He's just delivered a man in Verse 22, and then He gets a reaction from the religious people who hate this kind of stuff, and He responds in Verse 28; If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God is come upon you. Now notice what Jesus said; He said if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, the kingdom of God is come upon you - so deliverance is a manifestation of the kingdom of God, being superior than the kingdom of the devil. It is a prevailing of the kingdom of God. It is the kingdom of God coming in the earth, as it is in heaven. No demons in heaven, so when deliverance takes place, the kingdom of heaven comes, and begins to be established in a new way, in an area of the person's life they were not free, and notice the second thing; He says if I cast them out - so deliverance also requires some person to act as a representative of heaven, to speak, address and command the demons to go from the person's life. If I cast them out by the Spirit of God - so there's a co-operation. It requires the anointing of the Holy Ghost. We can't do deliverance without the Holy Ghost. You can go through all the motions, you can shout, make all the noise you like. If the Holy Spirit doesn't come, there isn't going to be any deliverance.
Now here's the thing to realise; you can come up for prayer and have someone lay hands on you or pray for you, but God knows your heart, and He knows the readiness of your heart to be set free, and so if we are open to Him, and the Holy Spirit is come upon our life, we will get delivered. There's absolutely no doubt about it at all. But if we just come, we say well I'll come up to see what happens, there's no faith for anything to happen, probably very little will happen. He said according to your faith, it's done to you, so deliverance is a co-operation between a person, the Holy Ghost, and also requires the co-operation of the person being prayed for. Many times He's said, according to your faith let it be done to you, so when you recognise hey, this is the problem. Jesus, I know exactly what I've got to do to position myself for freedom, then freedom will come. It's absolutely certain.
So Jesus then teaches a little bit about it, and teaches something very interesting. He gives an insight to the spirit world. When we talk about the spirit world, we live in a western culture. People don't think of a spirit world. They tend to think primarily of a natural world, but there are many cultures in the world where actually their world view is a spirit world view, and so Jesus teaches about the spirit world. Notice what He said; when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places seeking rest but finds none. What He's saying now is a demon is a spirit being. It's a spirit being. You are a spirit being. You live in a body. You're actually anchored to one place. You live in a body. You are a spirit being. Now as a spirit being you have access to the realm of the spirit, you have access to God. You can open your life to all kinds of things, so your body is the house, you as a spirit being live in.
Now when a demon comes into the person like that, it says the unclean spirit goes out of the man, he goes through dry places seeking rest. So when a spirit is cast out of a person, it can move from one place to another - in fact generally they move really quickly when they're cast out - [vroom] gone like that! And so demons will move, and what they do is they go a dry place, that's a place where there's no movement of the Spirit of God, and they look for a place of rest. It doesn't mean that they're looking for some place to lie down. They're looking for some place they feel comfortable in. They're looking for some place or person that's in agreement with them. They're looking for an entry into another person's life, so when an evil spirit comes out of a person, it goes through - it walks and travels in the spirit world, but it's looking for some other person they can enter into, looking for a place to enter. Now demons can occupy or come into a building, they live in a building, particularly a building where there's been a trauma, a murder or some kind of violent thing, where there's been idolatry of some kind or spiritism of some kind. Spirits can live in a building, and when people come in a house - perhaps you've been in a house, you bought a house, and then you find that once you're in the house many troubles come while you're in the house. There's conflicts, there's coldness in the house, there's a funny atmosphere in the place, people get sick; all of that indicates most likely a spirit is in the house and - or you may even see the spirit manifest, which we had in one of the first school houses we went to live in. Spirit manifested one night when I went to bed, and I saw it. It freaked me out completely, but it made me determined to get to deal with these things, because I saw they're real.