Two weeks ago, we by the grace of God looked at: What Manner of Spirit Are You of? And today we are going to be looking at another question. And the question is: Whose House Are You as A Disciple? There were times when Dr. Myles Munroe was preaching, he would enjoin the people listening to please write. I also want to enjoin us that as we read this piece, let us write down what the Spirit is ministering unto us. The question we are asking today: Whose house are you as a disciple?, is a crucial question, directed at us, not as a people, but as individuals. So, don’t deflect it, don’t be lost in the crowd, don’t say that question is for us as a church. But I want you to know that this question is directed to you as a body of Christ.
Whose House Are you as a Disciple? And we will look very quickly at the book of Luke 11, we will read from verse 24-26. The Bible says: “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places…” We are looking at a situation now. The Bible says: “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places seeking rest; and finding none, he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ 25 And when he comes, he finds it swept and put in order. 26 Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man…” not that spirit, not that object, not an article. We are not dealing with an article, an object; a chair, a table. It says: and the last state of that man…so, we know it is about a man or a woman, an individual….it says: the last state of that man is worse than the first.”
Now how many of us can look at ourselves today and say: we have reached our zenith as a people: “This is the best that my life can ever be, this is how far I can ever go, this is how deep I can ever go, I can never know more than this, I know enough, I have enough, I am happy enough, this is all that I seek about rest and happiness.” There is hardly a man that would talk like that. That is to show that our present realities are not our ideal destinations. Where we are is not where we want to be. So, when the Bible says the latter state or the last state of the man is worst than the first; the question is: was the first even good enough?
So, a man, a woman who is at a level, who now becomes worse off; so, we would the condition of the man has deteriorated over time. It has worsened, things got from bad to worse. Do you understand where we are beginning from? So, you shouldn’t just assume that this man that the Bible is talking about is a bishop, or he is the general overseer of a big church. We should believe that this man in the story could be any man, he could even be a bishop or someone who just even got born again or somebody who is not even born again. The Bible says because of what happened to this man, which is not the ideal thing, the situation of the man got from bad to worse. So, it is important that we ask this question very carefully.
Now if we go back to verse 24 and read it and read it again, haven gotten some basis for our thought, the Bible says: “when an unclean spirit…” The word ‘unclean spirit’ shows us something very important. There is a difference between an unclean spirit for example, and an angel or we could even say there is a difference between an unclean spirit and the Holy Spirit. One of the reasons why the name of the Spirit of God is called ‘Holy’ is because of the attributes of God. God is Holy. But there are other spirits apart from God that are not Holy. Some of them are tagged unclean spirits. Unclean spirits are different from you and I. Unclean spirits are spirits that lack bodies. They are creatures of God that have fallen from grace to grass, they fell from glory.
In the book of Jude, Jude said those who were not able to keep their proper abode, the angels, who were not able to keep their proper abode, God has reserved for eternal damnation. They are to be judged by God. They left their primary abode. The life God ordained them to live, they refused to live it. So, they were doomed, condemned by God, and some of them are called unclean spirits. Sometimes, you could also refer to them as demons. So, we understand what we are talking about now, right? But the Bible says: when, talking about time, not ‘if’; which is to show that this thing we are talking about is sure, it is just a matter of time. It is not necessarily sure for you, but it is sure for people across the world.
Now it says: when an unclean spirit goes out of a man…so, it means that a spirit that goes out of a man is a spirit that had entered a man at some point in time. But we must understand that that spirit is not the same as the man. It only entered the man. Do we have that understanding? The Bible says: “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he says, ‘I will return…” Do we remember the prodigal son? The son told himself: “the servants in my father’s house is better than I, so, I will return to my father.” So, this unclean spirit says: I will return to my house…see the confidence and boldness. What gave the spirit the impression that the man he left was his house? It says: “I will return to my house from which I came.”
No wonder the Bible says: when an unclean spirit goes out of a man… we don’t know how the spirit left the man. So, it looks as if the spirit was even regretting the decision to leave. The spirit felt more at home in the man. Every time the unclean spirit was in that man, the unclean spirit says “I am at home, I am in my house.” And that is why we are looking at that question today: whose house are you as a disciple? It is possible for us to see ourselves as human beings, we are men and women, but underneath of our manhood or womanhood lies the tendencies for us to be houses either for clean spirit or unclean spirit. And see the conclusion of where we just read: “and the last state of that man is worse than the first.” That is why we are looking at it. If the last state of this man will be something different from the beginning, we might not worry. We might say maybe things just fell apart, things will fall in place again, no! Things did not happen like that accidentally. The life of the man didn’t go wrong suddenly, something made it wrong.
So that we are not clueless as a people thinking, that man was good before, he was a good man and now, he is a bad man. Or we say that man was a successful man before, but now, he is no more, he is now a failure. What has shifted the state of the man from success to failure, from victory to defeat, from a man who was in charge of circumstance to a man who is under circumstance, these things don't just happen. These things are made to happen and it depends on who is residing in the man or the woman. Now we have seen the man, we have seen the woman as a house. That is why we are asking the question: who is residing in your house? and whose house are you? Who would look at you and say: you are his or her house? Whoever makes that statement would also be the one to determine your end.
What your life will become is a product of who you house as a person, as a building, as a house. Do we understand now? Now, there is a place I also want us to read before we go to Genesis. In 1 Corinthians 3:16-17, there is something for us to meditate on in that place. See what the Bible says: “Do you not know…as if we are expected to know. Ignorance is not an excuse. “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” So, don’t assume that you are a person, a man, a house that is empty. You either accommodate an unclean spirit or you accommodate the Spirit of God. By design, you were created as a house to accommodate the Spirit of God.
But you must understand that when you see an uncompleted building, the tendency is strong that the owner of the building is not the one residing in it, but guys, boys. We can say area boys, street boys, boys who don’t have accommodation of their own, who are struggling or trying to make ends meet. So, there are good boys who live in their father’s houses. Bible says: angels who could not keep their primary abode God has reserved for eternal damnation. Now, there are boys and girls, there are teenagers, men and women who live with their parents. You can call them domesticated people, cultured people, people who are in a normal state of reasoning and behavior. But there are boys and girls who don’t live with their parents, yet, they are not married. So, they don’t have houses of their own, they hang around. Anytime they find an uncompleted building, they simply occupy it.
I am sure you know that an uncompleted building is an unguarded building. An uncompleted building is an unprotected building, nobody competes to live in a building that is not completed. Of course, you can claim to be the owner, but as long as you haven’t completed it, you sleep somewhere else until it is completed. Don’t forget there are some buildings that are being constructed, some buildings are abandoned. Whichever, those buildings are less protected than the ones that are completed and occupied by the owners. So, when these boys and girls find these buildings, what do they do? They dwell there. They come there with all their goodies, some even enter the place with rubbish and they end up rubbishing the building.
The owner of the house would have loved to put an aluminum frame and windows, but these guys will just use wood as windows, some of the will use polythene material just to cover. Instead of using normal toilets, they would desecrate the surroundings of the building. These boys and girls who don’t abode in their parents’ houses, who look for uncompleted buildings don’t go there to beautify those houses, but they go there to defile them. If the owner normally takes care of his building, they will draw anything there. They will hardly sweep; they will hardly wash anything. Their clothes are hardly clean. So, what happens, as they are, the houses are. They are dirty, they are ruffians. They are unkept people and so, they make the building unkept.
Whatever the circumstance, or the situation, the character, the spirit, the attitude of the boys is, so also the state of the building. What makes the last state of the building of the man to be worst than the beginning? It was the activity, the cumulation of the impact of these unclean spirits. See what the Bible says: when an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes into dry places, seeking for rest, seeking for comfort, seeking for solace. When he can't find it, he says I was better off in the place I left. And the Bible says he will now make that decision to say let me go and look for seven other spirits who are more unclean than me, who are more wicked than me, who are more destructive than me; and let us go together and dwell there, I don’t want to dwell alone.
You know the situation of the man or the woman could have even been better off if the spirit of returned alone. But the Bible says it returned as seven. Now if those spirits also leave what happens is that they return as 47, that's what make legions to dwell in a house. Spirits increase, not arithmetically anywhere they are, they increase geometrically. A spirit moving from one to seven, seven to forty-nine, and forty-nine to whatever figure we can come up with after multiplication. When Jesus asked that man that was possess by the devil, and Jesus said: “What is your name?” He said: “legion for we are many.” And in the Roman kingdom, a legion is a group of soldiers who are not less than 2000 or 3000 to 6000. Just imagine 6000 spirits inside one man.
No wonder when you see certain people, they are unlovable, they are unclean, their character is nothing to write home about. What produces that character is the spirit dwelling in them. You know, two weeks ago, we said: what manner of spirit are you of? Are you flowing in the spirit inconsistence with Christ or are you flowing in the spirit of Christ? But this time around, we are not asking what manner of spirit are you of, we are examining what kind of spirit that dwells in you. Are you accommodating the Spirit of God or are you accommodating a demon that is an unclean spirit? These are things for us to ask. It could be easy for us to quickly say: I accommodate the Holy Spirit. But what kind of life have you been living? Have you been doing dirty things, keeping dirty thoughts, doing dirty things? If that happens, then there is a dirty spirit that is dirtying your container.
Actually, it is not your fault, the spirit that lives in you is creating what we see. That man of Gadarene that was mad, the moment Jesus chased out the demons, you remember that they went inside the pigs and those demons were so strong that they even pushed the pigs inside the water. A man could accommodate the quantity that was enough to carry thousand of pigs into the river. Do you understand what a man is able to carry? Because, come to think of it. If a space is built to accommodate God, how big will that space be? If you build a space to accommodate a container, say 40ft container, and you now put few flower jars there, that place was built for container and it is supposed to take one container, how many of the flower jars do you think would fit in? Are they not thousands? That’s it.
You are created to accommodate God, if you fail in accommodating God, then you will accommodate thousands of demons. When you see a mad man that is going a-wire, and you ask what is responsible for it? They are demons and unclean spirits in operations! There are certain things people can drink and certain spirits will enter into you instantly without training. There are some substances that will enter into you and you will start misbehaving without any training, what has entered you is what is producing the behavior. You think you need to learn evil to be corrupt? You don’t learn evil to be corrupt, the evil spirit that enters you produces evil. You don’t need to teach a child how to lie, the unclean spirit produces a lie. The Bible calls the devil the father of lies, he is a liar and a father of liars.
So, you just need to put an unclean spirit in someone and see them manifest unclean behaviors. Now let me remind us what happened in the Old Testament. God wanted to destroy king, and God said: how will I destroy this king? And one spirit said: God, I will go and become a lying spirit in his mouth and the mouth of his prophets, and they will tell him lies. When you see spiritual people that are lying, it is the spirit in them that produces the lies, you need to instantly discern it, the Holy Spirit is not at work here because the Holy Spirit does not lie. God is not a man that He should lie nor the son of man that He should repent? Do we understand? Enough of us struggling with men and women, we must simply deal with the spirit that is inside of them.
You are hardly without a spirit. Look at your life. You are either a man, a woman full of the full of the Holy Spirit, or you are either a man or a woman full of unclean spirits. When little things are said to you, and instantly, you flare up, your eyes turn red, and you bring something, you break it down. Will you say that is the Holy Spirit? The answer is no! and it is not you, it is the spirits. At a point, a man came to Jesus and He said: this my son, a spirit ceases him, and I want us to note that word, like somebody ceasing somebody, and that same spirit throws him inside fire and inside water. Is the man in love with fire or water? And when Jesus now came close to the boy, the Bible says the spirit convulses the boy. So, when you see a man convulsing, and you think he loves it simply because he wants to convulse, no, the spirit is convulsing him.
Apostle Paul said: "These things that I write you right now, not that God has said to me to do so, but I have the Holy Spirit also"; in other words, Paul was saying I am speaking to you by the Holy Spirit. But if you find a man without the Holy Spirit, who has unclean spirits, everything will go wrong. Look at the man in question, there was a moment in his life when he didn’t have the unclean spirit. The Bible says when the unclean spirit goes out of a man. So, he was at a point without an unclean spirit, so he was a normal man at that time, not spirit is ceasing him and throwing him into fire and water, he is on his own.
So, what changes the situation of the man is the entry of the unclean spirit. I am sure we remember that there was a time Satan entered Judas Iscariot. Bible says as soon as Jesus dipped the bread into water, He gave it to Judas and immediately, Satan entered into him. What did he do afterwards? The Bible says he rose up and went away. Some things you think you can’t do; you will do if you accommodate Satan. It is not you doing it, it is Satan trying to manipulate and manifest in you. So, what do you do? There is a wisdom of God that just came at a point when the Lord was sharing with us about the uncompleted building. Are you like an uncompleted building that is unprotected unpreservedpreserved? Nobody cares about you. The only one that can come close to you is someone that is unclean.
You know there are certain places in Abuja that has beautiful houses. So, when you're passing through them, you're like “wow, these people they are enjoying here.” But if you go through slums, have you ever said to yourself that those people there are enjoying? Can those who sleep in those expensive houses also sleep inside slum? So, you know that the nature of a building is what determines its character. If a building is beautifully decorated, well built up, then unclean personalities, unruly characters are quickly chased away by the reason of the building. But when a building is unpreserved, unprotected, unkept, anybody comes in. So, you see their walls painted with all manner of things. Do you understand? If you can focus on decorating your life as a building, as a house, you are attractive by virtue of the decoration and the beautification of your house to the Holy Spirit.
See what that place concluded with. I Corinthians 3 verse 17. It says: “If anyone…” irrespective of gender, irrespective of the positions and titles, “If anyone defiles the temple of God…” Now look at it, when the Bible says “you are the temple of God”, we could say the Bible was talking about the body of Christ. But what about “if anyone”, is ‘anyone’ not any person? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are. So, if you want to attract the Holy Spirit, make your temple holy. If you want to attract the unclean spirits, make your life an abandon project, make sure nothing is working.
If I have an unclean character, I am not looking for a clean place to hide. When people kidnap people, they don’t keep them in the palaces, they keep them in the bush. They look for uncompleted buildings and they hide there. Do you want demons to be hiding around your life? When police are chasing some people and they want to hide, they simply hide in an uncompleted building, they cannot hide in somebody’s mansion. Do you understand? Do you want demons who are being chased to hide in you? Is your life a hiding place for robbers and thieves? If this is the case, your life will be robbed, virtues would be stolen from you. The Holy Spirit is helping us to appreciate what goes on around us. Your life must not become an abandoned project.
So, when God is building you, wait to be built. In 1 Corinthians 3:9, the Bible says: “For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building.” So, if you are a building, it means you must be built. No wonder apostle Paul said in Acts 20:32: “So now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up…so that your life will not become an abandon project, hiding places for thieves and robbers, for spiritual robbers, spiritual thieves, hiding places for spiritual kidnappers, not hiding places for rebellion children who run away from their fathers’ houses looking for habitation in the bush.
May our lives not be hiding places for men and women, spirits with questionable characters in Jesus’ name. When God made man, God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. That means that we have been designed and destined to be accommodation for God and let them have dominion. So, by the virtue of our spirit, dominion comes to a man, dominion comes to a woman. And Bible says God formed the body of man from the ground is that not how we build our houses? We take sand, sharp sand, and all manner of sand and stones, we break stones, we use it to build our houses. Those houses are not us. But those houses will accommodate us. We sleep, so we do bedroom, we love to sit down so we do sit room. We love to do major and minor, so, we have restrooms. Is that not it?
Now, because of what you must do, that is why your body has been fashioned like this. And as a building, a house is built to express and to satisfy the owner of the house. So also, you have been built as a body to satisfy the Spirit of God that wants to dwell in you. The Bible says in Hebrews chapter 10, when He came to this world, and we said there's a difference between the ‘He’ that came and it says sacrifices and offerings you did not desire but a body you have prepared for me. So, there was the “He” and there was the body? Do we still remember that statement? There's a difference between the one that says a thing, and the body that was made for that. Do we understand?
So, the body was formed but He had to come to the body so the body must be formed in a manner that must accommodate Him. When we talk about Christ, Christ is a Spirit, Christ was never born. There was a time Dr. Myles also said “Christ was never born.” Christ was given. You too, the Bible says and God breathed into the nostrils of man the breath of life. The breath of life is not a chemical or a biological substance, it is God’s Spirit. And God breath into the body of man the breath of life and man became a living soul. The state of the man became better of than the state he was without the breath of God. And so, when the breath of life leaves a man, an unclean breath comes into a man, the future of the man or woman would be worse than the beginning.
So, when you find a man who is behaving erratically, the conduct of the man is bad, the conduct of the woman is bad, don’t just start to cry over it, cast out the unclean spirit. Every time Jesus cast out unclean spirit, people returned back to factory setting. The mute start talking, the deaf, they hear the blind they see, what happens? The unclean spirit has been cast out. I don’t know if you have been accommodating unclean spirits, that spirit ceases to manifest in your life henceforth in the mighty name of Jesus.
When Jesus sent out the disciples, He says, He gave them power to cast out unclean spirit, that’s it. Somebody is mad, the unclean spirit is making him mad. Somebody is even sick, there is an unclean spirit making him sick. When Jesus got to the house of Peter and the mother-in-law of Peter was sick with fever. The Bible says Jesus rebuked the fever and told her to stand up. He rebuked the fever; the fever was a spirit. You have been normal until a spirit comes into you and you start shaking, you start getting cold, you start getting hot, don’t think it is biological or chemical reactions, a spirit is at work. Bible says strangers shall hear his voice and they shall get out and flee from their hidden secret places.
When I was growing up, when I was a boy in the house of my father, every time I was sick, that was my prayer. That was his prayer for me and it worked every time hundred percent. And I'm going to pray this prayer in Yoruba because I was not prayed to in English. “Aya yo paa awon alejo, won sii fii iberu bojo saa jade ninu kolofin won.” Everything strangers in our bodies, they shall hear the voice of the Lord and they shall get out of their hiding places in the name of Jesus. God wants to be glorified in your body. God wants to be glorified in your life. Demons cannot reside in the temple of the Lord; demons cannot reside in the temple of the Lord. You are the temple of God. I am the temple of God!
Amen!
