11:23
The warfare analogy is now carried further. “Whoever is not with me is against me”. There is no neutral ground with Jesus, we are either with Him and working with Him, or we are against Him and working against Him. In all of this section we see that spiritual warfare is real and that we are in a battle. This is not the only aspect of life and the gospel, but it is a crucially important one and one that we need to have a firm grasp of. The gospel is not about a nice idea or a nice way of living. It is a spiritual battle against spiritual forces of darkness which destroy people’s lives. But the Son of God is our commander-in-chief and victory is certain.
11:24-26
We now read of what happens when an evil spirit leaves someone and there is no change in the person. Now in all this we should remember that it is Jesus who is speaking. Many may say that people in those days were too ready to attribute things to demons when psychological explanations are far more appropriate. Well if we say they were misguided then we also have to say that Jesus was misguided! And where does that leave us? I think we are on far safer ground in assuming that Jesus does know what He is talking about, and so we need to to take demons seriously since Jesus obviously does.
In this portion of the teaching Jesus warns about what will happen if the person who has been set free does nothing else. If that is the case all that will happen is that the demon will come back with some of his friends and the man will be in an even worse state than before.
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