rituals, internally they were empty and unoccupied. When the unclean spirit of paganism returned with the Roman occupation, it found the Jews ready to be repossessed, but instead of merely reinstituting the old forms of Paganism, the unclean spirit also invited seven other demons such as religious legalism, social elitism, and sectarian strife. At which point the Jews were in a worse predicament than they were at the first. If Jesus had something like this in mind, then His point is that this present generation had become worse than the unfaithful generations throughout Israel’s history.
Other Thoughts
- In an allegory the elements are picked for their symbolic value. See Understanding Parables.
- The unclean spirit represents the spirit of unbelief that refuses to acknowledge the truth.
- Water is often a symbol of judgment. The unclean spirit is looking for a place of rest where it will not be judged.
- Leviticus 14:33-57 gives rules for unclean houses. A house that is empty, swept and put in order is a house on the verge of being cleansed by the priest.
- The empty, cleaned house symbolizes a person to whom the truth has been revealed and who is on the verge of being forgiven and cleansed.
- The Messiah stands before the scribes and Pharisees. He has just miraculously healed a man of demon possession. The Pharisees have physical, tangible, visible evidence that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah. Will they believe? No. They go crazy trying to offer some other explanation.
- Similar to the allegory, the unclean spirit rejects the truth and calls for reinforcements.
- The last state is worse than the first because to reject the truth is worse than being ignorant.
Introduction
Today I want us to consider the parable of the empty house. To put my message in perspective I would like to share briefly a story I found while preparing this sermon. That story was about a house that sat empty because its owner lived in a houseboat. He abandoned his old residence and bushes and trees grew up around it in a short time. Very soon it became a hangout for drug addicts, vandals, and prostitutes.
In this parable, Jesus likened a man delivered from demon possession and yet not repented to an empty house. In context, the main point of Jesus’ parable was not on principles of demon possession. His point was the seriousness of rejecting Him as completely as the Pharisees had. Nevertheless, the parable of the empty house shows us some interesting principles of demon possession also. Let’s read from Matthew 12:43-45.
1. The Parable of the Empty House shows the Nature of the Evil Spirits
I. The Jews believed that demons occupied dry places. A modern interpretation would be demons occupying places where God isn’t present.
II. They are driven by a strong desire to harm God’s creation, including us. They can’t rest until there’s an opportunity to carry out their evil plots.
III. The parable of the empty house, shows they tend to revisit their former hosts. Many experienced Christians have testified to such incidents.
2. The Parable of the Empty House shows the Need for Regeneration
I. Upon his return, if the demon finds the body he left is not occupied by the Holy Spirit, he will cause more havoc by introducing his allies into that body.
II. This indwelling of the Holy Spirit is not parallel to deliverance from demon possession. The person must be regenerated.
III. Regeneration is the process of transformation the Holy Spirit carries out in a person followed by repentance and submission to Jesus.
3. The Parable of the Empty House shows the Dangers of Religion
I. Jesus said it will be the same with this wicked generation. He was referring to the entire nation. Not just the religious leaders of the day.
II. The observation of religion was seen by Jews as the only path to righteousness. Anything higher or more spiritual (Jesus) was condemned.
III. Like the man in the parable, Judaism as a religion was good at sweeping and garnishing the soul but not filling the vacuum in man.
Implications
The Parable of the Empty House dispenses some very familiar and powerful yet not so well received implications for us today. Let’s consider these truths and their relevance to us living in the 21st century.
A. The Presence of God must be a daily Experience
In life, God’s presence must be a regular experience. If not some other spiritual presence will take that place. Apart from the Holy Trinity, there are only two types of spirits: Angels and Demons. Angels don’t possess us.
B. Deliverance without Repentance is Temporary
Without repentance, deliverance doesn’t last. The Holy Spirit begins to indwell us only upon repentance and acceptance of Christ as our Lord and personal Savior.
C. We are to live by God’s grace and not by Religion
In an age, even the church is facing the danger of being religionized let us not forget that grace is the core of Christianity and remember to walk in it every day because religion will always leave us dry and empty.
It’s interesting that Jesus said this parable to a group of Pharisees who demanded a sign just like the masses of our time who chase after signs and wonders but not after the undiluted gospel or its life-transforming power.
Conclusion
The parable of the empty house shows that Jesus regarded demons and demon possession as real phenomena and not just contemporary superstition. This is a very important fact because there are churches that don’t believe demons are real and they possess a personal interest in every individual on earth. We learn that Apparently demons (or at least some of them) desire a human host and look for a place among the empty, seeing it as an invitation.
Ultimately this parable presses the urgency for repentance which precedes regeneration and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Being far more heavily possessed by a host of demons, resulting in severe suffering, is worse than being possessed by a demon. Being filled with the Holy Spirit of God is the solution to such anguish. Today even if you forget all the three truths we learned from this parable don’t forget to live a life filled with the Holy Spirit.
This parable fitly suited them, the Scribes and Pharisees, and the men of that generation, from whom in some measure the unclean spirit might be said to depart through the doctrine, and miracles of Christ, to go into the Gentile world; but being followed there with the preaching of the Gospel by the apostles, returns to the Jews, and fills them with more malice, blasphemy, and blindness, than ever, which issued in their utter ruin and destruction; of which this parable may be justly thought to be prophetical.