Luke 11:21 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Luke 11:21

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The Lord Jesus Christ here describes the matter of demons and their occupation, and applies it to the way they tempt people. The devil is described as a strong man armed who keeps his palace and he keeps his goods in peace. That is us. We are his goods; that's the picture. We are just the furniture, the bits and pieces, and the slaves in his palace. How does he do it? He does, says the Lord Jesus, by keeping you in peace. He keeps his goods in peace, which means to say, so far as is possible he is anxious that you should never know that it is he who is doing it, that you are actually a programmed person, a tempted person, a manipulated person, a person who is being conditioned by the enemy of your soul. You mustn't know that. You mustn't be suspicious of that. We perhaps don't even believe in him. We don't consciously feel his temptations and his direction of us. If we were to try to burst out of his palace, then it would be another matter. He would take measures to restrain us. But short of that, he is keeping us and he's keeping us in peace. Should anybody mention a personal devil, a dozen other voices must join in chorus to laugh at the idea. You mustn't think like that; you mustn't know that you are in his hands. If you have a great tragedy in your life, or you are very ill, or perhaps you are at death's door, he has got to keep you in peace. You mustn't begin to think for a moment that, when you die, your soul is going to God. If there is some other upset in your life, you mustn't think for a moment, ‘This life is vain. Perhaps I ought to seek the living God.’ No, he will surround you at such times with some other comfort, some other optimistic soul, something to take you from such thoughts. You mustn't be worried about eternity, because that's his method to keep you in peace. The devil is described here as being armed, and of course he is armed. He is armed with a very good knowledge of us. He is armed with a knowledge of our weaknesses. He knows how to tempt us to ambition and pride and possessions, and he is armed with lies. He knows how to misrepresent God; he knows how to prejudice us against the things of God; he is armed so that he gives us over to conceit and ignorance, and he quietens our consciences if our consciences should trouble us about our sin. The devil knows how to help us to justify ourselves. He is well-armed to keep his goods far away from God, far away from repenting of sin, far away from seeking the forgiveness of the Lord. He keeps his palace and actually the language there literally means he rules his goods. He rules not only in the sense of protecting his goods, but he regiments his people. You are conscripted into the army. The whole idea is you're going to do as you're told. The military don't say to you, ‘You have got a good mind. We’re glad to have you with us. We want you to use your initiative, think things out for yourself.’ They say, we want to control you and we want to rule you. So from the first bugle call in the morning, getting out of bed at some unearthly hour, you have to do exactly as orders say. And it's exactly the same with the enemy of souls, with the devil. One of his favourite weapons is the lie. The Bible teaches us that the devil is the father of lies and misrepresentations and he's doing it all the time. Every one of us here has been lied to constantly about the Christian faith. As we grow up, our heads are full of the most extraordinary wrong ideas about what the Christian faith is. We have an open Bible in our land. We all have access to it, and yet there is tremendous ignorance about what the Christian faith is. My head is filled with these false ideas. We are given the impression that the Christian faith is a matter of being good and changing myself. Somehow I have got to live a miserable life and deny myself everything under the sun, and if I do that lifelong and live life as a chore, then perhaps I'll deserve to go to heaven.

Application

Whatever the devil designs for the trends of the next decade, all his people will follow those trends. If he decides that everybody is going to be highly trendy and original in some respect, so that everybody will be highly trendy and original like peas in a pod exactly, according to the devil's programming. He decides what ideologies are going to be popular, what all the original thinkers are going to be originally thinking the same about. He decides that what's going to be in vogue, what's going to be in fashion today, tomorrow, the next day, next year, next decade. He dictates the program. He keeps the fashions going, because all the fashions and ideologies and teachings he promotes will have this in common: they will keep us away from God. They will be critical of God; they will be gradually training man all the time to self-sufficiency, to scientific humanism, to rejection of God. All the fashions will be gradually training us to be less moral more godless.

Not only that, he keeps his goods in every detail so that every part of us is run by him. You think of the various parts of a man. Our eyes – the devil will keep them and we will desire the things he wants us to desire. He'll tempt us to desire the things he wants us to have. He won't tempt us to desire the things of God. He'll tempt us to be desiring the things of this world, and then gradually more and more sinful things too. Our mouths – we will never pray. Our mouths will be given over to boasting, self-aggrandizement, malice, or promoting his cause. They will belong to him. Our feet – even if you regard them symbolically. The feet stand for the direction of a man. Our aims and our plans for life, our philosophy of life, will be his. Our heart – our feelings, the things we really love best, and want most, will be the things he wants us to love. Our minds will be his our tastes our desires, our patterns of thinking. You set out on life not knowing who is manipulating it for you, and more and more you are dancing to his tune. You are doing it his way.

How willing we are to be duped by the devil! How willing we are to ‘live on his dainties’, to succumb to his suggestions and his wishes! It suits us to be told by the devil that we can have what we want, and be what we want: to be proud of ourselves, and reject God, and spend our lives on number one, and spurn and ridicule our Creator. That suits us. In the light of that, isn't it amazing that God is so merciful? We are the willing dupes of the enemy and we willingly insult our God; we are willingly programmed and carried along. Isn’t it amazing that our God could be so merciful, and could so long to save us, and could be so full of love and mercy! Isn't it amazing that the Saviour was ready to come into this world and suffer and die for us! We have gone that way without the slightest hesitation or resistance. Never when the devil suggests something to us do we question it. Never do we investigate, or hesitate.

Questions

I heard a very well-placed man in public life on the television say that the Old Testament is a feudal document, full of feudalism from a bygone age. He went on to say that of course it endorses slavery and various things of this kind. Now you see, we have these ideas because the faith is so misrepresented. The slanders against the faith are everywhere. There is no feudalism in the Old Testament. Did you know that the first document known to mankind that is actually against slaves is the Book of Genesis? Did you know that in the very first civilization under God's government, the controlling influence of slavery began to be rolled back? Slaves had to be liberated. We hear these lies, and we don't understand about the depths of the Bible.

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Luke 11:21 Commentary and Bible Study