Smoodock's Blog

When is it wrong to disagree with others, and if it is permissible to disagree, how should that be done? I believe these next few verses in our study (Matthew 12:22-29) tell us how disagreement should be handled, and how it should be addressed, when it is wrong. In the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus presented himself as the long-awaited Messiah (Luke 4:16-21), but the authorities rejected him and thought to use their false doctrine that Messiah cannot die (Matthew 16:21-22; cp. John 12:34) to prove themselves correct by casting Jesus off a high precipice (Luke 4:28-29; cp. Matthew 4:5-6).

Since that time, Jesus went about the land preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, or Presence of God, healing whomsoever came to him. Although the multitudes followed him about, they held him in a context given them by false teachers. Nevertheless, Jesus didn’t want to disturb the status quo by the direct approach of debate with the Jewish authorities. When his own disciples came to the understanding that he was the Messiah, he counseled them to tell no one (Matthew 16:16-20). Why not? From the beginning Jesus presented himself as the Messiah, what not tell folks that he is?

It is because he was rejected by the Jewish authorities from the very beginning. To face them in an open debate would not only be dangerous, and this was not the time for Jesus to be taken and crucified, but an open debate would be divisive and create a great controversy over who was correct. How, then, should Jesus continue? He did so by preaching the truth without challenging anyone to make a decision. Nevertheless, this can be done for only so long before the people feel compelled to make a decision one way or another. Should they accept Jesus and reject their teachers or hold to their teachers and reject Jesus. It is here that we find ourselves in this study of Jesus’ ministry!

Notice that, in our present study, a man was brought to Jesus, and he was a demoniac, possessed to the extent that what possessed him took away his ability to speak and to see (Matthew 12:22).[1] Jesus healed the man, and the evidence for casting out what possessed him was that the man was able to both speak and see.[2] Therefore, the people who were with him and saw it were amazed and began to ask among themselves: “Is not this the Son of David?” (Matthew 12:23). In other words, folks began to come to the conclusion, on their own and without the aid of the Jewish authorities, that Jesus was the Messiah, vis-à-vis they were no longer possessed by false doctrine. They began to be willing to test what their teachers told them.

When the Pharisees, or the Jewish authorities, heard what the people were saying, they countered with: “This man drives out demons only by Beelzebul, the ruler of demons” (Matthew 12:24). In other words, the power by which Jesus healed was the power of evil! Moreover, to be clear, it is this statement of the Pharisees that Jesus addresses later in his reply, as the kind of blasphemy, which will not be forgiven. What was happening was, the Jewish authorities were losing their hold on the people. They, as it could be legitimately said, possessed them. They held their minds in false teaching, so that they, the people, could neither **see** the truth nor **speak** the truth, and Jesus simple preaching of the Gospel and doing good before them was **casting out** their possessors, vis-à-vis their teachers, the Jewish authorities. Nevertheless, in a last-ditch effort to hold on to their possessing power, they created fear in the hearts and minds of the folks who were ready to reject them and receive Jesus as their Messiah. They cast doubt on Jesus as a good man, saying he used the power of evil to create a context in which the people would receive him as their Messiah. What can Jesus do now?

[1] False doctrine does this. Once what is false is accepted as the truth, one measures the claims of others in the context of what is falsely held as truth. One’s ability to **see** truth is taken away, and, if one no longer knows the truth, neither can the blind man speak the truth. He is spiritually both dumb and blind. He is possessed by what is false.

[2] This is the spiritual sense of casting out what is false. Once the false doctrine is exposed for what it is, and a person begins to see the light, his eyes become **open** to the truth and he is able to see truth for the first time. Once he’s able to see the truth, he is also able to speak the truth.