Good morning, everyone. Welcome here to our morning service at Calvary Baptist Church of Trehearne. And welcome, for those who included us faithfully, to our live stream all over the world. Lord bless, and please open your hymnals to number 176. 176, break thou the bread of life. Number 176. Break all the bread of life, dear Lord, its breakdown loops beside the sea. Beyond these sacred beats, I seek thee, Lord. My spirit pines for thee, O As thou didst bless the bread by Galilee Then shall our bondage cease, all fetters fall And I shall find my peace, my all in all Thou art the bread of life, O Lord, to Thee Thy holy Word, the truth that saveth me Give me to eat and live with Thee above Teach me to love thy truth for thou art love. Oh, send thy spirit, Lord, now unto me, that he may touch my eyes and me Show me the truth concealed within thy word, and in thy book revealed, I see the Lord. Our Heavenly Father, we are thankful for Thankful to thee for that bread of life, thy word, which is available to us. We're thankful for the Holy Spirit who gives us understanding once we are saved and also works in the hearts of the lost, convincing them of sin, of judgment, and of righteousness. We're thankful for thy mercy and grace toward us. And we pray for each one that's listening today. Thou knowest the heart of each one. Pray that each one might desire to know thy peace and blessing. We do pray for our Zoom meetings that we have on Fridays that we can be a help there as well. People would understand the truth and understand the importance of submitting to the truth. And we continue to pray for our country of Canada and the great need for souls to be saved. We do pray that the outs continue to work in the hearts of individuals, that there might be someone who would want to come and join us here and learn the work so that they could assist and take over eventually. We pray for health and strength to carry on, and we ask that thy will would be accomplished, that we would be a light and a blessing in this community and around the world. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. And over to 218. Burden are lifted at Calvary. Number 218. Days are filled with sorrow and care Hearts are lonely and queer Burdens are lifted at Calvary Jesus is very near Burdens are lifted at Calvary Calvary, Calvary Burdens are lifted at Calvary Jesus is very near Cast your guilt on Jesus today Leave your worry and fear Burdens are lifted at Calvary Jesus is very near Burdens are lifted at Calvary Calvary, Calvary Burdens are lifted at Calvary Jesus is very near From old souls the Savior can see Every heart they can see Burdens are lifted at Calvary Jesus is very near Burdens are lifted at Calvary Calvary Burdens are lifted at Calvary, Jesus is very near. And over to 225. 225. Blessed assurance. Sorry, 255. 255. Blessed assurance. Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine O'er the fortress of glory divine Hail of salvation, purchase of God Born of His Spirit, was in His blood This is my story, this is my song Praising my Savior all the day long This is my story, this is my song Praising my Savior all the day long Perfect submission, perfect delight Visions of rapture have burst on my sight Angels descending bring from above Echoes of mercy, whispers of love This is my story, this is my song Praising my Savior This is my story, this is my song Praising my Saviour all the day long Perfect submission, all is at rest I am my Saviour Watching and waiting, looking above Filled with His mercies, love of His love This is my story, this is my song Praising my Saviour all the day long This is my story, this is my song ♪ Praising my Savior all the day long ♪ Morning. Take your Bibles and turn to Luke's Gospel account of the Lord Jesus Christ, chapter 11. We're going to be reading there verses 24 to 26 of that chapter. We'll stand, please, for reading of God's word, Luke chapter 11, verses 24 to 26. When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places seeking rest. And finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself. and they enter in and dwell there. And the last state of that man is worse than the first. Our Heavenly Father, we're thankful this morning again that we have thy word, that thou hast been gracious to us in recording thy word and then preserving it for us so that we have the truth today. Things that we need to consider in our own lives as we live in this world that we might understand the importance of knowing thee as our God and Savior. Understand as well that there is an enemy. Satan is trying to keep people from knowing the truth, trying to interfere in Christians' lives once we are saved. But we're thankful that thy word tells us that we have a God who is greater than all and that we can live victorious lives. We can know thy peace in our hearts. and we can be a blessing to others as well. So we pray as we look at these verses today that we would allow thee to be our teacher, that we would want to know the truth and know thy peace and blessing in our hearts. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. The title of the message this morning is Be Careful, Who Cleans Your House? Be careful who cleans your house. And that's very important. Last week, we looked at the verses from verse 14 on to verse 23, where Jesus was casting out a devil. And we have noted in the past that Jesus was faced with people that were possessed of devils many times through his three and a half years of public ministry. And we've noted that, that for some reason, we don't know, we're not given the details, but seemed to be a lot of people in the time that Jesus was on earth who were possessed with devils. Personally, I still believe that there are people that are possessed with devils today. I don't believe that God has called anyone to have a ministry of exorcism, but I do believe that people can be possessed and that the way to fix that, to address that, is when the person realizes their need and turns to God for salvation. Christians cannot be possessed of the devil. They can be oppressed, but they cannot be possessed, because the Spirit of God dwells inside the true child of God. The first thing that we want to notice in this passage is the nature of the unclean spirit. So we see in verse 24, when the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, Now, it doesn't tell us in this context, it doesn't tell us that he is cast out, but it says that he goes out when the unclean spirit is gone out of a man. So it would seem by the context of the verses that we read, that this unclean spirit is just going to look around somewhere else. And that's the nature we see here. It says, When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest. When Jesus cast out devils, he never left them to just wander around and inflict their torment on others. He dealt with them in such a way that they could not be a problem to others. But this unclean spirit, he tells us here, leaves the man and he's walking through dry places seeking rest. Now, we don't see these unclean spirits. The Bible calls them devils at times. Satan, of course, as we noted last time, the Jews accused Jesus of working through Beelzebub in verse 18. Beelzebub was the chief of the devils, and that makes him Satan. Verse 15 tells us that. So he is the chief of the devils. And under him, the Bible tells us that when Satan fell, he took one third of the angels with him. So we don't know how many angels there are. In fact, the Bible tells us there's an innumerable number of angels. So we don't know how many there are, but one third of them were cast out when Satan was cast out. So he has many helpers to do his evil work in this world. Now, one of the things that we also understand from the scriptures is that we cannot excuse ourselves and say, well, the devil made me do it. And we don't walk around and think that there's a devil behind every door. But we do need to understand that the devil is busy today. He is at work. When we listen to the news, and there's an account right now of a young man, 17 years old, in Ontario, who apparently got a hold of an eight-year-old girl, and this has happened a couple of weeks ago already, and the girl went missing from her house, her yard. And they found her, I believe it was a day later, and the injuries on her, at first they thought that she had been attacked by an animal. The injuries, they said, were quite severe on her, and they assumed that she had been attacked by a wild animal. So the police warned the families in that community, keep your children indoors or well supervised, because they thought there was a wild animal roaming around. And then through testing, they discovered it was not a wild animal, but it was a person. So now they had to find the person. And they did. It was a 17-year-old male that attacked this eight-year-old girl and hurt her severely. And so they're still working on releasing details on that. But what would cause a 17-year-old boy to do that to a young girl? There's obviously not a Christian boy that he would do something like that. Is he possessed? No, I'm not willing to say that. I don't know the boy. But obviously he is being influenced by evil things to go and hurt someone else. There's no other reason why you would go and attack someone and hurt them. So we know that there is much evil in our world, and that's just one case of many. where people are being influenced to do things that are not right. And that's why it's so important for parents, first of all, to be saved. And then secondly, to be teaching their children the importance of knowing the Lord and knowing him personally in their own lives. Because otherwise, Anybody is capable of doing evil deeds. Not everybody does, not to that extent at least, but anybody is capable of that. And the Bible doesn't teach us again to have to walk around on our tiptoes being fearful that we're going to be possessed, but we need to understand that there is only two ways to live. One is the right way and one is the wrong way. The Bible tells us that we're all born as lost sinners. And as lost sinners, we are influenced by the devil. And so there are many things that people do to expose themselves to that. And we have talked about that in the past. We know that one of the things that our current government did about 10 years ago is they legalized marijuana, and marijuana is proved to be a drug that affects the mental state of the individual. It's worse in that regard than alcohol is. Alcohol is also a drug that affects the mental state of a person. But marijuana is worse. And marijuana is the gateway to harder drugs. And that's the problem. Our government either doesn't care to know that or knows it and doesn't care that they are encouraging people to get involved in such things. Now again, everybody needs to choose for themselves. Nobody is forced to do wrong. So we need to choose for ourselves what we're going to get involved in. But again, we don't know how to make wise choices unless we are, first of all, saved. So again, going back to our text, we see this unclean spirit who's walking around looking for a place to rest. And it says in verse 24, finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. So again, this gives me the the understanding that this devil was not cast out, but chose to leave for whatever reason. Doesn't tell us the reason, but he chose to leave. So the Bible is clear that there is spirit activity taking place in our world. Again, not something that we need to be frightened of, but we need to understand it and we need to guard against it. One of the things that, there are several ways that people open themselves up to this. We have talked before that rock music is one avenue that the devil uses to get into people's lives. The musicians, some of the rock musicians have admitted themselves that when they get up on the stage, something takes over their bodies. They have admitted to that. So there is demonic activity taking place that people open themselves up to, but because of their ignorance of what's going on, they are not even really aware of what they're doing. And they think it's fun. When I was a young person, LSD was a very common drug that people would get involved in, but it was also a very harmful drug. And a lot of people were killed through the use of that, and many others were damaged for life because of that drug and its effects on a person. But all of those things are ways that a person opens them up for the devil to come in. The Bible tells us that we are to be in control of our minds. And when a person takes something that alters their mind, whether it's alcohol or drugs, They are no longer in control. They are opening themselves up for something else to enter in. Now, as I mentioned, we don't know what was going on in the time of Christ that people were possessed. They didn't have the drugs that we have today, but they obviously had hallucinating type of drugs at that time as well. But what the people were doing here to open themselves up, we don't know. Bible doesn't tell us that. But we know in our time, we know some of the things that open a mind up for the devil to be able to enter in. And it's important for us to be aware of that and to stay away from those things. So here it talks about this spirit, this unclean spirit, and that's what they are. They're unclean, and it's leaving one person's life. It's not talking about a physical house. It's using the word house, but it's speaking of a person. It tells us that in verse 24, when the unclean spirit has gone out of a man. And then later on it says, I will return unto my house. So that unclean spirit takes up residence in this man leaves that man, goes somewhere else, or is looking for somewhere else, doesn't find anything suitable, goes back to where it came from. The second thing we want to notice here is the danger of secular exorcists. The danger of secular exorcists says in verse 25, and when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. So again, we note that Jesus cast out many devils. We notice as well in the book of Acts that the apostles had the same ability to cast out devils. The apostle Paul did that. He addressed people that were possessed with devils as they were following after him, and he was able to cast them out. Today, as I mentioned, I don't believe that anybody is given that particular ministry of going around and casting out devils. I believe that in the course of any godly church, there might be opportunity to help someone who is possessed of a devil. But again, that would take discernment from the Lord to be able to do that, and that we don't just go around and think that everybody's got a devil. We know that in the early history of Canada, that the Catholics and the Anglicans assumed that the natives were possessed and they tried different ways to purge them of their language and to change them and it was very ineffective and it was wrong. Yes, the native culture is a pagan culture, but you don't change it by taking away their language. Their customs, yes, some of them need to be addressed, but again, it's through the preaching of the gospel that you help people to see the importance of right thinking and right action. So when you have, uh, A person, it tells us here again, when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. So here is a man, verse 24, and in verse 25, that the devil has left, and now he comes back and he finds the place clean, and the word garnished there means that things are set in order. So this devil sees inside this person, and he sees that this person has things set in order. But again, the order is not according to the word of God. Now there are, as I mentioned, there are many lost people who live quite decent lives. They're not outgoing and murdering. They're not stealing. They may swear sometimes, which is sin as well, but in the eyes of the world, the world would say, that person lives a pretty clean life. They're not in trouble with the law, and they get along with other people, and they grow up, they get married, they have children, and life carries on. So they look like from the outside, from the secular mindset, they look like things are going pretty good. They've got their house in order. But there's something missing. Even though their house may look like it's in order, it's still unprotected. And that's the problem that we find here. And that's the problem that we have in our world today when people go to individuals who claim to have the power to cast out devils, but they don't. And they are not able, therefore, to help the person who is in trouble to get their life in order. The only hope, we've talked about that many times, we talked about it in Sunday school, the only real hope that there is for man is to turn to God, be forgiven, and saved. Otherwise, they're still lost. There are many people who reform themselves over time. There are people who have had trouble with alcohol and they're able to get off the bottle. and they can change their life, but they're still lost. So in the end, they're still going to hell. And that's the problem. We need to understand that. A person needs to be more than just reformed. A person needs to be transformed. And that's something that we cannot do for ourselves. If you go in your Bibles to Romans chapter 12, Romans chapter 12, verse 1, the Apostle Paul is writing there and says, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. So I think there are still toys around today, used to be when our children were young, and they were called transformers. And someone gave our boys cars at one time, And those cars, you could flip things on them, and then they were a person. And that's a transformer. It changes from one thing to something else. And the Bible tells us in Romans 12, 2, that we need to be transformed, not conformed, but transformed. We need to be changed. And how are we changed? It says, by the renewing of our minds. So our minds need to be changed the way that we think needs to change. And that happens when a person gets saved and as they continue on in their Christian lives, they're continually transformed. I was saved when I was 20 years old. That was the beginning of my transformation. But those people that know me from when I was 20 till now, they would say that there has been quite a bit of change that has taken place in my life from that time. Because the transforming work that happens in a Christian's life takes place as long as the person lives. There are still things that need to change in my life. God knows that better than I do. But it's important for me to be willing to be changed. And of course, the changes need to be in accordance with God's word. So the renewing of our minds is as we are impacted and influenced by the truth that we change. And so here this unclean spirit is looking around and looking for a place to rest, doesn't find a place, goes back where he came from, and finds the place is clean, and it's set in order. So the person has tried to fix his life, but he's done it on his own. How do we know that? Well, the third point we have is an open invitation to destruction, verse 26. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first." So there's the problem when a person tries to either clean up his own life or goes to some other secular source to try to find help, but doesn't go to the right source, which is God. The only way to fix the problem stated here is when the person is born again, when the person is saved. That is what the Bible teaches. Salvation is what changes the person. If you go in your Bible, it's 2 Corinthians 5. 2 Corinthians chapter 5. And in verse 17 it says, therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. That's what happens when a person gets saved. As I mentioned, I got saved when I was 20. I was raised in a home. My parents took us to church every Sunday, and until I was about 16, I went to church every Sunday. At that age, I decided I'm done with church, and I left home, and I didn't want anything to do with God, and so I went to church occasionally. but not because I was interested in the truth, but simply because I wanted to meet with other young people. So I would go to church at times for that reason. So I knew of God, but I didn't know him as my God. And when I was 20, that is when God got through to me and showed me that I needed to repent and be saved. And when I did that, my life was changed. And everything that I had been taught in the past, I needed to now examine all of that in the light of the truth, which is the word of God. And so as I began to read my Bible, and I began to realize that there were things that I had come to believe that were not biblical. So then I had a choice to make. Is the Bible true? Or is the church true? Now, the church should be true, but if the church is teaching different than what the Bible teaches, then it's a choice that has to be made. Who's right? And the fact is, the Bible is right. If you have a King James Bible for the English-speaking world, you have the Word of God. If you take one of the perversions, and there are many of those, you do not have the word of God. So you're gonna find things that disagree with the King James, and you're gonna find things that are not true. So it's very important to have the word of God, and that's a discussion for another day, but it is very important to have the word of God in order to be able to examine what it is that you believe. Is it right or is it just your opinion or the opinion of someone else that you have accepted? So in our text again, this unclean spirit, he goes back to where he came from and he finds the house is clean, everything is in order, secularly speaking. So what does he do now? He goes and he takes seven other spirits more wicked than himself. And again, we see that in the spirit world, and it is a real part of society, In the spirit world, there are many devils and there are different rankings. Some are more wicked than others. That's what it tells us here. More wicked than himself. So this evil spirit, this unclean spirit, he wants friends. He wants association. And so even amongst the angels, they are not independent. The good angels, they're not independent. They work together. The fallen angels, they work together as well. The fallen angels have a goal, and their goal is to keep people from the truth. No one is born possessed of the devil, but everybody is born a lost sinner. And so as lost sinners, we get our influence from the devil through the music and other things that we involve ourselves in. Some people, as we mentioned already before, some people open themselves up to being possessed of the devil. When we were younger, there was a thing out there called the Ouija board. I don't know if it's still being used or not, but the Ouija board was a tool of the devil. And through the use of the Ouija board, people were opening themselves up to greater influence and possibly even possession from the devil. And so there are things that people do that open themselves up. They invite, not that they say Satan come into my life. Now there are places where people do worship the devil intentionally, but there are ways that people open themselves up through ignorance of not being aware of what they're doing, but it feels good. And so that's why they do it. And that goes for many activities that the world has out there that feel good to the flesh, but they're not good for us. And so it's important for us to understand that. We don't go by feelings. A Christian doesn't go by feelings. A Christian goes by truth. But the world goes by feelings. Up until I was 20, as I mentioned, I decided I'd had enough of church, I didn't like what I saw there, didn't like what I saw in my family, so I left. But I was basing my judgment on my feelings, what I thought was right, not based on truth. And that's the way many people operate. They just operate on the superficial level of feelings. This sounds good to me, makes me feel good, so I'm going to do it. We do that with food. We have different things that we like. There are things that my wife likes that I don't eat. There are things that I eat that she doesn't eat, because we have different things that appeal to our taste buds. Some of them, my wife will tell you, that I eat things that are not good for me. They're not healthy for me. And I don't doubt it that there are some things that I shouldn't be eating. And I've cut back on some things because I realize they're not good for me. So that's the way it is with our taste buds. But it's also the way it is with other things. There are things that we like, and there are things that we don't like. And once we get saved, now we can begin to understand if those things that we like are good for us or not. And so we need to be saved and have the Spirit of God dwelling in us to be able to have that discernment. This person in our text doesn't have the Spirit of God in him. And so this unclean spirit comes back to him. And because everything is clean in this person's life, secularly speaking, He brings seven other evil spirits with him, more wicked than himself, and they enter into this person. They take over in this person's life. Says they dwell there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So the devil, again, according to the word of God, has no interest in your well-being, nor in mine. He's not interested in us being happy. He's interested in destroying life. That's the purpose of Satan. That's the purpose of the unclean spirits. They don't care that you're happy. And so people look for ways to be happy, again, through drugs and alcohol and rock music and other things like that, but they're not really happy. If you're into drinking, you know that if you take your liquor and you drink it and you feel a little bit better because you're drinking, but you know that it doesn't last. And if you drink enough and when you get off of it, you got a headache. And if people talk too loud and you say, don't talk so loud, it hurts. Why? Because that alcohol is a poison. and it's affecting you in a negative way. For a while, it makes you feel good in secular terms, but the after effects are not good. In fact, even secular society has realized recently that consuming too much alcohol causes cancer. So now they're warning about that. And so, They understand that there are dangers to drinking alcohol, and yet they don't want you to stop drinking because they make too much money off it. It's all about the money. Same with cigarettes. They don't really want people to stop smoking because they make a lot of money off of cigarettes. If they really wanted people to stop, they would just ban it, period, and that's it. But then we'd be back into the time of the Prohibition days, and that was impossible to stop people from bootlegging, and so they figured the better way is to legalize it. Same thing with gambling. Gambling used to be a crime, and they would go after gamblers and shut down gambling houses, but now the government is in charge of the gambling houses. And so, that's the way the world deals with sin. They can't stop it, so they legalize it and they try to make money off it. But a Christian doesn't need that stuff and finds satisfaction through serving God. That's the difference. I don't need alcohol in my life. I don't need to gamble. I can't understand why anybody would want to work hard for their money and then go and throw it away in a gambling house. Doesn't make sense to me, but a lot of people do it. But I don't need that. And I don't need cigarettes. I don't need drugs. I am on some medication because of my heart issues, but that's not designed to put me into an altered state of consciousness. And so there's a difference. But here, this individual who is ignorant of the realities of life, and he is open for the devil to come into his life, and he's even allowing this devil to bring in seven spirits worse than the first one, and the end result for this person is that he's in worse shape at the end than he was before. And that's what happens when people try to fix their problems without God. their life continues to go on a downward spiral. They're trapped in ungodly ways, and the world has no answer for fixing those ungodly ways, and so things just go from bad to worse. And that's the problem that many people are facing today. It doesn't mean that they're possessed, but that's something you can see in society. that people, when they get involved in things that are not good for them, they need to increase. As I mentioned, marijuana is a gateway drug to harder drugs. And so the person starts off with what they call a soft drug, and then they gotta have some bigger fix over time, and it just gets worse for them instead of better. And of course, the world doesn't know how to address that. And so then they make safe injection sites. And they suggest that a person can go there and they can safely take a drug that's designed to kill them. And there's no such a thing as a safe injection site. It's a deadly thing that the government is going to answer to God for encouraging people to stay in their crippled state rather than finding real help. And that's where the local church is so important. Local church is designed by God, if it's a true church, to teach the truth, to help people to see that there is a real answer to the problems that we face. And that answer is to turn to God and be forgiven and saved. That's what the Bible teaches. That's what Jesus told Nicodemus. He must be born again. When a person is born again, they are changed from the inside out. The Spirit of God indwells the saved person. and helps that saved person to begin to understand the word of God and to begin to build their lives according to the word of God. If you go in your Bibles to 1 Peter 2. 1 Peter 2 again is addressing born again Christians. And it says there in verse one, wherefore laying aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisies and envies and all evil speakings as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word that he may grow thereby. So the Christian, because the person is saved, Now he needs to understand the importance of laying aside. So as a Christian, I need to actively put aside those things that are wrong, those things that are sin. And so how do I know what is sin? Well, I know that from the word of God, not from my own opinions, but from the word of God. The word of God will tell me what is sin and what is good. And so malice and guile, those are things that affect our emotions and we need to get rid of them. Guile is a form of deceit. Hypocrisy is deceit. It's trying to act like someone that you're not. So as a Christian, I need to live according to what the word of God says, but it needs to be real. I can't be a Sunday Christian. I need to be a seven-day-a-week, 24-hours-a-day Christian, someone who knows the Lord and who is governed by the word of God. Envying, we know what that is, and evil speaking, well, there's a lot of that that goes on, and the Christian needs to get rid of that. And then it says, as newborn babes, and that's how every Christian starts, desire the sincere milk of the word that he may grow thereby. So I need to make the choice as a Christian to read the word of God, to attend a good church faithfully, to allow the word of God to affect my life and to change me into what God says I need to be. And that will happen in a true Christian's life because we're saved as newborn babes. The Christian is not someone who is experimenting, but is someone who has come to become a child of God. So just as in our text, this man has opened himself up to devils, the Christian opens himself up or herself up to salvation. The Christian is someone who, before being saved, understands he's lost, just like I did when I was 20, realized that I was headed for hell, and didn't want to go there, and realized there was only one solution, and that was in turning to God. And that's what I did. So I opened myself up, I stopped fighting against God, and asked God to forgive me and to save me. And when I did that, God, in his mercy and grace, he forgave me and saved me. And his Holy Spirit came and dwelt inside of me. So I opened myself up for the Holy Spirit to come in. And since that time, he has been working in my heart and life to help me to be what I need to be, to be growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. So it's a choice that I made, but having made that choice to be saved, I can't unmake that choice. I don't want to unmake that choice, but I can't unmake that choice. Once the person is saved, the Bible says we have eternal life. We have everlasting life. The Holy Spirit moves into the Christian's life and he doesn't leave. I can grieve the Holy Spirit, I can disregard what the Bible says, and I can hinder the growth that needs to take place, but I can't kick God out of my life, and I don't want to do that. The Bible says that when a person is saved, they are held in the Father's hand. And so now I'm in that protective hand, and that's why I said before that a Christian cannot be possessed by the devil. cannot be like what we're reading here in these verses. So I'm not afraid that somehow, if I drop my guard, Satan's gonna come in and take over. He can't do that, because the Spirit of God dwells in my heart. Now that doesn't mean I can't sin, and I do sin. But the difference is I don't live in sin. And when I sin, the Holy Spirit indwelling me shows me that I'm sinning, and helps me to see the importance of confessing that sin to God and asking for his forgiveness and then continuing to grow in him. There's not a person alive that can say they never sin. They're lying if they say that. But Christians don't live in sin. And the reason that we don't live in sin is because the Spirit of God dwells in us. And so he points out what is right and what is good. And because we are saved, that's what we want. We want what is right and what is good. That's what causes a Christian to want to be in church when the doors are open. It's not because someone is standing at their door and saying, you better get to church. It's because the spirit of God inside motivates that person to want to be in the house of God, learning of God. That's what motivates the Christian to read their Bible every day because the Spirit of God dwells inside them and motivates them to want to read the Word of God. So in our text, we're dealing with unclean spirits. And the Christian has the Holy Spirit indwelling him. There's the difference. The unclean spirit makes things worse. The Holy Spirit indwelling a Christian's life makes things better. So again, as a Christian, the Holy Spirit indwells me, but I need to choose whether I'm going to listen to him. And so it's wise for me to listen to him. submit to God and to allow Him to lead and direct me in the choices that I make, and so on. And that's true for every Christian. There's one Holy Spirit, but just as there's one God, but He is over all things, and so the Holy Spirit indwells every true born-again Christian. And He is there to give us the ability to understand the Word of God properly, and to be able to apply the Word of God properly to our own hearts and lives. So there's always the fact that we need to choose. The Christian needs to choose if he's going to listen to the Word of God faithfully. The unbeliever is choosing whether he wants to allow the devil to have more access to him or not. And the choices that the unbeliever makes, as it tells us here in this passage, causes things to go from bad to worse. Man is not strong enough to control the devil. We need God to take control of our lives so that we can live God honoring lives. If a person wants to live for himself and allow Satan to have impact in his life, he doesn't have the ability to say no to Satan. And that's why the alcohol industry does so well. That's why the cigarette business does so well. That's why pornography is so prominent in many people's lives and so on, because lost people can't say no to the temptation to sin. It's just different sins that they get involved in. But when a person is saved, now they can say no to wrong and yes to right. because the Holy Spirit indwells the Christian's life. So that's the important thing to understand that lost people are open to being influenced by unclean spirits. Not all lost people are possessed, but they are definitely open to be influenced by unclean spirits. When a person gets saved, That is when the unclean spirit can no longer dwell there, and that is when the person can begin to enjoy life the way God intended for them to do. So if you're listening today, whether here or online, it's important to understand that the only hope for you is to be born again, to be saved. And once you're saved, it's important to be in a good church where you can be fed, where you can be taught, and where you can grow in the Lord and know His blessing. That's what the Word of God teaches us, and that is what works. God's way is always right. It's important for us to submit to Him and to know His peace and blessing. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we're thankful that we have Thy Word. We're thankful for the truthfulness of Thy Word. And that we can see in our text that the devil is real, that he has helpers, unclean spirits, who are looking for a way to keep people from the truth and to keep people from knowing thy peace and blessing. But we're thankful that we are not trapped, that a person cannot be saved. and cannot be set free from the desire of the devil, but we can be forgiven, and we can know thy peace in our hearts, and we can make wise choices. And we're thankful for that fact from thy word that we can be saved, we can know thy peace in our hearts. So we pray for each one that's listening today, thou knowest the heart of each one, and we pray that each one would want to know thy peace and blessing, who would want to serve Thee faithfully and honor Thee in their lives. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.