This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of “The Holy Spirit” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, September 10, 1995.
About this sermon
Reducing Jesus to a political reformer, a moralist, or a therapist sets a person against him, by this text’s own terms. No ‘eternal truth’ stands above Jesus for him to illustrate. The gospel rests on what happened.
Sermon transcript
We are reading tonight from Matthew 12, and we are beginning our reading at verse 14. This is Matthew 12, verse 14. Give your attention to God’s holy word. But the Pharisees went out and counseled together against him as to how they might destroy him. But Jesus, aware of this, withdrew from there. And then he followed him, and he healed them all, and warned them not to make him known.
In order that what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, Behold my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not quarrel nor cry out. nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. A battered reed he will not break off, and a smoldering wick he will not put out, until he leads justice to victory, and in his name the Gentiles will hope.’ Then there was brought to him a demon-possessed man who was blind and dumb, and he healed him so that the dumb man spoke and saw.
And all the multitudes were amazed and began to say, This man cannot be the son of David, can he? But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This man casts out demons only by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons. And knowing their thoughts, he said to them, Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and any city or house divided against itself shall not stand. And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself.
How then shall his kingdom stand? And if I by Jezebel cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? Consequently, they shall be your judges. But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come upon you. For how can anyone enter the strongman’s house and carry off his property, unless he first binds the strongman? and then he will plunder his house.
He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. And whoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him. But whoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, It shall not be forgiven him either in this age or in the age to come.
Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree rotten and its fruit rotten. For the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you being evil speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. The good man out of his good treasure brings forth what is good, and the evil man out of his evil treasure brings forth what is evil. And I say to you that every careless word that men shall speak, they shall render account for it in the day of judgment. For by your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned.
Our God, our religious devotion does not improve upon your finished work. Our faithful God does not improve upon that which you have accomplished. For what you have done, Lord, stands, and that inviolable. Lord, help us then to have the right religious spirit, even as you bless us with your Holy Spirit. And may it be true of us that we are concerned to enter into the work that you have fulfilled. And in this, Lord, may we be at peace. May we be at rest with You. We pray then, Lord, that You would free us from all frenzy, and that You would take from us an improper consternation. Instead, may we glory in our God, who does all things well.
This we pray for Jesus’ sake. In some ways, this message tonight will act as a primer to the preaching and teaching of this Church. And that is why I want you to listen carefully. According to Jesus, the critical time of God’s dealings with the world has arrived. It was announced by John the Baptist, and it has been inaugurated by Jesus himself. You must sense this. You must appreciate this fact. Even if you do not see it fully, If you do not fully comprehend it, you must sense this. If you are to understand biblical faith, particularly the New Testament faith, which I judge you claim as your own. I cannot say this loudly enough, or often enough, because it seems that this message is obscured, if not ignored, by so many in the Church of our time.
You see, the Son of God does not come to introduce a novel religious thought. He does not come, even, to introduce an idea, a religious idea afresh, or one formerly obscure and hidden, but always there and available, which he now brings to light. Jesus is not a religious philosopher. Nor is he the originator of a new rabbinical tradition. At the same time, neither is Jesus a moralist, whose interest would be that of a reformer, whose message is meant to bring political, economic, or societal improvements. intended to bring about a better world through better behavior. But going on, neither is Jesus a therapist.
Someone who appears on the scene to offer an innovative therapy. for humanity’s neuroses. Forty has in mind rehabilitation, but note the objective. Rehabilitation for the maintenance of our lives in this world. Rehabilitation for restoration to former capability. or for the coping with life and its problems, despite what might be judged our handicaps.
As beneficial as Jesus may be to us along therapeutic lines, still this one, Jesus of Nazareth, is no therapist. for him to be a therapist, places him in the service of something that would be imagined to be higher and more ultimate than himself. This thing, whatever it is, most definitely makes my health in this world, both spiritual and physical, the reason for his ministry. If we go the therapy line, we end up concluding that Jesus’ ministry was for the sake of making me feel spiritually and physically better in this world.
But is this what we hear from Jesus himself? Not at all. Instead, we hear from him statements like Matthew 12, 28. But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you. In this statement, Jesus separates himself from the usual therapists and therapies by making it clear that his supreme interest is in his and the Spirit’s common activity in the coming of the kingdom of God. Therefore, Jesus does not stand in line with other religious therapists, some of whom are mentioned in verse 27 of that twelfth chapter. the sons of the Pharisees who have been busy themselves casting out demons. Rather than offering then an undiscovered or novel remedy for humanity’s physical and mental failings, Jesus announces the arrival of the kingdom of God in its conclusive, eternity-defining reality. It has come, it has arrived.
Unhappily, many churches have presently given themselves over to therapy-centered ministries. For example, the habit of the last thirty or forty years has been this, to change the gospel ministry into one that centers specifically on counseling, change the gospel minister into an amateur psychoanalyst, to change the church into a counseling center. But these therapy-centered ministries are antithetical to the New Testament.
They miss the point. Therapy is derivative. It’s a byproduct. It is not center stage. Not only is the biblical message obscured by this approach, but where we happen to hear something of that gospel message in its genuine overtones, that message is more often than not trivialized. In this context, Jesus is closer to the master of good feelings than to what he actually is. Namely, the eternal Son of God, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, lived among us, died on the cross, rose again, and ascended into heaven. as the creeds of the Church make plain.
But don’t you see, we must handle morality and philosophy in the same way we have just handled therapy. In my judgment, we are now being compelled to talk about the seduction of the law. Moving on to the matter of morality. We are now being compelled to talk about the seduction of the law. In the hands of Satan, the law itself becomes a devastating weapon. because he wants to convince us that by our moral renovation, by our moral improvement, by our moral observations, by our appeal to the law, both personal and social, we are able to salvage the world, as well as ourselves, and touch God’s ultimate purpose for our lives. There is a seduction that belongs to the law. For in Satan’s hands, with the law in view, he is able to convince us that moral renovation is the only true objective.
That is a lie from the father of lies. The law, then, as in the case of therapy, vows before the gospel, does it not, of God’s glorious and gracious action? It is constrained to bow before that gospel by which we are saved from this present evil world into a better world altogether, into the courts of the Lord. All morality, all therapy for that matter, is subordinate to this gospel truth. But sadly there are many, even within Reformed circles, I’m able to get this straight.
You cannot make the law your Lord. You cannot make the law your God. God himself is above the law. The law is his instrument. It is subordinate to him, it is subordinate to his gospel activity. Is it not clear to you that that is what is going on in the preface to the Ten Commandments, as God declares his redemptive act, his accomplishment of salvation, and thus lays the groundwork for the presentation of the law? The law itself is not ultimate, it is subordinate, and yes, stands beneath God’s sovereign disposition.
But sadly, as I have said, there are many, even within Reformed circles, that seemingly deify the law. You cannot make the law the Lord. Note what Jesus says in the controversy over the Sabbath was the Pharisees earlier in this twelfth chapter, particularly chapter 12, verse 8. He declares there that he is the Lord of the Sabbath. That’s one commandment, friends. Jesus is also the Lord over the other nine.
So if you are disturbed by the lack of emphasis in this church upon moral renovation and the transformation of society, I will not apologize for it. And what might we say about philosophy? Now, I know as soon as we mention the word, many of you drop out. I’m not a philosopher, you say. In fact, I have no interest in philosophy. But I’m willing to wager, that is, if I was a betting man, that you may well be more a philosopher than you care to admit. Why do I say this?
Because a number of you have decided upon principles. You have decided upon principles. You have embraced a principle for living, or principles for living. And this principle, oral principles, are invariably a logical or an experiential necessity for you.
At least, that’s how you have viewed them. And they function for you as truth, as ultimate truth in all circumstances and for all time. why they even have a higher place in your mind than the Bible. Now, some of us have made our philosophies quite spiritual by saying that we believe in an invisible world behind and beyond the one we see. In our own way, we have translated Jesus and his message so that they become exponents of the grand philosophy that we espouse, the principle that we embrace. But you must understand this.
Jesus is not the lackey of a philosophical vision. He is not the friend of that point of view that holds axiomatically to a higher invisible reality. That’s Plato, not Jesus. Just believing in invisible things does not make you spiritually superior. That doesn’t allow you to wear stars, or to congratulate yourself.
Nor is Jesus Christ a friend of so-called timeless eternal truths, philosophically considered and defined. Let alone that practical philosophy whose rule of thumb is, forever the question, does it work? Is it useful? That is much closer to Aristotle and to John Dewey than to Jesus Christ.
In the end, Jesus Christ is not subordinated to anything that would claim a position of superiority to Him or to His Father in Heaven. Not my needs as in therapy, not law and order as in morality and ethics, not in logical conviction or systems, principles, that are laid upon me by necessity, as I imagine. Jesus Christ came among us not as an innovative pathologist, not as a revolutionary reformer, not as the champion of some central, all-controlling idea.
As our text makes clear, he came among us as the herald and the embodiment of the unprecedented act of God, central to the gospel’s event, not idea. God has done something, and now all thoughts follow in line. With him and in him comes the kingdom of God.
He together, as he makes plain now in Matthew 12.28, he together with the work as the final revelation of God for the supremely critical time in God’s dealings with this world. He, together with the Spirit, in the coming of the Kingdom of God, redefines my needs, my morality, my philosophy, so that I always begin and end with God in the context of his concrete acts. in this space-time world. As far as the Pharisees are concerned, they may want to argue about comparative pathologies or moralisms or ideologies, but Jesus authoritatively declares what God has done, what God has done in him. Present is the one who labors in concert with the Spirit, with the Holy Spirit. This one who is now manifest as never before. Jesus, so laboring with the Spirit, is the servant of the Lord, as Matthew is pointing out, prophesied by Isaiah.
Matthew 12, verse 18. These persons and their actions mean the kingdom has arrived. It is the time for entering Satan’s house, Jesus says. Verse 29. It is the time for entering Satan’s house. who now, as a strong man, must be bound before his house can be sacked. And that is exactly what Jesus, with the Spirit, is doing. He is binding Satan, he is sacking Satan’s house, and thus he is carrying off from Satan’s household those who have been formerly bound to him. In fact, he is taking these out of Satan’s kingdom, out of his house, and bringing them into the kingdom of God over which he presides with the Spirit.
Chapter 12, verse 29. It is the time of the great division. Moving on in the text, it is the time of the great division, and the crucial issue is where you stand with Jesus. Are you with him, or are you against him? It is the time of the great harvest, the end-time harvest. And if you don’t gather with him, you scatter. Now we come to the bottom line.
Those who prefer religious therapy, morality, religious philosophy, to the history of revelation message about the coming of God and his kingdom. Do not gather with Jesus, but scatter. And those who serve this world’s pathology, ethics, and idealism, instead of the redemptive historical pattern and message of God’s own self-revelation, Do not stand with Jesus, but against him. Now it is because I see this, because it is so clear to me, that I strain in my ministry to help you grasp it. My labor is so that you might see Jesus as He wants to be seen. Not as the supreme psychoanalyst, not as the sublime moralist, not as a great philosopher, but as the Son of God, the event of whose appearance means the coming of God’s kingdom, and the conclusive visitation of the Holy Spirit, to the only proper and true goal, that you might appear in glory, and thus live with your God forever.
Let us pray. Dear Lord, we are battered on every side. There are the religious practitioners of every stripe. The Father convince us again of the simplicity and purity of the gospel. And may all therapies and moralities and philosophies be put in perspective. No, Lord, may they be put in their places.
May there be nothing, nothing that rises above our love for you and our devotion to your Son. Lord, we ask that we would not allow you to be shelled in our own consciences as if we had some other God before you. Please forgive us wherein we are weak, be gracious to us where we have failed, but may we be determined, O Lord, to stand upon your mighty work, the coming of the Kingdom of God in Jesus Christ and in the visitation of the Holy Spirit. We ask it in our Savior’s name. Amen.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.