Daily Devotional For Sunday, November 9, 2025
Good morning Southside. It’s Sunday and I pray you will give God your priority and attend a worship service and praise Him with all your heart, soul, mind and strength today. We are making our way through Matthew’s Gospel and today we come to Matthew 12:43-45:
“Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and does not find it. (44) Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came’; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order. (45) Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. That is the way it will also be with this evil generation” (NASB).
Sounds like something out of a horror movie doesn’t it? Jesus is continuing His same teaching from the verses just prior to this. He is emphasizing the judgment that will come to this generation of His time. Jesus shows how easy it is for evil and demons to impact and even possess our lives. Jesus takes a common myth of His day to teach a parable here. In Jesus’ day people believed that demons lived in the desert looking for someone to possess. In Judaism, the wilderness or desert was seen as a place of the dead and evil.
Jesus is not saying this is where demons live, but simply using this first century myth to teach His point. Demons need a “resting place,” someone to possess. Jesus is not saying that once a demon has been cast out of a specific person, it will re-possess that person. If so, this would make exorcisms useless and worthless. What Jesus is saying is that an unsaved person who has a demon cast out of them is now vulnerable to be re-possessed again because they no longer have the Holy Spirit living in them.
To say that the demon was seeking rest is to imply it is to say the demon was seeking some greater satisfaction. What we see here is that demons prefer to live inside bodies, both human and animal, rather than just in their spirit form (Matt. 8:31). It is possible that this demon here was restless because it could not exercise its evil on inanimate objects and was looking for one to possess. “My house” indicates a strong sense of ownership and possessiveness. This house was “unoccupied, swept and put in order.” This means there had been a radical change of some kind of genuine moral reformation by this person’s own power or by the power of God.
He was now temporarily freed from this sin and this demon. What Jesus means here is that this person was highly motivated to change and he or she did. Maybe it was to save a marriage, or win back his children or keep his job. People are able to change when the stakes are high if they do not. Even if the Lord had done this, this person had not come to saving faith through Christ. Jesus cast demons out of a lot of people and for most of them, that is all they wanted.
So, when they died, they went to hell where the devil and his demons will eventually go for all eternity. Meaning they surrendered the consequences and results of sin to Christ, but not the sin. In Luke’s Gospel of 10 lepers Jesus healed, only one received the Lord’s forgiveness of his sin (Luke 17:11-19). Pastor and author John MacArthur writes this:
“A religious, self-righteous, reformed person is subject to Satan in a way that a guilt-ridden immoral person is not, because his very morality blinds him to his basic sinful condition and need. He is perfectly satisfied with his empty house, thinking that freedom from outward manifestation of sin is freedom from its presence, power, and damnation” (Source: John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Bible Commentary, “Matthew,” p. 337).
Jesus said, “the devil and his demons go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first” implying that a reformed moral life without Christ is more vulnerable to this because they see nothing wrong with their sin. Because of this, they are blind to what is happening. Therefore, they will be as 2 Timothy 3:5 says, “They will go on pretending to be devoted to God, but they will refuse to let that “devotion” change the way they live” (ERV).
We see this today in how some within the church are faithful to attend, even serve, but they lack godliness. What God calls sin, they call my right or my freedom. What God calls sin, they say, “This does not apply to me because I am a good person.” These people are like a leper in Jesus’ day who cuts off this finger and doesn’t realize it because he feels no pain. When we are self-righteous, it desensitizes us to our own sin and the conviction of the Holy Spirit. This is why we see such people living together and not marrying, using recreational drugs, getting drunk, watching media that God condemns.
God has not saved us to be more moral, but to be more godly. Today, morality is subjective, but God’s truth is eternal and changeless. In Jesus’ day the religious leaders had attempted superficial reformation through their rules, rituals and regulations, and NOT through a relationship to God. They really thought their religion, not God, saved them. They had this demon-possessed self-help attitude that was sending them to hell. Jesus says that a person who knows they are a sinner – really knows – is easier to be saved and talk to in life rather than the de-sensitized self-righteous good person who calls their sin anything but sin (i.e., an addiction, a struggle, a slight problem).
Assignment: What attitudes would Jesus in your life come from a demonic self-righteous possession? What God calls sin, do you? Do you legitimize and rationalize your sin at times? Are you more broken over your sins or more possessed with self-righteousness? Do you ever pretend you are devoted to God or you “hold to a form of godliness but deny its power?”
Scripture To Meditate On: Titus 1:15-16, “Everything is pure to those whose hearts are pure. But nothing is pure to those who are corrupt and unbelieving, because their minds and consciences are corrupted. (16) Such people claim they know God, but they deny Him by the way they live. They are detestable and disobedient, worthless for doing anything good” (NLT).
Prayer To Pray: “Dear Lord, I do not want to be possessed by self-righteousness. Lord, please forgive me when I rationalize my sin. I do not want what is demonic to gain more and more of my life. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit. I love You Lord. In Jesus’ name, Amen!”
I love you Southside! – Pastor Kelly