Matthew Chapter 12 centers upon Jesus’ interaction with the Pharisees, who were jealous of the acclaim and attention Jesus got from the common people. They complained that Jesus’ disciples sinned by satisfying their hunger on the Sabbath, eating plucked grain. Jesus’ reply focused on the needs of the human condition and his position as Lord of the Sabbath.
The Pharisees followed him into a synagogue, where Jesus met a man with a withered hand, and the Pharisees watched and waited for Jesus to offend them. They asked, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” To Jesus, it was important to heal this man on the Sabbath—to do good on the Sabbath, as he put it. Jesus asked the man to stretch out his hand and healed it. The Pharisees were incensed that Jesus had healed a human being on the Sabbath. From this point on, the Pharisees sought a way to do away with Jesus.
Jesus knew they were plotting against him, and he left the area. He healed everyone who came to him, while telling them to keep quiet about what he had done for them. Three of the Gospels have this motif of the “messianic secret,” and note that before the Crucifixion, Jesus often performed a miracle and asked that it be kept a secret. Jesus did not want to become known as merely a miracle worker.
Then Jesus confronted a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute. After he healed the man, the crowd murmured, “Can this be the Son of David?”—meaning they thought Jesus was the Messiah. The jealous Pharisees bizarrely accused Jesus of doing this healing by being in league with the Devil, calling him Beelzebub. Jesus turned and had a tour de force moment of logic and wisdom. He said, “If I were in league with Satan, why would Satan allow me to plunder his house of miserable captives and free them? How can someone enter Satan’s stronghold and take what belongs to him unless they have first tied him up?” Jesus then said, “If I am doing this by the power of God, as your own exorcists do… then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.” Then Jesus said that to call evil something that the Holy Spirit was doing was the unforgiveable sin. He had just freed a man captive to an evil spirit, and they, in their jealous rage, were calling that evil.
Jesus then helped his hearers to know how to decide whether something was evil or good: it had to do with observing what kind of fruit a person bore. He was saying this about the Pharisees, by the way.
The scribes and Pharisees were standing there, and they said, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” (Really? He had just healed a demon-possessed, blind, and mute man. Was that not sign enough?) Jesus called them an evil and adulterous generation.
Jesus told them two stories of the way foreigners and Gentiles had been saved by God while the so-called chosen people had resisted Him. He finished by telling them that in Him, something greater than Jonah or Solomon was right in front of them. You can imagine them gritting their teeth.
Then Jesus gave a cautionary message about how important it was to keep one’s life full of godly and pure actions and thoughts. He said that this evil generation was like a person who has been freed from an unclean spirit, but who kept the house of their lives empty, leaving plenty of room for a houseful of demons to move right in.
The chapter ends with Jesus saying that his true family was not just blood relations, but was to be found in those who love and follow him wholeheartedly and with devotion, doing the will of his Father in heaven.