Matthew 12:22-50

In spite of Israel’s persistent disobedience, God’s faithfulness, and His absolute inability to break His covenant promises is clearly displayed for us through every verse of the Bible.

Through the long experiences with Israel, we see it revealed to us that it was always God’s plan to include all nations, Gentile, and Jew, in His plan.

His plan was that through His chosen people, Israel, there would be the revelation, the knowledge of God. They would be a testimony a light to the nations.

In Isaiah 42:6 God says,

“I am the Lord; I have called you (who? The nation Israel) in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations”.

 

Another reference to Israel being a light to the Gentiles is found in Luke 2:32, where Simeon, a devout Jew, blesses the infant Jesus and says,

“My eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel”.

Through this nation Jesus, the Christ, The Messiah, would come and bring salvation not only to the Jews but also to the Gentiles.

 

The prophet Malachi declares that God’s patience is coming to an end with Israel because these people who were supposed to make the One true God known and shown to the nations of the world have failed to do so.

Instead, they’ve disrespected His name. They’re not reflecting God to the nations. But God makes all things work for good and what’s impossible to man is possible with God.

God’s purpose won’t be defeated, and so now, all over the world, His name is to be known and honoured among the nations and in every place, prayers and worship are to be offered to Him as Malachi 1:11 says.. And we read,

For from the rising of the sun, even to its going down, My name shall be great among the Gentiles; In every place incense shall be offered to My name (that’s prayer), And a pure offering (that’s Christ); For My name shall be great among the nations,” Says the LORD of hosts.

 

So, in this Jewish book, the bible, we have revealed to us everything to do with life, natural and eternal. It’s all for us and our learning, every word of it. However, it’s not all TO us. The modern day church has somehow got the idea that the Old Testament is the law and is related to Israel, but the New Testament is for the church. Every verse in the New Testament is Jesus speaking to us, the church, today.

This simply is not true and the only way we can know this is by

Seeing, not just reading, but seeing the whole counsel of God. We must see the whole perspective if we’re to ever know God’s will that’s revealed in His Word.

Selected bits and pieces of scripture here and there, where the whole context is never seen, only brings more questions than answers and leads to confusion and we know from 1 Corinthians 14:33,

For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.

 

All we really need to do as we delve into God’s Word is THINK.

We can’t just skim over a few verses adopt our own idea of what those verses mean and think we’re studying the Word.

We need to get back the art that’s fast disappearing today, the art of thinking. Critical thinking.

The quick sound bite, the 5 second meme, the one or two sentence comment on social media are all signs of an epidemic today that’s far more dangerous than any pandemic in the world, the epidemic of not thinking for ourselves.

So, lets walk into that peace that Paul talks about and turn from the confusion that doesn’t come from God.

 

Again, today we’ve run smack bang into another passage that’s caused confusion and error in the Christian church through misunderstanding, The Unpardonable Sin.

 

We cast off today in Matthew 12:22-23,

Then one was brought to Him who was demon-possessed, blind and mute; and He healed him, so that the blind and mute man both spoke and saw. 

And all the multitudes were amazed and said, “Could this be the Son of David?” 

 

Could this really be Him, The prophesied Son of David they ask themselves?

See, all these Jews knew about Him from scripture. They all knew that He was destined to come. There was no dispute amongst them about whether or not the prophecies were true. They knew!

With what Jesus had already done up to this point and then what the people now saw, How could they use the phrase “Could this be”? In other words, the cry should have been, “This is our Messiah, The promised One, The Son of David. He has the credentials.”

 

This was a tremendous miracle, just as great as the raising of the dead if not greater. Jesus’s continued miracles of healing and casting out demons convinced the people that He was the Son of David, the Messiah. But what did those old religious elite, the Pharisees say?

 

Verse 24,

Now when the Pharisees heard it they said, “This fellow does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons.”

 

This is leading to the unpardonable sin, and we need to carefully follow Jesus’s words.

 

Verses 25 to 27,

But Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. 

If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? 

And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub (Satan), by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore, they shall be your judges. 

 

He says every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation.

We all know this.

Whether it’s a government, a company, a household, or a community, wherever the heads of those organisations are divided against the goal, the vision, they’ll eventually fall. We’ve seen it time and again throughout history and across homes and communities everywhere today.

Then Jesus says to this lot, If Satan cast out Satan,…. That is, if Satan, (Beelzebub), casts out himself, or in other words the very forces that he commands to be there in the first place, he’s divided against himself. He’s destroying the very thing he’s building so how is it possible for him to stand. It’s an absolutely absurd concept.

 

By whom do your sons, or children, cast them out? This is actually a masterstroke in the way Jesus handles the pompous accusations of these Pharisees.

Children, or sons of the prophets, means the disciples of the prophets. It includes most importantly the children or sons of these Pharisees, the disciples of the Pharisees.

Now, from Acts 19 verses 13 and 14, we learn that there were exorcists among the Jews, and, from our Lord’s saying here, it’s also evident that the disciples of the Pharisees did cast out demons, or, at least, those who instructed them wanted everyone to believe they had that power.

Jesus points the finger right back at the Pharisees saying, If the man who casts out demons is in partnership with Satan, then your own disciples, and you yourselves who taught them, are all of you in partnership with the devil which would mean you’re all children of the devil and partnered with him against God.

See the very acts that they were doing were judging them.

Boy, how this must have confused and befuddled this lot. We can see their self-importance and their arrogance as they stand there with their accusing, judgmental looks making this accusation as if they’re the only authority in the universe.

Then what a change there would’ve been as their faces and their whole demeanour changed to a pathetic confusion as Jesus words sunk in and the ramifications of what He said hit them.

 

Now to verse 28,

But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. 

 

The kingdom of God is come upon you in the presence of the Messiah. Christ is saying, “l am here! I’m the One. My works are proof that I Am He that the entire scripture is about. My power to cast out demons is proof of that and it’s plain for you to see.

 

Now verses 29 to 32,

Or how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house. 

He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad. 

“Therefore, I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. 

Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come. 

 

Let’s break this passage down so we can see exactly what Jesus is saying here.

Or how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man,…. This is another example Jesus put to them to prove that his casting out of demons could not be by Satan, but by the Spirit of God.

It shows that unless His power was superior to Satan’s power He could never have been the master over him. He could never have commanded him, overcome him, and bound him.

Neither could Jesus have plundered Satan’s house as he did when he cast Satan’s minions out of the bodies or souls of men. He’s using a natural example to paint a picture of a supernatural act and He’s displaying the stupidity of the Pharisee’s argument.

He’s saying that if a man should enter into another, much stronger, man’s house with the purpose of plundering and stealing his goods, it would be stupidity to try and get that stronger man to help him. It couldn’t happen unless he first binds the strong man, rendering his greater strength useless.

The strong man is Satan and Christ is stronger than he is and the mere suggestion that Christ casts out demons by Satan’s assistance is completely absurd as Jesus is showing these religious rulers.

 

He that is not with me, is against me. These words again mainly refer to Satan, and are a further proof, that Christ did not cast out devils by him; since they two are as much opposites, as they can possibly be.

Satan is not on the side of Christ, but an enemy to him and that goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden.

 

And he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad.

Christ is the good shepherd, that gathers his sheep to himself. The sheep here are the lost sheep of Israel.

Satan is the wolf, that catches and scatters the sheep, and seeks to kill and destroy them.

These educated Jews knew very well of the enmity between Satan and God and therefor there’s no neutral middle ground. It’s either for Him or against him.

Therefore I say to you.

This shows that what follows is still referring to the Pharisees accusations that the miracles were performed under the influence and with the assistance Satan when they were clearly done by the Spirit of God.

“Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men.

 

For you and me as Christians today, that’s the person who’s believed and put his trust in Jesus Christ, that particular sin of blasphemy against the Spirit could not be committed.

It could only be committed when Jesus was here on the earth as He is in this passage. Again, Jesus is speaking to Jews still under the law. The Holy Spirit did not indwell the hearts of men at this time as He will after the day of Pentecost a little way down the track after Christ has been crucified, buried, raised from the dead, and ascended into heaven.

Before that the Holy Spirit came upon man but did not indwell them. He, The Holy Spirit could also leave man as we see in David’s plea to God in Psalm 51:11,

Do not cast me away from Your presence, And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. 

In our day, once we are baptised with the Holy Spirit the very moment we believe we are permanently and eternally and unconditionally sealed.

Ephesians 1:13-14 is absolutely crystal clear on this. The passage reads,

In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

Other verse tell us this as well such as 2 Corinthians 1:22, Revelation 7:3-4, and Ephesians 4:30.

So, to repeat, for the believer today that particular sin cannot be committed because it could only be committed. There is no act of sin that you could commit for which there’s no forgiveness.

Of course, if you resist the efforts of the Holy Spirit to draw you to believing, there’s no forgiveness because He’s the One bringing forgiveness.

It’s like a person with a disease that’s going to kill him, but the doctor tells him there’s a remedy for it. However, the person refuses to take the remedy. He doesn’t even believe the doctor that the remedy exists, so he dies. He doesn’t die from the disease, you see, but from refusing to take the remedy.

There is a remedy for the disease of sin, and the Holy Spirit applies it; but if you resist it, there’s no remedy. That’s the only way sin can be unpardonable today. The unforgivable sin is nothing beyond denying Jesus and can only be committed by those who have chosen to reject Jesus and His salvation. For that person their rejection is a rejection of the only means of forgiveness of sin and eternal life. In a nutshell the unpardonable sin today, in the present dispensation of Grace, is simply Unbelief.

John 3:18 says it all,

He who believes in Him (that’s Jesus) is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

 

And Romans 8:1, which is part of a larger passage where Paul talks about the role of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers further confirms it,

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

 

Now we’re at verses 33 to 37 and Jesus is still speaking to these Pharisees and He’s continuing on the subject of them saying He casts out demons by the power of Satan.

Verse 33,

Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit. 

 

Jesus is telling them by using an illustration of a tree. He’s saying if a tree is good then admit that the fruit it produces is good or if the tree’s bad call it’s fruit bad but don’t ever try and say that a bad tree bears good fruit or a good tree bears bad fruit.

This, of course, is exactly what these people were doing in the case of the Lord’s miracles.

Verse 34,

Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 

You may remember that John the Baptist had called these people the same thing.

These leaders of the Jews boasted of being the seed of Abraham and although they made a show of outwardly appearing righteous, inwardly they were full of poison and evil which showed up here in their envy and bitterness.

We’ll see Jesus put it another in Matthew 23 verse 27,

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.

 

Matthew 12:35

A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. 

There’s an old saying that goes, “What’s in the well of the heart will come out through the bucket of the mouth.” This scathing attack on these religious rulers by Jesus reveals that He’s rejected them. Had they committed the unpardonable sin? At least the break with these enemies is final and it won’t be healed.

Verses 36 and 37,

But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. 

For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” 

 

By an “idle word” is meant, what the Jews call “light conversation” or “vain discourse”. It’s like frothy language and useless conversation, but these pharisees have taken that to the next level with their blasphemies against Christ, and the Spirit of Christ.

Under the law, that remember all these people are still under, this’ll bring judgment should these people fail to repent of their words and ask forgiveness.

This does not apply to the believer in the body of Christ today. Remember the audience are Jews still under the law. Our useless and prideful words are forgiven by the shed blood of Christ just like every other sin we have and will ever commit.

Now we’ve arrived at Matthew 12 verse 38 where the scribes and Pharisees demand a sign. Let’s read,

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.” 

 

The scribes and Pharisees are now using another subtle approach to Jesus.

See how obsessed they are by Him? They appear to go along with Him by asking for a sign, but they’ve got no intention of believing because of a sign.

They’re trying to trap Him. Note how the Lord answers them in verse 39,

But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 

 

What was the sign of Jonah? Well, listen to Jesus in verse 40,

For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 

By the way, what could top the signs that they’d already seen in the miracles that were walking about in their thousands?

The Lord absolutely refused to grant them a sign but directed them back to two incidents in the Old Testament.

The first incident is the account of the prophet Jonah. Jonah was apparently raised from the dead when he was in the fish. God brought him out of darkness and death into light and life.

Jonah’s experience was typical of the soon coming burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ which would be the ultimate sign.

 

Verse 41,

The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here. 

 

The Ninevites received Jonah and his preaching after his miraculous deliverance from the big fish, and they repented. The acts of Israel, as a nation, place her in a much worse position because she did not receive her Messiah and did not repent.

The second incident that Jesus referred them to in verse 42 concerns King Solomon,

The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and indeed a greater than Solomon is here. 

 

Jesus was greater than Jonah and greater than Solomon. The queen of Sheba heard of Solomon and travelled from the ends of the earth to hear his wisdom. And the Lord Jesus Christ had come from heaven, but they would not turn to Him.

These scribes and Pharisees were educated enough in scripture to know exactly what Jesus was saying but did that make them see the futility of their desire to destroy the Messiah? NO!

He was revealed plainer for them to see than the noses on their faces but they tried every possible way to discredit Him to justify their rejection of Him.

Now in verse 43, and we’re of course in Matthew 12, Jesus gives one of the most weighty and startling parables,

“When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he (that’s the unclean spirit) goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. 

 

A man has an unclean spirit, and the unclean spirit leaves him. The man thinks he’s all cleaned up. Then what happens? Verse 44,

Then he (the unclean spirit) says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. 

 

In other words, to be reformed is no good.

My friend, we can try hard to stop doing the things we know are wrong, but that won’t make us a Christian and it won’t save us.

Trying to reform our ways without the indwelling Holy Spirit is a useless exercise and it’s not what we need. Jesus is saying here that that same old habit, that same old sin that you tried so hard to rid yourself of will come back one day with a vengeance and will start all over again.

 

Verse 45,

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 is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation.” 

Not only will that sin, that habit that addiction return it will return with a vengeance, many times worse than before we tried to clean ourselves up.

Just like the Pharisees and the scribes, who Jesus is speaking to, the hardest people in the world are unsaved church members because they think they’re all right.

They believe that going off to church every Sunday and helping out with church activities cements their salvation and they have eternal life. Their cry is, “How could God reject us because look how good we are.”

They’ve undergone a self-reforming where they’ve tried to be quote, “good”. But, in reality they’re like a vacant house, and all the evil spirits have to do is move in again. The cleaned up house is just inviting the same actions, addictions, and habits to come right back in but many times worse.

These are Satan’s prized people, but they don’t recognise it. Self-Reforming means death and destruction. Regeneration means life and liberty.

The final section of this chapter is even more startling, and it’s a continuation of the same thought that we’ve just read.

There’s a relationship that’s greater than the mother and son relationship and the relationship between blood brothers!

This is a relationship which is established with God through Jesus Christ by faith in Him.

Verse 46 to 49,

While He was still talking to the multitudes, behold, His mother and brothers stood outside, seeking to speak with Him. 

Then one said to Him, “Look, Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside, seeking to speak with You.” 

But He answered and said to the one who told Him, “Who is My mother and who are My brothers?” 

And He stretched out His hand toward His disciples and said, “Here are My mother and My brothers! 

 

The Lord is saying that the strongest relationship today is the relationship between Christ and a believer.

Friends, it’s a hard saying but if we’re a child of God and we have unsaved family members, we’re closer to Jesus Christ than we are to your own relations, including the mother that bore us.

We’re also more closely related to other believers than to the unsaved members of our family. This is a completely new kind of relationship.

 

Finally, Matthew 12:50

For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother.” 

And what is the will of the Father? That you hear the Lord Jesus Christ, that you accept Him and trust Him.

 

Before closing let’s look quickly at a few vital rules that we must keep in mind when studying the Word of God.

These aren’t complicated, scholarly rules. They’re simple, commonsense rules that we already know and use unconsciously every day to evaluate what others say or what we read.

 

Firstly, we have context.

Everyone knows about context. When we get a long email from a friend, we don’t do what most people do when they open the bible at say the letter to the Galatians. That is, they skip the first five chapters of the letter and read only a verse (or two). If we did that to our friend’s email, we just wouldn’t know what they were talking about. We would start at the beginning of the email and read all the way through.

For some reason, though, most of us don’t do this with the Word of God and we completely miss the context.

 

Then we have history.

Everyone knows about history.

If we’re ignorant of the history surrounding a news report or a social media post we’ll basically put our own historical meaning to it. The problem with that is that we’re almost always wrong if we just assume the history.

If we’re studying a portion of scripture that’s telling us about King David for example we should know the history that relates to the passage we’re reading otherwise we’ll get awfully confused.

 

Then there’s the audience.

We also know instinctively about an audience or who’s being spoken to when we hear or read of someone talking to someone else. However, we often disregard this very basic rule where bible study is concerned. Unless we’re aware of the who’s being spoken to it’s very easy to just assume that the verse is speaking to us today when it may well be speaking to a group or an individual hundred, even thousands of years ago and that audience may be under a completely different set of rules and living in a completely different culture to us today. What dispensation are they under? The dispensation of the Law, the dispensation of grace as you and I are under today, or the dispensation of the millennial Kingdom, the dispensation yet to come.

 

Then there’s genre or the type or style or the way we describe things. Figures of speech are included here.

Everyone knows about genre.

Let’s say there are two Aussie football teams playing, say the North Queensland Cowboys and the Sydney Roosters. The Cowboys win convincingly and the next morning the sports headlines reads, “Cowboys Smash Roosters”.

Everyone knows that a bunch of cowboys didn’t go out with baseball bats and smash a brood of roosters.

We all recognize that sports news is written in a particular style. No one is confused. For some reason, however, the same people who understand that news headlines are written in different literary styles, ignore the different literary styles of Scripture.

They mistakenly read proverbs and interpret them as promises, for example. The Bible, however, is written in at least eight different literary styles, each of which has its own principles, and we need to apply our understanding of those styles to the different literary styles (or genres) of the Bible.

 

Then we need to use Scripture to Interpret Scripture.

We also know about this. If we see an article somewhere referring to an event we’ve already learned about somewhere else and we feel it’s not quite right, we’ll go back to that original source to confirm it.

Same with scripture. God reinforces and confirms scripture, often in a number of other places.

Then there’s commentary.

And again, we all know about commentary. Commentary is incredibly important, but it often comes with the commentators’ biases. For example, we know when we listen to a commentary by a politician that he’s biased toward his own party, and we need to see through that get the value of what’s being said.

Even the most godly and intelligent commentator or preacher can be mistaken.

In Acts 17:11 we learn of the believers in Berea who were credited with being more noble because they examined the Scriptures daily to see if the things being taught by Paul were correct.

We have only one final authority for all truth, the Bible.

Next time we’ll be shoving off in chapter 13 of Matthew where we’ll see the parables of the Kingdom of Heaven which show the direction of the Kingdom after Israel’s rejection of it until the King returns to establish that Kingdom of Heaven on the earth.

Until then my friend may God reveal Himself to you in these troubled times.