DAILY DEVOTIONAL – June 18, 2019
“Clean, Not Empty”
Prayer: Lord Jesus, You gave up everything on the cross, even Your very life, so that we might have the fullness of the Kingdom of God and the fullness of Your presence in our lives both now and for eternity. Lord, in Your mercy help us to make room in all parts of our life for Your grace and power to fill us up. Amen.
Scripture: Matthew 12:43-35
43 “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. 44 Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. 45 Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation.”
Devotional – “Clean, Not Empty”
A couple months ago my wife and I finally got around to cleaning up our garage a bit. Boxes upon boxes of stuff. You never really realize how much stuff you have (and how much stuff you really don’t need) until you have to box it all up and move it.
As we were organizing the garage, it seemed every other box my wife or I opened, one of us would exclaim, “Oh my gosh! I forgot we had this!” Have you experienced that before? You clear out the attic or the basement, riffle through boxes that haven’t been opened in years only to discover something you completely forgot about and that you can’t believe was sitting in storage the whole time? It’s like an early Christmas isn’t it?!
This past week we finally got around to finishing our garage cleaning project, and as I was once again knee-deep in piles of stuff, I was reminded of what Jesus said in our passage today from Matthew 12. Jesus had just cast out a demon to the amazement of many and uses the opportunity to teach about the importance of what it is we fill ourselves with. Jesus said that sin and evil looks for “waterless places” to inhabit, and if it cannot find such a place, then it looks for places that are nice and neat and put in order, but filled with nothing of significance. Jesus used a house that has been swept and put in order as a figure of speech representing someone who was cured of demon possession, but who failed to then fill themselves up with the good things of God and with the life-giving water of Christ. When the demon sees that the house he once filled is again available, he returns with even more of his friends.
In other words, what Jesus is teaching, is that we can have our lives all nice and orderly, all nice and cleaned up the way we want them, but if we don’t fill our lives with the right stuff, with the good things of God, even a garage stuffed to the rafters with boxes can be empty; and sin and evil will not hesitate to fill the voids in our lives.
There is no such thing as being spiritually neutral. You are either filling yourself each day with the life-giving water Christ offers us through His Word and through a relationship with Him, or we are filling ourselves with the empty things of this world. Jesus said just before our text, in v. 30 of chapter 12, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” If we are not actively filling ourselves with Christ and gathering with Him, then we are filling our lives with things that work against Christ and our relationship with Him.
Jesus’ words here should cause us all to pause and take a long hard look at our lives; how we spend out time, what we have made priorities, where we invest our best efforts and the reasons why we keep certain behaviors, belongings or habits in our lives. Again, as Jesus makes clear, there is no neutral ground. Just because we are super busy, doesn’t mean we are busy with the right things. Just because our schedule is jammed packed and our homes might be jammed packed with a lot of stuff we like (and maybe even stuff we don’t), doesn’t mean we are full of the right things…we could still be a waterless and empty place.
Making sure your whole life is filled with the things of God and with the things of faith doesn’t mean you have to go live in a monastery or become a monk. You can work the job you have right now, and work the same work for Christ. You can live in the house you live in now with all the same stuff, and live it all and use it all for Christ. You can have the same relationship and friendships you have now, and live them all for Christ. You can fill your life just the way it is right now with Christ. How? By living in the Word of God each day, praying in the Word of God each day, looking for and believing that God will redeem all of your life and fill it with His goodness. Sometimes God will take the old an empty things in your life that have just been taking up space and breathe new life into them. Other times, God may have you get rid of a bunch of stuff you don’t need in your life and that has only appeared to fill you up, but that has actually left you empty.
Friends, our Lord Jesus gave all of Himself on the cross, suffering the death we deserve and rising again from the dead so that we would be filled with the fullness of God through faith in Christ and through a life lived in every way for Him. Jesus says in John 15, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”
As Paul prayed for the Ephesian Church in Ephesians 3:16-19, I pray for myself and for you, “that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Thanks for joining me for another time of devotion in God’s Word, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
