Welcome to Day 2934 of Wisdom-Trek. Thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom.

Day 2934– “The Kingdom of Light and the Kingdom of Darkness” – Luke 11:14-28

Putnam Church Message – 08/16/2026

The Good News According to Luke: “The Kingdom of Light and the Kingdom of Darkness.”

 

Last week, our message was “Lord, Teach Us To Pray,” and we learned Prayer is where our hearts are trained to live with God.

Today, we continue with our thirtieth-fourth message from Luke’s narrative of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Today’s message is: “The Kingdom of Light and the Kingdom of Darkness.” Our core passage today is Luke 11:14-28, starting on page 1614 of your pew Bibles.

Jesus and Beelzebul

¹⁴ Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute. When the demon left, the man who had been mute spoke, and the crowd was amazed. ¹⁵ But some of them said, “By Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he is driving out demons.” ¹⁶ Others tested him by asking for a sign from heaven.

¹⁷ Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them: “Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall. ¹⁸ If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? I say this because you claim that I drive out demons by Beelzebul. ¹⁹ Now if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your followers drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. ²⁰ But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

²¹ “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. ²² But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up his plunder.

²³ “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

²⁴ “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ ²⁵ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. ²⁶ Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.”

²⁷ As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, “Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.”

²⁸ He replied, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”

Opening Prayer

Most High God, Creator of heaven and earth, You alone are worthy of worship. You rule over everything seen and unseen. No spiritual power rivals You; no throne challenges Your sovereignty; no darkness can extinguish Your light.

Lord Jesus, open our eyes today to the larger story of Your Kingdom. Help us understand the spiritual battle without becoming fascinated with darkness or fearful of the enemy.

Holy Spirit, fill us with truth. Protect us from deception. Teach us to hear the Word of God and obey it. May Your Kingdom come more fully in us, through us, and around us. In the victorious name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Introduction: There Is More Going On Than We Can See

Most of what people in our culture know about Satan, demons, and angels probably comes from movies, novels, television programs, and video games.

And popular culture usually makes one of two mistakes. / Either the supernatural becomes fantasy — something primitive people once believed before science enlightened us. / Or the supernatural becomes entertainment — angels, demons, ghosts, and evil spirits made frightening enough to sell movie tickets.

The Bible gives us neither picture. / Scripture presents an unseen spiritual realm as every bit as real as the world we can see. / But we need to say something immediately.

Satan is not God’s opposite.

There is no eternal yin and yang. / There are not two equally powerful kingdoms battling to see which one survives. / God has no equal. / Everything else — visible or invisible — is created. / That includes angels. / That includes the heavenly host.

That includes Satan. / That includes every rebellious spiritual power.

And this is where one of my Biblical mentors, the late Dr. Michael Heiser, called the Divine Council worldview helps us recover something the ancient biblical writers simply assumed their readers understood.

The Old Testament describes God presiding over a heavenly assembly. / Psalm 82 pictures God standing in the divine council. / Psalm 89 speaks of the assembly of heavenly beings.

Job opens with the “sons of God” presenting themselves before the Lord. / First Kings 22 gives us a glimpse of the heavenly host surrounding God’s throne. / But these beings are never equal to God/Yahweh.

Think of a king and his royal court. The existence of a court does not diminish the king.

The biblical God is Creator. / Everything else was created. / He possesses authority inherently. / They possess only whatever authority He delegates. / He alone is worthy of worship.

But some of those spiritual beings rebelled.  / And when we follow that thread through Scripture, suddenly Luke 11 becomes much larger than one demon being cast out of one mute man.

We discover that Jesus has walked onto the battlefield of a war that stretches back to Eden.

And the King has come to reclaim what was lost.

The Larger Story: Three Rebellions and One Divine Rescue Mission

Before we enter Luke 11, let me give you the broad biblical picture. / We do not need to become Bible scholars this morning. Just remember three moments.

Eden: / Genesis 3 records humanity’s rebellion. / The supernatural rebel (referred to as a serpent or “shining one”) deceives Eve and challenges God’s goodness. Humanity joins the rebellion. / Death enters human experience. / Humankind becomes alienated from God.

The Days Before the Flood: / Genesis 6 describes another supernatural transgression involving the “sons of God,” cohabiting with the “daughters of the earth,” which produced the Nephilim, followed by extraordinary corruption and violence. / Whatever questions remain about every detail; Scripture is showing us that human rebellion and supernatural rebellion become intertwined.

Babel: / Then comes Genesis 11.

Humanity gathers in defiance of God’s command to spread throughout the earth.

God scatters the nations. / Deuteronomy 32 looks back on that event and describes the Most High dividing humanity according to members of the heavenly court, while Israel becomes the Lord’s own portion.

In other words, the nations rebelled against God, and God gave them over. / But those spiritual rulers themselves became corrupt. / Psalm 82 pictures God judging them because they ruled unjustly. / And listen to the final prayer of Psalm 82:

“Rise up, O God, and judge the earth, for all the nations belong to you.”

There is the hope. / God intends to reclaim the nations. / Immediately after Babel, Genesis 12 introduces Abraham. / God tells Abraham that through his family all the families of the earth will be blessed.

God is launching a rescue mission. / Israel would become the nation through which the Messiah would come. / And through the Messiah, the nations would be reclaimed.

Now remember what has happened recently in Luke. / Jesus sent out the seventy. / They returned saying: “Lord, even the demons obey us when we use Your name!”

And Jesus responded: “I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning!”

Then He taught His disciples to pray: “May Your Kingdom come.”

Now Jesus casts out another demon. / Do you see the larger story? / This is not random. / The reclamation has begun. Let’s look at four truths today with this background in mind. They’re on your bulletin insert.

Main Point 1: Jesus Has Entered a War That Began Long Before Bethlehem

Luke tells us Jesus casts out a demon that had prevented a man from speaking. / The demon leaves. / The man speaks. / The crowd is amazed.

Luke almost makes it sound routine because, by now, Jesus’ authority over demons has become predictable.

But within the Divine Council worldview, we recognize what these encounters represent. / Jesus is not merely practicing supernatural medicine. / He is confronting an occupying kingdom.