The Strong Man is Bound!
Matthew 12:22-37
Harry Stoliker
March 28, 2009 EBC
The Strong Man is Bound!
Let me attempt to show the connection between our three sections so we can
see the flow of thought in Jesus' teaching. The second two sections
flow out of what happens in the first section. The first section, V.22-29
(Jesus Against Beelzebub)is a deep discussion that takes because Jesus heals
a man possessed by a powerful demon. The question in this section is "By whose
power did Jesus cast out that demon?" The next section, V.30-32 (The Unpardonable
Sin) is a deep discussion on what the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit
means. The question in this section is "What is the unpardonable sin?"
And were the Pharisees committing the unpardonable sin? The third section,
V.33-37, (The Overflow of the Heart) Jesus calls the Pharisees a
brood of vipers! They showed what was in their hearts by what came
out of their mouths. The question in this section is "Do you realize that your heart
is revealed through what comes out of your mouth?" Lets go to work!
I. Jesus Against Beelzebub V.22-29
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V.22-23 tells us of yet another miraculous demonstration of Jesus
power over demons. The description of the healing is brief so that more time
can be spent on the responses of the people and the Pharisees. The focus
is that dialog not the demons. We see that demons have the power to take away
sight and speech in non-believers.
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The people's response gives us another Name for Jesus: Son of David!
This places Jesus in the kingly line of Israel's most famous king. The people
were expecting a messianic, end-times, powerful, Son of David figure
to liberate Israel from her enemies. He would be a warrior king, like
his father David. Listen to Jeremiah 23:5 "Behold, the days are coming, declares
the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign
as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land."
Look at Luke 1:31-33 "And behold, you will conceive in your womb
and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will
be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give
to him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign
over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end."
7 times in Matthew Jesus is called the Son of David. The first
was in 9:27 when two blind men called him saying "Have mercy on us, Son of David!"
The NT accepts Jesus' Davidic origin as a certainty. Peter in Acts 2:29-31
"Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he
both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. 30
Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with
an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne,
31 he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ,
that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. Peter
is interpreting Ps.16, written by David, and says that David was talking
about the resurrection of Jesus to sit on the eternal throne of God!
Again, Paul is preaching in Acts 13:22-23 "And when God
had removed Saul, he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and
said, 'I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do
all my will.' 23 Of this man's offspring God has brought
to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised." Jesus is the promised
Son of David! The people began to see it correctly! The messianic Son of David
had come!
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The Pharisees couldn't take all the messianic interpretations that the
people were putting on everything Jesus did! They counterpunched with some very nasty
accusations of where Jesus supposedly got all his power. They said
he was in league with the devil. He was the devil's crony. He was
working for the devil. They couldn't deny Jesus had just done a powerful
deed so they say his exorcism was just a magic trick of the devil,
Beelzebub! Beelzebub likely means "lord of the house"
which fits perfectly with V.29 which tells us that Jesus has tied up
the strong man whose house is getting plundered! The lord of the house
gets tied up by someone stronger than he is!
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V.25-26 Jesus supernaturally knows what they are thinking and embarrasses
them by showing how absurd their logic is. Satan's kingdom would
fall, like any human kingdom, if it was divided against itself by internal civil
war! "If Satan drives out Satan he is divided against himself."
They didn't even have commonsense going for them as they opposed Jesus!
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V.27 "And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast
them out? Therefore they will be your judges." There were Jewish exorcists
around in the 1st century. We see some who totally failed at it
in Acts 19 called the "sons of Sceva." The Pharisees seem to have
had some associates or disciples that attempted to cast out demons
in God's name, and they weren't ready to say their disciples were
cronies of Beelzebub! If they did, they would have made themselves quilty
of opposing the work of God through their own exorcists.
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V.28-29 "But if it is by the Spirit of God that
I cast out demons, then the kingdom of Godhas come upon you. Or how can someone
enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the
strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house." Binding
is a metaphor, it means to be restricted, severely curtailed, limited
in effect, power, and scope. It wasn't by Beelzebub that Jesus
cast out demons; it was by the Holy Spirit! Jesus' entire ministry was empowered
by the Holy Spirit, which is what we just say in V.18!
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Notice that Jesus is saying that he is far superior to Satan. He has entered
Satan's kingdom, bound Satan up, and is plundering his goods!
Satan's kingdom is this sinful world where he reigns as the
prince of the power of the air (Eph. 2:2). Jesus can expel demons
and win souls into His kingdom because he has tied Satan up
and has made him powerless to prevent the advance of the gospel. Jesus
is now rescuing people from the kingdom of darkness and bringing them
into the kingdom of light and Satan can't do a single thing
about it! Jesus takes anyone He wants out of Satan's kingdom, anyone at all.
Jesus is taking millions and millions out of Satan's evil empire into God's
glorious kingdom! I read a report this week that said anywhere between 6-10,000
people a week are being saved in China.
Look at Col. 1:6 "All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing,
just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's
grace in all its truth." Also, 2 Timothy 2:8-9 "Remember Jesus
Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for
which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not
bound!"
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"Kingdom of God" occurs only five times in Matthew, compared
to 32 occurrences of "kingdom of heaven," (which occurs in none of
the other Gospel accounts.) We see in V.26 that Satan has a kingdom
and in V.28 that God has a greater Kingdom.
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All this is happening NOW. "The Kingdom of God has come upon you…"
The coming of Jesus was the beginning of the end for Satan. The last days
have begun. Donald Hagner says it beautifully: "The main point is:
Jesus is stronger than the strong one and is hence able to raid his kingdom at will
and deliver those who are oppressed in a variety of ways. In this basic sense
the ministry of Jesus is the beginning of eschatological deliverance, the
turning point of the aeons!" Here's the point: God's Chosen Servant,
Jesus, defeats and destroys Beelzebub so that we, true Christians, can
live our lives in the victory of the Holy Spirit! "Greater is He that is in
you than He that is in the world."(1 Jn. 4:4) "Therefore, submit yourselves to
God, resist the devil and he will flee from you!" (Js. 4:7-8) We need
to have joy and confidence in our hearts that we can live for Christ
in this world, at this time, no matter what the
circumstances are!
II. The Unpardonable Sin: Blasphemy Against the Spirit V.30-33
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The context is key to interpreting any passage, especially this one. The
Pharisees had just credited Jesus ministry of exorcism to the devil. That
is blasphemy! But is it blasphemy against the Son of Man or against the Holy
Spirit? V.28 gives us the answer: it was the Holy Spirit who empowered
and vindicated Jesus' exorcism. They had blasphemed the Spirit!
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"If a person persistently attributes to Satan what is accomplished
by the Spirit of God, that is, if one makes a flagrant, willful, decisive judgment
that the Spirit's testimony of Jesus is satanic, then he will never be forgiven."
ESVSB
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What is this sin, plain and simple? It is persistent and unrepentant resistance
to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. It amounts to final rejection of God plan
for salvation. It is the Spirit who convicts men of sin and righteousness. To finally
reject the Spirit is to finally and fully reject God's salvation. Can the Holy Spirit
be resisted?! Acts 7:51 "You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart
and ears, you always resist the Holy Sprit." This verse proves that
unbelievers resist the Spirit. They always will, UNTIL that
day when the Spirit changes their heart of stone to a heart of responsive
flesh. Hard-hearted sinners blaspheme the Spirit by their persistent,
final, refusal to repent and bow in submission to Jesus. Blasphemy
against the Spirit is a life-long refusal to repent, an entrenched, decisive, unrelenting
choice to rebel against God.
Who then can be saved? Who then will be saved? Everyone who is saved
is saved by the power of God when the Holy Spirit overcomes their refusal
to repent. The Spirit changes our hearts in a totally irresistible
way. He overcomes our sinful resistance and gives us the will and power
to repent and believe! 2 Cor. 4:6 "For God who said: "Let light shine
out of darkness, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the
knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Christ."
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Can a Christian commit the unforgivable sin? No. Never. If you are a true
Christian you have been given grace to stop blaspheming the Spirit and now
the Spirit lives inside you and empowers you for a lifetime of obedience
to Christ! Phil. 1:6 "He who began a good work in you will complete it until
the day of salvation!"
III. The Overflow of the Heart V.33-37
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V.33 Jesus is saying that the Pharisees are not good trees because
they have blasphemed. They are clearly bad trees. They can be recognized
as bad trees because they cursed Jesus by saying he worked for Satan. 1 Corinthians
12:3 "Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of
God ever says "Jesus is accursed!" and no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except in
the Holy Spirit." They thus blasphemed the Spirit by cursing Christ.
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Then he calls them snakes! V.34-35 "You brood of vipers!
How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart
the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth
good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil." 3 X's
in Mt. Jesus calls them "the offspring of snakes" (3:7; 23:33).
They are slippery, slithering, poisonous snakes, incapable of speaking
anything good and very dangerous to be around.
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V.36-37 "I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for
every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by
your words you will be condemned." This section ends with a solemn warning to
all disciples of Jesus. Manage your language carefully. We will
give an account for how we talk in this life. This doesn't mean we
have to be paranoid about every syllable that comes out of our mouths, but
we have to be very diligent in how we speak. Ephesians 4:29 "Let no
corrupt, unwholesome or rotten talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is
good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who
hear." Gossip, discouraging comments, put-downs, swearing, dirty jokes,
crude stories, broken promises, unpaid vows, thoughtless comments, insensitive quips,
hateful criticism, self-centered obsession…all this evil speech doesn't go unnoticed
by God. Rather we should use our language to praise God, thank God,
encourage the faith of others, and proclaim the glory of Christ in
the Gospel.
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How do you know what's in a person's heart? Just spend some time listening
to them. "For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks." If I walked
around with you for one day, I could tell how much you love Jesus
and how full you are of the Word of God! If you love Christ and love
His Word, you will not speak like a Pharisee snake, but like a son
of God who is in love with His Master. Is that what the people around you
hear coming out of your mouth? Ask them to tell you if it is!
Let's pray,
H.