Latest / Reformed Thinking / Mercy on Trial: The Son of David and the Slander of Unbelief (Matthew 12:22–24)

Transcript

Mercy on Trial: The Son of David and the Slander of Unbelief (Matthew 12:22–24) · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome back to Reform Thinking.
• 0:02
  I am. I'm genuinely pumped for this
• 0:06
  one. Me too, this is a good one.
• 0:08
  We have a stack of materials today that are focusing on a
• 0:11
  very specific, I mean a really intense slice of the gospel.
• 0:15
  Of Matthew, a very small slice. Yeah, we are zooming in on
• 0:19
  chapter 12, just verses 22 through 24, and I want to set
• 0:23
  the table immediately. We're looking at this through a
• 0:26
  specific lens. We are Protestant Christians and
• 0:30
  we hold to reform theology. And you know, we like the
• 0:32
  Westminster Confession around here.
• 0:34
  We certainly do, and while 3 verses might sound like a quick
• 0:37
  read, you know it's sort of fly over country in the Bible.
• 0:40
  The weight of what happens here is it's actually crushing.
• 0:44
  It's massive. It is heavy.
• 0:46
  And, you know, usually when people read the Gospels, it
• 0:47
  feels a bit like a travel log. And Jesus went here, he ate
• 0:50
  this, he healed that guy, he walked on some water.
• 0:52
  It's it can feel like a list of events.
• 0:54
  Highlight reel. Exactly.
• 0:56
  But the research we have in front of us is framing this
• 0:58
  completely differently. They aren't calling this a
• 1:00
  story. They're calling it a courtroom
• 1:02
  scene, a trial. It is absolutely a trial, but
• 1:07
  the twist? And this is what makes Matthew
• 1:09
  12 so unnerving is that Jesus isn't the one on trial.
• 1:13
  Or at least he shouldn't be. Right.
• 1:15
  He shouldn't be. The human heart is on trial
• 1:19
  here. We're looking at a moment where
• 1:21
  a man in absolute total bondage is brought to Jesus and this act
• 1:26
  of mercy, which you would think would just be a party, right?
• 1:29
  Yeah, balloons cake. Everyone's happy.
• 1:31
  Exactly, but instead it triggers a crisis.
• 1:35
  It's a crisis of identity, and the mission we have for this
• 1:38
  deep dive is to figure out how one single event forces three
• 1:42
  very distinct groups to render a verdict.
• 1:45
  You have the victim, the guy who gets healed, you have the crowd,
• 1:47
  the people watching with their popcorn, And then you have the
• 1:50
  Pharisees, the religious heavyweights.
• 1:52
  And the scary thing our notes point out is that there is no
• 1:55
  neutral ground. You can't sit this one out.
• 1:58
  No, you can't. That is the core take away.
• 2:00
  This is the theological watershed of Matthew's Gospel.
• 2:04
  If you look at the structure of the book, up until this point,
• 2:06
  Matthew has been presenting the king.
• 2:08
  That's here we shift to the formal rejection of the king.
• 2:11
  It is the line in the sand. OK, let's get into it.
• 2:14
  We need to start with the first person in this courtroom, the
• 2:16
  victim. The text in Matthew 12.22
• 2:20
  introduces us to a man who is, well, to put it lightly, he's in
• 2:24
  a really bad way. Bad way is the understatement of
• 2:28
  the century. The text describes his condition
• 2:30
  as comprehensive bondage. Comprehensive bondage.
• 2:35
  It is layered misery. We're told he is demon,
• 2:38
  oppressed, blind and mute. That is a trifecta of suffering.
• 2:42
  I want to slow down here because I think we read Blind and Mute
• 2:45
  Demoniac and we just, we glaze over.
• 2:48
  We've heard it in the Sunday School, but try to imagine
• 2:50
  waking up as this guy. It's a horrific thought
• 2:53
  experiment. I mean, first you have physical
• 2:55
  isolation. The Greek terms are two flows
• 2:57
  for blind and kufos for mute. OK. 2 flows and kufos.
• 3:00
  To be tufos means you're cut off from the physical light of
• 3:02
  creation. You can't see the sun, You can't
• 3:04
  see the faces of your family. You can't see the path in front
• 3:06
  of you. You were in perpetual night.
• 3:08
  Just constant darkness. Constant and then kufos.
• 3:11
  That means you can't speak, right?
• 3:13
  It can imply both deaf and mute in many contexts, but here it's
• 3:17
  specifically about the inability to speak.
• 3:20
  So he's cut off from social communion.
• 3:22
  He can't ask for water. He can't tell someone he's in
• 3:25
  pain. And you know, perhaps most
• 3:27
  tragically in the biblical worldview, he cannot verbally
• 3:31
  praise Yahweh. He is a human being who has been
• 3:35
  dismantled. Dismantled.
• 3:37
  That is a chilling word and on top of the physical stuff, which
• 3:40
  is bad enough, you have the spiritual reality.
• 3:42
  The text says he is demon oppressed.
• 3:44
  The Greek word is diamond isomi, right?
• 3:47
  And here's what we need to put on our grammar hats for a
• 3:49
  second, because this is huge. OK, diamond isom is a passive
• 3:52
  participle. OK, pause Passive participle.
• 3:55
  That sounds like something I failed in high school English.
• 3:57
  Break that down. Why does that matter to me?
• 3:59
  It matters because of who's doing the work.
• 4:02
  In a passive construction, the subject, the man, is not the one
• 4:06
  acting. He is the recipient of the
• 4:08
  action. He is being acted upon.
• 4:10
  He isn't a partner in this situation.
• 4:12
  He isn't a Co conspirator. He is a captive.
• 4:14
  So he's like a puppet or a prisoner.
• 4:17
  A prisoner is a better word. He is being held by an external
• 4:21
  malignant force. He has lost his agency.
• 4:25
  The sources describe evil here not just as bad behavior but as
• 4:29
  parasitic. Parasitic.
• 4:30
  Yes, it collapses human wholeness.
• 4:32
  You have to understand this. Evil doesn't create anything.
• 4:36
  It can't. It only ruins what God created.
• 4:39
  It deforms. This brings up a pretty dark
• 4:42
  theological point. You mentioned.
• 4:44
  We're looking at this through a reformed lens.
• 4:46
  This guy isn't just a sad historical statistic, he's a
• 4:48
  picture of something else. He is a theological portrait of
• 4:52
  total depravity. I knew we were going there.
• 4:54
  Total depravity. That is the tea in Tulip.
• 4:57
  But a lot of people hear that and think it means we're all as
• 4:59
  bad as we could possibly be. You know, like everyone is
• 5:02
  Hitler. That's a very common
• 5:03
  misunderstanding, Yeah. Total depravity doesn't mean
• 5:05
  we're as bad as we could be. It means every part of us is
• 5:08
  affected by sin. Every part.
• 5:10
  Our mind, our will, our emotions, every faculty.
• 5:13
  If we look at the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 9,
• 5:15
  Section 3, it puts it starkly. It says that man by the fall has
• 5:21
  wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good
• 5:25
  accompanying salvation. Wholly lost all ability.
• 5:27
  That is strong language. It's not partially hindered.
• 5:30
  No wholly lost. And this man in Matthew 12
• 5:33
  illustrates it physically. The text says he was brought to
• 5:37
  Jesus. Was brought.
• 5:38
  You know I missed that when I read it first.
• 5:39
  That seems like such a small detail.
• 5:41
  It's a crucial detail. Think about it, Why was he
• 5:44
  brought? Well, you said it, he was blind.
• 5:46
  He was blind, he couldn't see the way he was mute, he couldn't
• 5:50
  ask for directions and he was oppressed.
• 5:54
  He was under the power of a strong man.
• 5:56
  He did not come of his own volition.
• 5:58
  He could not come of his own volition.
• 6:00
  So if we apply the theology here, you're saying that a
• 6:02
  person outside of Christ is like this guy?
• 6:04
  We can't just decide to follow Jesus.
• 6:06
  Exactly, this just kills the idea of the sovereign free will
• 6:09
  of the Sinner. A dead man cannot perform CPR on
• 6:13
  himself. A blind man cannot will himself.
• 6:16
  To see. This parallels John 6.44
• 6:18
  perfectly. No one can come to me unless the
• 6:21
  Father who sent me draws him. Just as this man had to be
• 6:25
  physically brought because of his condition, the Sinner must
• 6:28
  be spiritually drawn. We're born spiritually blind and
• 6:31
  mute. We don't need a little help or a
• 6:33
  moral boost. We need a resurrection.
• 6:36
  We need to be carried. That is so humbling.
• 6:38
  It really takes the ego out of salvation.
• 6:40
  You can't say was is smart enough to pick the right
• 6:42
  religion. You contributed nothing but the
• 6:44
  sin that made the salvation necessary.
• 6:46
  That's the Reformed position. It's all of grace.
• 6:49
  Before we move on to the healing, I want to ask about the
• 6:52
  demon stuff. Matthew treats this as very
• 6:54
  real. In our modern world, we tend to
• 6:56
  psychologize everything. Oh, he was just schizophrenic?
• 6:59
  Or he had epilepsy. You're right.
• 7:00
  We try to explain it away, but Matthew's very clear that this
• 7:03
  is distinct from illness. The Bible differentiates between
• 7:06
  curing a disease and casting out a demon.
• 7:09
  So it's not just a pre scientific way of describing a
• 7:12
  mental illness. Not at all.
• 7:14
  This is personal, intelligent evil.
• 7:16
  It's an adversarial force. It's a hostile takeover of a
• 7:20
  human image bearer, and we do ourselves a great disservice if
• 7:23
  we try to sanitize the Bible to make it fit our secular
• 7:26
  materialism. So we have the misery of man.
• 7:28
  This guy is at rock bottom. Now we move to the second figure
• 7:32
  in the courtroom, the majesty of the Messiah.
• 7:35
  The healing happens and what stands out to me is how how
• 7:40
  boring. Boring.
• 7:42
  Well, not boring, but undramatic.
• 7:44
  Verse 22 just says he healed him.
• 7:47
  That's it. There's no smoke machine,
• 7:48
  there's no screaming, there's no 20 minute struggle on a stage.
• 7:52
  I see what you mean and that starkness is the point.
• 7:54
  It's so simple. The sources point out the
• 7:56
  contrast here with the charlatans of that age.
• 7:58
  Right in the 1st century there were exorcists who used
• 8:01
  incantations, smelly roots, smoke bargaining techniques.
• 8:05
  Like a magic show, they had a whole routine.
• 8:06
  Exactly. And frankly, we see some of that
• 8:08
  theatricality in modern faith healers, right?
• 8:11
  The sweating, the shaking, the repetitive shouting.
• 8:13
  Showmanship. With Jesus there is none of
• 8:15
  that. There is no struggle, there is
• 8:17
  no bargaining. There's just a word of command.
• 8:20
  It's just authority. Absolute authority and the
• 8:23
  result is immediate and complete.
• 8:25
  The blind man sees. The mute man speaks.
• 8:29
  It's done. This connects to that concept of
• 8:31
  the stronger man that Jesus brings up later in the chapter.
• 8:34
  Yes. It's the perfect illustration.
• 8:36
  Jesus describes Satan as a strong man guarding his house
• 8:41
  and the only way to plunder his goods, which in this case is the
• 8:44
  victim, is for someone stronger to come in, tie him up, and take
• 8:47
  what he thinks belongs to him. Jesus proves here that he is not
• 8:53
  a dualistic rival to Satan. It isn't yin and Yang.
• 8:56
  Right, it's not 2 equal forces arm wrestling for the.
• 8:58
  Universe. Not at all.
• 8:59
  It's a sovereign evicting a squatter.
• 9:02
  Jesus is the stronger man. There's no contest.
• 9:05
  Now I want to open a can of worms here, a big one.
• 9:07
  Go for it. I write we're reading this and
• 9:09
  we see Jesus casting out demons. We see the apostles doing it
• 9:12
  later, and there are plenty of churches today, good, well
• 9:16
  meaning churches, that say we should be doing this too.
• 9:19
  They have deliverance ministries.
• 9:20
  They try to bind Satan. But our notes on the Reformed
• 9:23
  perspective take a very different view.
• 9:25
  They take a cessationist view. They do, and this is a major
• 9:28
  point of contention of the Church.
• 9:29
  So we need to be careful. But clear here.
• 9:32
  The cessationist view is that the specific sign gifts like
• 9:36
  Apostolic healing, prophecy, and this kind of authoritative
• 9:40
  exorcism were for a specific time and a specific purpose.
• 9:45
  But why? I mean, if Jesus is the same
• 9:46
  yesterday, today and forever, yeah, why wouldn't he want us
• 9:49
  popping demons out left and right?
• 9:51
  Wouldn't that be great marketing for the gospel?
• 9:53
  It sounds like it would be, but we have to look at redemptive
• 9:56
  history. These miracles weren't just
• 9:58
  random acts of kindness, they were credentials.
• 10:00
  Credentials. Think of it like a police
• 10:02
  officer showing a badge. OK, I'm here.
• 10:04
  When Jesus comes on the scene, he is claiming to be the
• 10:07
  Messiah. He is fulfilling specific
• 10:09
  prophecies like Isaiah 35.5 to 6 which says the eyes of the blind
• 10:14
  will be opened. So when he does this, he's
• 10:17
  slapping his resume on the table, right?
• 10:19
  He is proving he is who he says he is.
• 10:22
  It's authentication. So it's authenticating the
• 10:25
  person of Christ, yes. And the same goes for the
• 10:28
  apostles. Second Corinthians 12.12 speaks
• 10:31
  of the signs of a true apostle. These miracles were given to
• 10:35
  authenticate the new revelation they were bringing.
• 10:38
  I mean, think about it, they were writing the Bible.
• 10:40
  We aren't. So the argument is, once the
• 10:42
  Bible is finished, once the badge has been established, the
• 10:46
  revelation is complete. You don't need the flashy signs
• 10:49
  in the same way anymore. Right.
• 10:51
  Think of it like scaffolding on a building.
• 10:53
  When you're building a skyscraper, you need
• 10:55
  scaffolding. It's essential.
• 10:56
  But once the building is complete, what do you do?
• 10:58
  You take it down. You take it down.
• 11:00
  If you leave it up, it actually obscures the building.
• 11:03
  The Canon of scripture is the building, the sign gifts worth
• 11:06
  the scaffolding. But hold on, I can hear a
• 11:08
  listener screaming at their phone right now.
• 11:10
  Does that mean God doesn't heal anymore?
• 11:11
  Does that mean demons aren't real?
• 11:13
  No, and that is a vital distinction.
• 11:15
  That is not what cessationism teaches.
• 11:18
  Reformed theology believes God can and does heal today and
• 11:22
  answer to prayer. We absolutely believe demons are
• 11:24
  real and active, but we distinguish between God
• 11:28
  answering our prayers and an individual person possessing the
• 11:32
  gift of healing or the authority to command spirits.
• 11:35
  We don't command, we pray, we don't bind.
• 11:39
  We asked the one who was already bound.
• 11:41
  That brings up the cluster theory I saw mentioned in the
• 11:43
  notes. Yes, this is really helpful.
• 11:45
  If you look at the whole Bible, miracles aren't evenly spread
• 11:49
  out like peanut butter. They are clustered.
• 11:52
  You have a huge cluster around Moses and Joshua with the giving
• 11:56
  of the law. You have a cluster around Elijah
• 11:58
  and Elijah during a time of great prophetic renewal.
• 12:01
  And then you have the biggest cluster by far around Jesus and
• 12:04
  the apostles. And in between those times.
• 12:06
  In between those times, for hundreds of years, you just
• 12:09
  don't see this level of supernatural activity recorded.
• 12:12
  It's not the norm. So the fact that we don't see
• 12:14
  people walking on water every Tuesday isn't a lack of faith,
• 12:17
  it's just the normal way God works in history post Apostolic
• 12:21
  age. And there's actually a great
• 12:24
  comfort in the Reformed view here.
• 12:26
  We don't need to go around trying to bind spirits or
• 12:28
  wondering if we have enough faith to empty the local
• 12:30
  hospital. We rest in the finished work of
• 12:33
  Christ. He is already bound the enemy.
• 12:36
  The war is won. We don't need to fight the
• 12:38
  Battle of Matthew 12 again. Jesus already won it.
• 12:41
  That is actually a relief. It takes the pressure off me to
• 12:43
  be a superhero. It does.
• 12:45
  We walk by faith, not by sight. OK, let's get back to the scene.
• 12:48
  The healing happens. It's undeniable.
• 12:50
  The guy was blind and mute. Now he's looking around,
• 12:53
  probably describing the color of the sky for the first time,
• 12:55
  talking to people. You cannot hide this.
• 12:58
  You cannot. It is a public witness.
• 13:00
  And this brings us to the third section, the crowds.
• 13:04
  This is what our notes call the tragedy of the middle ground.
• 13:08
  Their reaction is described as amazement.
• 13:11
  The Greek word is exystomy. Exystomy.
• 13:14
  It sounds like existential. It's related.
• 13:17
  It literally means to stand out of oneself.
• 13:20
  Think about when you're so shocked by something that you
• 13:23
  feel displaced. You know, like I can't believe
• 13:25
  my eyes. You're flabbergasted.
• 13:27
  Your categories are blown apart. So that they're blown away.
• 13:30
  That sounds like a good reaction.
• 13:31
  I mean, isn't that what we want? It starts as a good reaction.
• 13:35
  They're intellectually staggered.
• 13:37
  But, and this is a massive but, our sources make a very sharp
• 13:42
  distinction between amazement and faith.
• 13:45
  And unpack that. What's the difference?
• 13:47
  Being dazzled by the supernatural is not the same
• 13:49
  thing as saving faith. You can be entertained by the
• 13:52
  spectacle, you can be shocked by the power, but that doesn't mean
• 13:55
  you're submitting to the person. It's like watching a magician.
• 13:58
  You're amazed, but you don't pledge your life to him.
• 14:02
  That's a great analogy. We see that a lot today, don't
• 14:04
  we? People love the vibe of
• 14:06
  spirituality, they love the miracle stories.
• 14:09
  But that's not conversion. It's just spiritual tourism.
• 14:12
  Right. And look at the question the
• 14:14
  crowd asks. This is where the grammar gets
• 14:16
  really interesting. Again they ask, can this be the
• 14:18
  son of David? Which is the right title?
• 14:20
  It is Son of David means Messiah.
• 14:23
  They're looking at their Bibles, figuratively speaking, and
• 14:26
  connecting the dots from the prophecies.
• 14:28
  They are. They're thinking about Two
• 14:30
  Samuel 7. They're seeing the healing and
• 14:31
  thinking, OK, this fits the profile, but look at the Greek
• 14:34
  particle Maddie. Maddie, what does that tell us?
• 14:37
  Well, in Greek, the way you phrase a question can tell the
• 14:40
  listener what answer you expect. If I say you're hungry, aren't
• 14:43
  you, I expect you to say yes. Maddie implies a negative
• 14:48
  answer, or at best some very tentative doubt.
• 14:51
  So how would you translate that into modern English tone?
• 14:55
  What's the vibe of that question?
• 14:57
  The vibe is something like this couldn't really be the son of
• 15:00
  David, could it? Or, I mean, it's probably not
• 15:02
  him, but. Maybe it's hesitation.
• 15:04
  It's hedging their bets. It's deep hesitation and you
• 15:07
  have to ask why? Why are they hesitating?
• 15:10
  Because Jesus doesn't look like the son of David they wanted.
• 15:12
  There it is. He doesn't have a sword.
• 15:15
  He's not riding a War Horse. He's poor.
• 15:17
  He's from Nazareth of all places.
• 15:19
  He's not rallying the troops to kill Romans.
• 15:21
  He completely conflicts with their political expectations, so
• 15:25
  they're stuck in the middle. They see the power, the miracle,
• 15:28
  but they stumble over the package, the humility.
• 15:30
  And the sources describe this middle ground as a tragedy.
• 15:33
  It is the ultimate tragedy because they want the benefits,
• 15:36
  the healing, the show, the free bread without the demands.
• 15:41
  They don't want the lordship. They don't want the lordship,
• 15:43
  they want a savior from their problems, not a Lord of their
• 15:46
  lives. This feels like a direct
• 15:48
  critique of what we often call seeker sensitive Christianity.
• 15:53
  You know the model where we try to make church as cool and non
• 15:56
  threatening as possible just to get the crowds in?
• 15:58
  It is exactly that. If you build a ministry on
• 16:01
  amazement or entertainment, you get a crowd like this one.
• 16:04
  You get people who are intrigued, may be fascinated but
• 16:06
  not submissive, not converted. And the danger is that this
• 16:10
  hesitation doesn't last. You said neutrality has a shelf
• 16:13
  life. It does.
• 16:13
  You cannot stay on the fence forever.
• 16:16
  This hesitation in Matthew 12. It eventually curdles.
• 16:19
  What do you mean by that? These same crowds who are asking
• 16:22
  could it be, are the exact same pool of people who will scream
• 16:26
  crucify him a few chapters later.
• 16:29
  Wow. To delay confession is to begin
• 16:32
  denial. To delay confession is to begin
• 16:35
  denial. That is a bumper sticker that
• 16:38
  should scare us. It means maybe is actually just
• 16:41
  a polite no. In the things of God, yes, maybe
• 16:44
  is a no in disguise. It's an attention attempt to
• 16:46
  stay in control. So the crowd is waffling.
• 16:49
  They're creating a vacuum, and into that vacuum step the heavy
• 16:52
  hitters. Section 4.
• 16:54
  The Malice of the Hardened. The Pharisees.
• 16:57
  The Pharisees hear the report and notice they feel compelled
• 17:00
  to answer. They cannot be silent.
• 17:02
  Right, the cat's out of the bag. When the Kingdom breaks in
• 17:04
  publicly, you have to account for it.
• 17:06
  The guy is shouting praises, you can't just ignore him and hope
• 17:09
  he goes away. Right.
• 17:10
  So what is their play? They can't deny the miracle.
• 17:12
  Everyone saw it. It's an established fact.
• 17:14
  Exactly. They're too smart for that.
• 17:16
  They don't say oh he was faking it.
• 17:17
  They don't say it's a psychosomatic reaction.
• 17:20
  The evidence is too strong. So since they cannot attack the
• 17:23
  fact, they attack the source. And that's Matthew 12.24.
• 17:27
  It is only by Beelzebul, the Prince of Demons, that this man
• 17:32
  casts out demons. Let's talk about that name for a
• 17:34
  second. Beelzebul.
• 17:35
  Yeah, it sounds like a Bee Movie monster.
• 17:37
  What does it actually mean? Where does that come from?
• 17:39
  It is a fascinating and frankly disgusting history.
• 17:44
  It goes back to the Old Testament deity Bausible, which
• 17:47
  meant something like Prince Baal or Lord of the High Place.
• 17:51
  But the Israelites, who loved a good pun to mock idols, changed
• 17:55
  it slightly to Bells above and. What does that mean?
• 17:58
  Lord of the Flies. But it gets worse.
• 18:01
  In the rabbinic period it was sometimes distorted even further
• 18:04
  to imply Lord of the Dung. So they're literally using potty
• 18:08
  humor to attack Jesus? It is so much worse than humor.
• 18:11
  It's a slur of the highest order.
• 18:13
  They're looking at the beautiful, holy, liberating work
• 18:16
  of the Holy Spirit giving a man his life back, and they are
• 18:19
  identifying it with the filthiest, most repulsive
• 18:22
  conceptualization of Satan they can possibly think of.
• 18:25
  It is blasphemy in its purest, most concentrated form.
• 18:28
  That is visceral. It shows how much they hated
• 18:30
  him. But let's look at the logic or
• 18:33
  the lack of it. Jesus points us out later.
• 18:35
  But how does it make any sense for Satan to cast out Satan?
• 18:38
  It doesn't make sense intellectually.
• 18:39
  It's absurd. Why would Satan destroy his own
• 18:42
  work? A Kingdom divided against itself
• 18:44
  cannot stand. But this brings us to a key
• 18:48
  Reformed insight about the nature of unbelief.
• 18:51
  Which is. Unbelief is rarely about a lack
• 18:54
  of evidence. It's about a moral verdict.
• 18:56
  It is the suppression of truth. Romans, one says men suppress
• 18:59
  the truth in unrighteousness. So they aren't confused, they're
• 19:03
  not just making an intellectual mistake, they are cornered.
• 19:06
  They are cornered and they are fighting back.
• 19:08
  They are reversing the moral polarity they're calling good
• 19:11
  evil and light darkness. And we have to ask why?
• 19:15
  Why would smart religious men do something so irrational?
• 19:19
  Self protection. Bingo.
• 19:20
  Think about the stakes for them. If they admit this miracle is
• 19:23
  from God, what is the logical next step?
• 19:26
  They have to admit Jesus is the messenger of God.
• 19:28
  And if he is the messenger, they have to listen to him.
• 19:33
  And if they listen to him, they have to repent, they have to
• 19:36
  change. They lose their status as the
• 19:38
  gatekeepers of Israel. They lose their autonomy, they
• 19:41
  lose their power. So to protect their own little
• 19:44
  Kingdom, they have to reject the true Kingdom.
• 19:47
  Precisely if they can stick the label Satan on Jesus, they can
• 19:51
  dismiss him, they can kill him and feel righteous about it.
• 19:54
  It is the ultimate act of self preservation.
• 19:56
  And this leads us to the terrifying concept that comes
• 19:58
  right after this passage, the unpardonable sin, the blasphemy
• 20:03
  against the Holy Spirit. It is the watershed moment.
• 20:06
  This is the official rejection of the King by the nation's
• 20:08
  leadership. I want to pause here because I
• 20:11
  know people worry about this. I've had friends ask me, usually
• 20:14
  late at night, have I committed the unpardonable sin I yelled at
• 20:18
  God once, or I had a bad thought about the Holy Spirit.
• 20:21
  That's very common and pastoral fear.
• 20:23
  Let's define it clearly based on the text.
• 20:25
  The unpardonable sin is not a stray thought.
• 20:27
  It is not struggling with doubt. It is not even an outburst of
• 20:30
  anger at God. It is a specific, hardened,
• 20:33
  malicious attribution of the Spirit's undeniable work to the
• 20:38
  devil. It is looking at the sun and
• 20:41
  calling it pitch black because you hate the light.
• 20:44
  So the standard advice is if you are worried you've committed it,
• 20:48
  you probably haven't. Exactly.
• 20:49
  The Pharisees weren't worried, They were smug.
• 20:51
  They were self-righteous. If you have a tender conscience
• 20:54
  that is afraid of offending God, that is proof that your heart
• 20:58
  hasn't been hardened beyond return.
• 21:00
  But for the Pharisees, this was the end of the line.
• 21:03
  It was. It precipitated the judicial
• 21:05
  hardening of Israel. After this moment in Matthew 12,
• 21:08
  Jesus changes his teaching style.
• 21:10
  Right, he starts speaking in parables.
• 21:12
  And why? To hide the truth.
• 21:14
  To hide it. I always thought it was to make
• 21:15
  it simpler. It was to hide it from the
• 21:17
  hardened and reveal it to the humble.
• 21:19
  It sets the clock ticking toward the destruction of the temple in
• 21:22
  8070. This was the point of no return
• 21:25
  for the leadership of the nation.
• 21:26
  There is a massive warning here for religious leaders, for us,
• 21:30
  really, for anyone who thinks they've got God figured out.
• 21:33
  A massive 1 Remember, the Pharisees were the Bible man.
• 21:37
  They were the conservatives. They memorized scripture.
• 21:39
  They tithed. They were the Orthodox ones of
• 21:41
  their day. That is frightening.
• 21:43
  You can be right on paper and dead in your heart.
• 21:45
  It proves that knowledge and orthodoxy do not guarantee a
• 21:48
  soft heart. You can defend tradition while
• 21:51
  opposing the God of the tradition.
• 21:53
  You can be the most religious person in the room and be
• 21:55
  completely possessed by the spirit of the Pharisee.
• 21:57
  Wow. OK, We have walked through the
• 22:00
  courtroom. We've seen the evidence, We've
• 22:01
  seen the players. Now let's synthesize this.
• 22:04
  We have Section 5, the verdicts. We have 3 distinct verdicts
• 22:09
  rendered in this courtroom. First look at the man.
• 22:13
  The victim, What is his verdict? What does he represent?
• 22:15
  His verdict is grace. He is a trophy of sovereign
• 22:18
  grace. He contributed nothing.
• 22:21
  He didn't pray the sinner's prayer.
• 22:22
  He didn't walk the aisle. He was brought in bondage and he
• 22:25
  was set free by the sheer power of the King.
• 22:28
  He represents the elect. OK, second the crowd.
• 22:31
  Their verdict is indecision, the tragedy of the middle.
• 22:34
  They're unstable. They are intrigued, amazed,
• 22:36
  entertained, but they are not owned by Christ.
• 22:39
  They're flirting with the truth, but they won't marry it.
• 22:42
  That's a great way to put it. And eventually that indecision
• 22:45
  turns to rejection. And 3rd, the Pharisees.
• 22:48
  The verdict is malice, hardened opposition, malicious
• 22:52
  reinterpretation of clear evidence.
• 22:54
  They prove that without a new heart, without the spirits work,
• 22:58
  even the most undeniable miracles will only make you hate
• 23:01
  God more. And looking at this through our
• 23:04
  reformed lens, this really exposes the human heart, doesn't
• 23:07
  it? It goes back to that passive
• 23:09
  idea you mentioned at the start. It shows us what theologians
• 23:12
  call the noetic effects of sin. Noetic.
• 23:14
  That's a fancy term meaning sin effects our mind.
• 23:17
  Gnosis, Greek for mind. Our mind is not a neutral
• 23:20
  instrument that just weighs facts like a computer.
• 23:24
  Our mind serves our heart. If our heart is in rebellion,
• 23:28
  our mind will twist the evidence, even miracle level
• 23:30
  evidence, to justify that rebellion.
• 23:33
  That explains why you can show someone what seems like absolute
• 23:36
  proof creation morality history and they can still just shrug it
• 23:41
  off. It's not about the data.
• 23:42
  It's not about the data. Apologetics is useful, but it
• 23:46
  doesn't save anyone without the Holy Spirit removing the
• 23:49
  blindness. Clear evidence just results in
• 23:51
  hardening, not conversion. The Pharisees had the best
• 23:55
  evidence in the history of the world, Jesus standing right in
• 23:59
  front of them, and it only made them worse.
• 24:01
  It really hammers home that we need the stronger man.
• 24:04
  We need Jesus to liberate us from the strongman Satan.
• 24:07
  We can't think our way out of it.
• 24:09
  We can't behave our way out of it.
• 24:10
  We need to be conquered. That's the only hope.
• 24:12
  We need the stronger man to break down the door of our heart
• 24:14
  and carry us out. So let's bring this home.
• 24:17
  What does this mean for the person listening right now?
• 24:19
  Maybe they are driving to work. Maybe they are doing dishes.
• 24:21
  What's the take away? It means there is no secular,
• 24:24
  militarized zone. I want to speak directly to you,
• 24:27
  the listener. You are in this courtroom.
• 24:30
  You're looking at the same evidence.
• 24:31
  You see the man healed in the text.
• 24:33
  You see the claims of Christ. You can't just be amazed.
• 24:36
  You can't stay in the crowd. No, you are either gathering
• 24:39
  with Christ or you're scattering.
• 24:42
  And I really want to challenge the modern crowd response.
• 24:45
  We live in a culture that loves the journey.
• 24:47
  We love to say I'm a seeker or I'm wrestling or I'm
• 24:51
  deconstructing. It feels very intellectual and
• 24:53
  safe to be unsure. It does, it feels safe.
• 24:56
  But are you using uncertainty as a shield against obedience?
• 25:01
  Are you using endless exploring to avoid bending the knee?
• 25:04
  At some point I'm thinking about it becomes a refusal to
• 25:08
  surrender. You have to move from the
• 25:09
  crowds. Question.
• 25:11
  Could this be to Peter's confession?
• 25:13
  Thou art the Christ. That is the move, that is the
• 25:15
  shift from death to life. And I love that we can circle
• 25:18
  all the way back to the mute man.
• 25:20
  His silence wasn't broken by his own will, it was broken by the
• 25:23
  authority of the King. That's the beauty of it.
• 25:25
  If you're listening and you feel that silence, that inability to
• 25:27
  praise, that spiritual stuckness, you don't need to try
• 25:31
  harder to speak. You need to look to the king who
• 25:33
  opens the mouth of the mute. That is a beautiful thought to
• 25:36
  end on. It is his work from start to
• 25:38
  finish. Amen.
• 25:41
  Solideo, Gloria. This has been a heavy, but I
• 25:43
  think a really necessary deep dive into Matthew 12.
• 25:48
  Thank you for walking through the courtroom with us.
• 25:49
  It was my pleasure. This is reformed thinking.
• 25:52
  We'll see you next time.