Anchor My Faith

The Unclean Spirit Returns Home

Scripture: Matthew 12:43-45; Luke 11:27-28

In the previous lesson the background of an illustration Jesus is going to use to point out the importance of what we have in our hearts was laid out. The illustration began with an unclean spirit having been cast out of a person and was wandering around the area looking for another place to stay but was having little success and desired to return to its former dwelling place. In this lesson we will see what it does and how Jesus applies it to our hearts.

^{Mt 12:43} “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. ⁴⁴ Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. ⁴⁵ Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation.”

Like the younger son who had spent his inheritance on sinful living, he found life to be miserable and as he thought about the comforts of home, he decided he would return and see if his father would take him back as one of his servants. In the illustration that Jesus is using here, the unclean spirit decides to return to the person it used to dwell in. It returns to check out the person, described as a “house from which I came,” and “finds the house empty, swept, and put in order.”

Once the unclean spirit had left, the person cleaned the area formerly occupied, by reforming his life, and left the area empty; an area of the heart that God designed to be occupied by his Spirit. When the unclean spirit returns to look the situation over it finds the space unoccupied, but it reasoned that if it returned alone it would not have enough strength to resist being cast out again, so it goes and finds seven other spirits more evil than himself and invites them to come and live with him. They enter the man, causing his state to be worse than when the single unclean spirit lived there.

The space in the person’s life that God designed for himself was never filled with God’s Spirit and was thus vulnerable to being filed with the ways of the world or as in this case unclean and evil spirits. Jesus then draws the application by pointing out a choice we all have concerning that space God created in our hearts for himself. We can with human strength try to keep it clean and in order or we can come to Jesus in submissive faith and receive the Spirit of God. If God’s Spirit dwells within us, then we have a power in us that is greater than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4). “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God” (1 Corinthians 2:12 ESV).

If we leave God out of our lives by continuing to reject Jesus, then like the person in the illustration, or the evil generation during the time of Jesus, conditions of the heart will continue to become worse than at first.

^{Lk 11:27} “As he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!” ²⁸ But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”’

This woman thought that the mother having such a person as Jesus for a son must be a happy person. Jesus admits that she was happy; that it was an honor to be his mother. There is, however, a grater happiness and a higher honor and that is to “hear the word of God and keep it.”

Conclusion

What do we have dwelling within our hearts? Is it the Holy Spirit? Are we storing up his word in our hearts that we might not sin against him? What evidence does your life display that shows you are traveling along the correct road into eternity?