Scottish pastor and biblical scholar of the previous century W. Graham Scroggie points here to one of the key, constant questions about Jesus: from where is he getting this authority?  How did he come by it?  How is it he talks as if he knows exactly what he’s talking about?  You and I can have authority by virtue of our education, our credentials, our experience, our history: been there, done that.  People can generally tell if you or I actually know what we’re talking about; they can also tell, generally, when we’re blowing smoke.  No one ever said that Jesus was blowing smoke, but they couldn’t understand how he could speak with such authority, power, and knowledge.  If they ever got around to thinking their way past “How dare he?” they began asking, How did he get it?  Where did he get it?  Who gave it to him?  Who is this guy?  Who is Jesus, really?  That’s a great question for anyone to ask, honestly.

What was quite sad is that many of those who couldn’t understand were the very ones who ought to have known all along.  The Pharisees, the priests, the elders, the scribes—all of them had made God’s Word their lifelong study and pursuit, their passion, treasure, and joy.  Now, God’s Incarnate Word was among them, addressing them, and they couldn’t recognize him, or wouldn’t.  To recognize Jesus is to acknowledge his authority.  The Pharisees, priests, elders, and scribes had much of God’s Word right, especially as to the letter; they also had much of God’s Word wrong, especially as to the Spirit.  Apart from the Spirit, beloved, this book remains a book alongside all the other books.  Oh, like the very best books, this one also says some good things, things to think about and savor, even things to treasure up in our hearts, like other books we’ve come across and enjoyed.

But the Bible is not primarily a book to be enjoyed; it isn’t even, primarily, meant to be thought-provoking, though many find it to be.  The Bible is, primarily, God addressing you.  If only God would speak!  If only God would say something to us in our day!  He has.  He does.

The problem today is about the same problem Jesus encountered: God speaks, and people don’t much care for what they are hearing.  They want to hear what they want to hear.  True religion, you know, isn’t about what any old book says.  It’s about what we know today; it’s what’s in our hearts.  True religion must evolve, along with us!  They want to hear what is in line with what they already believe, what they are already doing and happily.  God assures us His Word is for change, and that we must be changed according to His Word, and people want to hear what they want to hear.  Many like the idea of change, so long as they aren’t the ones who must.  They don’t want different beliefs; they want assurance that God blesses the beliefs they already have.  If necessary, they’ll craft a god who will.

Jesus is drawing crowds.  That has a lot to do with the miraculous signs and works of awesome power he does, but these aren’t the only reasons people are coming to him.  They understand, to a greater or lesser degree, that God is at work among them, again.  God is doing something.  This reminds them—not that those people at that time needed the reminding—Jesus is reminding them that there is a God and that God acts.  Jesus is a reminder for everyone, an assurance for everyone, that there is indeed a God and that God indeed acts.

Even the big wigs from Jerusalem know something is happening, but their main concern seems to be what effect what is happening could have on their power, prestige, and authority.  Unsurprisingly, they are highly invested in maintaining these, which means they are highly invested in making sure others believe their way, or at least don’t resist or interfere.  Their way affirms their own power, purity, worth, and righteousness.  All that time immersed in the Word of God, and this the result!  Tragic.

“[T]he teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He is possessed by Beelzebul!  By the prince of demons he is driving out demons’” (3:22).  Ah, so that’s it!  How simple, of course.  Beelzebul—the Lord of the Flies.  That’s one version of the name.  Now, where do flies gather?  Where there’s filth of whatever filthy sort, nastiness.  The Lord of Filth—that’s another rendition of Beelzebul.  The religious authorities are trying to spread the idea that this Jesus, not only is he not holy, he’s possessed by the Lord of Filth!  An evil spirit, the spirit of filth and pollution, is in him.  To a society religiously preoccupied with cleanliness and pollution, that charge, that slander, had power to sway minds strongly.

But there was also what Jesus was doing.  I mean, anyone can say things that sound like good things, faithful things, but these by themselves go only so far.  Does the person also live these good words, these God words?  People saw, no matter what the religious authorities said, that Jesus was doing good, great, beautiful things: deeds of mercy, compassion, healing, restoration.  Is evil likely to do good?  Is evil likely to show mercy, compassion, grace?  Is evil likely to glorify God?

“So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: ‘How can Satan drive out Satan?” (3:23).  Why would he?  Isn’t that getting a little ridiculously overcomplicated?  People were wondering what was happening, and how it was happening.  They may even have been wondering, as they took it all in, why it was happening.  Some had their thoughts, others their accusations.  Still others, like the officials from Jerusalem, didn’t want anyone thinking about it at all: it’s evil, period.  So, stop asking questions.  Stop thinking.  Nothing to see here.  Move along.

But if Satan is being driven out, it isn’t Satan’s power doing it!  Whatever is contrary to life God’s way comes in the costume of desirability, goodness, and decency; it wants to work itself in deeper, and spread.  If that metastasizing power is being purged, it must be another power, a stronger, opposing power doing it.  “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.  If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand” (3:24-25).  Division or unity, weakness or strength.  As we can see on the news every evening or throughout each day, we live in divisive times, and what earthly unity can alter that?  Will the upcoming election change that?  Will a university education bring unity?  An improved economy?  A war?

There is a kingdom toward which Jesus is pointing, into which he offers to lead us.  That kingdom is not a matter of the words and demands of people, their social and political notions about anything.  The kingdom into which Jesus offers to lead us comes through living God’s Word.  Unlike the socio-political orders of this world, living God’s Word can’t be imposed by executive order or otherwise.  The authority of the church is spiritual, an authority we typically experience—and exercise—as moral authority.  We have such authority only as we are faithful stewards of the Word of God.  This is why it should cause us to tremble, and drive us to prayer, when we see the church divided, even divided against itself.

“And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come” (3:26).  Jesus is not suggesting that Satan, the Tempter, the Accuser, is actually opposing himself, but Satan is indeed opposed, by a stronger power.  The argument of the religious leaders, the religious authorities, doesn’t add up and, despite itself, points to the true answer: the Tempter’s end has come.  The enemy doesn’t pretend to drive himself out in order to dupe people in; that’s weak; that’s lame.  The enemy is interested in making demonstrations of how fearfully powerful he is, so that there is no hope and no alternative but surrender and submission: no will and no way; time to get on the right side of history, and so forth.  He studies each of us closely and knows just how to tempt us, but the enemy cannot make us do anything: we have only ourselves to blame for that.  If darkness, wickedness, pollution, is being driven out as people all around Jesus could see for themselves, this can mean only one thing: the stronger one has come, bringing the stronger Word, the stronger kingdom—light, righteousness, healing.  The Comforter has come.

Beloved, we know, oh, we know we are not free from temptation, but our comfort in every temptation, and even in every failure to resist temptation, is that the Tempter, our Accuser, is done; his end has come, and nothing he can do, do to us, can prevent what is inevitable.  He has already lost.  And he knows it.  He hates what he knows, and it makes him all the more furious and venomous.  Oh, he’ll take it out on us, to the extent God will allow, yet God has plans even in this for blessing us and causing us to become yet more aware of the grace and glory of God’s blessings.

Remember Samson?  Part of the lesson we might take away from his story is that temptation’s power isn’t in or with the temptation itself.  Temptation has only the strength we give it; oh, I know, the temptation can be strong, so strong!  Because we give it that strength.  What’s so tempting to me might be no temptation for you, and what trips you up more often than you want to confess might have no attraction for me.  The Tempter studies each of us very carefully, looking for the way in.  God told Cain, in some of the earliest words in the Bible, “sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Gen 4:7).  Oh, we know, we know!  But how?  How?  Jesus tells us that no one can serve two masters.  We master sin as we serve God; more precisely, God, our master, masters the sin in us, ties him up, as it were, so that God can clean us out.  “In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up.  Then he can plunder the strong man’s house” (3:27).  Who can tie up a strong man?  Samson broke the ropes, time and time again, but it wasn’t Samson doing it: it was the grace of God working in and through Samson.  How is a strong man tied up, then?  By refusing that grace, by relying on his own strength, which is no strength.  Grace applies itself to deprive temptation of the strength we were—are!—in the habit of giving it.

People out there who feel more or less indifferent to Christianity, and every other religion, still in many cases have some hope or expectation that, somehow, there will be some sort of life for them, after death, because they are a good person, or if they don’t see themselves as remarkably good, then at least because they have done some good in this life or at least not much evil, or not much really horrible evil, anyway.  Besides, if God is so loving and forgiving and all, why, God would never condemn anyone; He couldn’t.  From what I understand of it, Muslims believe that your good and your less than good deeds will be weighed against each other.  They get this thinking in part from things we also can read in the Bible.  I’ve found, though, that good deeds are nearly always outweighed by bad.  We read in Ecclesiastes, that “one sinner destroys much good” (Eccl 9:18).  One lie can undo—outweigh—a lot of truthfulness.  One unkind word can undo—outweigh—a lot of kindness.  If we’re going to try to rely on our own performance to get us life beyond this life, we’re lying to ourselves, which is cruel and sad but hardly unusual.  Once we figure out that God doesn’t actually owe anyone anything, the groundwork has been laid for a beautiful revolution in our thinking.

“Truly I tell you,” Jesus says, “people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin” (3:28-29).  Mark explains that Jesus says this “because they were saying, “He has an impure spirit’” (3:30).

The dreadful thing here is not that the religious authorities and those so deeply versed in God’s Word were slandering the Incarnate Word, bad enough as that is.  The truly dreadful thing is that they may actually have believed what they were saying, because it was impossible for them, with their way of thinking, even to contemplate the possibility that God was truly present among them, using His power to master and cast out the darkness, depravity, and defilement that had gotten such a strong hold on us all.

We could take Jesus to be saying that God will refuse to forgive such people, and I don’t say that interpretation isn’t possible, but I think it’s also possible, equally possible, that God will be unable to forgive them, because such people, in their blindness and hardness of heart, will never seek God’s forgiveness, being fully convinced in their hearts of their righteousness and rightness, that there is no God, and nothing they’ve done that would require any divine forgiveness.

God will not force anyone to accept Him.  We have grace to thank for belief and ourselves to blame for rejecting God.  Beloved, Jesus came to offer a gift beyond compare to anyone who would receive it.  The cruelest cuts came from those who, seeing what Jesus was doing, and hearing what he was saying, wanted nothing to do with the gift, or the giver.  Not only wanted nothing to do with these but went out of their way to tell everyone that this Jesus and what he was offering was all a lie, a filthy lie.