Luke 11:21 Commentary and Bible Study

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.