Matthew 12:30-37

Last week we got to see this really cool talk that Jesus was giving about the Strong Man Satan being overpowered by the Stronger Man Jesus. How Jesus is rescuing His people out from Satan’s control and caring for them. A wonderful picture of our Savior, but this week Jesus turns the talk towards some harder statement that we have to deal with. So let’s get into this.

 

Read Matthew 12:30-37

 

In verse 30, Jesus makes a very important statement. He says that “He who is not with Me, is against Me”. Jesus is really removing the opportunity here for any sort of neutral stance towards Him, He’s removing the grey area. So that you can’t just simply ignore Him and think that everything is going to work out just fine. I mean you can try to ignore Him, but the fact remains that if we do not stand one hundred percent with Him, then by default we are in opposition against Him. And I don’t know about you, but that’s not a place that I ever want to be in again, and I say again because being an enemy of God is where I started. It’s honestly where we all start at. None of us are born into following Jesus. We aren’t saved just because our parents, or family, or friends are. We aren’t saved because other people want us to be, we’re not saved by just doing good things or trying to be a good person, we won’t be saved on accident, and we’re not saved because we come to church and call ourselves a Christian.

 

We have to understand really clearly how one moves from being an enemy of God to a true follower of Jesus Christ, because Jesus just said that if we aren’t with Him then we’re against Him and that’s not a small thing at all. I want to go read another passage together.

 

Read Ephesians 2:1-10

 

In this passage you can clearly see the divide between the state in which we were born. As being dead in our sin, walking in the ways of the world, the ways of Satan, how we followed the lusts or desires of our flesh and of our mind, how we were children of wrath or enemies of God, JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. James in James 4:4 says:

 

 

That was all of us, but the reality is, that were started off in a lot of ways not knowing any better. But that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t sin and that doesn’t mean that we weren’t still enemies. Again, Jesus said if you aren’t with Me, then you’re against me. But then you find right in the middle of that passage in Ephesians, one of the most dramatic and impactful transitions in all of scripture. It says, “BUT GOD“.

 

We were sinners, we were lost, we were enemies, BUT GOD INTERVENED. Jesus stepped on the scene, and Salvation comes in His wake along with the opportunity to cross the spiritual battle lines from enemy to friend of God. When I think of that intervention, I think of even another passage in Romans 5. Paul in Romans 5 was like when we didn’t have any strength or ability to fix our messed-up situation, Christ came and died for the ungodly like us. He said that as people, we would be really hard pressed to give up our own lives for someone else, even for a really good or righteous person. And yeah of course it can’t be easy for anyone put in that situation to consider giving up their life for someone, especially a stranger. But Paul told the Romans, and he was like LOOK, even while we were still sinners, even while we were still enemies, even when we had no strength and nothing to offer, it was in that situation that Christ gave up His life, to pay for our problems, so that we could have the opportunity for a fixed relationship with God the Father.

 

And Paul was telling the Ephesians the same thing, that God in His mercy, in His love, even while we were dead sinners, made us alive together in Christ. You see Christ died for the punishment that our sin deserved, but He came back to life so that we could be MADE ALIVE in Him.

 

So, we all start as enemies, we’re all start off against Him, but because of God’s love, and His grace, we have the opportunity to walk away from our sinful life, to repent, to turn away from that sin, and to believe in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus for all of that sin, and because of that we can now STAND WITH HIM and not against Him any longer. We have to understand that our sin will be judged by God, we have to understand that that won’t work out well for us, we have to understand that Jesus came to deal with that problem, that He gave up His life on that cross to fix it, and we have to believe that, turn away from the sin and turn towards Him, and call Him LORD of our lives. That’s how we’re saved, there’s no other way to God, if we’re not there yet, then we’re still against Him, and we’ve all been there, but He’s ready and willing to bring every last one of us into His family and into His Kingdom.

 

But let’s think back to why Jesus is making this statement in the first place. Jesus makes this statement because these Pharisees were caught up in it all, they were actively standing against Him at that moment. They weren’t just ignoring or staying neutral, they were entering the fight actively against Him, they were trying to kill Him now. And that’s why Jesus ups the stakes in His next statement. Let’s read verses 31 and 32 again.

 

Read Matthew 12:31-32

 

Jesus begins with a statement that should be comforting in a way. He says that every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, BUT He adds an exception to that statement. He says that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. He says you can talk about Me, you can blaspheme Me, not that we should ever do that, but He says that will be forgiven, but if we speak against the Holy Spirit, then He says that that will not be forgiven in this age, here on earth, or even in the age to come.

 

That’s really heavy, really serious, and should be really scary to these guys that are still bringing Jesus these problems.

 

But what is Jesus talking about here? What is this blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? I think there are some different viewpoints on what this is, but I think the simplest route here, might be the best. Jesus, by the power of the very Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, was working these incredible miracles and displays of God’s power in front of all of these people. God was at work, right there, in their midst, in the flesh, and in living color, and yet these Pharisees who knew the law, who knew the prophecies of the Messiah, who claimed to be these hyper religious elite.

 

These guys with the very Holy Spirit working in power, in front of them, chose to claim that Christ wasn’t Spirit Filled, but instead claimed that He was demon-possessed. They called the Holy Spirit a demon and Jesus is like you don’t get to come back from that. But notice this, that this wasn’t the first rodeo for these guys, this isn’t the first thing that they have seen. We’ve been following them, chapter after chapter, as they have been trying to tear Jesus down, and Jesus is just like, this is the last straw guys. You don’t get to come back from this one.

 

Remember in the last chapter, in Matthew 11, when Jesus was rebuking entire cities because they were seeing Him work and still denying Him. Well, these guys have been there through all of it, seeing all of it, and Jesus told those cities they would face greater judgement because they saw the miraculous and still denied Him.

 

These people were at a very unique crossroads, in world history, where the Father God’s plan for Salvation was in motion, the Son of God was here in person, and the Spirit of God was moving in signs and wonders as Jesus ministered to people. And it’s like we said in the last chapter, where there is greater light, there is greater responsibility. These guys were basically like inches away from the sun, light wise, figuratively S-U-N and literally the son S-O-N. They could see the light right in front of them, but they have ultimately chosen the darkness. Remember Jesus knows their hearts, and He’s like you’ve gone too far, and you’re going to be judged for this.

 

And He continues into verse 33-37, let’s read this again.

 

Read Matthew 12:33-37

 

Jesus here is still dealing with their comments. He’s like you’re trying to front like a good tree, like everything is all good, and you’re on the right page with God, BUT YOUR FRUIT IS BAD. And we aren’t going to get bad fruit from a good or healthy tree, so what’s up? The point that Jesus is driving home with them is that their bad fruit, or their choice words, or their blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, is the evidence that their “good tree look”, is all a front, and they are actually just a bad tree producing bad fruit at the end of the day.

 

He calls them a “brood of vipers” in verse 34, which is basically just a way to call them sons of Satan, and He says that “out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” That whatever is really in your heart, what you really feel, not this front that you have been putting on, not the acting in the play like the hypocrite as we have talked about before, but the real things of their heart are coming out against Jesus right now.

 

And let us remember exactly Who Jesus is, and that He can clearly see the heart side of things, while He is hearing the things coming out of their mouths. He knows exactly what is going on here. And that’s absolutely true in regard to all of us, God knows exactly what’s going on with us. These guys may have done a really good job of convincing other people of their supposed holiness, but they never fooled God in the least, and nobody ever will.

 

I think of a statement that Solomon made in Ecclesiastes 5, he said:

 

 

 

Jesus says that if there is good treasure in our heart then we should be bringing forth good things, God things. But if we are hoarding evil treasure, maybe we’re putting on a good show, but still at the end of the day as a result of the evil treasure, our corrupted heart will make us a corrupted person, who will bring forth corrupted or evil things. So, Jesus is saying, check your words, that our words really mean something, that our words are very much evidence of what is really going on down in our heart and God knows.

 

Jesus says in verse 36 that we will be accountable for every word, even the idle or thoughtless ones when the day comes to stand before Him. And that should give us some pause, it should make us take more seriously the words that we say and consider how the words that we are choosing to speak, are reflecting the character of our heart. These guys unfortunately, absolutely knew better, and didn’t chose to do better. They spoke way out of line, they spoke against the very Spirit of God.

 

And maybe we get to this point and we’re like, OH NO, have I ever done or said something like this? Am I in trouble?

 

There’s some debate on this exact circumstance, but the reality is that the situation for us is very different from these guys. We haven’t had the opportunity to watch the Holy Spirit moving through Jesus literally standing right in front of us. and then staring Jesus right in the eyes and calling Him a worker of Satan possessed by a demon himself. We haven’t had that blinding level of light to be responsible for, but that doesn’t at all mean that we have no level of responsibility.

 

In John 16 it says that the Holy Spirit will be here, after Jesus, to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgement. We can sit here today because of the Holy Spirit and understand that we’re sinners, we can see God’s righteousness, we can understand that sin deserves judgement, we can understand that Jesus died, was buried, and rose again to save sinners like us. We may not be in the same position to blaspheme or speak bad of the Holy Spirit, and Jesus, right to Jesus’ face like these guys did. But if we can now understand all of those things through the Holy Spirit’s work in this world right now, then the ultimate blasphemy now is to deny Christ, to deny all of this, because there is no neutral ground. We’re either with Him a hundred percent, or we’re against Him, and we can be against Him all the way into eternity, and I definitely don’t want that for any of us.

 

Maybe you haven’t come to know Jesus yet, maybe you’re still on the wrong side of this, maybe you still have questions, or you’re just trying to figure things out. Then I would encourage you, even plead with you, please, let’s talk about it. There’s no shame in having that conversation, there’s no shame in not knowing Him yet. Remember what we already talked about this morning, that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US, has been there, and so we’re not going to look at you any different, instead we’re absolutely going to rejoice around any person that wants to turn away from sin and follow Jesus, because that’s what we’re about here.