Message Info:
- Text: Luke 11:14-28, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), No. 39
- Date: Sunday morning, November 16, 2025
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Audio File: Open/Download
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Transcript:
⟦Transcript⟧ I came across a story not long ago about a man who was a fire marshal, an arson investigator, and he was chasing down somebody in their community who was setting fires, destroying property, endangering lives, and this man, this investigator, seemed to always just be a half a step behind the perpetrator. He would usually be the first one on the scene when there was an arson. He seemed to know what the arsonist motivations were going to be. He seemed to know what to look for to the point that other people in the department started to suspect that maybe he was the arsonist.
Or that maybe he was working with the arsonist. Because to always be there and always be there right after the fact and to seem to be inside the guy’s head up till the point where, you know, he couldn’t get in front of him and stop him. They said, he’s got to be involved somehow. Until he managed to catch the guy. Because he had put himself in the frame of mind of being able to catch the guy.
And suddenly, then he’s a hero. This man who had been looked at with suspicion was a hero, because they could see clearly he’s not on the arsonist’s side. He was putting himself right there, thinking like this man, trying to track him down so that he could catch him and stop him. And evidently, this has happened on a few occasions, because when I read about this, I vaguely remember there being an episode of Unsolved Mysteries that talked about similar case.
And I should be able to remember where and when it happened, because that’s my favorite show, but I can’t remember all the details. That kind of thing has even come up in the plot of scripted crime dramas, that they think, oh, this guy, he’s right behind the criminal, or the arsonist in particular. He’s right behind him. He’s got to be involved. He’s so close to this, he’s got to be involved, until they take the man down.
And then it should be clear to everyone whose side he’s on. But imagine if the investigator went through all of this work and was looked at with suspicion and then managed to catch the arsonist and present all the evidence against him so that the man would go to prison for as long as he ought to be in prison. And then people still look at him with suspicion and say, no, he had to have been in on it. That’s the kind of thing that the Pharisees accused Jesus of.
That’s what we’re going to look at this morning. They accused him of being in league with Satan, of collaborating with Satan, even after his ability to overwhelm Satan had been put on display and should have made clear to everybody where Jesus stood. As we’re continuing our study through the book of Luke, we’re in chapter 11, about midway through the chapter this morning. If you’ll turn there with me, we’re going to look at this instance of the time the Pharisees blasphemed against Jesus, and there’s a similar story. It may be the same story.
I’m still researching that, whether this was the same event or not, but there’s an account in Matthew chapter 12, at least very similar circumstances, where Jesus refers to it as the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. And that’s what we’re going to look at this morning, where they are blaspheming Jesus and blaspheming the work that the Spirit is doing through Jesus. So once you’re there with me in Luke chapter 11, starting in verse 14, if you’ll stand with me as we read together from God’s Word, and if you don’t have your Bibles or can’t find Luke chapter 11, it’ll be on the screen for you where you can follow along that way. But let’s read what Luke says here. It says, and he was casting out a demon, referring to Jesus, Jesus was casting out a demon, and it was mute.
When the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke, and the crowds were amazed. But some of them said, He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons. Others to test him were demanding of him a sign from heaven. But he knew their thoughts and said to them, Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a house divided against itself falls.
If Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For if you say that I cast out demons by Beelzebul, and if I by Beelzebul cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? So they will be your judges. But if I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are undisturbed.
But when someone stronger than he attacks him and overpowers him, he takes away from him all his armor on which he had relied and distributes his plunder. He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. When the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest and not finding any, it says, I will return to my house from which I came. And when it goes, it finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and takes along seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they go in and live there, and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.
While Jesus was saying these things, one of the women in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed. But he said, on the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it. You may be seated. There’s a lot happening in this passage.
And at first glance, it doesn’t appear to all fit together. Not in the sense that it’s made up, but in the sense that we seem to just be jumping from topic to topic. But when you read all of this and you take it together, you look at it together in context of everything that’s going on, we see here an instance where Jesus is doing ministry, and the people see Him doing ministry, and the Pharisees begin to try to explain away his ministry, and they make against him perhaps the worst accusation that they could make, that he’s in league with Satan. And Jesus turns around and shows them how illogical and how foolish that accusation is, and begins to teach about why it’s impossible to look at him as somebody that would be in league with Satan. And so everything that happens through here really comes back to that argument, whether Jesus is on God’s side or on Satan’s side. And there are these couple of verses tacked on at the end where this woman seems to say something that has nothing to do with anything that’s been said, but really what she’s doing is praising Him for His wisdom, for the power of His teaching.
And one of the ways she does that is by pointing out that he is so blessed that God bless the woman who brought you into this world. And he makes a statement to her about the real blessing is to hear the word of God and obey it. Ultimately, all of this comes back down to the question of whose side is Jesus on? Now, for us, that’s a bizarre question.
If I were to ask you, without context, you know, without saying we’re looking at Luke 11 today in this story, if I were to walk up to you out in the Welcome Center and ask you, was Jesus on God’s side or Satan’s side, you’d look at me like I was a lunatic. As a matter of fact, there’d probably be a business meeting called for tonight, because you don’t know that, not sure you should be up there teaching tonight. For us, this is a settled question. Of course, Jesus is on God’s side. we know how the story ends for the people who were seeing this in real time there were very evident signs very clear what should have been clear signs of who jesus was but never underestimate the ability of religion to take the truth of god’s word and twist it into something that it’s not. And so the Pharisees were very good at convincing the people, well, maybe He is, maybe He isn’t.
The jury’s still out. And so we come to this point where some people were still on the fence, maybe not about whether He works for God or Satan, but we know at least some of the people were on the fence of whether is He the Messiah or is He not. What we see from the parallel story in Matthew chapter 12 is that the Pharisees, the ones who ask him the questions today and the ones who accuse him of being in league with Satan, they knew who he was. They knew exactly who he was. They were familiar enough with the scriptures that they knew he was the Messiah.
They saw the miracles that he performed, they heard the teaching that he delivered, and they knew deep down in their hearts that He was the Messiah, but they didn’t want Him to be the Messiah. So, rather than admit what they knew to be true, they began to try to explain it away. And how do you explain away the miracles? How do you explain away the authority that challenges their authority?
You say, this guy works for Satan. And I tell you this because it’s always is a question that somebody has. What is this unforgivable sin that Jesus talks about? Am I in danger of having committed the sin? Well, it’s possible that you’ve committed the sin if you were alive in the 30s AD and saw Jesus with your own eyes do these miracles and fulfill Scripture, and you knew that He had come in the power of the Holy Spirit as the Messiah to fulfill God’s plans, and despite that knowledge, despite knowing better, you were so hard-hearted that you attributed his work to Satan instead.
Because at that point, if you’re that hard-hearted against the truth, then you’ve gone past the point of no return. So, if you were alive in the 30s AD and did that, then yes, you very much are in danger of having committed the unforgivable sin. You and I, I don’t know that anybody in here was alive in the 30s AD. Anybody?
No, I didn’t think so. To see the work of Jesus Christ right in front of you and to attribute his work to Satan is a hard-heartedness that leads to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, which is the unforgivable sin. That’s what these men did here. But it’s rooted in something that I think we need to understand. And that’s that as Jesus walked and as He taught and as He ministered, His works were so incredible that His adversaries, they couldn’t deny that they happened.
They couldn’t deny that He did the things that He did. They couldn’t deny the miracles. They couldn’t deny the authority of the teaching. They had to come up with something that would explain it away.
And by explaining it away, they admitted that it happened. It’s the same thing as with the resurrection. None of the folks in that day said, oh, the tomb wasn’t empty. They said, oh, the disciples stole the body. And by saying that, they’re admitting the tomb was empty.
When they say, oh, you do these miracles by the power of Satan, they’re admitting that he was a miracle worker, and they’re admitting that he’s doing things that cannot be explained merely by natural means. So even Jesus’ critics had to admit that no mere man could do the things that he did. Even this morning, I was watching a history video as I was cooking breakfast. Well, I have an exciting life, right?
But they were talking about the religious faiths of our former presidents, and they were talking about, I believe it was Jefferson, Somebody else in that age. I was paying real close attention as I was getting breakfast ready for the little girls. But they were talking about how he said, I believe Jesus is a good moral teacher. But I deny that he was God. Folks, the people who were there and saw it with their own eyes would have some objection to that, to say, oh, he’s just a good moral teacher.
Even his enemies here admitted he did things that no mere human could do. His critics had to admit that no mere man could do what he did. Can we put that slide on the screen because some of them are probably trying to fill in the notes. There we go.
So if you’re trying to fill in the blanks on your notes. There it is. Even his critics had to admit he did things that no mere man could do. They knew in their hearts that it was the work of God, but they didn’t want to admit that, and so they had to come up with some other plausible explanation.
Who else could it be? It could be Satan. Let’s just say it was Satan. But in doing this, they are acknowledging something about Jesus, and that’s that he is no mere man. He is not merely just a good human moral teacher.
They saw him, in verse 14, do battle with the powers of darkness. They saw him cast out demons, and they couldn’t deny what he’d done. So, they accused him of being in league with Satan instead. Verse 15, he casts out demons by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons.
This was a reference to one of the pagan gods that they encountered in the Old Testament that I think they rightly identified with Satan. And they said, he does these things by demonic power, Because the demons can do things that you and I can’t do. Others didn’t go quite that far, but in verse 16 when it says they were asking for signs, basically they’re on the fence and saying we know that you do things that no mere man can do, but we want to see which side you’re on. Are you with God?
Are you with Satan? Because the demons can’t make signs appear in the heavens apparently. We want to see some Old Testament type signs. And if you can do that, then we’ll believe that you are who you are. So there’s not the accusation that he’s in league with Satan, but there’s still the question in their minds.
But all of this points back to the fact that they knew he was doing things that no mere man could do. They couldn’t say it didn’t happen. All they could do was try to explain away what he did. we look at Jesus’ life and we see things that no mere man can do. The one thing we cannot do if we take an honest look at the Jesus portrayed in the Gospels and see all the things that He did and all the things that He taught, the one thing we cannot honestly do is walk away and say, well, He was just a good moral teacher.
The things that Jesus did, the way He points them out, or as he points out, the things that Jesus did could only be done by the power of God. Jesus’ works could only be done by the power of God. If we’re faced with the choice, he can’t just be a man, and so there’s some supernatural power at work here. He’s either in league with God or he’s in league with Satan. He makes an airtight argument here that it is absolute foolishness to say that he’s in league with Satan.
Points out the absurdity of their arguments. If we look at verses 17 and 18, he shows us that if satanic power could exercise demons, then Satan would be dividing his own kingdom. Knowing their thoughts, he said, any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a house divided against itself falls. If Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand?
For you say that I cast out demons by Beelzebul. He’s saying if Satan is as crafty as he has portrayed in Scripture, he is not dumb enough to come to you and divide his forces. Oh, yeah, I’m going to use demonic power to cast out demons. And they might have been thinking, oh, he’s putting on a show, so Satan is using him to put on a show so he can mislead people. But you look at the whole of Jesus’ ministry and all the times He confronts Satan, all the times He confronts sin.
The whole of Jesus’ ministry, this is not just one trick to convince people so that He can mislead them. The whole of Jesus’ ministry has been confronting the darkness. And Jesus is pointing out this is a really foolish strategy, or this would be a really foolish strategy on Satan’s part. And are you foolish enough to think Satan’s that foolish? it’s a bad strategy not only is it a bad strategy but he points out that if satanic power can be used to do these miracles including casting out demons then even their own group is under suspicion i don’t think they’d thought about that see there were there were rabbis and there were pharisees evidently who would try to exercise demons And Jesus is saying, well, let’s think about this for a minute, because if I’m here casting out demons and I’m doing it by the power of Satan, Jesus was probably a little less snarky than I’m interpreting it, but… And if I’m casting out demons by the power of Satan, how do we know you’re not casting out demons by the power of Satan?
Turns it back around on them. He says they’re sons. That doesn’t specifically mean the biological sons of the people He’s talking about. He’s talking about those who came from their group, these Pharisees and religious leaders, kind of like the sons of Israel or those who have come from Israel, the sons of the Pharisees, those who came from this group. So, Jesus is posing a very valid question here.
Are your own people in league with Satan? If I’m under suspicion, so are you. and of course all of this is nonsense he’s not in league with Satan they’re not casting out demons by demonic power because Jesus points out when we get to verses 21 and 22 one power can only be cast out by a stronger power Satan divides his forces they’re all weakened, everybody’s weak now if you want to drive out an enemy, you have to come with a stronger power to drive them out. He says, when a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are undisturbed. So in our day and age, you picture somebody that’s got the state-of-the-art alarm system, they’ve got the floodlights all over their house, they’ve got the attack dogs, maybe a moat with crocodiles, they’re armed to the teeth. Nobody’s messing with that house.
Unless maybe you come in with a tank. You’re not getting through to that guy unless you bring in something stronger. The strong man can only be defeated by the stronger man. He says, but when someone stronger than he attacks him powers him, he takes away from him all his armor, which he had relied on, and distributes his plunder.
In this example, Satan is the strong man. We can’t deny that Satan is a powerful force, but the good news is that the stronger man is Jesus. And there comes a time when Jesus comes to the strong man as the stronger man and takes away all his armor and takes away all of his stuff and gives it to his people. And Satan is left with nothing. And so he’s saying, if you’re saying I’m casting out demons by the power of Satan, that doesn’t make sense.
I can only cast out Satan if I’m stronger than Satan. And we’re going to jump past verse 23 because I want to come back to this in a minute. He continues the argument. It’s like a little parenthesis there in 23. he continues this argument when we get to verse 24 by saying when an unclean spirit goes out of a man he passes through waterless places seeking rest and not finding any so the demons are cast out they go off into the desert they’re looking for a place to stay and he says not finding any I’ll return to my house from which I came meaning I’ll go back to the person I possessed and then he comes and in verse 25 when it comes it finds it swept and put in order referring to the person like a house, a house that’s been swept and put in order, somebody that these Pharisees have cast demons out of, and now their lives are put back together, and they look moral, and they look respectable, and everything’s in better order than it ever was, and he says the demons move right back in, and they bring all their family with them.
And why are they able to do that? Because these Pharisees would cast out demons. They knew the things to say, and they could cast out demons, but there was nothing to replace. There was nothing to fill the void that’s left by that demon. See, when Jesus cleans us up and straightens us up and removes the darkness, He fills that vacuum with His light.
He fills that vacuum with His Spirit. And there’s no place for that demon to return to. By the way, can I be possessed by a demon as a Christian? No, because the Holy Spirit already lives there.
And the weaker man can’t kick out the stronger man. God’s already there, and Satan’s not kicking him out. Doesn’t mean Satan can’t trouble you, but you cannot be possessed. by a demon as a believer. But what these people were doing, they were saying the right words, and they were casting out the demons, and then they were cleaning up people’s behavior, but not really dealing with the spiritual issues behind everything, leaving an open door for that demon to come back and, oh, we can move right back in, and everything’s in order. What they were doing was a counterfeit of the work of God.
And counterfeits of God’s power only make people worse off. Jesus says in verse 26, it goes and takes along seven other spirits more evil than itself and they go and live there and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. So, the audacity of these Pharisees accusing Jesus of doing things by the power of Satan that were changing people’s lives and reconciling them to God when these Pharisees were going out with a counterfeit of God’s power that left them more susceptible to the power of Satan than they’d ever been before. And Jesus calls them out for it. But in verse 20, so he’s listed all of these things.
If this, then this. If this, then this. All these reasons why it can’t be Satan’s power that he uses. But in verse 20, he says, But if I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come to you.
What he’s saying there when he says the kingdom of God has come to you, this is messianic terminology. He’s saying, if I haven’t done these things by the power of Satan, then I’ve done them by the finger of God. And if that’s the case, then the kingdom is here. The Messiah that you’ve been waiting for, God with us, is here. Oh, but Jesus never claimed to be God.
Right there. If I do these things by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come. If Jesus worked these miracles by the power of God, then He had to be the Messiah. So we look at this and we have to ask ourselves, are we going to believe what the Pharisees, they acknowledge the miracles happen, but are we going to believe that all the things Jesus does, that He does by Satan’s power or that He does them by God’s power.
It’s obvious that Jesus works by God’s power, and if He does these things by God’s power, by His own word, He is the Messiah and God’s kingdom has come. You say, well, that’s pretty forceful to say there’s no question. I’m really not the one who even said it. That’s where we come back to verse 23.
He who is not with me is against me. and he who does not gather with me scatters. It’s possible he’s addressing the whole crowd. In my mind, I think he might be addressing those people who back in verse 16 are just trying to test him and demand a sign from heaven. Maybe he’s with God, maybe he’s with Satan.
We want to find out. They can’t commit to a response. They can’t commit to an answer. verse 23 is very clear there is no middle ground when it comes to how we view Jesus and here again I go back to the statement the one thing you cannot do when you take an honest reading of the gospels is to look at it and say he’s just a good moral teacher when you read what he said about himself when you read what his apostles said about him and then and and then died in the most gruesome ways possible, rather than recant what they said. When you read these things, he either has to be the greatest hoax in the history of the world, the greatest charlatan who ever lived, or he has to be God in human flesh. There is no middle ground.
And Jesus said, if you’re not with me, then you’re against me. Because the tendency is to say, well, you know, I’m not really, we might say, I’m not really with him, but I’m not against him either. You know, Jesus says you have to pick. And if you pick, the choice has been made for you already.
One of the, well, the choice is already made. There’s no middle ground. Those who hear him and recognize him. We’re talking about these people who are witnessing all of this.
Those who hear Him and recognize Him for who He is and choose not to join Him still, they’re not bystanders. He’s saying, you’ve taken a side against me. And it does sound harsh, I admit, to say that anybody has just made themselves an enemy of Christ. But the Bible does teach that’s where we start out because of our sin. We wouldn’t need to have peace with God if we already had it.
Our sin has put us on the other side from God. it’s made us enemies of God in that if we want to use that terminology if we don’t make the conscious choice to be with him and to be for him then we’re against him by default and as harsh as that may sound it’s spoken by a God who loved us enough to pay the ultimate price so that we could be with him and for him so that we could have peace with him Jesus didn’t die for us because we were wonderful and lovely He died for us in spite of us being His enemies and He died for us because we were His enemies He paid the price so that enemies could become sons so that we could be forgiven and if we look at all that He’s done for us and we understand the price that He paid for us. And we still look at that and say, I don’t know. I don’t know that I want to take that side. We’ve already taken a side.
Now, I firmly believe that as long as there’s breath in our lungs, there’s time to fix that. I believe as long as we still feel the pull of the Holy Spirit, there’s an opportunity there to get on the right side and to trust Him as our Savior. But Jesus is clear there’s no middle ground. And then I want to end here in verses 27 and 28. This woman just wants to heap honor on Jesus.
I know it sounds like a strange thing to say, blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed. Please do not go out to Walmart today and say that to somebody as thank you. if they’re nice to you. Oh, blessed is the womb that bore you. They will lock you up, okay?
We don’t talk that way in our culture. The closest I can get in, okay, what would we say today is to say, oh, your mama must be so proud of you. She’s wanting to heap praise on Jesus, that he is so worthy of honor that even his mother is worthy of honor for bringing Him into this world because of the truth that she heard. She recognized in His words the truth and recognized Him for who He is. There is nothing wrong with what this woman said.
It just didn’t go far enough. And so Jesus doesn’t so much correct her as add to what she said. On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the Word of God and observe it. it’s not my mama who’s going to be right with God by bringing me into this world. Oh, there’s some doctrinal implications for that.
It’s not my mama who’s going to be right with God. It’s those who hear my word and do it. So she’s hearing all this truth that’s preached. She’s hearing him lay it out for the Pharisees about who he is.
And she’s so excited. She cries this out. And he says to her, what you ought to do is hear my word and obey. So once we recognize his power, once we recognize him for who he is, the correct response is obedience. Jesus calls us to step away from the pretense of neutrality, stop paying lip service to him, and act to obey him as Lord.
And the first thing we’re called to do is to repent and believe Him. See, we don’t get to heaven through perfect obedience. It’s our inability to obey Him perfectly that’s made us enemies of God to begin with. Jesus Christ came to earth to pay the price for my sins and yours.
Jesus Christ came to earth to bear the weight of God’s wrath against sin for you and me. That’s why He went to the cross, and He was nailed to that cross, and He shed His blood and He died to pay that penalty in full. And three days later, He rose again to prove it.
It’s another one of those things that could only be done by the power of God. And now you and I are left with this opportunity. to trust Him as our Savior and ask for that forgiveness and be forgiven. We’re to walk away and say, I’m not really going to pick a side in this.
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