A Weak Man, a Strong Man, and the Stronger Man

I want you to remain standing at all of our campuses here together. We want to spend a little time this morning as we begin just praying through some very important things that are going on in our society. Some things happening right here in our church. First, today is Sanctity of Life Sunday. This is a nationally recognized Sunday on which we lament with thousands of churches across the nation. We lament the terrible tragedy of abortion. The day for this Sunday, is always whichever Sunday is closest to January 20th, when the Supreme Court legalized in 1973 the killing of children in the womb. Summit, we want to be a place that is clear, a place that is clear about the tragedy and the unqualified injustice of abortion, but also a place that extends forgiveness and healing and who seeks to understand that often those decisions get made in the midst of a lot of pain and confusion.

So we want to not only want to be clear about what is right and wrong, we want to be a help and a resource to those who feel like they have nowhere else to turn. I'm actually going to be preaching a message on this subject next week, Lord willing, but today we just want to acknowledge this because, like I said, this is National Sanctity of Life Sunday. Secondly, this weekend, Monday of this coming week is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. That is a day in which we express gratitude for the progress that has been made in becoming a more just, and fair society. That's a day in which we affirm the dignity of all peoples and a day in which we acknowledge the ongoing work that needs to be done in this regard, and we recommit ourselves to it. And so we want to pray for that also. By the way, we don't commemorate these two dates together, Sanctity of Life Sunday and Martin Luther King Jr. Monday, because we believe that you can't talk about about one without the other.

It's simply that these are both nationally recognized day on our calendar, which we of course have no control over. So we want to pray about both those things. Third, I want us to pray for our nation.

What an incredibly difficult couple of weeks, probably more than ever. We are aware of spiritual forces at work in our society that are seeking to divide, to sow anger and hatred. What a great time for us as a people, as a local church, to be giving ourselves to the 21 days of prayer and fasting.

I want you to do this, okay? I want to urge you to avoid any temptation to excuse evil as a means of accomplishing good. The Apostle Paul warns in Romans 3 about God's wrath that comes on those, he says, who say we must do evil that good may come. Now I know that some may have legitimately righteous things that you are worried about in this election concerns, many of which I share. But we as the people of God must avoid the temptation to wink at, to excuse or justify evil, lies, slander and the like as a means of accomplishing good.

There's a time to vote, there's even a time peacefully to protest, but there is never a time to excuse evil in the name of good. And there's always a time to pray. So that's what I want us to do now.

The one thing we are confident, most confident in, and the one thing we know that we always can do. So at all of our campuses, or if you're joining us at home, online, there at your computer, by yourself even, I want you just to bow your heads, maybe open your hands as a sign of our desperation to God. And you follow me as I lead a voice of prayer on our behalf to God. Father, we are aware of just how broken our society is and how desperately, Father, we need you. God, three things on our heart, many more, but these three I want to express.

God is a representative of this church. Father, first we mourn, we lament, we confess, God, this horrible tragedy of abortion. And God forgive us for not seeking to protect the most vulnerable in our society from what is so clearly an injustice. God, we pray for a change in the national laws that sanctify this and that protect it.

God, we pray that there would be an awakening of our conscience in our country that would be grieved by this. God, we do pray for young ladies right now, God, maybe in our midst that are considering this. And God, we want to be a resource. I pray that you would help them see that there is hope in Jesus and that there is healing and there is forgiveness and there is help even in a moment like this one.

God, I pray that you would give them the faith just to ask the question. God, we want to commemorate and give you thanks, God, for the ways that you have worked in our society helping make it a more just and equitable nation. God, we lament the terrible tragedy of slavery and Jim Crow laws and things that have followed on with that. And God, we thank you that you have accomplished these things, but we recognize, God, that there is still so much racialized polarization. And we're asking for humility and forgiveness and a sense of Christ's likeness in this, God, that would seek to honor and serve one another better than ourselves, recognizing that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek or black or white or rich or poor, young or old.

There's just oneness in Christ Jesus. So, God, we ask God for you to continue to do that. Father, we pray for our nation that we know that the moments of darkness are the times where you can show your light. So, God, as you have torn down the idols for many on the right and the left and the hopes that they place in our country and our government, God, I pray that you would turn that God to the only one who can give life and health and peace. God, let us see that every solution, every solution on earth is doomed to fail unless, Lord Jesus, you are at the center. God, make us a church who proclaims faithfully the truth of Christ, the grace of Christ, the message of Christ, the eternal hope in Christ in the midst of all these empower us. God, in this season, 21 days of prayer and fasting, give us a hunger, a desperation, a desperation to pray. God, a desperation that would consume us even more than our desire for food. We'd have a sense of how badly we need you. Father, we ask for that. We ask for that help believing that you are ready and willing to give it. We pray in Jesus' name and all God's people said, amen. Amen.

You may be seated if you haven't already done so. Luke 11, if you got your Bible with you this weekend, if you're joining us there at home, you can even pause me if you want and we'll go run, grab your Bible and turn it to Luke chapter 11. As your attorney there, it is hard for me to believe that this year will mark 20 years since the 9-11 attacks. They say that those attacks rewrote the book on how nations think about warfare. In previous wars, you had an identified entity like Germany or Japan, but the 9-11 attacks were carried out by citizens of countries who were our allies.

Some by people who lived right here within our own borders. After the attacks, Congress felt like a declaration of war was appropriate, but the dilemma was they weren't quite sure what to call this war. Previous wars had been called the war with England or the war against the Axis powers, but this was a war against terrorists. So the media dubbed it the war on terror. The strategies for fighting it were different.

You couldn't just amass an army and go after the enemy. These were territories that the enemy really called home, so we started to hear about things like sleeper cells and race radicalized operatives. These realities required different strategies for fighting and different security protocols. And of course, that gave rise to new dangers like the invasion of privacy or racial profiling. Many of the hit drama shows of that era, shows like 24 or Alias, played on the premise that this new war is very dangerous and we better learn the new rules of engagement or we just will not survive.

I share that because I think you're going to find parallels in how Jesus instructs us, the church, to approach the Christian life in Luke chapter 11. He says that if we don't realize the real nature of the enemy, then we're going to be ill-equipped to survive the battle. You see, just like in the war on terror, our enemy in this battle is not one entity that we can isolate and identify.

He doesn't have a headquarters somewhere like Hollywood or the New York Times or Wall Street. He's not at work in only one particular culture or people, nor is he isolated to one political party. We're certainly going to find him at work in all of those things, but he's also going to be at work in our churches, in our small groups, in our families, and even in our own hearts.

And that requires different rules of engagement. By the way, in illuminating these things for us, Jesus also is going to answer a question that a lot of us ask, particularly around the new year. And that is why we struggle so much to bring, to effect real change into our lives. I would say that one thing almost all of us have in common, maybe all of us, is that there are things in our lives we would love to change. But many of us are so discouraged at our persistent inability to do so. In fact, some of you didn't even make a new year's resolution this year because you didn't need anything else to feel guilty about failing at.

After 2020, I just want to come out with some big wins, and so that means I'm not even going to play the game. Amen? Jesus explains that that's because spiritual forces are at work in us and around us, and so apart from his power, any attempt to change is doomed to fail, even if for a while it looks like it succeeds.

Let's take a look. Luke chapter 11, let's begin in verse 14. Now, Jesus, he was driving out a demon that was mute or that was making the man mute. Let's just stop right here because I have a feeling that some of you might read that one sentence and just say, really? I mean, Jesus actually believed that some physical and psychological problems were caused by demons?

Short answer, yes. And that is consistent throughout the Bible. There's a lot more going on behind the scenes in situations like this than many of us realize, and maybe that strikes you as naive. And you're like, well, we now know that diseases have viral causes. Emotional and even spiritual problems can be explained by psychological or physiological causes or the result of past trauma. And by the way, I don't think Jesus would disagree with you at all.

That is certainly not inconsistent with what the scriptures teach about these things, and it's why God gave us the scientific method to discover those things. But Jesus would say that if you think that all of life's issues can be explained by merely physical factors, then maybe you, maybe you are actually the naive one. Do you really think that at the root of the Holocaust was just a man with chemical imbalances who got flunked out of art school? Do you really think that the strife and division we experience in our own society simply owes to differing political ideologies? When we see the rage that animates the discussions that we are in, how can we not see the evidence of spiritual, evil spiritual forces at work whose intent is to divide and to destroy? Or today when we look at our society's disregard for the lives of innocent babies in the womb and the dogged determination to celebrate our right to discard them, how do we not see evidence of spiritual forces at work?

When we think about the tragic history of our blindness on racial injustice, how do we not recognize the hand of the enemy? So yes, evil in our world has physical causes, but if you think that physical factors alone explain all human evil and suffering, perhaps you're the naive one. And that's why the vast majority of people throughout history, even today, have recognized the reality of supernatural spiritual forces at work.

And that's not because everybody else around the world is so naive and we alone are so sophisticated. Now, just to be clear with you, this is not to say that every problem is directly connected to demonic activity. That's not what I'm saying at all. Just that according to Jesus, these things are sometimes at work. So back to verse 14, when the demon came out, the man who had been mute spoke and the crowds were amazed, but some of them said, no, he drives out demons by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons. Now, quick note here, Beelzebul means the ruler of the demons, or some translations say Lord of Dung.

Scholars say it was a bit slang, calling someone the Lord of Dung but using the curse word for dung. Calling Jesus the Lord of the demons or the Lord of Dung was a way that the religious leaders could explain away his power. Jesus obviously had supernatural powers, but they didn't want to acknowledge that he was from God.

So the only way to, the only alternative, the only way around that was to say that he got his obviously supernatural powers, they had to come from Satan. Verse 17, knowing their thoughts, by the way, have you noticed how many times in the book of Luke that that phrase occurs? That's another hint by Luke that Jesus is God because he always knew what everybody was thinking. So he tells them, every kingdom divided against itself is headed for destruction and the house divided against itself falls. If Satan is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand?

Now, y'all, this is as logically simple as it gets, right? How does it make sense that Satan would empower Jesus to destroy his other works? If Satan is the one behind certain diseases and afflictions, if he loves to spread dung, be eligible, if he loves to spread dung into people's lives in the form of disease and death and strife, why would he empower Jesus to clean up those very things? Jesus' works are going the opposite way of Satan's. Verse 19, he continues, and if I drive out demons by be eligible, by whom do your sons drive them out?

For this reason, they will be your judges. All right, now here's his second piece of reasoning. His second piece of reasoning is, if I cast out demons by Satan's power, then by whose power do your people cast them out? By what standard do you say that my power is from Satan and theirs is from God?

If my powers to do these things are from Satan, well then maybe your people's powers to do those things are from Satan also. He's showing them the inconsistency of their accusation. Theirs is not an honest intellectual objection. They're just making up objections because they don't like Jesus. By the way, I have found that same insight really helpful when talking to people about the gospel today.

Sometimes people will come up with objections to the gospel, but they're not real objections because they would never apply those same standards to themselves. Many Muslims, for example, apply a historical cynicism to Christian history that they would never apply to their own. They believe all these crazy conspiracy theories about the Bible, but they would never look at their own history through that same lens. Or for you college students on your college campus, you'll hear a professor apply a cynicism to the historical evidence for the resurrection that they would not apply to any other event in history.

They assume that for this one event, for this one event that there was some elaborate, almost inexplicable historical ruse. Or they'll raise objections from Christian history like, what about the Crusades? And they'll imply that those things invalidated Christianity itself. And when you respond with, well, yes, the Crusades were a tragic chapter where Christians departed from Jesus' teaching, but I'll tell you what, I'll see your Crusades and I'll raise you Mao Zedong's China and Stalin's Russia, which in the name of atheism committed genocides exponentially larger than anything that happened in the Crusades. And when you say that, they'll respond, they'll say, well, that's got nothing to do with the intellectual integrity of atheism. And Jesus would say to them, just like he says to these people, why are you applying a cynicism to me that you would never even apply to yourself? This is not a real objection.

This is a rationalization for a decision you've already made. And that is, you don't like Jesus. Perhaps your cynicism has less to do with intellectual honesty and more to do with the dislike of Jesus and his claims of authority over your life.

That's the point. Jesus continues, verse 20, if I drive out demons by the finger of God, well, then it's logical for you to conclude that the kingdom of God has come upon you. Now, this finger of God image here is a reference that all those religious leaders would immediately have recognized. The phrase finger of God was a phrase that was used by the Egyptian sorcerers in Exodus 8 to describe the power that Moses was displayed in the Exodus. In the Exodus, God had done a series of miracles to convince Pharaoh to let the Jews leave Egypt.

You remember this? Well, for the first couple of plagues, the Egyptian magicians used some trickery to replicate some of those things. Moses, for example, throws down his staff on the ground and then becomes a snake. And the Egyptian magicians, they've got this little trick rod where they could make it look like they also had that power. By the way, the Bible didn't tell us if that was just an optical illusion or if there was some kind of actual sorcery involved. Either way, in Exodus 8, Moses raises the stakes. Moses then takes the staff and he throws it down into the dust, and as the dust poofed up, it turns into what?

You remember? It turns into gnats. And from there, gnats multiplied and covered the land. Well, the Egyptian magicians, they couldn't duplicate that. Creating an optical illusion where it looks like a staff turns into a snake is one thing, but this, creating gnats out of dust, they can't touch that. And so they tell Pharaoh privately, Exodus 8 and 19, they're like, this is the finger of God.

We just can't do this. Even the pagan magicians knew the finger of God when they saw it. And Jesus is saying, your Jewish exorcist can do some pretty impressive things. But they cannot do anything like what you are seeing here, and it's safe to conclude that if the finger of God is present, then so is the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God is here because the king is here. Verse 21, Jesus continues, when a strong man, fully armed, guards his house, his estate, his possessions are secure. But when one's stronger than he attacks and overpowers him, he takes from him all the weapons that he trusted in.

And then he divides up his plunder. Now, in this analogy, don't get lost here, in this analogy, who is the strong man? Satan is the strong man. And who is the stronger man?

That's Jesus, right? Jesus is the stronger man that overpowers Satan and plunders all his possessions. Now, important, in this parable, who are you? You are the property who was first owned by the strong man, but then liberated by the stronger man. The implication is, and this is so important, you are either going to belong to one or the other. You cannot be free of the strong man until you are under the control of the stronger man. You see what he says in verse 23?

Look at it. Anyone who is not with me is against me, and anyone who does not gather with me scatters. Neutrality toward Jesus is not an option. And so if you are not actively pursuing and serving Jesus, you are against him. Because you are still under the control of the strong man.

Do you see that? We'll come back to that, but first let's finish the parable. Because Jesus is going to make this point even more clear. Verse 24, when an unclean spirit comes out of a person, it roams through waterless places looking for rest. And then not finding rest, it says, I'll go back to my house that I came from. Returning, it finds the house swept and put in order. Jewish law demanded rigorous cleaning techniques after you had gotten rid of any kind of disease or defilement. It even applied to your property. For example, if you had a mold problem in your house, you couldn't just clean that area with soap and water or a bottle of Clorox. The book of Leviticus said you had to remove that whole section of the wall.

And if the mold came back, you had to burn the whole house down. Jesus uses this as a picture of the person who tries to use the law to clean their life up. So they make a bunch of resolutions. They get rid of their bad habits. They bring their addictions under control. They get rid of bad relationships and they turn over a new leaf. They are serious about change. What happens, verse 26, then that unclean spirit goes and brings seven of the spirits more evil than itself and they enter and settle down there.

As a result, the person's last condition is even worse than the first. They're worse after they got rid of the demon than before they got rid of him. The demons don't mind this clean up.

In fact, they kind of like it. And it certainly does not stop them from coming back in much bigger numbers. The use of the number seven, by the way, is meant to imply completion.

The number seven usually indicates in Hebrew. It's like saying the last state of that man is infinitely worse than the first. Listen to me. I want you to hear a pastor in a church say this. Religion and self-improvement apart from Jesus opens the door to more deceptive and more dangerous demons. Religious change, I don't care how eloquent or good looking or multimillion dollar the person that is peddling it to you is. Religious change or self-improvement is often accompanied by pride and judgmentalism and a sense of self-sufficiency.

And those things are infinitely worse than alcoholism or a bad temper. Tim Keller uses this as an illustration. He says, say you've got a little boy who falls down and scrapes his knee. And let's say that he's really being overly emotional about it.

So his dad comes over and his dad says, son, get up. Be a man. You don't want to be a little pansy in your life, do you? Stop crying. Okay, here's the question. Can that motivation help that little boy stop crying?

Yes, it can. His dad's words help him sweep his house, tame his emotions, get some control. But what's happened now? The little boy didn't just take himself back from being overly emotional. No, now he's given himself to a new master and that master is the fear of looking weak. And let's just say that that becomes a driving force in his life. Never look weak because weakness makes you look deficient as a person. So cover any weakness at all costs. Now I want you to imagine this guy's marriage.

You cannot have a healthy marriage if you're always scared of looking weak or you refuse to be vulnerable or you despise your wife when she does. So yes, through that dad's motivation, the little boy was freed from being overly emotional. But he did so by giving himself to a new master, a worse master.

The medication had worse side effects than the disease. You conquered alcoholism but you developed a judgmental and an arrogant spirit. Seven more demons. You overcame your insecurity by becoming a driven, domineering, and self-sufficient person. Seven more demons. You avoid conflict by retracting inward and shutting yourself off and just not having friends anymore. Seven more demons. You avoid pain by never committing to anybody.

Seven more demons. By the way, we see the same thing politically. People on the left will say, well, the problem in our society is the institutions of capitalism. They serve the interest of white supremacy or the patriarchy. So let's tear them down and redistribute all the wealth. So you do that.

But then guess what you're left with? People still have the same sinful heart of greed and exploitation who will use whatever power they have to subvert the weak around them. That has been the history of every Marxist country in history.

Seven more demons. People on the right say, no, no, no, the government is the problem itself. Just make everybody free and that will take care of it. And we might agree that power distributed amongst a bunch of corruptible people is less dangerous than power isolated in the hands of a few corruptible people. But even then you haven't dealt with the problem. Selfishness and greed and corruption still fill the heart of man and Satan still finds those things and uses them to create the despair and loneliness that comes from materialism and self-sufficiency.

Seven more demons. You see, the point is, whether you're talking individually or politically, Jesus is the only master who can free you from your demons and make you whole again. It is ironic, but freedom in the Christian life only comes from giving yourself fully to Jesus.

Let me say that again. The irony is this. Freedom only comes from surrender. So again, let's ask, what does this passage teach us about change? What does it teach us about how to bring change both in ourselves and in others? Jesus teaches us in this passage that there are two conditions for real spiritual power. Number one is in verse 23.

I'd encourage you to write both these down. Number one, total surrender. Total surrender. Again, verse 23, anybody who's not with me is against me and anyone who does not gather with me scatters. Until you are under the full possession of the stronger man's authority, you are powerless to fend off the domination of the strong man who is Satan.

Clean up or self-reform or pledges to do better are not going to do it. You're either all in with team Jesus or you're still on team Satan. And to be on team Jesus means that you've surrendered 100% of who you are, all your hopes, all your dreams, all your ambitions, all your ideas. You've given them all to him.

Now you're like, hold on, hold on, hold on, no way. I may not be a fully committed Christian, but I don't belong to Satan. Yes, you do. Your argument's not with me. Your argument's with Jesus.

He who is not actively pursuing me, actively serving me, still belongs to Satan. When I was a student pastor, my first chapter of ministry, we used to do this illustration. I actually tried to recreate it for you here. I thought about getting people up and then it's thought too complicated. I'm just going to do it all by myself.

I'm a one-man actor here. So you'd always put somebody here on this set of chairs. This represents a fence. And on this property, this side of the fence represents complete and total devotion to Jesus. And this side of the property represents I'm just giving myself to Satan. And so what would happen in this, when I do it for students, is you'd have people come out from the different sides to represent the different teams. And so somebody would come out from team Satan and they were like, hey, we're going to go party and get drunk and do all kinds of illegal stuff.

And do you want to come with us? And the person's like, no, I'm just not, you know, I try to, I believe in God. I try to be a good person.

So I'm not going to do that. Another person comes out on the other side representing team Jesus and they're like, you know, something like, hey, let's read our Bibles or let's be involved in the church. Let's do ministry. And no, I'm not really a Jesus freak. I'm not really a Bible banger. I'm not really all in that way. But I'm not really comfortable there either. And so you have three or four people that come, you know, representing one another person from the side that says, hey, let's get rid of the belief in the Bible. Let's just throw this off. It's freer.

It's better without. No, I don't want to do that. I still want to hold on to my beliefs. And this represents kind of where the majority of, especially Christian teenagers or teenagers in churches are, where they're like, I'm not really going with the world, but I'm also not fully devoted to Jesus.

I'm just kind of here on the fence. Well, at the end of the little thing, you know, somebody would come out representing Satan or a demon and they're there to collect all their people. And an angel comes out to take all the people who are on Team Jesus. And, you know, kind of the last moment, the demon comes up and grabs this person on the fence and starts to pull them their way.

And this person starts to object like, no, no, no, no, no. I never threw off my belief in Jesus. I never wanted to be on Team Satan. I never got rid of my faith. I never really plunged wholeheartedly into sin.

I kept my morals. And the last thing that this demon says is what you don't understand is that the devil, Satan, owns the fence that you're standing on. Luke 11, 23 makes it clear that if you're not actively serving Jesus in that field, the fence that you're standing on still belongs to Satan. The point is, whatever part of your life is not surrendered to Jesus, it's still under the domination of Satan. You're either fully surrendered to him or you're still his possession.

He doesn't care if you recognize that you belong to him. You still do. You say, well, I wouldn't be like those religious rulers who called Jesus the Lord of Dung and crucified him.

Yes, you would. There's only two teams. It's like we often say here at the Summit Church. In every heart, there is a throne and a cross. In every heart, there's a throne and a cross. If Jesus is on the throne, well, see, that means that you gotta be on the cross.

Vice versa. If you are on the throne of your life, that means Jesus must be on the cross. There is no neutral ground.

There's no third territory. Christianity's not about self-improvement. It's about surrender. See, the only question is, are you fully surrendered?

That's the only question there is. You're either fully surrendered to Team Jesus or you're still on Team Satan. I don't care how many times you come to church or how good of a person you think you are. It reminds me of C.S. Lewis' analogy where it's like we come to Jesus like people whose houses are in disrepair. Man, it's dirty and it's smelly and the carpet is old-fashioned and worn out. So we hear that Jesus can fix those things and so we come to him and ask him to help us clean it up.

And he does. But then Jesus starts knocking down walls and you're like, wait, wait, wait a minute, Jesus. I just wanted a clean-up. I wanted a little help tidying up my room, help tidying up my marriage, my habits, my career, I wanted purpose. I wanted you to help with my kids. Jesus says I can help you with all those things but to get that help, this house has to belong entirely to me. I didn't just come as your divine servant to help you become a more and better you. I came as the owner. I'm not here to take requests.

I'm here to take over. And so it means that if you come to Jesus, the only way to come to him is in total surrender. The only way is to come and say, Lord Jesus, all that I am, all that I have, all that I ever hope to be, I now and forever offer to you. We don't come to God, C.S.

Lewis said. We don't come to God as bad people who need to be made into better people. We must come as rebels to lay down our arms.

He's either Lord of all or he's not Lord at all. You don't come to Jesus to turn over a new leaf. You come in surrender to receive a new life.

Total surrender. One other place I want to take this, one other short point, but before we do that, I actually want to do something here right now at this point. And that is I want us to take communion together, at least those of us who are followers of Jesus, and it comes with a special invitation for those of you who are not yet followers of Jesus and need to surrender. When you came in, if you're at one of our campuses, you received one of these little COVID-proof communion things here. If you're watching at home, feel free to pause this, run, grab something, represent the bread and the cup for you, and then turn it back on when you get here. I want you to take this, I want you to open it up, because these things represent the body and blood of Jesus, but listen to me. Here's what I want it to highlight for you right now.

Total possession by the stronger man. This represents the fact that I don't have to be free, I don't have to be afraid of Satan's control of my life, but it's because I've given myself fully to Jesus. Is that true of you? In taking this, can you say, all that I am, all that I have, all that I have, all that I ever hoped to be, it's yours. If not, listen, it's not me talking, this is the Bible. Don't take the bread and the cup. This is something for those who are active followers of Jesus, something for those who have surrendered themselves.

I do have an invitation for you, though. This actually can be your surrender. Those others around you are taking the bread and the cup, symbolizing their surrender and their receipt of Jesus Christ. For you, this moment can be about giving yourself to Him. The point in this is not the bread and the cup, the point is the fact that I belong to Jesus. You see, 2,000 years ago, He gave Himself to me.

He spread out His arms and He died. He broke His body so that He could pay for my sins because He was my only hope of salvation. Conversion is giving myself back to Him and saying, you're the only one that can save me. If you've done that, I want you to take this in a moment in remembrance of Him, and if you haven't done that, why don't you use this moment right now to actually surrender to Him? For those of you that know Him, and for those of you that have surrendered, Jesus said, take and eat and do it in remembrance of Me. Jesus then took the cup, and He says, this cup is the new covenant. My blood was just poured out for you.

He didn't hold anything back. The God who gave His all for you deserves nothing less than your all back for Him. If you've done that and you know that, I want you to take it as a symbol of His giving Himself to you and your giving yourself to Him.

You take it in remembrance of Him. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to bow your heads wherever you are. Could you just take a moment right there, just you, just there in the quietness of your heart in this moment, and express thanks to God for this gift of salvation. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for saving me. Thank you that I belong to you.

Thank you that that height or depth or principality or power or anything else in all creation can separate me from the love of Christ. Here's what I want you to do. Listen. I want you to pray that God would open your heart right now to apply this point. And I'm going to make here from Luke chapter 11, okay? God, speak to my heart.

Show me. Make me desperate for you and your power. Desperate enough to give myself to fasting and prayer. God, help me. Holy Spirit, help me in these next few brief moments. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Write down number two if you're taking notes. Write down prayer.

Now, real quick. This second way to access this divine power according to this chapter is through prayer. Earnest, unrelenting prayer. We didn't read it, but in the passage right before this one, the first 13 verses of this chapter, Jesus had been teaching about the power of prayer. And he told a story about a man who had unexpected visitors late one night, and he needed some bread to feed them, so he goes over to his neighbor's house in the middle of the night, and he knocks and he knocks and he knocks and he knocks until his friend finally gives up and gets up and gives him the loaves that he's asking for. And this, Jesus says, that is how you should pray. And then he concludes that whole teaching by saying, listen, how much more if a friend would respond to your persistent knocking and if parents would respond to their children when their children are crying out in need, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit, the stronger man?

You see the context? How much more will he give the stronger man to those who ask him? Then Jesus tells the story about the demons. If you want the power of the Holy Spirit, if you want the Spirit of Jesus, the stronger man, in and through your life, you get it not only through surrender, an act of surrender, you also get it through desperate, urgent, unrelenting prayer. Jesus reinforced this in another place, by the way, Martin 9, there was a man who brought his son, who was afflicted by a demon that caused convulsions, brought him to Jesus' disciples, but the disciples couldn't cast the demon out. And so they brought the father and the boy to Jesus, and Jesus cast the demon out. And after the incident was over, when they were debriefing the day, the disciples are like, hey, Jesus, why couldn't we drive him out? Why wouldn't the ball go in when we shot him?

What's wrong with us? And Jesus told him, he was like, this kind can come out, Mark 9, 29. This comes out only by prayer.

Some manuscripts add the words, add fasting. Prayer and fasting. God unleashes the power of the stronger man into the lives of others through desperate, urgent, unrelenting prayer, and only that.

Listen to me. What your friends and what your kids and what your spouse needs is not your sweeping and cleaning efforts in their lives. What they need is the presence of the stronger man.

Your cleaning efforts cannot expunge the demonic activity from them. It takes the power and the presence of the stronger man, and that comes only through prayer. So why, Summit Church, why do we spend so much time thinking about how to talk to people about God and so little time talking to God about those people? You bring your friends here to let them listen to me for 45 minutes, talk to them about God.

How often weekly do you talk to God about them? That's the reason that we've begun this year with 21 days of fasting and prayer. We want to see the finger of God in our community, amen? We want to see it in our church.

We don't want to see what a group of talented people can do. We want to see what God can do. We want to see the finger of God in our families. Do you want to see that? Do you want that in your own family?

Do you want it in your life? That comes out only by fervent, unrelenting prayer. The good news is that this strong man, Satan, more powerful though he may be than us, is no match for the power of the stronger man. Do you see verse 22? But when one stronger than he attacks and overpowers him, he takes from him all the weapons that he trusted in and divides up his plunder. It's a rout. Jesus plunders him.

He humiliates him. Listen, I both love and kind of resent a little bit how the book of Revelation depicts the last battle. I'm a little disappointed because it's kind of been... It's anticlimactic.

Can we just say that? You ever read Revelation? You've got all these battle forces arrayed against Jesus and his people, and you think you're in for this kind of epic, Lord of the Rings-style battle? And then Jesus walks onto the scene and just speaks, and all his enemies basically evaporate.

You're like, I kind of wanted a little more action. But the point is, their power is no match for his. He's the stronger man.

He's the finger of God. The good news is that God has called you and I to bring the power of the stronger man into other people's lives. Again, verse 22, when the stronger man takes over, he divides up his plunder. What is Satan's plunder? It's the souls of people around us that Satan holds captive. It's your children. It's friends that are headed toward destruction. It is friends in decimated marriages. They're held captive by the strong man. We want to bring them the power of the stronger man.

Hey, friend, have you figured this out yet? Jesus wants to do more than help you survive and endure the Christian life. He wants to use you to plunder Satan's kingdom. He didn't come just to give you peace like a river in your soul or warm fuzzies on a cold night. He wants to use you to plunder the works of the enemy around you. But when one stronger than he overcomes, he attacks and overpowers him.

He takes from him all the weapons that he trusted in and divides up his plunder. If you, right, if you respond to those requests from people you love, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit, the stronger man, to those who ask him? Missionaries at work in places all around the world where Satan holds people captive under earthly governments that keep people in bondage from hearing the gospel, this promise is for you. I know some of you are listening to me this morning. For those of you who are at work in our city in places where there's poverty and injustice in pregnancy centers where women consider what to do with a precious unborn baby that Satan wants to destroy, this promise is for you. To parents who are discouraged by the influence of the world on your children, to husbands concerned with what is happening in the life of your wife or vice versa, this promise is for you. To those of you who know somebody that is in one sense afflicted physically, emotionally, spiritually by our enemy, this promise is for you.

He's ready to use you, but these kind go not out but by prayer and fasting. You'll see I've got a two-part invitation. I'm going to repeat this again. Are you ready to surrender? Are you ready to surrender? I want you to bow your heads if you would.

Everybody at all campuses, bow your heads. Are you ready to surrender? Right now, even if you're by yourself in front of a computer, I want you to do this. If you're like, today I'm giving myself to Jesus fully. I believe he died for my sin. I believe he's the only one that can save me, and I'm giving myself fully to him. Right now, raise your hand, okay? You're like, I'm by myself at my computer.

I don't care. Just raise your hand. Today I am giving myself fully to Jesus. Raise your hand and hold it up. Obviously, I can't see. I can't see everybody.

I see some of you, but I can't see everybody. Father, I praise you. I thank you for those people who have hands raised indicative of the fact that they know religion can't help them, reform can't help them, getting better can't help them.

Jesus, you alone. Thank you, God, for those who raised their hands in faith and surrender. Hey, with your head bowed and listen, I got, you raised your hand. I got a request for you. I want you to pull out your phone right now. I want you to text the word ready, R-E-A-B-Y, to 33933. You can even sneak a peek up here at the screen, but text the word ready to 33933, and somebody will follow up with you later and let us help talk this through with you and show you what's next. If you're serious about this, if you're really serious, text the word ready to 33933.

Here's the second part of the invitation. Who do you need to pray for? Who in your life do you sense the presence of the strong man in? And you just want to say, I'm going to give myself to prayer. And this today may mark a new desperation, a new consistency in my prayer. I'm going to ask all of our campuses, we're going to have prayer counselors come right down front at all of our campuses. They're going to be here like we did a couple weeks ago, just here for you to pray with, just to help carry this load with you.

Let's have people at all of our campuses, I want you to stand, stand at all of our campuses. If you got something on your heart, I want you to do like we did a couple weeks ago, don't wait, don't wait till the very end, just come right now. Just there are people you can see coming down here, you just come and they're going to keep their mask on. We would ask that you keep yours on as well since you'll be talking there for a minute and just pray together. So you can come right now, okay? Just step out right now at all of our campuses.

Don't wait. Our worship team is going to come in a minute, but we're just going to turn this into a time of prayer. You got a son or a daughter that you see the strong man working in. Maybe physically you feel like you need healing. You're not sure what's going on, but you're like, I know that I need God's help in this. Maybe there's a marriage, yours, or somebody else's that's falling apart.

Maybe it's a financial need. Maybe it's somebody who's lost, a friend that just needs to come home and you know, you know that only God can help. Don't waste a moment that we would give you just to bring it in the house of God to God himself. You come here as our worship teams come. By the way, if you are joining us online, you can click the request prayer button. You'll see it right there on the screen. A live host will pray with you right now or in a private chat. If you're watching on demand, you can email prayer at summitchurch.com and somebody from our team will reach out to you. All right, all of our campuses, you come. Let's turn this place into just a tabernacle of prayer for a while as our worship teams come to lead us.