Archived Daily Manna | Rejoice Fellowship | A mission to release people to rejoice in the world.

Message: There is a world of truth in this compact and eerie little ghost story. The context does not define whether it was intended as literal truth — that unclean spirits actually go out of people and then return with seven others — or whether it is metaphorical. A person could not be faulted for believing either way. It sounds more like metaphor, however, since at least part of it cannot be meant literally. We do not have actual brooms that sweep our minds, and our mind is not a literal house. (I will also note that Hebrew writings use certain numbers non-literally, especially 7, 40, and 1000.) As metaphor, it has many levels of meaning. At the most mundane, it serves as a lesson in practical psychology. Consider the most prosaic self-help efforts. Even if life gives you a thousand reasons to quit . . . Now many people who are overweight go on a diet, lose weight, but then regain the weight they lost and more? If we personify overeating or physical indolence as a demon, we can drive it out by force of will, and “set our house in order”; but unless we put some new benign spirit in its place, the malignant one will return. Alcoholics Anonymous was a startling success, at a time when alcoholism was considered incurable, not because it instructed alcoholics to stop drinking; but because it concentrated on bringing in a new spirit, a “higher power,” to take up residency where the “alcohol demon” wanted to live. Christ means this to connect to the previous passages about Jonah and the people of Nineveh and Sheba, although it is hard to see at first. The Jews had been blessed with a covenant with God; the scribes and priests were the people charged with the keeping of it. They swore off sin, in a sense, as an alcoholic might swear off booze or a lecher might swear off pornography or prostitutes. But where they failed was by not understanding that outward, mechanical compliance with God’s law, as if it were merely a set of rules for behavior, was doomed. In fact, the very purpose of the old covenant, as Paul so often reminds us, was to demonstrate the futility of attempting to rid oneself of sin by simply not sinning. It works no better than trying to break an alcohol addiction by simply not drinking. Burning heart christian Christ, when He became incarnate, brought with Him the solution; the acceptance of God’s Word, which was grace personified in the person of Christ. He is not really saying that the people of Nineveh, or the Queen of Sheba, are righteous before God. They, like the Jews, had only evicted the unclean spirit, Satan, leaving his room clean and empty. Christ’s point is that evil will, inevitably, return — and his return will be even worse than before—unless we first accept Christ and can thus receive the Holy Spirit. This return to corruption had already occurred in Israel, for a great number of the scribes and priests, particularly the powerful sects such as the Pharisees, had become as corrupt and hypocritical as any Renaissance pope. These are they who will kill Jesus: Jews who had already suffered the return of Satan to their hearts and souls, and were thus unable to accept Christ in their hearts. “The last state of that person is worse than the first.” A good person who has not taken Christ into his heart is doomed to greater evil. But the flip side of this is a wonderful promise: “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” (John 14:23-24)