Biblestudy: Matthew (Part Seventeen)

Matthew 12:1-37
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John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 27-Jan-82; 75 minutes

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Back to Matthew 12. I have been giving you titles for these chapters as we go along because of the big test I am going to give. You can never tell, I may spring one on you halfway through. Chapter 14 is the midway point of the 28 chapters in Matthew. So I might, before we get into the 15th chapter, just spring a real surprise test on you—a little pop test—and see if you know the information that is in the first 12 chapters.

But for chapter 12, I have given this title, “The Rise of the Opposition.” Well, we have two rises. That is sort of like you do with bread, you let it rise and then you punch it and knock it down. This is the second rise of the opposition.

I am going to, first of all, give you an overview; make it a good bit easier for you to follow the story as it goes along here, because once we begin looking at the individual sections, some of the overall point of the 12th chapter is going to be lost to you.

But in this chapter anyway, the crisis that eventually leads to His crucifixion is shown to be developed over what it was in chapter 9. And eventually, as I said, it leads to His crucifixion. But Matthew, as his way is, gives a very orderly progression of events. They are pretty well delineated, pretty clearly delineated, and it goes something like this:

In verses 1 through 8, you see the Jews suspicious, and the incident that shows their suspicion sort of subtitled, “Well, we cannot allow this liberality to continue unchecked,” the liberality being Jesus’ attitude toward the Sabbath.

Then in verses 9 through 13, the suspicion advances to active investigation. And you will see that as we get to that section where they are actually sending delegations to watch what He does, and interrogate Him.

Then verse 14 shows something all by itself. Then after the investigation, it shows that they conclude and begin a determined plan to act. So you might say preparations to act or determinations to act.

And then in verses 22 through 32 we see they have advanced to the place where there is deliberate and prejudiced blindness. It is no longer a matter of questioning, but accusation. Even though He does a good work, they ignore it, and reject it.

Now, the chapter also shows, conversely, how Jesus reacted to these things. And again, it is fairly clearly delineated. However, there is one little thread that pops up in various places. In verses 6, 41, and 42, Jesus makes claims to His authority. In the one He says that He is greater than the Temple. In the other, He says He is greater than Jonah. And in the last one, He says He is greater than Solomon.

So Jesus, first of all, makes claims. Then the second thing we see there is actually a courageous defiance of them which is very clearly seen in verses 9 through 14. And we will see that He deliberately challenged them.

Then the next one in verses 22 through 32 again, we find Him on the attack; that there is a warning, and contained in that warning is an attack against them. It is verbal, of course, and we will see what He labels them.

Then in verses 43 through 45 (which we will not get to tonight, at least, I do not think we will) we find that He tells these people that action is necessary; that if they are going to understand Him and what He is saying, they are going to have to put into practice what He is saying—what they are hearing. Of course, it is an admonition to you and me as well.

And then the final one in verses 46 through 50 there is a positive invitation on His part to join His group, or His way to accept it.

Let us go back to the beginning of the chapter and begin reading in verse one:

Matthew 12:1-8 At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. And His disciples were hungry, and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, "Look, Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath!" But He said to them, "Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: How he entered the house of God and ate the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless? Yet I say to you that in this place there is One greater than the temple. But if you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath."

First of all, let us clarify that the disciples were not stealing. In Deuteronomy 23:25 (which we will not be turning to), it says very plainly and clearly that a man on a journey was able to go into someone's field and take what he needed for that meal; that he was not allowed to use a sickle; he was not allowed to carry out any more than he could carry in his hands. He was not allowed to have a basket or any kind of a sack or satchel with him. But he was allowed to go in, take out what he could carry in his hands, and use what it was needful for that meal. So this was certainly something that was permitted in God's Word.

Secondly, they were not breaking the Sabbath either. But to the Jews (that is from the Jew’s point of view) they were, because they were breaking [garbled] in all the details. But they were fleeing from Saul, and they came in on this day, dusty, dirty, and very hungry. And David strode in there, and I believe that he was even confronted by Abiathar who was the priest, and Abiathar did not stop him either, because apparently Abiathar understood the spirit of God's law, even as David understood the spirit of God's law.

Now, when he strode into that first room of the Tabernacle, there was on the right hand side of that room, a table that had a candelabra on it (I believe it has seven candles on it), and also two plates that had six loaves of bread. Actually, they were unleavened bread, so they were not very puffy. Six loaves of bread on one plate, six loaves of bread on the other plate, one for each one of the tribes of Israel.

That bread was made fresh, I would imagine on Friday, then on Saturday morning, it was put out fresh on the tables left there until the following Sabbath. Then it in turn was replaced with fresh bread. And what was left over, those 12 original loaves became food for the priests.

Now God's law, not the body of regulations that the Jews had made up to define God's law, but actually God's law in the book of Numbers states very specifically that the priests only could eat that showbread.

The way God shows it in I Samuel, there is no blame placed on either Abiathar or David for what occurred. Jesus confirms here that what David did was a lawful act under the circumstances.

Now, what is the lesson, or what is the point? The point is this: When we consider the circumstance of the disciples, what they were doing on that Sabbath day, and then Jesus’ use of this illustration, it is that human need takes precedence over ritual custom, even if the ritual custom came from God's own Holy Scriptures.

Maybe one of the clearer examples of this might be that if your house, or your neighbor's house is burning down on the Sabbath day, what do you do? You put out the fire, you make the effort to save life, or in this case to save property, or both together. I can recall a very interesting example of the application of this law, and the reason I remember it is because after it occurred, and after Mr. Friddle gave his decision on it, he later that day asked me what I thought of it. And I think, luckily, I came up with the same answer he did. I have to say luckily, or through inspiration (that would be better).

But at any rate, early one Sabbath morning, I believe it was still dark, like about four o'clock in the morning, he received a call from a member who lived in West Virginia, who was a supervisor in the Bureau of Mines. This man reported (he was also a church member) that there was a mine on fire, and he understood that there were some men trapped in it. And as a supervisor for the Bureau of Mines, it was part of his responsibility to oversee any of the operations that went on there. In fact, it was his part of his responsibility to oversee the company's safety procedures, and things like that.

It flashed into Mr. Friddle’s mind, because this man wanted to know if he should go to work and help put out the fire, and possibly help save these men's lives. Mr. Friddle told him, “Yes, he thought that he ought to go to work and use whatever expertise he had to try to save those men's lives.”

Well, he did do that, and that was the question he asked me. He asked me, “Do you think I did the right thing?” I should have said no, Mr. Friddle! You know that we . . . [jokingly] I did not do that. I was probably intimidated by his question. [Yes, it was the right thing to do.] But at any rate, that was an application of this decision here that Jesus made—human need takes precedence over ritual custom.

Let us go on now. The next thing is that He quoted the Sabbath work that was done in the Temple. Now in the Temple on the Sabbath, as every other day, fires had to be tended, wood have to be carried; there was the preparation for, and the slaughter of the animals. There was the lifting of the animals onto the altar. And in addition to all this, there was twice as much work required on the Sabbath as there was any other day of the week, because God's law stipulates that on the Sabbath, those sacrifices were to be doubled.

Now, this kind of work is illegal for a lay member, but for the priests, it was okay. What is the lesson involved here? Why did He quote it? Here is the lesson: The worship of God on the Sabbath takes precedence over the labor involved to perform it.

Let us apply this. Is there anything that you do every Sabbath that fits into this principle? Almost every one of us does it? What is it? Driving. The Jews had worked up a regulation that they were not allowed to go more than a Sabbath day's journey. Well, Mr. Armstrong in understanding the principles of the law, says nonsense. The worship of God takes precedence over the labor involved to get there. Therefore, it is okay to drive to services, even if that distance might be 100 miles. So, we have somewhat of a progression here on the one hand, the worship of God takes precedence over the labor involved to perform it. But on the other hand, an act of mercy is greater than the worship of God. I mean, the actual ritual of going through the worship of God. Mercy toward your neighbor takes precedence over that.

As a summary, he quotes Hosea 6:6 where it says that if you had known what this means, “I will have mercy and not sacrifice,” you would not have condemned the guiltless. The guiltless were the apostles and what they did there. Now, let us interpret that: God wants kindness, mercy, not ritual sacrifice. Another way of putting it is that kindness to humans is more important than worship, ritual, or liturgy.

Now, let us make one modification here. Remember that this [back to Matthew 12 story] was an ox in a ditch situation. This is not something that happens every Sabbath day. It was not every Sabbath that they walked through the fields. It was not every Sabbath they were in a situation where they were traveling from one place to another. It was not every Sabbath that they could not prepare their meals for the Sabbath. But because of this situation, then, the circumstances that Jesus quoted here applied. So there is no permission here for a person to do ordinary work to relieve the oppression of his neighbor. It is just one of those things where it gives permission to occasions that spontaneously occur, not those things that are planned to occur. So I think that is really quite clear. God's law has enough flexibility within it to take care of emergency circumstances.

And so do not go giving yourself the justification to do it because you or somebody else pushed the ox in the ditch. It does not apply in a situation like that.

One final thing is verse 8, “For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” There is an alternative translation of that some modern translations of the Bible have picked up on. The Revised Standard Version, which is probably the best of the modern translations, has it translated the way the King James does. However, some do not have it that way. Some have translated it where it says that, “Man is master of the Sabbath.” Now, there is some justification for that because the Greek does not literally say, “Son of Man.” What it does say is “the” the definite article “the” man. That is subject to the interpreter's application of it. Now the King James and most of the more direct translations have continued to adhere to this, that the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath day and that Jesus was using this as authority, that He had the right to interpret the Sabbath this way because He is, or was, the Son of Man. A loose interpretation of that would be, “He was the Messiah,” or “He was God in the flesh” and He was using His authority there.

But even if it is translated that man is master of the Sabbath, even there, it means pretty much the same thing; not that it gives man permission to do anything that he wants on the Sabbath, but rather it gives him permission to take care of emergency situations within the framework of God's law; that man has the right to decide those things; that he has the liberty from God to make the decision. He is to apply the spirit of God's law. So even that way, man is still restricted to the purpose for which God gave the Sabbath. That, of course, was first of all to worship and to rest.

So with those two principles right there, the whole framework of keeping the Sabbath hangs. And then these other things that allow for emergency circumstances can then be applied within that framework. So it does not give man permission to use the Sabbath selfishly.

Matthew 12:9-10 Now when He had departed from there, He went into their synagogue. And behold, there was a man who had a withered hand. And they [the Pharisees and scribes] asked Him, saying, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?"—that they might accuse Him.

Now, you see, we have gone from suspicion of His application of the Sabbath law to active investigation. “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” And it shows their attitude, “That they might accuse Him.” So it was not an innocent question at all.

Matthew 12:11-14 Then He said to them, "What man is there among you who has one sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value then is a man than a sheep? Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath." Then He said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." And he stretched it out, and it was restored as whole as the other. Then the Pharisees went out and plotted against Him, how they might destroy Him.

You see right in that six or seven verse section, they have advanced from active investigation to plotting to kill Him, how they might destroy Him.

Now, in this section, I think that you would notice in there, that He deliberately and publicly broke their Sabbath; that He challenged them. What it, of course, resulted in was a conference to study ways to destroy Him.

Maybe I have stated some of these things before, but I do not think that we have anything in our culture that even begins to equate with the attitude that the Jews had toward the Sabbath. I have tried to think of something that was analogous to that, where there was a fanatical devotion to a day, to a period of time, or maybe to a single doctrine. I do not know. The best I can come up with might be something like the Amish or the Mennonites and their refusal to wear modern clothing, or their refusal to have electricity, or even to use automobiles, or trucks or anything along those lines, where they have a fanatical devotion to that kind of a way of life. And it just seems as though nothing can deter them from that.

But even that does not even begin to equate, because as fanatically devoted as the Amish or the Mennonite are, they do not persecute others who believe differently.

But the Jews did. They were not only fanatically devoted to the Sabbath, they would persecute anybody else who dared to keep it any differently. And I have read in news magazines that even today, there are some Jews in Jerusalem who will throw rocks at automobiles who pass through their section on the Sabbath day; that on Friday afternoon before sunset, they will go out and put up barriers across their streets, so people cannot even accidentally drive into their area on the Sabbath day.

So even today there are some people who are very devoted to that belief. I dare say that there are not any of us like that. And I hope there are not any of us like that. But it even went further than that kind of devotion. There are records in many different areas, historical records that show this that I am telling you.

Most of you are at least somewhat familiar with the Apocrypha, and the book of Maccabees. There are two books of Maccabees in the Apocrypha. In I Maccabees the author gives a very gory example of how devoted the Jews attitude was toward the Sabbath. He talks about Antiochus Epiphanies sending a detachment of his army to encircle and kill a group of Jews that they had found encamped in a certain area. Well, the Syrian forces of Antiochus Epiphanies caught these people in an area, and then waited until the Sabbath day, because they knew that the Jews would not go to war on the Sabbath. And then they marched in, and the Jews did not even so much as pick up a stone to defend themselves. They just submitted themselves to the slaughter—men, women, children, and even the animals—died on the Sabbath day, one thousand of them.

I will tell you, that is devotion to a doctrine. Would to God that we would have some kind of belief that would even begin to approach like that. It is no wonder Jesus said, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” I think He understood how degenerate we are going to be in spiritual areas.

Most of you have heard of the Roman General Pompey. Do you know how Pompey captured Jerusalem? Well, I will tell you how. Josephus says that when Pompey captured Jerusalem, Pompey knew that the Jews would not fight on the Sabbath. And so what he did is he laid siege around the city. You ever wonder why there are no trees around Jerusalem? This is one of the reasons why: He laid siege around the city. And then all during the week, he had soldiers cutting trees, gathering rocks, dirt, and everything else that he needed. Then when the Sabbath would come, and the Jews would lay down their arms, and look out over the wall of the city, he began building a great mound made out of tree trunks, rocks, and dirt. They did it unhindered because the Jews would not shoot arrows at them or anything.

Then all during the week, he would gather material again, and then on the Sabbath day, free of any kind of defense from the Jews, he would make the mound a little bit higher. He did that for months until finally, he had a mound that was higher than the hill that Jerusalem sat on. Then one Sabbath, he rolled his big catapults up there. So, he had the high ground. And so, he started lobbing the artillery right into the city, and he battered down the walls. It was that easy.

He took advantage of the Jews unwillingness to fight on the Sabbath. So all during a week, all he had to do was just kind of protect that little mound to see that the Jews did not tear it down. And they could not do that. They were trapped inside the city.

There is even a story which I have read in Josephus of an attempt by the Jews to burn that thing down. It was filled with logs, they almost succeeded one time, but it just delayed it.

The stories are legion. The Gentiles have made record after record of how they defeated the Jews. They just waited for the Sabbath. They had a fanatical devotion to it. If you can get a feeling for that you will understand why they were so antagonistic toward the things that Jesus was doing.

Now, there was a somewhat of a misinterpretation really, or a misapplication, but they knew what it said in the book of Ezekiel, that they went into captivity because they broke the Sabbath, and they were determined they were not going to go into captivity again. But they just got things all out of whack—all out of perspective. They were determined they were going to do everything in their power to protect the Sabbath. And so they made all kinds of regulations regarding its keeping, to keep people from breaking the Sabbath. And then maybe God would not be angry with them, and they would not go into captivity. Well, it did not work.

Now, their law—their law—regarding the Sabbath, also said that there was to be no healing on the Sabbath, because to them healing was work. They did recognize that if an emergency took place, that there were certain measures that had to be taken. And so they permitted a person to do first aid that would not in any way induce healing. So if you got bashed in the head with something, or got a big cut in some way, maybe fell and got a cut, you could put a bandage on, but there was not allowed to be any dressing on it. No kind of medication was allowed. You could stop the bleeding, you could put a bandage on, but you could not do anything that would induce any kind of a healing.

You can see from this example here in the book of Matthew that they were not concerned about the person's well-being. Their whole intent was to make sure that their regulations were not broken. You see, Jesus just challenged them on this. “I dare you,” He said, “to do something.” And so, He gives them the example of how that they recognize that if a sheep falls in the ditch, that they certainly would lift the sheep out. And of course, He says, “Is not a man worth a great deal more than a sheep?” Well, of course he is. So then He threw the gauntlet right at them, reached out, and healed the person.

There is another lesson that we can get out of here that I think is very good in regard to the Sabbath day, or maybe in regard to any kind of a situation in which we have the opportunity to help a person who is really genuinely in need. And that is, that if it is good to do good for an animal on the Sabbath, then to fail to do good for a man is evil. That is what it equates to. To fail to do good for a man is evil.

Now remember it was still the Sabbath day. And so what He was saying was this: There is no time so sacred that it cannot be used to alleviate misery or pain.

Matthew 12:15-21 But when Jesus knew it, He withdrew from there. And great multitudes followed Him, and He healed them all. Yet He warned them not to make Him known, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: "Behold! My Servant whom I have chosen, My Beloved in whom My soul is well pleased! I will put My Spirit upon Him, and He will declare justice to the Gentiles. He will not quarrel nor cry out, nor will anyone hear His voice in the streets. A bruised reed He will not break, and smoking flax He will not quench, till He sends forth justice to victory; and in His name Gentiles will trust."

Now, in that preceding section, we see that Jesus was courageous, that he defied the crowd of enemies that were around him. However, this section shows that he was not reckless. Courageous, yes, but reckless? No. Discretion is the better part of valor. He knew that there were times to withdraw.

Notice the indications. It says that great multitudes followed Him, and He charged them that they should not make Him known. I think that this was done in recognition of how inflammatory people are in regard to leadership.

Remember, this was a subject people; a slave people, really; slaves of the Roman Empire. They had been that way for about 120 or 130 years. And before that, to the Seleucids and Ptolemys for a couple of hundred years. This was a people anxious to overthrow the yoke of bondage to other nations.

Suddenly they had in their midst a miracle working individual; a man whose words and deeds were beginning to rally people around Him, and they were beginning to look to Him as somebody who might be able to lead them out from the oppression that their history for several hundred years had shown them to be under.

Now, you know what would happen. By word of mouth, people would begin spreading the word. “Have you seen this Jesus of Nazareth?” “Have you heard what He has done?” “I have seen it.” “Let’s go after Him.”

So Jesus, in order to slow these people down, asked them not to say very much, because without a doubt, if He had promoted it in any way, it would have led to a political rebellion. I am certain of that. Those people would have taken up arms, rocks, clubs, and anything they had to begin to throw the yoke of Roman bondage off of them.

And that is not what Jesus wanted. He quoted Isaiah 42 as authority for His asking them to be quiet. Now that prophecy is addressed to “My Servant.” It is one of those prophecies that has a dual application, because there is no doubt to anybody, any biblical scholar that I have ever read, who doubts that was to apply to Cyrus, you know, the Persian Cyrus; that he was God's servant in that case.

Now, Cyrus was unusual among conquerors in that he was not a difficult person to deal with. He was actually gentle by comparison to the Assyrians, for example, and the Babylonians who preceded them. He was not the kind of person like the Assyrians who would just completely empty the land of the people, and ship them somewhere else; or like the Babylonians who were very likely to take their captives back to their own country, and put them in concentration camps and use them as slaves, like Nebuchadnezzar did. We even have the example there of Ezekiel being in that kind of a situation in a concentration camp; and how Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego ended up in Babylon.

But Cyrus did not tend to do that. He tended to allow the people to have a certain amount of self rule with Persians over them. The locals had to answer to the Persians, but he tried to allow things to remain pretty much as they were. And so he did not deal with the conquered nations in the way that most did.

So, this prophecy then applies to both, because as you read Isaiah 42 you will eventually have to come to the conclusion that it applies more to Jesus Christ than it does to Cyrus. It starts out with Cyrus, but it certainly ends up with Jesus Christ, because it says He will magnify the law and make it honorable in Isaiah 42:21. Cyrus did not do that. Jesus Christ did that.

Here we see that Jesus applied it directly to Himself. Let us get some ideas out of the application that He makes here. He says, “I have put My Spirit upon Him,” see, My Servant, “I have put My Spirit upon Him; and He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles.” That is, He is saying (we are applying this to the Messiah) that He will show people what justice is, what judgment is, what wise decision-making is, all the way down to the area of a person's personal and private life.

Now, Jesus did this in two ways. He did it by His example, and He did it by His preaching. We have a record of that in the Bible. He showed the nations how they were to live. That was His judgment in every area of life.

Matthew 12:19 “He will not quarrel nor cry out.”

This means that He will not be a brawling, inciting to riot instigator. Jesus certainly preached in public places, and I am sure from time to time that His voice was heard in the streets. This does not mean that He would not preach in the streets. It means that He was not going to be somebody who is going around stirring up rebellion in the streets, like a rebel would do standing on the street corner trying to get a group of people following.

Matthew 12:20 “A bruised reed He will not break, and smoking flax He will not quench, till He sends forth justice to victory.”

A bruised reed is illustrative of a human being who is bent and broken under the burden of life. And the second metaphor there about smoking flax is an illustration of a human being whose light is just about ready to go out. You know, when the light goes out on the wick, the last thing it does is smoke; oftentimes there will be a bright ember or two at the end of the wick. But mostly what you see coming out of there is smoke. And what it means is that the life of that person is ready to perish.

Now, the application is that Jesus has not come to treat people with contempt, or with pain and misery, but rather He has come to encourage, to lift up, to turn their lights back on, to brighten the flame, as it were, to nurse them back to life. So, He came to encourage and strengthen, not to beat down, or treat with contempt.

Then the final thing is, it says “in His name Gentiles will trust.” He is showing here that His ministry is universal, that is, His ministry is not just to one nation Israel, but it is universal.

When you put that all together, what did He say?

He said that the Messiah has come to be a Sacrificial Servant, not a conquering ruling king. You put that all together, and that is what He said. So He used that prophecy as His authority for telling the people not to spread the word around in this case, but allow Him to continue to preach God's Word, and show God's judgments, and allow Him to encourage and strengthen people, giving them hope. Eventually His Word is going to be sent out to the Gentiles—to the rest of the nations as well.

Now, you see the Jews could very easily construe from the things that they could get out of the prophecies, things that really applied to His second coming they were applying to His first coming, and they thought that they had the great leader there, the son of David who was going to lead them out.

And so Jesus had to let them know. “Look, I am not sent just to you people, but to the Gentiles as well. I have not come to conquer the Gentiles, but rather to bring them to salvation as well.”

Matthew 12:22-24 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?" Now when the Pharisees heard it they said, "This fellow does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons."

Now you see the opposition is raging, and they are blinded in their anger and prejudice.

Matthew 12:25-29 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, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they shall be your judges. But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. 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.”

Now, let us look at what Jesus used as arguments to counter the accusation of the Jews.

The first one is this: That if He was doing this by Satan's power, then Satan's kingdom is divided against itself. Even if the scribes and Pharisees were right, we should then expect Satan's kingdom shortly to fall. Now, Satan's kingdom did not shortly fall.

That leads to a question (for me anyway): Is Satan's kingdom divided against itself? That is a hard one for me to answer. On the one hand, there is the indication from these scriptures that Jesus is saying that His Kingdom is not divided. On the other hand, Satan is the author of the carnal mind. Satan is the author; he is the father of confusion. Now, certainly he has influence on these other demons. And I think that he is able to keep them somewhat rallied around him by dint of his strength—his authority. But I cannot see them agreeing with him on everything. I can see where they might agree with him and be in league with him in their desire to subjugate man, to eradicate man, to control man, to destroy man, to thwart God's plan and purpose. But I cannot see them agreeing with one another on how it ought to be done.

Now, that would seem to me that would create division, because look what their lines of reasoning has done to man. Everywhere we go on earth, we see reflections of their thinking, and everywhere we go on earth, we see division—differences. It is impossible for man to get together. It is an impossibility.

So I am really at war with myself over verse 25. I would have to say, they are in unity in terms of certain things, and that Satan is able to keep them together by dint of his superior intelligence, power, and authority. I do not believe that they agree with one another. Eventually their kingdom is going to fall to the superior strength and wisdom of God. We will leave that as it is. I cannot really answer that very clearly, because I have a war going on in my own mind in regard to that.

The second thing He said, “If I am casting out demons by Satan's power, then how do you know whether your own colleagues are not doing the same?” That stopped them, because they did not know—they did not know whether their own colleagues were doing the same as they were accusing Jesus.

The third thing He did is really a declaration. He says, “Look (this is in verses 28 and 29), if I am doing this by God's power, then Satan must have been bound and prevented from resisting.” Satan is the strong man in the illustration. No strong man will allow you in his house to steal things from his house, unless you first subdue the strong man.

But if He has done this by the power of God, then they are going to have to admit that Satan is subject to Jesus Christ, which indeed is exactly the way it is. So therefore, Satan has been defeated. Now, you see, He said that as a witness against them, because that is exactly what occurred. Satan was defeated in Matthew 4.

Matthew 12:30 “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad.”

This statement comes right on the heels of this encounter with the scribes and Pharisees regarding demons.

Now, what is he saying in verse 30? Let us put that into modern English. What is he saying?

[Audience participation]

He says if you are not for Him, you must be against Him. Interpret that: If you are not for Him, you must be against Him. There is no middle ground. You cannot sit on the fence. You are either committed, or you are not. There is no halfway house. And if you are not committed, if you are not for Him, He says you must be against Me. And if you are not for Me, you are part of the problem.

Well, let us give this another word. Another word might be: There is no such thing as neutrality. You cannot be a Switzerland or a Sweden and be neutral. There is no such thing as being half pregnant. There is no such thing as being half Christian. You either are one, or you are not; you are either begotten by the Spirit of God, or you are not. You are either contributing to the solution, or you are contributing to the problem.

Let us drag this all the way down to our local level here. You are either helping the church of God, or you are hindering it. You are either building the local congregation, or you are tearing it down. If you are neutral, you are tearing it down. If you are not wholeheartedly with it, you are weakening the congregation; you are not strengthening it.

Now, how do we get in these situations? What is it that causes us to seek neutrality, rather than be committed? Well, I can see at least three things that does this, it causes us to be this way. Actually, they are all aspects of human nature. Remember a little bit earlier, Jesus was talking about pouring new wine in old wine skins and He said it will never work. Why? Well, because human nature (one aspect of it anyway) just wants to be left alone. We love the status quo. We do not want to be disturbed. We like things the way they are. Do not rock the boat. In order to move off dead center, it takes an awful lot of energy to overcome inertia. And so rather than move, we just remain as we are. It may take a lot of sacrifice to get off that center too. We may have good intentions. We may have the desire, but unless we are really committed, we will always remain believing but doing nothing.

A second reason is that there is a tendency for us to be cowards. We all have it in us to some degree, because people are so real, and God is so invisible. This is one of the reasons why Jesus laid down as a stipulation for being a part of Him was that we have to love Him more than father, mother, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, and so forth.

There is a strong drive within all of us to have the approbation, and adulation of people. We fear people. Those things are just a part of our nature. We want the comfort of people. We want the warmth and encouragement of people.

One of the elements of human nature that keeps us from being committed is our fear of people. If we choose God's way, the chances are we are going to get people around us upset—employers, relatives, neighbors, whatever.

A third reason: We will just call this, flabbiness, for the lack of a better word.

Human nature loves security. We would rather be secure; we would rather be comfortable. We would do almost anything to be secure, rather than accept the challenge and adventure that is involved in going in a direction of life that we do not know where it is going to lead.

That is why I thought that was so meaningful about Abraham. Here is the man who is the number one example of a human being. And God led him into a country he knew not. He led him by a way he knew not.

The same thing happened to Israel. God took them out into the wilderness, and they did not know where they were going. They simply followed the cloud.

So it is with Christianity. Your life can take some strange twists and turns as a result of this way of life.

Now, we know that. It is awfully comforting to be secure. Very interesting about Abraham again. It says that he never owned a piece of land, and he never owned a house. As wealthy as he was, he did not have those two symbols of security that we have: land and home. He never had them. So he was a man who was always on the move, as it were. And he could not afford not to meet the challenges of life.

Let us go on again.

Matthew 12:31-33 "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. 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.”

Now, what did the Pharisees just do that caused this outburst? In the context of this, they had attributed a work of God to being a work of demons, or a work of Satan. So, in this context, the unpardonable sin is the failure to distinguish a work of God as a work of God. They just could not see it. They were blinded by this time, and they could not see it.

Let us understand about the unpardonable sin, because it does not have to be exactly what happened here with the Pharisees. It can be any number of things. In a much broader sense, the unpardonable sin is the inability to distinguish between good and evil.

Now, how does a person become this way? That he cannot tell the difference between good and evil? God gives us gifts. Faith is a gift of God that He gives to us. And so, God gives us the gift, or the faculty, or the ability that enables us to recognize goodness and truth when we see it; to come to desire it, and to want to make it a part of our lives. In the Bible, He opens our mind, He opens our heart, He stirs us up. You see, He calls us, and He gives us this faculty, this ability to be able to see goodness in a way that we could not see it before.

This is what Paul meant in Romans 7:7 when he was talking about himself. Here he was, a doctor of the law! Trained at the feet of Gamaliel! And then suddenly, he says, “The law came, sin revived, and I died.” What he meant there was that he, for the first time in his life, understood the tenth commandment. He perceived the truth that was there, because God gave him the ability to see the lust that was in himself. And so God gives all of us that ability to distinguish between good and evil in a way that we never were able to do it before.

Now, just as I described, and you know very well, that gifts that are given must be developed. So also gifts that are given can degenerate through neglect. You know that is a true principle. You can go to school and learn how to speak a foreign language. I did it with Spanish. By the time I came out of the 12th grade, I had a couple of years of Spanish behind me, and I had a pretty good vocabulary. I understood much of the grammar. And though I could not speak it all that well, I did understand it. I could understand a conversation, as long as the people did not go too rapidly, I could read it in the newspaper, and did not have any difficulty at all with it that way.

But you know what? I have not used it since 1950 when I graduated from high school. Now, I have a vocabulary of about 10 words. I can recognize verbs. I know the root verb, but I do not know all the tenses. I have forgotten all of the grammar, virtually all of it, and I cannot read it any longer. I simply have not used it. It is degenerated to that point.

The same thing is true with skills, though you may not lose it entirely. Your ability degenerates when you quit practicing, when you quit doing it. There are examples of people who, when they were in the home of their parents, maybe grew up with a certain amount of education in better music. But gradually, when they got into their teen years, they began to be influenced by their peers, and they began to listen to the music that their peers do, and slowly but surely the music of the peers drowned out the music that had been instilled in them by their parents. And the first thing you know, after a while, they did not appreciate that better music at all, and they had been reduced down to hard rock, to acid rock, and that is all they appreciated.

Now, the gifts of God are much the same way. And if He gives us the ability to perceive evil or good, and if we can make the choice to continue to practice the evil, or to continue to practice our own way, the time will come when our mind is so hardened that we will call evil good, and good evil. I guarantee you it will happen. That is exactly what Jesus is talking about here.

Hebrews 6:4-6 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened [they have their mind opened up], and have tasted the heavenly gift [forgiveness of sin], and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit [to be begotten by God's Spirit], and have tasted the good word of God [to understand truth and begin to put it to practice in their lives] and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.

Now, why is a particular sin unforgivable? It is because a person gets to the place where he no longer is able to distinguish between good and evil in any given area. It could be the breaking of any of the Ten Commandments. When a person gets to the place where he has practiced the evil for so long, that his mind thinks that it is good, repentance is impossible! He has gotten to the place where he is calling the evil that he does good, and the good of God is evil. He cannot come to desire the good. His mind will no longer permit him to do it. He cannot desire to change. And if he cannot desire to change, he cannot repent. And if he cannot repent, God cannot forgive, because repentance has to be there, before God will forgive.

You see, that is what had happened back here with those Pharisees. They were calling a work of God, the work of Satan. Now, all that remains for their judgment is whether God judges they had gotten to the place where their minds were so blinded that they cannot possibly repent. And if they did, whether they were converted or not, they are going into the Lake of Fire, because they will never be able to repent, because their mind has hardened to that extent through the practicing of evil.

Now, back to Matthew 12. Just one final admonition on this point and that is this: It is a law of life that what we train ourselves to hear, we hear. Now very often, Jesus said, “Let him who hears take heed,” or words to that effect.

A dumb example maybe, but it will illustrate the point. When I walk into a building that is under construction where there is welding, you know, my eyes look and pick up those welds. And I look at it, and I look at what I can see, and I begin to evaluate it.

If a mechanic gets in somebody's automobile, his ears are trained to hear certain things. You have been driving this old clunker for years, and you are in love with all the wheezes and knocks and bumps and rattles that you live with. It does not bother you all that much. You might hear them, but it does not bother you at all that much. But the expert who has been trained to hear such things, he gets in your car, he says, “Oh, here you’ve got a wrist pin slapping there, and your pistons knocking. Oh, you got a main bearing rapping too. All that rattle is coming out of this place, or out of that place. And that squeak’s coming from here and there.” By the time you have gone 10 miles with the guy, you think that you are driving something that is going to stop on you any second now, and you better drive right to a junkyard.

There are people who have trained their ear so fine that they can walk through a forest, and there might be several different birds that are chirping away, but they have trained themselves so that they can identify one bird from another. I would not know what bird was what. The only one I can really tell is a bob white [quail]. And that is just so plain. I can tell an owl too, “Who-oo-oo-oot.” There are a few, but most of them I cannot.

You see, whatever we are sensitive to, that is what we pay attention to. And so the admonition really ought to be very clear. We ought to train ourselves to be sensitive to God's Word. And then we will recognize sin very far off. We will be warm, and our conscience will be tender, and we will be in the place where we can avoid getting into the kind of situation like these scribes and Pharisees were.

Matthew 12:34 “Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”

Actually, this is a continuation of this thought: “He who is not with Me is against Me,” up in verse 30. And so, the way to be with Him is to make the tree good, so that the fruit will be good. In other words, He is admonishing us to repent, because you cannot get two kinds of fruit out of the same tree. If you have a good tree, the fruit will be good. If you have a corrupt tree, then the fruit is going to be evil. So, the way to make sure that the fruit of our lives is good, is to repent. Then our fruit will be good. “Let’s be good,” He is saying.

Now He makes is specifically applicable to the tongue, because of what the scribes and Pharisees had just uttered—a very corrupt thing came out of their mouths, this accusation that His work was a work of Satan.

Matthew 12:35-37 “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. 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."

He is saying very clearly, “That which is in the heart will surface on the lips.” Now, in order for good things to surface on the lips, the heart has to be good, because that is where the problem is, or that is where the wellspring of good is as well. It is in the heart. And so out of the mouth, by what a person says, we can tell whether a person's mind is wholesome or dirty, whether it is positive or negative, whether it is kind or cruel.

Now, He mentions idle words. You are familiar with one aspect of this word. It is the word ergon in Greek. It is the word that is translated in the Bible as work, or deed. It is typically spelled e r g o n. However, this word here is spelled a e r g o n—aergon. Now, when an “A” is prefixed in front of the word ergon, or really on any other Greek word, it changes it to mean without. Asymmetrical means, “without symmetry.” Aergon means, “without works.”

So this is an idle word. It is a word without works. In other words, it is words that produce nothing—they are barren, they are fallow, they are lazy.

In actual practice (I have given you a literal definition) what it means is, words given without thinking, or words without restraint.

Now, when a person is consciously on guard in public, he is generally careful of what he says. He is on guard, and his true character may not be revealed. But when a person is not on guard, when there are no restraints on what he says, then the reality that is in his heart begins to come out—you see the idle words begin to come out.

A very clear example to you and me is President Nixon and the Watergate tapes. When he was in public, he was a refined, dignified, public servant, who was doing all he could for us. But the Watergate tapes revealed him to be a man who was conniving, deceitful, and foul mouthed. So he was not on guard, he was not watching his lips and so, all kinds of idle words came out on those tapes.

Now, sometimes we will say things, let us say in a moment of anger, or in a moment of jealousy, or envy, when our passions are kind of aroused, maybe a stream of words will come out of our mouths. And then after we say it, we wish we had been more on guard about what we said, and we say, “Oh, I didn’t mean that.” Why did you say it if you did not mean it?

Words have a property to them that is very similar to throwing a stone at a glass greenhouse. Once it leaves your hand, it cannot be called back, and it is going to do its dirty work, going to go right toward that greenhouse, and shatter a couple of panes of glass.

Well, it is the same way with words. Once they get out of the mouth, they are going to continue on their trajectory. They have been uttered, and they are going to do their damage. They cannot be called back.

You see, what Jesus is admonishing here, is that there not be any words that are unrestrained or unthinking. He is saying, “Look, you better guard the lips of your mouth. That if your heart is not all that it ought to be, change the heart, then you do not have to worry about what you say. But if your heart is not to that place yet, you better get to working on changing your heart.” And if there are still foul words coming out of your mouth, if there is still a lot of gossip, and things that are negative, and tear people down, you better begin changing the roots of the tree, you see, down in the heart, and not let things come out like these Pharisees did.

So speak with care, because you are going to be justified by what comes out of your mouth. And if you are able to control yourself, and restrain things until your heart is changed, you are way ahead, because at the very least you have not damaged somebody else's greenhouse.

JWR/rwu/drm