[Due to technical issues, this sermon wasn't streamed or recorded. Here is a transcript.]
We’re going to be a little ambitious. Our passage will focus on Matthew 12:22–45, but honestly, we’re going to engage with the entire chapter, because the whole chapter seems to happen in a single day. I believe the Lord wants to bring clarity to some things that come up here, so that’s the goal.
Across all of Scripture, the Lord frequently compares Israel to trees and vines. The grapevine is employed for covenant fruitfulness and/or failure, the fig tree for the timing of judgment and a call to bear fruit, and the olive tree for the grafting in of the nations. But here and in other places, Jesus used a generic tree/fruit metaphor to describe the spiritual condition of a person or an entire nation.
The Diagnostic Verses
Verses 33–37 are the diagnostic verses in Christ’s condemnation, so we’ll start there, and then we’ll begin unpacking the larger passage.
Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. 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. 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.
— Matthew 12:33–37
I called this the diagnostic verses because what we have here is Christ’s diagnosis of the Pharisees’ hearts based on what has been coming out of their mouths all day long.
You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
— Matthew 12:34
You cannot separate a tree from its fruit. Their speech—the fruit—reveals what was in their hearts—the root. We’re going to notice here in a moment that their accusation against Jesus was what they were muttering to themselves, not something that they said out loud to everyone, so it was their unguarded, knee-jerk reactions to what they were witnessing. That’s what Jesus meant when He said our careless words will be held to account.
for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.
— Matthew 12:37
Now, I could spend some time here and preach, because Lord knows everyone mutters things that they don’t want everyone else to hear. Jesus said those very words will act as evidence either for or against you on judgment day.
Setting the Stage
So, what exactly has been happening all day that led to this confrontation? Let me set the stage with the things that happened earlier in the day, then we’ll pick it up in force at verse 22.
This chapter begins with a scene where Jesus and His disciples were walking to the synagogue on the Sabbath. Along the way, they plucked a few heads of grain to eat as they journeyed. Some Pharisees who were also walking to the synagogue saw them, and questioned whether they should do that on the Sabbath. Jesus shut them down with His response that concludes, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” That’s strike one.
Then in the synagogue, there was a man with a withered hand. Perhaps those same Pharisees questioned Jesus whether it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath. Of course, Jesus shut them down again, appealing to the Law of Moses, and healed the man’s hand. The Pharisees then began conspiring against Jesus on how to destroy Him, so Jesus left. Strike two.
As Jesus left, a crowd followed Him, and it said that He healed them all—on the Sabbath no less. Matthew offered a few passages from Isaiah to highlight that Christ’s healing ministry was a mark of the Messiah’s servant ministry. His works of service to the broken, the sick, the poor, and the underserved were all hallmarks of His Spirit-empowered mission to Israel and ultimately to the nations. The very works that the Pharisees were rejecting.
So we pick up in verse 22, where from that crowd a demonized man is brought forth.
Then a demon-oppressed man who was blind and mute was brought to him, and he healed him, so that the man spoke and saw. And all the people were amazed, and said, “Can this be the Son of David?” But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons.”
— Matthew 12:22–24
Before we get to Christ’s response, notice the contrast that Matthew creates here. On one hand, you have the crowd. The realization of who Jesus truly is began dawning upon some in the crowd. “Could this be the Son of David?” Let’s not get too excited, because we know ultimately the crowd turns on Jesus, but in this moment, some light has broken in. They are asking the correct question. This question serves as the hinge moment for the entire Gospel of Matthew. From here, the direction of the story begins to make a decisive turn.
The Pharisees, who had clearly joined the crowd at this point, had witnessed this deliverance happen. You’d think that after everything they’d witnessed that day, something in their hearts would begin to break and ask the same question that the crowd was asking. But instead, the exact opposite happened. They didn’t ask a question; they made a declaration. But it wasn’t out loud to everyone. They essentially muttered to themselves what they really believed. And unlike the crowd, who wondered if this might be the Son of David, they declared to themselves that Jesus’ miracles were done by the power of Beelzebul.
Strike three.
A House Divided and a Strong Man Bound
Now, what follows is a two-part dialogue. First is Christ’s response to the Pharisees’ rejection of His healings. Then the Pharisees will demand further evidence—a sign—and Christ will then respond to their demand with the only sign that they’ll receive, and a final verdict of what will happen to them.
By the Spirit, Jesus knew what they were muttering to themselves.
Knowing their thoughts, he said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand. And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”
— Matthew 12:25–28
The first thing that Jesus does is corner the Pharisees. The Pharisees also cast out demons, and they train their followers to do the same. They would claim that they do theirs by the power of God, yet they claim that Jesus, whose deliverance ministry is far more effective than their own, is empowered by Satan. Jesus established first that a house divided cannot stand; if Satan casts out Satan, his kingdom will crumble. So the absurdity of casting out a demon by the power of Satan is established. Now, if the Pharisees’ claim that Christ, whose deliverance ministry is demonstrably far more effective than theirs, is casting demons out by Satan’s power, then they must admit that their own less effective deliverance ministries are also empowered by Satan. Why would a lesser ministry be empowered by a greater power?
In other words, Jesus is basically saying, fellas, you and your sons cast out demons too, albeit far less effectively, but you’re saying that your lesser ministries are empowered by God, but My greater ministry is empowered by Satan. Who are you saying is winning here?
So, either way, the Pharisees lose. Either their own sons will condemn them for teaching them to use the power of Satan, or they will condemn themselves by their unbelief. “But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”
It took me a minute to work through the logic of what Christ was saying here, so I hope that is clear. Then Jesus says this.
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. Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
— Matthew 12:29–30
Jesus is referring to two things at once. First, He’s referring to the work He just performed in the man He healed. Jesus is the one who binds the strong man. In this blind and mute man, a demon had afflicted him, causing these conditions. It took one with greater authority than the demon to enter, bind him, and cast him out. Up until Christ arrived in this man’s life, his “house” was dominated by this demon who had occupied and made himself a home. Jesus entered the picture and evicted him. Once the demon was gone, the blindness and muteness were healed; his house was cleared and in order.
The second meaning here is broader. The kingdom of God was breaking into earth through Christ’s ministry. The god of this world—Satan—has blinded everyone to the truth, and Christ has entered to spread the light of His kingdom. His deliverance ministry was casting out demons here and there and everywhere to make the point. The kingdom of God is breaking in. Heaven is breaking into earth through His ministry. Jesus has come to bind the strong man—Satan—and plunder his kingdom. The gates of hell shall not prevail against His church. So when we share the gospel, we are bringing heaven down to earth to bring light into the darkness. Jesus has bound the strong man so that you and I can, by the Spirit, plunder his kingdom. That just means free the captives, open prison doors, unbind shackles, all in Jesus’ name, and see ones who were dead in their trespasses and sins be brought to new life as they are born again into the kingdom of God.
So, Christ’s declaration that if you aren’t working with me, you’re against me had some real-time bite. Jesus’ ministry was the work to bind the strong man who had taken residence in the hearts of the people. Jesus’ goal on the cross was to bind the strong man—Satan—once and for all. If you stood opposed to His earthly ministry, you were working against His purposes to plunder the strong man’s house. Period. Then came the warning.
Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit
Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.
— Matthew 12:31–32
I remember when this used to bother me. What is blaspheming the Spirit? Have I somehow done it? Now, to be clear, I would typically start asking myself this question when I had been in some willing rebellion. Honestly, about three years after I got saved, I entered into a period of rebellion unlike any I had experienced to that point. What made it bad was I knew exactly what I was doing, and I continued down that path anyway because I didn’t know how to stop. And that whole time I questioned whether I had blasphemed the Spirit.
Look, first of all, people who wonder if they’ve blasphemed the Spirit probably haven’t. But what we see here in this passage actually gives us the definition of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. What did the Pharisees do? They attributed the works of the Spirit in Christ’s ministry to the power of Satan. Therefore, blaspheming the Holy Spirit is consciously condemning Christ’s work by the Spirit as demonically empowered. So when a person sees the Holy Spirit’s power at work to reveal the grace of God in Christ, but then that person consciously condemns it as the work of Satan, they have blasphemed the Spirit.
And for that, there is no forgiveness in this age nor the age to come.
I think this is an appropriate moment to talk about why this is so. Why is blaspheming the Holy Spirit an unforgivable offense? Jesus even said that you can blaspheme me, the Son of Man, and it can be forgiven, but not the Holy Spirit.
First, the offense against the Holy Spirit is greater because He is the One who empowered everything that Jesus did. All of Christ’s works are by the Holy Spirit. As part of His incarnation, Jesus lived as we live—completely human and completely dependent upon the Holy Spirit. All of Christ’s ministry flowed from the power of the Holy Spirit.
Luke’s Gospel highlights it better than Matthew and Mark, but we need to get it into our minds that when we read about Jesus doing a miracle, the power for that miracle came from the Holy Spirit. When Jesus cast out a demon, the power to cast out that demon came from the Holy Spirit. When Jesus knew something prophetically, like in this passage when He knew the thoughts of the Pharisees, that particular knowledge came from the Holy Spirit. Jesus didn’t exercise mind-reading abilities; He listened to the Holy Spirit, who gave Him knowledge of what others were thinking. When Jesus taught, His teachings were ordered by and empowered by the Holy Spirit. When Jesus said, “I only do what the Father tells me,” He received that knowledge of the Father’s will by the Holy Spirit. When Jesus prayed to the Father, His prayers came to the Father by the Holy Spirit.
Jesus did nothing from His human resources, nor did He ever “cheat” and play His “God card.” He came here to gain the full human experience so that He can be a perfect mediator on our behalf. So, His whole life on earth was lived as we live: completely dependent on the Holy Spirit for communion with the Father, for power in ministry, for everything pertaining to life and godliness. The Holy Spirit was His connection to the Divine Nature, just as He has been for every believer ever since.
We give too little thought to the Holy Spirit’s role and importance. But as we see here, by Christ’s own words, blasphemy against the Spirit is more severe than blasphemy against the Son, which elevates His role and importance. Even Jesus said on occasion that if people wouldn’t believe Him, they should believe His works. That statement makes more sense in light of the importance of the Spirit’s work through Him.
Second, blaspheming the Holy Spirit is unforgivable simply because you are rejecting the only means by which the Lord has chosen to reveal His grace toward us in Christ. If you see the work of the Spirit to reveal the Father’s grace in Jesus, but then reject that work, there is no hope for you to repent any other way.
So, blaspheming the Spirit is the fruit of a hardened, dead heart. If you blaspheme the Holy Spirit, you only reveal what is already true on the inside. Therefore, it seems, contrary to what I’ve been told by several people, blaspheming the Spirit isn’t just a matter of dying in your sins. The Pharisees blasphemed the Spirit right here, well before any of them actually died. And what we see in the larger narrative of Matthew is that after this exchange, Jesus’ public teachings turned decidedly to parables. Why?
This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.
— Matthew 13:13
The parables were a judgment upon them. They refused to believe the works of the Spirit through Jesus, so after this moment, His teachings for them would be concealed in parables.
That has an ongoing application for us today. It means that a person can reject the Holy Spirit’s drawing for a final time and seal their eternity well before he or she actually dies. This is why the preacher of Hebrews implored his hearers:
Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.
Now, for a moment, consider where we began. The fruit of their trees tells us everything we need to know about their roots. This blasphemy is just bad fruit reporting on a bad root. The diagnosis is that they are bad trees with bad fruit, which tells us they have bad roots. They were dead all along, and that’s why they reject what should be plain to them.
Believer, if you’ve been born again, you cannot blaspheme the Spirit. Why? A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. Just like Satan cannot cast out Satan, the Spirit will not testify against Himself. Once you belong to Christ, the Spirit works to keep you in Christ by sealing you, sanctifying you, and transforming you. It is precisely because He is at work in you that you will not blaspheme Him. And this is the fruit of a good tree: the ongoing work of the Spirit, transforming, renewing, and empowering believers to do the good works that the Father has prepared for us.
The Demand for a Sign
Now the Pharisees respond to Christ’s condemnation.
Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.”
— Matthew 12:38
I hope you see the incredible irony of this request. All day long these Pharisees have been seeing signs! And they’ve rejected every last one of them. Now they have the audacity to ask for just one more so that Jesus could prove Himself. Do you think for one moment that they would’ve believed it if Jesus had offered it? No! But hang on—before we get a little too self-righteous, how many times have you done this exact thing? You’ve read about Him, you hear testimonies from others about Him, but, for whatever reason, you need more? You need a personal demonstration before you’ll believe or take a further step in your faith. I get it. Walking by faith can be a scary thing. So we just need to take a moment and remember that we’re not that much different from these Pharisees. At times, walking by faith requires upending everything that we’ve held onto for the sake of following Jesus. When you’ve faced those moments, did you ask for a little extra assurance?
Jesus saw right through their request.
But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.”
— Matthew 12:39–42
There’s a subtle shift that happens here. Jesus had been addressing a particular group of Pharisees, but here He began speaking in generational terms. An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign. “Evil and adulterous” is covenant unfaithfulness language. Jesus shifted to Israel as a whole, not just the Pharisees in the crowd that day. We know that at other times Jesus criticized the crowds for following Him just to see a miracle or to get bread, so this evil and adulterous language actually applies to the entire generation of Israel alive during that day. They all sought a sign, despite the fact that many signs were given to them. It was never enough.
However, here, the Pharisees are demanding a particular kind of sign. An authenticating sign, signaling that Jesus is the prophet Moses promised would come after him and be like him. So they wanted Jesus to offer a sign, as Moses had. He refused to do so and said that the only sign they would receive is the sign of Jonah. This is an important distinction, because we know that after this moment, Jesus did many more miracles and signs. So the kind of sign the Pharisees were asking for is what makes this a different kind of request. We won’t explore all of it here, but this comes from Deuteronomy 18:15. The fact that they were conspiring to kill Jesus is rooted here, because they believed He was a false prophet (Deut. 18:20). The funny thing here is that they would kill Him, but the sign that they asked for to authenticate that He is the prophet like Moses would come through His death and His resurrection. He said that would be the sign. It came true, so therefore He is the one Moses prophesied!
The Empty House
Let’s move to the final verses:
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation.”
— Matthew 12:43–45
This whole discourse began with the deliverance of a demonized man. Jesus returned to this concept to wrap up His whole judgment on the matter with the Pharisees. The operative word here is empty.
Israel had come back from exile, rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, rebuilt their Temple, and endured foreign occupations by multiple nations, yet never returned wholesale to the same idolatry that got them into exile in the first place. In that sense, they remained faithful to Yahweh.
Yet in another sense, they slowly became adulterous again. Not with other gods. This time it was just good old-fashioned traditions. They became a self-righteous nation, falling in love with themselves this time rather than with other gods. They made their institutions and schools of interpretation and their political power the driving forces in national life. It all had a veneer of faithfulness to Yahweh, but it was only skin deep. The house had been put in order, but it was empty on the inside.
So Christ’s final words here predicted precisely what happens to ordered but empty houses. The original demon is driven out, and the house is put in order. They had been idolatrous, but were exiled and allowed to return and rebuild. Christ arrives to take His place in the house, but He was rejected. Now the house remains empty, and the demon that once lived there returns to spy out the circumstance. It’s turnkey, move-in ready, but this time he brings seven stronger demons with him. And this is precisely what happened. Israel—as a political entity—was destroyed, Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed, and their condition after that was sevenfold worse than their previous condition.
Jesus said that is how it would be with this generation.
He knew that all of His work to cast out demons would come unraveled because Israel was going to reject Him. He knew that; He predicted it. All the little spiritual houses that had been put in order because Jesus had evicted the strong man would be reoccupied, since those homes had remained empty after He cleared them.
The tree was bearing bad fruit. To quote the Sermon on the Mount:
A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.
— Matthew 7:18–20
Would You Change?
I always like to end teachings like this with a moment to reflect on their impact on us. Clearly we stand on the other side of Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension, looking back on this as historical narrative. Clearly this is a record of what happened, but how should it inform our growth right now?
I look at these Pharisees as men who actually believed they were pursuing the truth by practicing the Law of Moses—which is fair. That was the thing they inherited; it remained the prescribed way to worship the Lord. But when Jesus—Yahweh incarnate—arrived and brought the light of the kingdom with Him, He exposed how the religious leaders were more in love with their institutions than the One who gave them those institutions. Here in Matthew 12, Jesus challenged their understanding—”The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath… it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath”—and performed signs to give authority to His claims by healing people and delivering them from demons. These things should have softened the hearts of the Pharisees, but they only uncovered their deadness. The Pharisees chose institutional loyalty over the truth that Jesus was teaching and showing.
We face similar choices. I’m speaking from personal experience. I told you all several weeks ago that I’m a Word-and-Spirit-before-tradition kind of believer. I have gone through a years-long unraveling of my faith, not in a deconstruction kind of way, but just taking a long, hard look at why I believed what I always believed. And you know what I found? Some of it was traditions of men. Some of it was denominationally rooted. And some of it was a misunderstanding of the Scriptures. I had to realign things. And I was happy to do it! Why? Because at the root level, I am alive in Christ! I’ve received that new heart, my spirit has been made alive in Him, and when the Lord shows me something that needs adjusting in my theology, I’m happy to make that adjustment! I’m not married to a theological understanding! I’m married to a Person! And when He shows me my error, there’s nothing in me that wants to hang on to that error! Now, it may, and often does, take time to root it out of my thinking, because very few ideas or thoughts live unconnected to other ideas and thoughts. The process of dismantling takes time.
I shared a video the other day where Dr. Michael Heiser said, “You must be able to hear a proposition, and know what you’re being asked to believe.” I agree with that statement 100%, and if we all took it seriously, it would profoundly impact how we understand the Scriptures. The question at stake is: Would you change? Are you willing to let go of traditions, doctrines of men, and bad interpretations of Scripture when the Holy Spirit highlights them to you? The answer to that reveals your roots.
And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.
— John 3:19–21
