Introduction and Context
Well, last week I was thankful for my friend Chris Anderson being able to come and be with our church. I appreciate some of the feedback I've received about his sermon. I wish that we had time and the ability to play some of his music for you as well, because he has written several incredible and encouraging hymns.
His feedback to me was that he really appreciated our church. He speaks at quite a few churches, but he felt a connection with ours that he doesn't always feel with others. So, he wanted me to pass that on to you, and I want you to be encouraged by that as well.
Well, this morning, I want you to turn in your Bibles to Luke's gospel, the 11th chapter.
And we're going to continue our series in Luke as we're looking at the life and ministry of Jesus as recorded in this gospel.
I've said throughout this series that Luke is written to convince us of Christ and to help us have confidence in who Jesus is, that we can stake our lives on him.
The Significance of Jesus' Ministry
I've also said multiple times that as Luke wrote his biography about Jesus' life and ministry, he was documenting Jesus' teaching and miracles so that his followers could understand their significance. Luke made it clear in chapter 10 that absolutely no one could earn their salvation through their works. Whether they were casting out demons or whether they were doing other works in the name of God, none of that was capable of saving them. Instead, he quoted Jesus who told his disciples to simply rejoice that their names were written in the book of life.
Now in chapter 11, Luke is unpacking what Jesus explained would be important in the life of the believer. He opened chapter 11 by highlighting the priority of prayer, and then he described a contentious interaction between Jesus and the Pharisees. In fact, it's a little bit startling that in the first 13 verses, Jesus is describing how to pray, how to be persistent in prayer with some illustrations of that. And then immediately on the heels of that, he pictures Jesus casting out demons and Pharisees accusing him of being demon-possessed.
But I believe Luke has joined these two narratives together in order to help disciples of Jesus understand how to pray because he knew that Jesus' disciples would face demonic opposition. This opposition could easily tempt disciples to doubt their faith or abandon Christ altogether. Yet, if they remain faithful to pray for the kingdom of God to come, as he said in verse number two, then God the Father would answer all of their prayers and strengthen them with the Holy Spirit.
What we have in this section that we're going to read and study this morning is Jesus showing his disciples his power against the evil one, and that Jesus uses his word to overcome the resistance of sin and sinners and to bless believers. So let's read beginning in verse 14 and I'll continue through verse 28.
It says, Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute. And when the demon left, the man who had been mute spoke, and the crowd was amazed. But some of them said, "By Beelzebub, the prince of demons, he is driving out demons." Others tested him by asking for a sign from heaven. Jesus knew their thoughts, and he said to them, "Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall. If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? I say this because you claim that I drive out demons by Beelzebub. Now if I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do you followers drive them out? So then they will be your judges. But if I drive 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 and his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up his plunder. Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. 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 swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and they live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first."
As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, "Blessed is the mother who gave birth and nursed you." And he replied, "Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it."
Amen. This passage is fascinating with a lot of things that I will not be able to double-click on their detail. But what I want you to see very clearly in this section is that Jesus is highlighting the importance of his word to resist the work of the devil. He's highlighting the importance of his word to resist the work of the devil. Luke starts right in with Jesus driving out a demon, and this demon was oppressing a man and preventing him from speaking. He had made the man mute. So as Jesus comes across this man, recognizing the oppression that he's under by a demon, he moves to cast the demon out, and the crowd was amazed.
Jesus Confronts False Accusations
Well, in the midst of Jesus working this miracle that no one else had been able to accomplish, people come against Jesus with false accusations. And I believe the first section of this passage shows us that Jesus confronts those false accusations. So this is my first point this morning: that Jesus confronts false accusations.
Throughout Luke's gospel, Jesus has exercised his authority over demons and he's cast them out of multiple human beings so far. These demons have always submitted to Jesus' divine power. There were no arguments. There was no resistance. He spoke and they left. But Jesus also gave his disciples authority to cast out demons, and they marveled that it actually worked.
Crowds gathered to see the results of this ministry. And even Jesus' enemies are recorded in this passage as recognizing Jesus had authority over the demons. The problem is the Pharisees who were interacting with Jesus accused him of exercising authority that came not from him being God, but came from him being affiliated with Satan. They, unlike the crowd that was amazed, were people who made false accusations against Jesus. It says they had claimed that he cast out demons using demonic power from Beelzebub, the prince of demons.
There's much that we could say about Beelzebub, who this is, and what this is a referent to, but I think what is significant in context is not to lose sight of the big picture. That Beelzebub is simply another name for the prince of demons, Satan himself. And they're accusing Jesus of working on behalf of Satan. They're saying Jesus was exercising satanic power to influence and drive out demons.
But there was another group. Instead of a false accusation of saying Jesus was satanic, they offered Jesus an alternative. They said, "We have a test for you." They said, "We want to see a sign from heaven." They didn't believe that Jesus' power had come from God either, so they asked him to show them a different sign. They wanted Jesus to prove his power over demons came from God and not from Satan. And they insisted that Jesus perform a different miracle that they approved of and that they accepted as a miracle. That would be no miracle at all because they were setting the terms and writing the conditions. And God, the Son of God, was working on his own strength for his own purposes.
This reminds me that skeptical people who oppose Jesus stand as judges over him. They set the terms and conditions. They make accusations that Jesus should do this and not do that. And they also offer tests demanding that he perform according to their standards. One group judged Jesus with false accusation. They saw Jesus cast out a demon, and they responded by accusing him of being satanic. The second group also judged Jesus. They saw him cast out a demon, and they demanded a different miracle. In both cases, these were sinners blinded by their sin, resisting Jesus' authority with false accusations.
Religious people can read the Bible. They can attend church. They can dialogue with other Christians, and they can still reject the gospel. That's what's happening with these Pharisees: that they knew the Old Testament law. They knew the promises of the prophets that pointed to Israel's Messiah, but they were blind in their sin. They were deaf to the words of Christ. This reminds us that unless the Spirit of God opens our eyes and our ears to believe the gospel, none of us can see our sin and hear the voice of God. Instead, we look at the same evidence that convinces Christians and we reject Jesus. This is why they made accusations against him and they judged him according to their own standards.
But Jesus says he reveals something that they didn't consider. He pulls back the curtain in verse number 17. And Luke says Jesus knew their thoughts. You see, Jesus was not limited in his knowledge. He was all-knowing. And he understood what drove and motivated their resistance. And it wasn't simply that they rejected him as Jesus, but they were blinded by their sin. You see, Jesus' critics thought or accused him of being with Beelzebub when in fact Jesus was from God. They opposed his miracle because they rejected his identity as the Son of God. And they rejected his divine authority over the demons and over their lives. They wanted to discredit Jesus as either an agent of Satan or as an out-and-out fraud. So Jesus confronts their accusations and he confronts it by teaching them a principle and illustrating it with two stories.
The Principle of a Divided Kingdom
The principle that he taught them begins in verse number 17, where he says, "Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined and a house divided against itself will fall." In other words, kingdoms and houses, which are referring to nations and families, cannot survive if they're divided against themselves. They must unite against opposition, especially opposition from their enemies. This would have been an obvious thing to say and self-evident. So Jesus is using something that's clear to ask his critics a rhetorical question.
He says in verse 18, "If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand?" In other words, Jesus is asking them this, to put it a little bit more clearly: If Jesus was working for Satan, how could Satan succeed? If Jesus was representing the person that he was opposed to, how could that person make progress? Satan was opposed to Jesus in the wilderness in chapter four of this gospel, and Jesus opposed Satan. He withstood temptation from him. So to say that Jesus was casting out demons for Beelzebub would mean that Satan was using his archenemy, Jesus, to stop his own demonic attacks. It simply did not make sense.
Jesus was asking this question because his critics were accusing him of driving out demons by Beelzebub. And Jesus rejected their false accusation and exposed their flawed reasoning. Why would Satan work with Jesus? Why would the prince of demons let Jesus cast out demons and decrease their resistance? Satan wanted to stop Jesus at all costs, and his goal would be to increase the number of demons opposing Jesus, not decrease them. He wouldn't let Jesus do this work on his behalf.
If this were not enough, Jesus clinched his point by turning the religious leaders' accusation against their own colleagues. He asked them another question in verse 19: "Now, if I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your followers drive out demons?" If they believed Jesus was casting out demons with Satan's power, then what about the Pharisees or other Jews who were casting out demons too? Were they using Satan's power for their exorcisms? Of course they weren't. The Pharisees and other religious Jews were casting out demons not by the power of Beelzebub, but by the power of God. Even the Pharisees recognized that they needed God's power to do this. And apparently there were men other than the disciples who were casting out demons in Jesus' name in chapter 9, and Jesus did not stop them from doing this. He said that their casting out demons in his name supported him.
Therefore, Jesus continues to confront the Pharisees here in chapter 11. He says, since other religious Jews were driving out demons and they depended on the power of God, then the Pharisees could ask them to judge their accusations against Jesus. But Jesus was not interested in setting up a trial. He wasn't there to present evidence for or against his cause. He was simply trying to show that the Pharisees' false accusations revealed their unbelief. Beelzebub had blinded their hearts and their minds from accepting Jesus. So they were actually the ones who were opposed to God. It was not Jesus who was opposing God and working for Satan; it was them who were opposed to God and working for Satan.
Jesus further claimed that he was driving out demons by the finger of God. This is a metaphor for the fact that he exercised the power of God, and by his mere finger, he was able to drive demons out of their human hosts. Jesus didn't have to create some hocus-pocus ceremony. He didn't have an exorcism ritual. He simply spoke, and by his power, the demon departed. Jesus' ministry did not derive from Satan or any of his demons. His authoritative teaching and his supernatural miracles were a demonstration of his identity as the Son of God and a further demonstration of his power as the Son of God, revealing that the kingdom of God had come upon the people in verse number 20.
When we share the gospel of Jesus Christ, we will always encounter resistance. If Jesus himself, who was able to do miracles, faced resistance, then of course people will oppose us. And sometimes religious people are the most resistant to the advance of the gospel. Their commitment to their works and their false conceptions of God motivate them to do the exact opposite of what God wants. And in the name of God, some religious people deny his power and oppose the advance of the gospel and kingdom.
I'll give you a practical example of this. In 2021, Tucker Presbyterian Church, which is a PCA congregation on the other side of Atlanta, was trying to buy a church building. They were a church plant that had been started for the sake of the gospel, and they were looking for a permanent home. They came across an empty church building that was not being used. And upon investigation, they learned that this church building was the former ARP Presbyterian Church in Tucker. ARP, Associate Reform Presbyterians, a different denomination than the PCA, Presbyterian Church of America, that Tucker Presbyterian belonged to. So the elders of Tucker Presbyterian, learning that this building had historical Presbyterian connections, found out who owned it and they made an offer.
They offered $675,000 to buy this unused church building for their growing church. They needed space since they were a church plant and they were now, at that time, meeting in a former barbecue restaurant, and they thought the old Presbyterian church might be the answer to their prayers.
However, to the surprise and even the dismay of Tucker Presbyterian, the denomination decided to sell this old building to an Islamic study center instead. The Islamic Study Center offered a lower price than Tucker Presbyterian, and they only paid $611,000 for this building. The congregation of about 160 people left the barbecue restaurant and moved into a local school where they continue to worship now.
This story illustrates what happens when a church stops listening to and obeying the word of God. The old Presbyterian church in Tucker had lost their gospel witness. They were no longer declaring the glories of Christ, and they had closed their doors. They denied selling their property to a new church, and they virtually gave it away to an Islamic study center, giving the Islamic faith a further foothold in their community.
Yet God has established Tucker Presbyterian, and they're even reaching Muslims in that part of Atlanta. It's an incredible turn of God's providence, but it's also a reminder that when we set out to do the work of God, there can be people who claim to be Christians who are opposed to that work. Jesus confronts these kinds of people and he calls them out for what they're doing, that they're denying his power and authority.
Jesus Exposes Satan's Resistance
Jesus uses his word to overcome resistance by confronting false accusations. But secondly, Jesus exposes Satan's resistance. He shows the Pharisees that they were not merely opposing him, but that they were the ones who were working and doing Satan's bidding.
So Jesus shared two illustrations about his kingdom. First, in verses 21 to 23, he gave a parable about a man and a strong man and a stronger man. It says verse 21, "When a strong man fully armed guards his own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up his plunder."
Here Jesus is comparing Satan to a strong man who's protecting his house from attack. He doesn't want the gospel and kingdom to expand any farther. But Jesus also identifies himself as the stronger man who overthrows Satan. No matter how much power Satan exercises on earth, Jesus will overpower him in the end. He will take away Satan's protection and he will plunder his possessions before casting Satan and his demons and unbelievers into the lake of fire for eternity.
Who are the possessions that Jesus plundered? It's people like this mute man who had been possessed that Jesus liberated. It was the others that Jesus cast out demons from that he snatched from Satan. He proved time and time again that he was stronger than Beelzebub when he cast out Satan's demons and healed people like this mute man. Jesus exercised his divine authority and overcame the wicked schemes of Satan.
The Pharisees were wrong to accuse Jesus, and they were also complicit in Satan's evil. The Pharisees were not neutral judges. They were actually evil allies against Christ. According to Jesus, he says verse 23, "Whoever is not with me is against me." Anyone who rejects Jesus actually opposes Jesus. He didn't leave them any room for neutrality. Thus he said, "Whoever does not gather with me scatters." If they thought Jesus was casting out demons by the power of Satan, then they were actively dividing Israel and opposing the kingdom of God.
Sadly, these Pharisees and their hatred toward Jesus was affecting other people. They had no regard for the well-being of the mute man who had been possessed by a demon. The crowd, it says, marveled. They were amazed, verse number 14. But the Pharisees were punching back against the one who cast out the demon. These Pharisees were more concerned about themselves and their power than the spread of Jesus' name and authority.
Therefore, to make his teaching even more direct, Jesus confronted them about this man that he had just delivered. In verses 24 to 26, he gives a second illustration to make this very personal. He told his accusers what happens when an impure spirit comes out of a person. The wandering demon, it says, goes through arid places seeking rest and doesn't find it. And then he says, "I will return to the house that I left."
In other words, unless this formerly demon-possessed man believed in Jesus as his Lord and Savior, he would end up much worse than he was before. The demon might roam the earth looking for another vulnerable person to possess, only to come back to the house it left, the man who had been possessed. And Jesus compared this man to a house that had been swept, clean, and put in order, but was an ideal place for more demons.
You might wonder: wait a second, if Jesus cast out the demon, why would the demon come back? And why would he bring more demons? Well, he would do that because unless this man had filled his life with hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ, his life was left empty and vulnerable to attack. Though the man may have been in his right frame of mind and able to talk, unless he believed in Jesus, he was still vulnerable to the demons. This man who had been relieved of a single demon would now find himself in a far worse situation with up to seven other spirits more wicked than the original demon.
That's a Freudian slip, I guess. So, no, our deacons are not demons. I'm going to... Apparently, I'm thinking about Wake Forest and their demon deacons. So anyway, that's funny.
But these individuals were accusing Jesus of having the power of demons, and yet they were making this man vulnerable to multiple demons. They were not neutral with their false accusations and with their vocal opposition. Instead, they were revealing their hatred and their animosity to the work of God. This demon-possessed man needed faith in God. He needed the power of the Father. He needed the filling of the Spirit. And yet, these Pharisees would much rather have stopped Jesus and left that man exposed to demons.
The Apostle John in his first letter says believers have someone who is greater than demons residing in us. He says, "You dear children are from God and have overcome them because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world." John is saying what Jesus is saying that when God fills our lives, we cannot be possessed by a demon.
When we don't believe in the power of God through the gospel of Christ, then the power of Satan, the prince of demons, can control our life. This does not mean that demons actively possess every unbeliever; I don't think this passage is teaching that. But it does say that demons are oppressing unbelievers and they're influencing them to reject God and to face eternal punishment.
That means none of us, no one, can be neutral about Jesus. Neither miracles nor morality apart from God can save anyone. The most vulnerable people to Satan's attacks and Satan's influence are the people who think they're okay without Jesus. They may believe they're good enough, that they're trying hard. They try to be a nice person and they try to do what's right. Or they may think they can earn God's favor through penance if they just make up for the bad things that they've done and they just do something to sort of counterbalance the evil that they sense in their heart.
And yet all of this, Paul says, is religion that has a form of godliness but lacks God's power. As we think about Jesus exposing Satan's resistance, what he's ultimately doing is he's showing that this resistance resides in each of us if we're not regenerated, if we don't believe Jesus for our new life, that we have been born again.
Only the power of the gospel can help us recognize Jesus in his deity and accept him as our savior. And we all desperately need this. Even the Pharisees needed it, and it was available to them, and yet they rejected it, accusing Jesus of being a worker for Satan rather than recognizing him as the Son of God.
The point is this: that when we do not accept Jesus, we also reject him. And we ultimately smear his name, aligning him with Satan. When the truth is, those who reject Jesus are themselves aligned with Satan. And Jesus confronts false accusations that people make against him.
Blessing the Word of God
And he exposes Satan's resistance so that the last thing that I see here is that he can bless the word of God in the lives of his people. Jesus blesses the word of God and the lives of his people. As he went back and forth with the Pharisees about Beelzebub, there was a woman in the crowd who suddenly called out. Verse number 27 is a little bit startling. We have this back and forth, and you can feel the intensity of the arguments. You can see the red faces of the Pharisees as they oppose Jesus. And then it says, as they were saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, "Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you."
This was not only an abrupt interruption; it would have been a cultural faux pas. It would not have been normal for a woman to stand up and speak out in this kind of way. And yet here she is, an unnamed woman who is demonstrating that she believes Jesus is who he says that he is. As she stood up and said this, she offered a blessing for Mary, Jesus' mother, to show her gratitude for Jesus. Notice it says, "Blessed is the mother who gave birth and nursed you." This woman was not calling for the worship of Mary. She was not setting Mary up to be a co-redemptrix with Jesus. She was simply saying, "What a privilege for the woman who gave birth to you, because you are bringing us God." This is a formula and an explanation for her faith in Jesus.
And Jesus responded with a blessing for her and for all believers like her. He said, "Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it." Jesus' blessing takes the form of a beatitude similar to what he taught in chapter 8, and it calls for a response. He blesses those who hear his word and obey it. Jesus was saying to the crowd and to the woman, "Believe what I am saying and follow me with your very life."
Neutrality can be a guise for rejection. There are some agnostics who demand that people, Christians especially, provide more evidence to prove that Christianity is correct. While they may sound sophisticated, they may sound neutral, they're actually putting themselves in a judgment seat over God. They assume they're neutral and they simply need more evidence to be convinced, as if the evidence of the Bible is not enough. But no one is neutral before God. Sin blinds sinners and makes us unable to see the beauty of Christ apart from the gospel.
The apostle Paul says it like this in 2 Corinthians 4: "And if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." Yet Paul also says that the Spirit of God is who lifts the veil so that the blinded minds can see the glory and beauty of Jesus. 1 Corinthians 2: "The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, but considers them foolishness and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit."
I have a friend who is a full-time evangelist. He travels from church to church, helping lead them through a week of outreach and a week of renewed focus on declaring the glories of Christ. And I've heard my friend preach multiple times, and he's been a very effective evangelist that God in his grace has used him to explain and offer the gospel to many people who have repented of their sin and believed. And here's how my friend begins some of his sermons. He says, "Some of you are not going to hear what I say today. Others of you are not going to see the Christ that I'm going to offer you today. And several of you are going to reject what I'm about to share, and you can't stop yourself from doing it."
He sets the stakes right at the beginning of his sermon by saying, "I have a message that it's impossible for you to receive or to believe." But then he goes on to show them in the gospel that the Spirit of God can open their eyes. The Spirit of God can help them hear the call of the gospel. And my friend is very passionate and clear in calling people to repentance and faith in Jesus. And many of them do end up seeing and hearing the gospel of Christ.
As we think about this in our own context, Jesus is reminding us that there will be accusations against Christians who declare the gospel, but he exposes Satan and his schemes. Jesus works so that his word is blessed in and through the church for the glory of God. I like what one Reformation writer wrote about this. He said, "It is not enough to hear God's word. One must also grasp it as a valuable treasure and not just let it go by. The devil also hears the word of God, but he does not obey it."
The devil is very troublesome here. For he turns many people away from God's word so that they do not hear God's word, or if they hear it, they do not obey it. The point is, Satan knows God's word probably better than most of us. Yet Satan doesn't believe it, and he wants to take as many people away from it as possible. This is why Paul wrote to the Romans, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.
Earlier in my sermon, I mentioned Tucker Presbyterian Church. Well, I shared the story of how the old Presbyterian church rejected their offer to buy their building. Well, this past June, to the surprise and delight of Tucker Presbyterian, delegates from the Associate Reform Presbyterian denomination voted to donate $650,000 to Tucker Prez for their building fund. The money came from the dissolved assets of the presbytery that had sold the building to the Islamic Study Center. So the broader denomination recognized the wrong that had been done and they gave money to this new church that's in desperate need of its own facilities.
God has clearly used his word in the life of this local church despite satanic resistance. And God is blessing Tucker Prez according to his word. Brothers and sisters, if we're serious about declaring the glories of Christ to our neighbors in Milton, we can expect Satan's resistance among us as well. This resistance is not a sign of failure. It is not a reason to give up, but it's an indicator of progress for the gospel.
Over and over again, I could tell you stories of church members who fight and divide when the church hears and obeys God's word. Another pastor in Metro Atlanta recently shared an example from his church. He said, when God was blessing his church and their gospel witness and new believers were being added to their number, there were church members who were starting to attack him and reject the new believers. They said, "Our church has enough people already. I like the friends that I have here and I don't want to have to get to know new people. It's too inconvenient when these new people come and we have to teach them our ways."
These church members are not neutral about the gospel. In fact, if they're not careful, they're doing the work of the devil by opposing the gospel. And I would encourage us to not oppose the gospel, but to advance the gospel. God wants our church and other faithful churches to be a light to sinners who are trapped in darkness. And the way we do this is by declaring the glory of Jesus Christ. We cannot hide the gospel. We cannot keep it to ourselves. Instead, this light penetrates the darkness that is all around us. And we must let our God-given light shine before others and pray for his kingdom so that our neighbors may glorify our Father in heaven.
Declaring the Glories of Christ
Jesus uses his word to overcome satanic resistance to the gospel. And Jesus wants us to declare this message as far and wide as we possibly can. When we get serious about declaring Jesus, Satan will get earnest about trying to stop us. And I would say, I have seen this firsthand over and over again, that well-meaning people oppose the advance of the gospel for one reason or another. Whatever the reasons are, they all boil down to a simple fact: that they're comfortable the way things are.
Yet God wants us to take the gospel to everyone that we can. And God wants to build his church and grow it. This is not a message or a gauntlet to throw down to say, "Change is coming and we're going to do anything that we have to just to attract people and share the gospel." But it is to say, as we lean into advancing the glories of Christ and declaring Jesus to sinners, that it will change us just as it will change our church.
And my prayer would be that we would accept that willingly, gladly. That just as God sent someone to you and to me to tell us the gospel of Jesus, that we would go and share Jesus with others. And no matter the resistance, no matter the work that Satan throws at us to try to stop us, they would press on undeterred.
Peter encouraged the believers in his first epistle that they would suffer for the sake of Jesus. I say "encourage" and "suffer" together because that's what Peter does. And he says that opposition is just a reminder that we're working for the Savior who has already beaten down the opposition. So our job is to do what God would have us to do.
I want our church to continue to be faithful. And I want God to bless his word through our lives as we share his word to other people. God is going to use his word to overcome resistance and grow the kingdom. Let's be a part of that.
Let's pray. Father, as you have directed your word this morning, I pray that we would be sensitive to what you're saying. Help us not to think that we're somehow neutral or that we can somehow be casual Christians. Father, instead, show us again and again how radical the gospel is, that you drive out demons, but you also forgive sins. And you have forgiven us when we place our trust in you. You've given us new hearts and made us new people with a new way to live.
And Father, I pray that we would live in such a way that we declare the glories of Christ, not simply by being nice people or good people, but we declare the glory of Christ by speaking the hope of the gospel, that we're willing to identify sin and that sinners need a savior. And Father, I pray that as we do this, you would bless our church by bringing new believers in our midst and help us to love them. Help us to encourage them and help us to disciple them. And Father, I pray that you would raise up new generations of believers that would continue your gospel work until you come again. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.