The Sabbath School by William Hanna

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 16, 1881

The Sabbath School.

By William Hanna

LESSON FOR PACIFIC COAST.—JUNE 25.

Christ Accused of Casting out Devils Through Beelzebub.—Luke 8:1; Mark 3:19-21; Matt. 12:22-42.

LESSON COMMENTS.

OUR Lord’s second circuit through Galilee, if not more extensive, was more public and formal than the first. He was now constantly attended by the twelve men whom he had chosen out of the general company of his followers, while certain women, Mary, Joanna, Susanna, and many others, some of them of good position, waited on him, ministering to him of their substance. The crowds that gathered round him wherever he went; the wonder, joy, and gratitude, with which his miracles, particularly those recent ones of raising the dead, were hailed; the impression his discourses had created, and the steps that he had now obviously taken towards organizing a distinct body of disciples, fanned into an open flame the long-smouldering fire of Pharisaic opposition. On other occasions Jesus had satisfied himself with rebuking on the spot the men by whom the charges had been preferred. But he had not yet broken with the Pharisees as a party, nor denounced them either privately to his disciples, or publicly to the multitude. But now, at the close of a year’s labor bestowed upon that province, the collision came.

Early in the forenoon of one of his longest and most laborious days in Capernaum, there was brought to him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb. The man could hear as well as others, and once he had spoken as well as they. But from the time the devil entered he had been tongue-tied, had tried to speak but could not. A new and horrible kind of dumbness had come upon him, the closing of his lips by an inward constraint that, struggle as he might, he could not overcome. St. Luke speaks only of the dumbness, as if it more than in the blindness lay the peculiarity of the case. Luke 11: 14.

The casting out of devils had been one of the earliest and most common of our Lord’s miracles; always carefully distinguished by the evangelists from the healing of ordinary diseases. If the testimony of Josephus is to be credited, demoniac possession was common at this period, and exorcism by the Jews themselves, not unfrequent. But when a dumb devil was cast out, and instantly the man began to speak, we are told that in one instance “the multitude marvelled, saying, It was never so seen in Israel,” (Matt. 9:33); and in another, “All the people were amazed, and said, is not this the Son of David?” Matt. 12:23. Here, almost for the first time, was an open expression of faith in Jesus as the Messiah, who was known and spoken of all over Judea as the Son of David. Whatever his words and actions might have implied, Jesus had not publicly taken this title to himself; but now the people of themselves begin to think that it must be so—that by none other than he could works like these be done. The man whose character the Pharisees had been attempting to malign, whose influence with the people they had been doing their utmost to undermine, is not only hailed as a teacher sent from God, but a prophet, nay, more than a prophet, the very Son of David. What is to be said and done?

The facts of the case they do not, they cannot deny. That the man’s dumbness had been nothing but a common dumbness, that there had been no evil spirit in him to be cast out of him, they do not venture to suggest. Those ingenious scribes that have come down from Jerusalem can see but one way out of the difficulty. They do not hesitate to suggest it, nor their friends beside them to adopt it; and so they go about the crowd that is standing lost in wonder, saying contemptuously, “This fellow doth not cast out devils but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils.” A wine-bibber, a gluttonous man, a friend of publicans and sinners, a Sabbath-breaker, a blasphemer, the vilest thing that calumny can say of him—that he is in league with Satan, and that it is to his connection with the devil, and that it alone, that he owes his wisdom and his power.

How does Jesus meet this calumny? How does he speak of and to the men who were guilty of forging and circulating it? They were busy among the crowd secretly propagating the slander, but they must not think that he was unconscious or careless of what they were saying of him. He calls them unto him (Mark 3:23), and they come. His accusers and he stand forth before the assembled multitude, fairly confronted. First, in the simplest, plainest manner, obviously for the sake of convincing any of the simple-minded people who might be ready to adopt this new solution of the secret of his power, he exposes its foolishness and injustice. There was, he assumes, a prince of the devils, who had a kingdom of his own, opposed to the kingdom of God. That kingdom of darkness might admit of much internal discord, but in one thing it was and must ever be united—in its antagonism to the kingdom of light. No more than any other kingdom, or city, or house, could it stand, were it, in that respect, divided against itself. Yet it was such kind of division that these Pharisees were attributing to it.

Their own sons undertook to cast out devils; was it by Beelzebub that they did it? If not, why cast the imputation of doing so upon him? None but a strong one could enter the house of the human spirit, as the devil was seen to enter it in these cases of possession. It must be stronger than he who binds him, and casts him forth, and strips him of all his spoils. This was what they had just seen Jesus do; and if he, by the mighty power of God, had done so, then no doubt the kingdom was come unto them—come in his person, his teaching, his work. He that was not with him was against him; he that gathered not with him, was scattering abroad.

Much there was in the spirit and conduct of many then before him, whom the application of this test must bring in as guilty; but let them know that all manner of sin and blasphemy might be forgiven. In ignorance and unbelief they might speak against the Son of man, and yet not put themselves beyond the pale of mercy; but in presence of that divine Spirit and power which he spake and acted, not only to ignore it, but to misrepresent and malign it, as these Pharisees had done, was to enter upon a path of willful, perverse resistance to the Spirit of God, which, if pursued, would land the men who took and followed it in a guilt for which there would be no forgiveness, either here or hereafter; no forgiveness, not because any kind or degree of guilt could exhaust the divine mercy or exceed its power, but because the pursuers of such a path, sooner or later, would reach such a state of mind, and heart, and habit, that their ever being disposed to fulfill, or capable of fulfilling, those conditions upon which alone mercy is or can be dispensed, would vanish away.

The blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, which never hath forgiveness, lies not in any single word or deed. Jesus, though not obscurely hinting that in the foul calumny that had been uttered, there lay the elements of the unpardonable offense, does not distinctly say that the men before him never would or could be forgiven for uttering it. His words are words of warning, rather than of judgment. A monstrous accusation had been made, one in which, if the men who had made it persevered, they would be displaying thereby the very temper and spirit of such blasphemy against the Holy Ghost as never could be forgiven. It was from an evil heart that the evil word had been spoken. It was by a corrupt tree that this corrupt fruit had been borne, and the heart would get worse, the tree more rotten, unless now made better. Such bitter words of ungodly malice and despite as the Pharisees had spoken, were but outward indices of the state of things within. Yet such good signs were words in general, that “Verily,” said Jesus, “I say unto you. . . . By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”—Hanna’s Life of Christ.