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An archive of Jacob Nannie's Sermons & Teachings
This sermon was preached on December 10th, 2023 at Enclave Community Church in Turlock,
California.
The text is Matthew chapter 12, verses, I believe it's 22 through 29, 22 through 32.
And it's on recalibrating expectations and how the Messiah was not who the Jews expected
him to be and how Jesus recalibrated their expectations.
And you know, as I was recording, as I was editing this sermon, I realized there's a
giant gap in the audio and I was like, what is, what is that?
And I remembered that it was during this sermon, this is the first and only time this has ever
happened, but during the sermon, someone passed out while I was preaching.
It was a very unique experience of Harry, formative one.
I learned a lesson there.
My pastor afterwards told me, that's a good lesson in the fact that when there's an elephant
in the room, you kind of just name it and address it.
So probably the only time he's told me, you know, here's what you should have done in that
situation very pointedly.
And he said, you should have stopped and addressed the room, but has to happen to all
of us, I suppose, at some point.
And so you might hear in there a little gap where I might say, are we good to continue?
And that's because someone passed out.
And so many more experiences like that to come, hopefully, because they make it interesting.
But without further ado, here is my sermon on Matthew 12, 22 through 32, titled Recalibrating
Expectations.
All right, good morning.
Today's scripture is going to be Matthew 12, 22 through 32.
Jesus and Beelzebul.
Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him so
that he could both talk and see.
All of the people were astonished and said, could this be the son of David?
But the Pharisees heard this, they said, it is only Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that
this fellow drives out demons.
Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, every kingdom divided against itself will be
ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.
If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself.
How then can his kingdom stand?
And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out?
So then they will be your judges.
But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come
upon you.
Or again, how can anyone enter a strong man's house and carry off his possessions unless
he first ties up the strong man?
Then he can plunder his house.
Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
And also I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the
Spirit will not be forgiven.
Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks
against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in his age or in the age to come.
Let's pray.
Lord, we just thank you for, we thank you for your word, and we thank you for the message
today.
I pray that you come upon us and just give us peace during this season, and I pray that we
will be the aroma of Christ to those around us.
Lord, be with Jacob today as he gives the message.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Also, my parents are watching from Nevada, and they tell me every Sunday, so I'm saying hi
to them.
Hi, Mom.
I'm done.
Well, good morning, everybody.
I wanted to start out today with a question, and that question is this.
How many of us here have a smartphone?
A lot of hands.
Okay.
How many of us here have an iPhone?
Okay, okay.
So a lot of us have smartphones, and those of us who have been baptized and washed in the
blood of Christ have iPhones.
I wanted to start out today's message by telling you about the story of the first iPhone.
So in some ways, it relates to our passage.
In 2007, Steve Jobs and Apple was going to announce the first iPhone.
And, you know, Apple's pretty secretive about what their phones and devices can do and what's
coming out, what's coming next.
So there was a lot of hope and expectation that people were building up as they were expecting
the first iPhone.
It's a revolutionary phone that we're going to get.
And so they were wondering.
They had assumptions and a lot of expectations.
And at the 2007 Macworld Conference and Expo, Steve Jobs says, okay, we're not going to announce
just one thing today.
We're going to announce three things.
We're going to announce, of course, a revolutionary phone, but also a iPod with touch controls that's
And you can imagine the excitement building about three new devices.
This is more than we expected, more than we asked for.
What is it going to be like?
And then he says, by the way, this is all one device.
And that device is the iPhone.
So what Steve Jobs had done at that expo was reshape the expectations of the crowd, but also
he exceeded the expectations that they had for what they were going to get.
Some of this is in our passage today.
The people in the first century, they had expectations about the Messiah.
And we're going to see that Jesus recalibrates them and exceeds them in our passage today.
And so what Matthew 12, 22 through 32 is telling us is this.
This is a thesis statement.
If you listen to my sermons, it's in every sermon.
This is the only sentence that I want you to remember from the whole sermon.
It will be on the test at the end.
Jesus, the long-expected Messiah, is signaling the arrival of God's kingdom by performing signs
and wonders by the Spirit of God.
And we're going to explore this by looking at three things.
Can we turn this mic down just a little bit?
We're going to explore, first, the expectations of first century Jews when it came to the question of the Messiah.
What were in their minds when they thought about the Messiah?
Second, I want us to look at Jesus' response to the Pharisees and the charge that they lay against him
and how he handles that and what the implications of his source of power and authority are.
And finally, we're going to look at what all of that means for us today in Jesus' warning.
So let's go to the first point and look at the expectations of first century Jews.
So in our text, Jesus, he heals a demon-oppressed, blind, deaf, and mute man.
And the crowd first is amazed, and then they ask a question right away.
And the way that the question is written, it can be read with some doubt.
They say, this can't be the Son of David, can it?
So that leaves us with a question.
Why, when this crowd sees the signs and wonders that Jesus performs, particularly in this instance,
why is it that they are reminded of the Messiah?
And what is it that makes them question, is this the Messiah?
There are a couple things that lead to this question.
First, first century Jews were expecting someone like a new Moses,
who would do signs and wonders similar to what God did in Exodus.
We've seen Exodus and Deuteronomy over and over again,
all throughout these two books, verses like this.
This is Deuteronomy 26.8.
This can't, I'm sorry.
And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm
with great deeds of terror, with signs and wonders.
So these signs and wonders that Moses performs in the Exodus
are signs that liberate God's people by judging God's enemies.
So the first century Jews were expecting a Messiah that's like a new Moses,
that's liberating God's people.
Jesus' healing of the demon-oppressed man demonstrates this, right?
He's liberating this man from demon oppression, right?
The man was demon-oppressed, so he had these ailments because of this,
and Jesus heals him and liberates him from the power of this demon.
But his liberation of the man does not look like what the first century people expected
when they thought of liberation.
So it's just enough liberation for them to say,
hey, that kind of reminds me of the Messiah,
but it's not exactly what they were looking for,
which leads to the question,
is this the son of David?
Is this the Messiah?
So that's the first thing that they had in their minds, liberation.
The second thing was restoration.
First century Jews were expecting the Messiah would remove those things that stood in the way
of the people of God fully participating in the kingdom of God and in the worship of God.
All right, think of the man in our verse.
This is in verse 22 in our passage, the very first verse.
Then a demon-oppressed man who was blind, and it can be read deaf and mute,
was brought to him, and he healed him, so that the man spoke and saw.
So this man who was liberated from demon oppression, he was blind, he couldn't see,
he could not speak, and he could not hear.
So probably couldn't participate very fully in the worship of God.
If someone was here today, and they could not see or speak or hear,
there's some physical limitations on how much they can participate.
There's no fault of the man's own.
Nothing he did that led to this, but he couldn't fully participate.
He can't see, he can't speak, and he can't hear.
And Jesus heals him so that he can see, speak, and hear.
He's liberated and restored to physical wholeness.
He's restored to the wholeness that God had intended for creation.
And so now he can participate in the worship of God.
Now, we're not saying that he was saved before or saved after,
just that this demonstrates that the Messiah brings restoration
that allows the Messiah's people to participate more fully.
So in summary of this first point,
the first century Jews expected a Messiah to liberate and restore God's people
so that they might fully participate in the kingdom of God.
The exorcism demonstrates liberation.
The being restored to physical wellness and wholeness shows us the restoration.
So like Steve Jobs did with the iPhone,
Jesus is recalibrating the expectations.
They're saying, this reminds me of the Messiah, we're not sure.
And so Jesus is taking their expectations and recalibrating them.
This is what the Messiah does.
This is what it actually looks like when the Messiah truly liberates and truly restores.
They were expecting liberation from Rome.
They were expecting the Messiah to come and save them from their current political and national situation.
Their enemy, Rome.
But the Messiah comes in Jesus and says,
the true enemy that you're being liberated from and restored from is Satan, is sin and death.
And his healings and exorcisms demonstrate that.
And so I want to ask,
do we have expectations of God?
Do you expect Jesus to do anything in your life?
And if you have those expectations, are they shaped by what God says in his word?
Are they shaped by your communion with him through prayer and reading?
And if they are, are you, how do you respond when God meets expectations in unforeseen ways?
And maybe he meets them in ways that are not readily identifiable.
Maybe he meets them in ways that make you uncomfortable.
How do we respond when these things happen?
And are we open to having him work in our life in a way that we did not expect?
That's a crowd that I would ask, that's a question I would ask the crowd too.
They're expecting something, they're seeing something different.
Are they open to seeing that Jesus is the true Messiah?
When God works in your life in unexpected ways,
are you open to saying this is truly the work of God and coming alongside of it?
These are questions that I want us to ask before the Lord.
And so while the crowd was questioning Jesus' Messiahship,
there was something else happening.
The Pharisees, they had a death grip on their own redefined expectations
of what the Messiah would look like.
And what they do with that is they attribute the work of Christ to Beelzebul,
the prince of demons.
So let's look at, second, Jesus' response to the Pharisees in verses 24 through 29.
So in verse 24, I was asking Christina, my wife, I read this passage and I said,
I just want to know, I want to know what you think about it.
And she pointed out something interesting that I had to learn is she said,
hey, how come the Pharisees say it's only Beelzebul?
Like to them, it's not a big deal, right?
She picked up on the fact that the Pharisees dismissively say about Jesus,
this guy, no, he's just casting out demons by the power of demons.
Remember, they pick up on what the Messiah was supposed to do.
They knew the Old Testament well.
They hear the crowd being amazed and starting to wonder, could this be the guy?
And they say, no, no, no, no, no, it's not him.
He's just casting out demons by the power of demons in a very dismissive tone.
But their dismissive tone attributes the work of God to the work of Satan.
And to respond to this, Jesus uses two points of reason.
First, he says, how can a house divided stand?
How can Satan cast out Satan?
It's almost as if he's saying, how can something fight against itself and stand it?
It doesn't make any sense.
So he responds with logic.
Now, Satan might act, the enemy might act in ways that to us seem counterproductive.
We might even see this in physical, real-world battles.
People will do things that seem counterproductive, maybe to confuse or to distract.
But in this instance, in this passage, it makes no sense for Satan to cast himself out of a man
using someone who was thought to be the Messiah.
That's like the ultimate self-defeat, right?
He can't be demonstrating any certain point.
It's not like Satan's saying, I'm going to win by using God to defeat me.
Well, then you just lost.
And so Jesus says, you can't fight against yourself and stand it.
It makes no sense for Beelzebul to cast out demons.
Second, he says, all right, let's say I, if I was using demonic powers,
why don't you say the same thing about your sons and your students who are also casting out demons?
If I'm using the power of Beelzebul to cast out demons,
what about the people that you readily accept cast out demons?
Wouldn't they also, by the same standard, be using the power of Beelzebul to cast out demons?
In fact, Jesus is saying that he's doing the opposite of using demons to cast out demons.
He's the Messiah liberating God's people from God's enemies.
In this case, he's liberating, again, a man from demon oppression.
And it's at this point in Jesus' response that he utters the climactic words of this passage.
This is in verse 28.
Here's the vital question for us.
I think most of us here would say, yes, we really and truly believe that Jesus performed these signs and wonders by the Spirit of God.
What that means, then, is that the kingdom of God has come upon us.
That's what Jesus is saying.
If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then you know the kingdom of God has come upon you.
And the kingdom of God coming upon us has certain implications.
It means something.
It changes everything.
And we're going to get to that in a second.
The third thing Jesus says, he says, okay, Spirit of God, that means the kingdom of God is here.
If that doesn't make sense to you, let me say it another way.
In verse 29, he says,
Or, how can someone enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods?
Unless he first binds a strong man, then indeed he may plunder his house.
So he's saying, the implications of my kingdom coming are that I am binding Satan,
binding the enemy and taking back my possessions, which are my people.
Jesus is binding the strong man, going into his house, and taking back us.
He's liberating us from Satan, from the enemy, from demons.
Christ is bringing wholeness to what Satan has sought to steal and destroy.
And he's bringing peace to the world by reconciling people to himself.
This, again, is represented in the healing of the demon-oppressed man.
So, there are times when it looks like the enemy is winning.
And we might be afraid, even, that Jesus is not doing all that he said he would do,
or all that he promised.
And in troubling times like this, we need to run to passages like these,
that demonstrate Jesus is, he promised that the kingdom of God has come,
that he's liberating and restoring us to wholeness.
Passages like this, signs and wonders like this,
are demonstrating that he has bound Satan and is defeating the true enemy,
which is sin and death.
He's bringing liberation and restoration.
In summary of the second point, Jesus' signs and wonders restore God's people
by judging God's enemies.
And this is evidence that the kingdom has come.
So, again, like Steve Jobs, Jesus is recalibrating expectations, right,
of the crowd and even the Pharisees.
And he's exceeding them, right?
You're going to have more liberation from just Rome in the earthly realm.
You're going to have liberation from sin and death, right?
The spiritual warfare.
I think it'd be far easier for God to liberate us from our political,
geographical, national situations.
It's a whole nother level of peace and wholeness and freedom
when God liberates us from sin and death and restores us to wholeness.
I think, I'm deviating from my notes here, so bear with me.
In the movie, I think it's Guardians of the Galaxy 3,
it focuses on this character who is really tortured and mutilated
and experimented on.
And he has a lot of problems wrong with him, and he escapes.
And there's a scene where he, it appears that he's dying,
and he goes to what we call heaven.
And in this heaven, he sees people who were with him in captivity.
And I think the movie makers miss out on a key point here.
In the scene, they show his friends as still being mutilated and worked upon.
And I think that they, we could have caught something,
a better glimpse of this message if they had showed them back to wholeness.
That's what Jesus is doing.
He's taking us away from danger and the enemy,
but he's also restoring us to a new wholeness.
It's all the scars of sin and death are going to be gone
when Jesus restores us fully.
Okay.
Are we, is everyone okay if I continue?
Okay.
I think Ed may have gotten me out of a really bad analogy in my sermon, though.
So, that's good.
Okay.
So, Jesus' sign of healing and restoration, of exorcism,
is signs that he, as the Messiah, is liberating God's people, restoring God's people, and defeating Satan.
He's recalibrating expectations, and more than that, he's exceeding them.
Right?
He's saying, more than, more than restoring you and liberating you from Rome,
I'm going to save you from sin and death.
And there's going to be a day where we don't experience,
I think I said, the stain of sin, the scars of sin, any longer, emotionally or physically.
And that's what we have to look forward to.
But the problem in this passage is that the Pharisees still had a tight death grip
on what they expected from the Messiah.
And because of that, again, because of that, they attributed God's work to Satan.
And then Jesus warns them in verses 30 through 32.
Essentially, what Jesus says is we cannot be neutral about Christ's work as the Messiah.
Or, when it comes to the kingdom of God, he says this in verse 30.
Whoever is not with me is against me.
And whoever does not gather with me scatters.
We can't be neutral.
You're either with Christ or you're against him.
The neutrality that I think our day and age really espouses a lot is a myth.
We can't be neutral.
But the Pharisees, they weren't even trying to be neutral.
They weren't saying, we're not sure if Jesus is working by the power of God.
Maybe he's a magician or a sorcerer.
Maybe he's using the power of demons.
They weren't even saying that.
They weren't being neutral.
They said, no, we reject Jesus is working by the spirit of God.
And actually, we're going to call Jesus, essentially, some commentaries say they're essentially calling Jesus Satan.
They go above and beyond rejection of God's work into attributing his power to Satan.
They knew all about the Messiah.
I don't think we could say that they didn't know the Old Testament.
They had expectations.
Even if they were a little off, they were there enough to recognize and be reminded of the Messiah when they saw Jesus working.
Blatant, open rebellion and rejection of God's work, an attribution of God's work to Satan is what Jesus is referring to in verses 31 through 32.
Let's read that again, verse 31.
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 the age to come.
Now, for us modern readers, this is really hard for us to digest.
D.A. Carson, when he comments on this passage, he says this, on this verse.
He says,
Jesus' statements are remarkable because one of the glories of the biblical faith is the great emphasis of Scripture,
the great emphasis that Scripture lays on the graciousness and wideness of God's forgiveness.
All throughout Scripture, God's grace is wide and his forgiveness goes as far as it can.
And so we come to passages like this where Jesus says,
if you blaspheme the Holy Spirit, you will never be forgiven.
And to emphasize that, he says, you won't be forgiven now and you won't be forgiven when the new age comes either.
These are really tough and harsh words.
Lack of belief, let's call it doubt.
If doubt is not what Jesus is saying, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is.
If doubt or lack of belief in Christ and his works was the unforgivable, unpardonable sin,
then we couldn't be saved.
It wouldn't be possible because all of us lack in doubt.
And before we're saved and even after sometimes.
It's the open rejection, despite the evidence, that it's an open rejection of God's work.
So it's if you know God is working and you say, I reject that work and actually God's work here is the work of Satan.
Open, blatant rejection of God and attribution of his work to Satan is what is unforgivable.
And this is a lifestyle that the Pharisees lived.
This is not just a one-off instance.
A lifestyle of, I see the Messiah in Jesus, but I don't believe it.
I reject it.
And actually, he is Satan.
To sum up, Jesus says we cannot be neutral when it comes to his work.
And he warns us against attributing the works of God to the works of Satan.
And there are two points of application here.
Maybe this is the first time that you've heard the gospel message of liberation and restoration.
The application is don't harden your heart to the message of Christ.
And maybe you're here today because your family dragged you here for the Christmas season.
And if that's you, we're super happy you're here.
And you're hearing the gospel message.
Maybe you've heard it a thousand times or this is the first time.
Don't harden your heart to what Jesus is saying.
Maybe you're looking at the New Testament and the claims of the New Testament and the signs and wonders of Jesus.
And you say, I don't really believe that.
That's different than attributing the works of God to Satan.
Don't harden your heart.
If you don't believe, don't harden your heart.
But definitely don't say that the gospel message is from the devil.
That the signs of Jesus are from Satan.
And I think this applies, or I know this applies to us who are already saved.
There's things that happen, signs and wonders, exorcisms, even the claims of the New Testament and the claims of Jesus,
where we might be wondering, man, I'm not really fully believing that these things are real or they actually happened
or that my friend just cast out a demon or that my friend just healed someone.
I don't think we should feel fear in doubting.
Doubting accompanied by faith is a, you're in good company.
The disciples who walked with Jesus, heard his message, were told, hey, I'm going to die and rise again.
When they went to see his resurrected body, it says, some doubted.
Like they really saw Jesus.
They really handled his body.
They spoke with him.
They touched his wounds.
And some of them that had been with him for years doubted.
But they doubted with faith.
They had faith accompanying their doubt.
This is not what Jesus is talking about in this verse.
He's not saying that if you doubt, you'll never be forgiven.
He's saying, don't attribute what I do to Satan.
Don't blaspheme the Holy Spirit.
And so maybe we're seeing signs and wonders today or in the New Testament and we have a hard time believing.
Okay.
Don't harden your heart to what God is doing.
And don't, don't, don't attribute the work of God to the work of Satan.
So in summary of this message, let's revisit our thesis point.
Jesus, the long expected Messiah, is signaling the arrival of God's kingdom by performing signs and wonders by the spirit of God.
Even today.
Now there's two points of application for this.
Jesus is, he's shown us in his word.
And I think if you talk to people, he's shown us in the lives of others that he really is liberating and restoring.
Right?
He, he really did liberate this man from human oppression.
He really did restore him to physical wholeness.
And with this, we can look at passages like this and know Jesus really did, really has, and really is liberating us from our true enemy.
Sin, death, and the devil.
This is a reality.
This is a reality.
And not only that, he's restoring us to the wholeness God intended day by day through sanctification.
As the days and years go by, we're being moved from one degree to the next in wholeness and restoration.
And one day we will be fully restored.
Second, because of Jesus' words in verse 28, the kingdom of God is really and truly here now.
We can have a whole other sermon on this, right?
There's this thing in the New Testament called the already and not yet.
So, so God's kingdom is, is already here.
As Andrew said when he was praying, it's not fully here.
One day it will be fully realized all the way, 100% here.
But that doesn't mean that it's not already here in a very real sense.
And if you doubt that, just go to Jesus' words.
If by the spirit of God I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
Which means liberation and restoration has come upon us.
And I think what we need to realize when we realize that the kingdom of God is truly here
is that we can join in on proclaiming the message of liberation and restoration to the nations,
to people, to our community even.
We have to take the truth that the kingdom is really here.
And if we've experienced liberation and restoration, we should be spreading that far and wide.
Preaching the gospel to the nations.
Let's pray.
Lord, I thank you that, God, that you hear us.
Lord, I thank you that even as studying this passage, I was overwhelmed by the fact that
you care enough about me to liberate me from sin and death and restore me to wholeness.
God, my life is short, maybe 100 years, maybe 120.
But you care enough to have sent your son to die and take me away from the devil.
Take me away from sin and death and restore me.
And I pray that we, as a church, as a congregation, as individuals, we realize this as we commune with you day by day.
God, may it be so real for us that we have no choice but to spread this message of hope.
Pray these things in Jesus' name.
Amen.