Speaking of Jesus

“Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” Such goes a phrase that you may have heard as a child, and by now most of us know how big of a lie that is. As the years go by, we realize that words are in fact way more powerful than any stick or stone in this world.

Words don’t just affect us, but words have shaped the history of our world in more ways than any tool or weapon or invention. Words really, really matter.

Today’s passage is about words—words that matter, words that reveal, words that justify, word that condemn. But before we get into what this passage says about words, it’s really important for us to remember where we’ve been after taking a couple of week’s break from Matthew.

We’re in the middle of a section that started when Jesus healed a demon-oppressed man who couldn’t see or talk. And when word got out, some people were amazed and wondered if this meant Jesus was the Messiah. The Pharisees, who had already decided Jesus couldn’t be from God, had to come up with some kind of reason for His power. So they instead said that Jesus cast out demons by the power of the prince of demons.

Jesus responded to the Pharisees and showed how absolutely ridiculous it was to say that this was an inside job. Why would Satan cast out Satan?

The Pharisees were desperately avoiding the obvious—that His power to overwhelm Satan came from the Spirit of God and was proof that the kingdom of God was upon them.

And we left off in verse 30 with this warning statement Jesus made: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters” (Matthew 12:30).

Because Jesus had come to make war on Satan’s kingdom, the time to choose sides has come. Like we said a couple of weeks ago, you have to pick a trench when the bullets start flying. Jesus is the divine warrior-king and you’re either with Him or with His enemies. And the implication is that the Pharisees are not with Him. They are against Him. They are working against Him.

And our passage today is simply a continuation of this speech from Jesus. In the fist part of the speech, which we looked at two weeks ago, Jesus was mainly playing defence. He was responding to the Pharisees and showing how bonkers their claims were. But verse 30 was a transition and now, for the rest of the passage, Jesus is playing offence. He’s going after the Pharisees and showing them the results, the cause, and then the final result of their decision to reject Jesus and blame His power on Satan.

1. Words Against the Spirit (vv. 31-32)

And he begins here in verses 31-32 as he speaks about their words against the 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).

These verses address the so-called “unforgivable sin” or the “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.” And these are the verses that have caused significant amounts of dread and angst and terror for Christians of sensitive conscience.

There’s this phenomenon psychologists call “High Place Phenomenon,” where a person standing on top of a tall building feels an urge to jump even though they don’t want to. Or someone flying on an airplane feeling the urge to pull the emergency handle even though they don’t want to make the plane crash. If you’ve ever felt that, it’s surprisingly common, and psychologists believe it actually comes from the brain’s desire to stay safe. “An urge to jump affirms the urge to live” says Jennifer Hames who recently studied this experience. [https://www.headspace.com/articles/high-places-phenomenon]

I bring this up because I suspect many Christians have had the theological equivalent of “High Place Phenomenon” with this passage. I know that I sure did as a young teenager. Knowing that there was this sin I could commit that would irreversibly condemn me forever gave me this fearful fascination with it and a sense of terrified inevitability that I was certain to commit it.

And that caused all kinds of awful things to play though my mind. I remember one night specifically where I was certain that, in the quiet of my own thoughts, I had committed this sin. And I remember feeling this awful dread, and actually getting out of bed and looking up at the dark sky and thinking, “Well, that’s it. It’s all over for my soul.”

It’s easy to laugh at this now, but at the time it was a big deal.

How much better it would have been for me if I had understood how to properly read these verses in context. “Therefore” says the beginning of verse 31. See why reading the Bible carefully matters so much? I might not have had that dark night of the soul has a 13-year-old if I had been shown how to read these verses in connection with the whole passage in which they’re found.

“Therefore.” These verses are about what’s been happening in this passage. These verses are about the Pharisees. Let’s see that as we take a bit of a closer look at these verses and recognize that they are parallel. What that means is that verse 31 and 32 each say the same basic idea in a different way.

They each start by talking about the kind of sin that can be forgiven. Verse 31: “Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people.” Verse 32: “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of man will be forgiven.”

Just think about these statements. They’re incredible. People get worked up about the fact that some sins can’t be forgiven, but what should amaze us is that sins can be forgiven at all. We don’t deserve that. God could have made every sin unforgivable and that’d be exactly what we deserve.

Instead Jesus announces the wonderful truth that He’ll forgive every sin and blasphemy, including words spoken against Him. The assumption here is that Jesus is divine and so words spoken against him are words spoken against God, which is the definition of blasphemy.

And he’ll forgive that. When people see him eating and drinking and call him a glutton and a drunkard, He’s willing to forgive that. When people say, “Isn’t this just the carpenter’s son?”, He’s willing to forgive that. When people see Him hanging on the cross and say “He saved others, let Him save Himself!”, He’s even willing to forgive that.

And we should be amazed by this.

But there is a sin that can’t be forgiven which comes out in the second half of verse 31 and 32. “…but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven… whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”

They key to understanding these phrases is to pay attention to context, which just means, the words around the words we’re trying to understand. In the context of this larger passage, where have we already heard about the Spirit?

And the answer is verse 28. “But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” Jesus has been casting out demons by the power of the Spirit. And this is because He is the Messiah, who has ben blessed with a unique empowerment by the Spirit. Remember verse 18, further up in the chapter? Isaiah’s prophecy said of the Messiah, “I will put my Spirit upon Him.”

And we saw this in a visible way at Jesus’ baptism, when the Heavens were opened, the Spirit of God descended and came to rest on Him in the form of a dove, and the Father spoke these words of delight from Isaiah: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:6-17).

We see the Trinity in perfect operation here—Jesus, the Son of God, the Divine Messiah, sent by the Father and uniquely empowered by the Spirit.

And so when the Pharisees say “Jesus is casting out demons by the power of Beelzebul,” they are not actually speaking something wrong just about Jesus. They are speaking against the Holy Spirit. They are giving Satan credit for something that the Spirit was doing.

And—here’s the important part—they were doing it with eyes wide open. They could put two and two together and they could see better than anybody else that the obvious truth was that Jesus was the Messiah. But they were so committed to being right and protecting their power and their glory that, with eyes wide open, with no excuse, they deliberately and consciously stared at the work of the Spirit and said “the devil did this.”

One author described this as a declaration of war on God. Another author said that by attributing the work of the Spirit to the devil, the Pharisees had basically painted themselves into a corner from which they could not escape. How could they even ask forgiveness after so deliberately rejecting the only person who could forgive them?

And so from one perspective it could be said that the unforgivable sin is unforgivable precisely because the people who commit it, like the Pharisees, will never ever seek forgiveness for it. In other words, every sin can be forgiven except the sin of rejecting forgiveness.

And so in context we can see that this is not a sin that you can commit by accident. You don’t slip up and do this. This is the sin of the Pharisees, a deliberate, conscious, no-excuses rejection of Jesus and His mission.

And in the context of the passage, Jesus’ words here are powerful and important. The Pharisees thought it was their place to pronounce judgement on Jesus. Jesus shows that it’s actually His place to pronounce judgement on them, as He does in these verses.

They thought they could blame Jesus’ power on the devil, but in so doing, they themselves do the most devil-like thing imaginable, which is to look at God, know who He is, and hate Him anyways.

They thought they could write Jesus off, but in so doing they write themselves off for all eternity. And this is the tragic result of their speaking against Jesus. No forgiveness, in this age or the age to come. In other words, ever.

2. Words from the Heart (vv. 33-35)

Now a question we might have is, “How does this happen? What is the cause or the root of such awful unbelief? Where do words like, ‘It is by the prince of demons that he casts out demons’ come from? How is it possible to see Jesus and see His glory, and still reject Him in such unbelief like this?”

Those questions lead us into the next set of verses here, verses 33-35, where Jesus shows the cause of the Pharisee’s blasphemous words. Wicked words came from wicked hearts.

Jesus introduces this idea with a word picture in verse 33: “‘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’” (Matthew 12:33).

This isn’t the first time Jesus spoke this way. Back in the Sermon on the Mount, He said “’Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. 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 7:15–20).

The idea is that we are like trees. Who we are is proved by what we do and what we say. A bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree produces good fruit.

These days, it’s common enough to hear people apologize by saying, “That wasn’t the real me.” That thing that I did, that thing that I said—that wasn’t actually the real me. And Jesus disagrees. The things that we do and say proves what kind of person we actually are as much as fruit proves what kind of tree it came from.

And Jesus would have us understand that the fruit of the Pharisees—particularly their blaspheming words about the Holy Spirit—proves exactly what kind of people they are. In case we miss it, He spells it out very clearly in verse 34:

“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).

“Brood of vipers” is a phrase first used by John the Baptist, and it means offspring of snakes. Baby snakes. And when we hear this phrase we should go all the way back to Genesis 3:15, when God said to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.”

All of history is about this long war between the offspring of Eve and the offspring of the serpent. The offspring of the serpent are not those who were literally begotten by Satan in a physical way, but those who have hearts like him.

Jesus was very explicit about this in John 8:44 where He said to the Pharisees, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires” (John 8:44).

They were the offspring of the serpent, proving by their words that they had hearts shaped by Satan’s tutelage. Satan had shaped them and taught them like a father and they were his true sons. Their hearts were evil.

So, Jesus asks rhetorically, “How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” What comes out comes from what’s inside, from the heart. And a wicked heart produces wicked words.

Again, this is so different from how we often think today. If you heard the phrase, “He really spoke from the heart,” what kind of speech would you assume came from that person? Probably meaningful, good words. Because we have this idea that’s been reinforced through stories from the time we’re little that deep down inside, everybody has basically a good heart. For years now Disney has been pumping out movies showing that villains are just misunderstood, and they’re ready to become good people as soon as they find a little encouragement and understanding.

That’s not how the Jesus looks at things. According to Jesus, some people have bad hearts. They are wicked, all the way down. They are evil. And how can you tell? From the fruit of what they say. They speak evil. Their heart overflows into their words.

And those little things that they say when they’re caught off-guard, when they’re not carefully scripted, are actually the clearest picture of what’s actually down there.

Jesus unpacks this idea a little further with another word-picture in verse 35: “The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil” (Matthew 12:35).

Jesus here pictures our hearts like storehouses or treasuries. What comes out is what’s in the treasury. My wife has a shelf in our storage room where she keeps gifts for people. When she sees something she knows someone would like, she buys it, and when it’s time to give them a gift, she goes down and out of that treasure brings up something good to give to them.

Years ago, as a child, I had the opposite experience. Friends from church invited us over to their house for the first time, and I think they could tell that we weren’t doing very well financially, and so they told us that they’d be sending us home with a gift. And I remember being so excited for that, until we opened the gift and saw what they’d given us. And it was basically a bunch of garbage. Some used toys, a broken camera that didn’t work at all—just junk. And it was dirty, too.

And I’m sure they meant well, but it serves as a good illustration of what Jesus is describing here. When you go down into your basement to get something for someone, what you come up with depends on what was in your basement. The Pharisees’ words were bad fruit coming from a bad tree, evil treasure coming from an evil treasury, wicked words coming from a wicked heart.

That where their words against the Spirit came from. They were words from the heart.

3. Words on Judgement Day (vv. 36-37)

And having shown us the cause of their words, Jesus finishes up this passage by showing us their final result. In a sense, He already has done this by telling us that their blasphemy would find no forgiveness in this age or the age to come. What divides this age and the age to come? Judgement Day. And Jesus brings all the threads together as he talks about the results of these words on Judgement Day.

“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 12:36–37).

When you first hear these verses, this might sound awfully harsh. Really? On Judgement Day God is going to hold us accountable for every single word we say, even the careless ones? Our words will be the criteria for whether we are justified, which means declared righteous, or condemned?

But this actually makes sense if we remember that Jesus has just told us that our words are the fruit that shows what kind of tree we are. Our words are the overflow of our hearts. Our words reveal what’s really inside and who we really are.

What’s unsettling is the realization that God is listening to every word we speak. Every single thing, not just that we do, but that we say, will be evidence on the Day of Judgement.

This is one of those few truths that might actually be a little bit easier for us to accept in our day compared to Jesus’ day.

We live in an age where so much is recorded. So many of our conversations happen through apps on our phones. People can hide microphones or have their phone recording things without us knowing it. And we’ve seen all kinds of stories in recent years where conversations that people thought were private were actually being listened to and were later used as evidence against them.

Jesus is telling us that there are no secrets with God. Ecclesiastes 12:14 says “For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.” It’s all being entered in the record.

For the Pharisees, their words against the Spirit who works in Christ have been registered as evidence of their serpentine hearts and will condemn them on the day they stand before God for judgement. Once again we’re reminded that, while people thought they were the ones evaluating Jesus, it’s actually the other way around. Those who judged Jesus ensured their own judgement.

Conclusion & Application

So, what about you and I? We probably don’t know any card-carrying members of the Pharisee’s sect, and it’s unlikely we know anybody who seriously thinks that Jesus’ power to cast out demons came from the devil.

But that doesn’t mean this passage has nothing to say to us.

We’ve already seen how this passage forces us to grapple with the existence of evil in the world. According to Jesus, there are two basic categories of human hearts. Good hearts and evil hearts. Good hearts are demonstrated with good words, even the careless ones, and evil hearts are demonstrated by evil words.

This completely challenges the idea that everyone, except for a few Hitlers here and there, is basically good deep down inside. All they need is a little attention and some good opportunities and they’ll turn out okay. And that’s a lie. If we believe the lie we’ll be ill equipped to deal with the real evil that exists in our world. We’ll be vulnerable to being hurt because it might never occur to us that some people have no problem hurting and harming other people

Some people have no problem lying to your face. Some people have no problem using their words like knives and daggers, because some people are evil.

I remember dealing with a really painful situation in which someone I knew caused a lot of damage to me and several people I really cared about. And after years of trying to figure this out while giving them the benefit of the doubt it was so hard but actually freeing to finally come to the realization that this person was just straightforwardly evil. And I was safe to recognize that because of the fruit. Their words were a fountain of confusion and manipulation and destruction. Lying was their second language. Truth was unimportant. Destroying others was almost a sport. They were evil.

Allowing Jesus to prepare us for the reality of evil in the world will help us not be disillusioned when we encounter it.

But we can’t just stop there, can we? Because if it’s really true that every careless word reveals what’s in our hearts, then evil is not just found out there in the really, really, bad people. There’s evil to be found a lot closer to home.

Listen to these words from Romans 3 which press the point that each one of us is guilty before God. “What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.’ ‘Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.’ ‘The venom of asps is under their lips.’ ‘Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness’” (Romans 3:9–14).

Every time we’ve lashed out and said something hurtful or harmful or proud or snide or arrogant or insulting, that was not like a little bit of mud on an otherwise clean surface that you can just wipe out of the way. It was more like poking a hole in a surface to see what’s behind it and realizing that there’s a lot of gross stuff back there that stays covered up most of the time.

Our words reveal our hearts and those hearts, apart from the work of God, are “deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” as Jeremiah 17:9 says. We may not all be as evil as we can be, but apart from the Lord we are all rotting trees producing rotten fruit.

I watched a show this past week where the main character was confronted over something they’d done and they said, “I’m not a bad person.” God disagrees. Yes we are. Yes, I am. I remember some of the things I’ve said in my life. I remember some of the things I said to other kids on the playground when I was a kid. Some of the things I said when I was angry even to people close to me. Sometimes those words come back and they make my toes curl and they remind me of my two great needs—our two great needs.

Forgiveness. And we need transformation.

We need the Lord to forgive us for our wicked words and our wicked hearts. And we need the Lord to change our hearts so that they produce good fruit and good words.

“And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God” (Ezekiel 11:19–20).

That’s the promise, and that’s the work that Jesus came to do in us. Paying for our evil words and evil hearts on the cross, and then transforming those hearts by His spirit, giving them new life, turning them to Himself, so that they produce good fruit which includes good words.

Now we know from the rest of Scripture that this process does not happen overnight. Jesus’ words here, describing a bad tree or a good tree, evil treasure or good treasure, picture the results of either Satan or the Lord ruling in our hearts. But we know that when a diseased tree is made healthy, there’s probably a transformation process. When a basement full of garbage gets renovated into a storehouse of good things, there is a process of change.

And it’s that process of change that a passage like Colossians 3 points to. Listen to these words, focusing in on what they say about words, and how we have a responsibility to put into action the transformation that God has already performed in His children.

“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Colossians 3:5–10).

A transformation has already occurred—so be transformed! You’re put off the old man and put on the new man—so put that into practice in the way you talk and don’t talk.

There’s a tension here we need to recognize. On the one hand, when someone has been saved by Jesus, that must change their words. A new heart makes new words. But on the other hand, there is a process of transformation where old ways of thinking and feeling and talking need to be deliberately put to death and replaced with what is right.

So, maybe you’re feeling convicted here because this past week some harsh words came out of your mouth. And you’re wondering if those harsh words are going to condemn you on the day of judgement.

If you are in Christ, Jesus already bore the condemnation for those words. In Him you have forgiveness and in Him you have the power to put the old man to death, killing the root from which the fruit of those words arise. It doesn’t happen all at once.

But it does happen. By the power of the Spirit we will experience success as we kill our sin. Christians aren’t just forgiven sinners. We are forgiven and are being increasingly transformed to look more and more like Jesus.

So, brothers and sisters, thank the Lord for His forgiveness for every careless word, rejoice in the transforming power of the Spirit, and by the Spirit put to death the remnants of rot that still remain.

It may be the case that, as you look at your life, you can’t see any evidence of the Lord’s work. Maybe you say you are a Christian but you recognize that your words, especially when you’re not trying to put on an act, are an endless stream of complaining and anger and bitterness and malice and slander and your words show no evidence of the Lord’s transforming power.

If we take Jesus’ words at all seriously, it would be appropriate for you to turn to the Lord this morning and tell Him that you’re not sure if you even know Him. Maybe it’s worse than you think. Maybe the fruit is rotten because the tree is rotten. But take heart, because the Lord is able to bring the dead to life and change the hardest heart. Cry out to the Lord for His forgiveness and His grace. Come to Him and rest.

And maybe there’s a chance you hear these words and you know for sure that you don’t believe in Jesus. Do you hear the warning today? There is a day of Judgement coming. The mighty works of Christ, and especially His resurrection from the dead, prove Him to be the judge of all the earth. Will you run to Him for salvation today? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.