In our last study of Matthew 12:1-21 we saw that despite His
warning that he would either be a blessing or an offense Jesus offended the
Pharisees by showing how lopsided their standard of good and evil was. The ultimate standard is God Himself Who
desires mercy more than sacrifice. Later
in Matthew 22, Jesus will discuss how the Law itself hangs on the Great
Commandment: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, all they
heart, all thy mind, and all thy strength and thy neighbor as thyself.’ Everything in the Law proceeds from that
proposition.
When Jesus pointed out in Matthew 12 how their application
of the Sabbath Law actually demonstrated a lack of mercy for the hungry and the
sick and was thus a misunderstanding of the Law itself, the Pharisees became
furious. So Jesus withdrew to the
countryside around the Sea of Galilee and continued to quietly teach the truth
and to heal the sick. He did not argue
with the Pharisees; He just withdrew while the Pharisees began a conspiracy to
destroy this Man Who had showed them up.
It is always a terrible decision to decide to be offended by Jesus.
Now this week we are going to see in this follow-on passage
in Matthew 12:22-32 that the
Pharisees began to succeed in their campaign to poison the minds of the people
with such ultimately devastating consequences that Jesus speaks up with a
solemn warning.
The ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ in this case was the
healing of a demonized man. ESV calls
him a” demon-oppressed” man. This is a
better translation than some older versions that use “demon-possessed.” The Greek word is literally “demonized.” No demon “owns” a person as a possession. But it is possible for a person with a
weakened or over-relaxed mind or emotional state to give up control. This control can pass to another person under
hypnosis for example. Drugs or trauma
can also bring about this state. Such
persons become quite susceptible to spiritual trickery in their mind while in
this state. We do not know precisely what
brought about this state of affairs in the case cited in Matthew 12 but Jesus
sees that the man has actually lost the ability to see and to speak. Before we continue, what exactly is a demon?
A demon is simply an evil angel. At some point in the past, the chief angel
was Lucifer. He was filled with pride
and decided to try to overthrow his creator, God, and succeeded in getting 1/3
of the angels to rebel with him. But he
was instead overthrown himself (Cf Isa. 14; Ezek. 7). All angels are actually created spirits who do
not own physical bodies but have great power and can appear as if they
did. Lucifer became known as Satan, the
adversary, and the evil angels became his servants, the demons. When they were overthrown they did not grow
horns or anything grotesque but, in fact, they retain the power to appear as
angels of light. They do all they can to
deceive the human race in their continuing mad power play. They are discerned not by their appearance
but by their message.
So one or more of these demons or evil angels has oppressed
this man to the point where he was quite helpless. And Jesus was moved with mercy and compassion
and He healed him by casting out the evil.
And the man was suddenly able to speak and to see.
So how did the crowd
react? 1) They were amazed. They could not deny that something awesome
had happened. 2) They began to ask a question, “Can this be
the Son of David?” In English it sounds
like they were asking for information but in Greek, the grammar tells us that
they were assuming that the answer was, “No.”
So really, it was something like this, “In spite of this miracle, this
can’t really be the Son of David, can it?”
The miracle argued that this was indeed the Messiah, the promised Son of
David, but the Pharisees, their religious leaders, had publicly denied that
this could be.
And, sure enough, the Pharisees got wind of it and sent out the
word that Jesus did this by means of being in league with Beelzebub, the prince
of demons—Satan, in other words. Some
versions will say Beelzebul which is closer to the Greek spelling. Beelzebub means ‘Lord of the Flies.’ (Now you know where Golding got his idea for
the book title.) Beelzebub was
worshipped by the Phoenicians who were amazed at seeing life emerge from dung
as maggots crawled out. They took this
to be an omen of a life-giving god.
Later the name was changed to Beelzebul by the Israelites, because it
means ‘Lord of filth.’ They were mocking
the Phoenicians for worshiping the god of feces as they saw it. So now the Pharisees are connecting Jesus
with this god of feces, who they believed ruled over the evil spirits in the
world. Speaking evil of God is blasphemy.
But Jesus did not strike them dead for their insult. In fact, He calmly pointed out the stupidity
of their logic. Why would Satan be
induced to surrender territory of his own free will? Jesus said, ‘A house
divided against itself cannot stand.’
(Abraham Lincoln quotes this line in his Gettysburg address to refer to
the illogical state of affairs as the civil war raged on). Jesus went on to point out that there were
even Jewish exorcists who were able to cast out demons. He calls them ‘your sons.’ These sons had obviously been treated with
respect by the establishment. So, Jesus
is saying, in effect, ‘Your condemnation of me, also points at your sons. How do you think these sons will judge the
situation?’ Hmmmm.
On the other hand, if this is empowered by the Spirit of
God, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.
(Luke 11:20 has a parallel account which says, ‘The finger of God has
come upon you’ which is a quote from Pharaoh’s magicians when they realize that
Moses is actually working miracles by the hand of God.) So which kingdom is it? God’s or Satan’s?
Jesus adds one last interesting comment to his reply. He talks about what you have to do if you
wish to raid a strong man’s house. You
have to deal with the strong man and tie him up. Jesus has entered a strong man’s house – the
demonized man—and tied up the strong man—the demon—and freed the man whose
house it really belonged to. Who has
that kind of power? Discerning the source of power requires discerning the
message. Who wants to free the man? Who wants to enslave Him?
Now comes His solemn warning. Be careful how you take sides. If you don’t choose to be on Jesus’ side
then, by default, you have chosen the other side. There really isn’t any room to sit on the fence
once you hear the message.
Every sin, every blasphemy (evil speaking) against Jesus
will be forgiven but speaking against the Spirit of God goes too far. It cannot ever be forgiven. Why?
Because it is the Spirit of God that convicts us of sin. If we ignore Him, there is no other means to
come to the realization of our need for forgiveness and then to the One Who can
forgive us. There is a small window in
which this choice can be made. The
window opens when we hear the gospel and realize our need for forgiveness. The window begins to close when we refuse to
listen or consider any longer. The
closing is final when we die.
In Matthew, the nation of Israel is being confronted by
Jesus’ claims and by His credentials—by His words and His works. What will they do with Jesus, the
Messiah? We, too have heard this
message. We cannot establish our own
rules for engaging heaven. The Pharisees
did that. Will we follow Jesus or the
voice of trickery that bound the blind and mute man for years? Jesus opened the victim’s eyes and
mouth. Our eyes and mouth are opened as
well. What do you see? Jesus? What do you say about Him?
© 2018 Eric Thimell
No comments:
Post a Comment