Life of Christ 66
Last time we looked at the tug of war between the Pharisees and Jesus
for the soul of the Jewish nation. We saw the Pharisees advance the theory that
the indisputable works of Jesus were done because He was possessed essentially
by Satan. And that was utterly unforgivable. This time we find ourselves a bit
further advanced in the exact same conversation (Matthew 12.38-45).
I find it mind-boggling
that immediately after telling the people that Jesus does miracles in the power
of Satan they immediately ask Him to do another one. Talk about adding insult
to injury! And if they really believed in what they proposed they were actually
asking to see Satan at work.
Jesus rightly and
angrily refuses, and tells them the only sign or miracle that He will now
furnish them is one similar to the Jonah of the Old Testament, a resurrection
when all hope was gone. Then, following up on the thought of Jonah, He informs
them that Ninevah repented under Jonah's preaching, and He Himself is greater
than Jonah. Speaking of greater than, the Queen of Sheba was eager to hear the
wisdom of Solomon, and He is greater than Solomon. In other words, if the
people of Ninevah and the Queen of Sheba could speak at the moment they would
condemn the Pharisees and Israel for her complete lack of response to her
actual Messiah.
Jesus then proceeds to
give them a powerful illustration of just exactly what is wrong with the
Pharisees' approach. To me, this illustration is both enlightening and
convicting.
Jesus likens a man to an
empty house, one in which an unclean spirit lives. The unclean spirit is kicked
out, and rightly so. The house is then cleaned, fixed up, and prepared with
care to be occupied again. The problem is that it remains empty, and now it is
actually more attractive to that unclean spirit than ever. It finds some
unclean spirit friends, and comes back and takes over the now fixed up empty
house in which it used to live. The culmination of the story is that the
house's condition, and thus the man's in Jesus' story, is worse now than it was
at the beginning.
This is precisely what
Israel, under the influence of the Pharisees, had done.
Think of Israel in the
Old Testament, and how she continually struggled with one particular sin, that
of idolatry, the worship of other gods. The proscription against this is the
very first of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20.3). Yet before Moses gets down off the mountain with the tablets in which that commandment is inscribed they've
built a golden calf and are worshipping it.
The Idolatry of Solomon, Frans Franken II, 1622 |
They failed at obeying
this commandment repeatedly in the Old Testament. They failed under the
leadership of Aaron. They failed in the time of Joshua, and after him during
the judges. They failed at this under so many of the kings. Ezekiel said it had
gotten so bad toward the end that secret rooms had been hollowed out underneath
Solomon's Temple, and Israel's leaders worshipped idols right there below the
Temple. The prophets repeatedly railed against the violations of the first
commandment, and promised that God's judgment would fall on His people if they
continued (Jeremiah 1.16). It was precisely for this disobedience specifically
that Solomon's kingdom was divided in two after he died (I Kings 11.32-33). It
was precisely for this disobedience specifically that the northern kingdom of
Israel was carried away into Assyrian captivity (II Kings 17.6-12).
God's judgment was
poured out in fiery indignation, first splitting the nation in half, subjecting
her to the will of her enemies, and then consecutively swallowing up each half
thus causing the nation to effectively cease to exist.
This finally seemed to
make an impact, and we can see, in the five centuries between the return from
the Babylonian Captivity under Ezra and the time of Jesus, that Israel never
did return to idol worship. In fact, she became, if anything, more secure and
stable in her monotheistic worship of only one God, Jehovah, than she had ever
been.
Well, what could
possibly be wrong with that? At first, under the wise and godly leadership of
Ezra and the last of the Old Testament prophets, and then later under the
originally sincere though unscriptural Pharisees, and now finally under the
insincere and wicked rabbis she had rejected idolatry firmly – but she had replaced
that idolatry with a system of unscriptural, highly complex, extra-biblical,
vain traditions. The Pharisees and their rabbis, slowly, over centuries, tore
the heart out of Israel's religion, and even though she wasn't in idolatry she
was so wicked as to reject and put to death her own Messiah. And instead of
ceasing to exist as a nation for 70 years, as happened during the Babylonian
Captivity, this time she would cease to exist as a nation for 1900 years. 'Then
goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself,
and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than
the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation' (Matthew
12.45).
At the
risk of boring you to tears with Edersheim again, here is my favorite author on
the life of Christ in reference to this story:
The folly of Israel lay in this, that they thought of only one demon – him of idolatry – Beel-Zibbul, with all his foulness. That was all very repulsive, and they had carefully removed it…But this house, swept of the foulness of heathenism and adorned with all the self-righteousness of Pharisaism, but empty of God, would only become a more suitable and more secure habitation of Satan; because, from its cleanness and beauty, his presence and rule there as an evil spirit would not be suspected…and thus the last state – Israel without the foulness of gross idolatry and garnished with all the adornments of Pharisaic devotion to the study and practice of the Law – was really worse than had been the first with all its open repulsiveness.
The folly of Israel lay in this, that they thought of only one demon – him of idolatry – Beel-Zibbul, with all his foulness. That was all very repulsive, and they had carefully removed it…But this house, swept of the foulness of heathenism and adorned with all the self-righteousness of Pharisaism, but empty of God, would only become a more suitable and more secure habitation of Satan; because, from its cleanness and beauty, his presence and rule there as an evil spirit would not be suspected…and thus the last state – Israel without the foulness of gross idolatry and garnished with all the adornments of Pharisaic devotion to the study and practice of the Law – was really worse than had been the first with all its open repulsiveness.
I see several lessons
here. First, nations and people are both harder to reach when they are
self-righteous than when they are exceedingly sinful and admit it. The Israel
of Jesus' day was open with egregious sin. There is little record of any
rampant homosexuality, or child sacrifice, or idolatry. It was outwardly
buttoned up, and inwardly hypocritical. 'Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear
beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all
uncleanness' (Matthew 23.37). Jesus, with all of His powerful preaching and
jaw-dropping miracles, couldn't reach that generation. They thought they were
good, and refused to see that they weren't. On the other hand, you give me a
man or a nation that is living openly in the full squalor of sin and I will
show you a man fully conscious of his own deep need for salvation. The mind
runs immediately to the recently discussed story contrasting Simon the Pharisee
and the prostitute, doesn't it?
Secondly, we must never
lose sight of the importance of the heart. I've preached so about the heart
recently in our church that I often feel like I'm beating a dead horse when I
bring it up again, but I have to continue to bring it up for I keep finding it
again and again in the Word of God. The vast majority of the problems that
Jesus dealt with concerned a people outwardly following Jehovah to the letter
and yet inwardly bankrupt. We must take great care, to the extent that we can,
that such does not happen on our watch to our children, to our church, or to
ourselves.
Thirdly, a religion that
is full of rules and empty of a relationship with God is an open door to the
devil. I do not believe rules are wrong. I believe unscriptural rules are
wrong, and I believe rules without a warm relationship with God are wrong. Don't tell me how many i's you dot and t's you
cross if you also can't tell me that you are spending large chunks of alone time
loving on Jesus. Don't tell me how many Christians notice and approve of what
you are doing if you and God aren't living together moment by moment throughout
the day. Don't tell me what position you occupy in the kingdom of God if you
aren't yielded to Him in private and alone. Don't tell me all that you do and
don't do if your heart isn't holy.
One
of the most fearful examples of this in Scripture is Judas Iscariot. Outwardly,
he had it all together. Inwardly, he was rotten to the core, and the devil targeted
him like a heat seeking missile. 'And after the sop Satan entered into him'
(John 13.27). You can chase out of your life all the worldly pollution of wrong
music, wrong friends, wrong entertainment, and wrong fun, and that is good. You
can then fence yourself and your loved ones off from those things, and that is
also good, in my opinion. But I beg of you not to leave the inside empty. Rot
draws flies, but inward rot draws devils.
If
you ever get to the place where you think you are pretty good you are in deep
trouble. Self-righteousness is such a terribly subtle and yet awfully damaging
temptation to which to succumb. On the other hand, when you stay close to the
Lord and the cross you stay constantly reminded of your own sinful condition
and the great grace of God, and that is a wondrous protection to genuine
spirituality.
…and
if you don't your last state will be worse than the first.
If you would like to listen to the audio version of this blog you may find it here on our church website. Just press 'launch media player' and choose We Preach Christ 37, 'The Last State Worse Than the First'.
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