Introduction: I was reading another Larry Woiwode book and the power of his argument again struck me due to its logic: “If values evolve from traditions and common sense, then when values start clashing, we need a judge or referee, as we do when we turn to a dictionary to define words. Otherwise any individual value is as valid as another. Without an outside guide we’re in Babel, where everybody is talking nonsense, because everybody is using words that have meaning only to themselves, and, as Einstein has pointed out, “It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the basic evil nature of man” (Woiwode, Essays on Literature and Culture, p. 34).  

Illustration: In our discipleship group with our church, I’m currently teaching through Matthew 12:22-32. This is one of the New Testament passages with some of most oft-referenced verses from the lips of Christ, especially about kingdoms divided against themselves, and what happens to them; and about either being with God or against Him (no middle ground); and about calling Christ demonic when He was/is the only fully good/holy person to ever live, etc. And it all got me thinking. The teaching Christ gives in these verses all centers on His upending and overturning the kingdoms of darkness that we sinners establish. And the way people respond to the truth of Christ reveals their nature and allegiance. They’re either for Christ or against Him; they’re either for good or for evil; they’re either humble before the truth or they gnash their teeth against truth. 

Text: In vv. 9-14 of Matthew 12, Christ healed a man with a withered hand. You’d think that would be a time for the Pharisees to rejoice, right? But what did they do? They kvetched about Sabbath extra-biblical oral traditions and work on the Jewish Sabbath. And v. 14 says, “But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.” See it? No middle ground. They hated the truth. They hated Christ. They hated the Holy One of Israel. Then in v. 24, after Christ had delivered a man from demon oppression, the Pharisees accused Jesus of being satanic, and of course Jesus once again rebuked them and their shoddy theology. 

Encouragement: What Woiwode was writing upon is the same fundamental issue Christ is teaching, namely, that it is the stony human heart that must be transformed by the Spirit of God in order to be in the kingdom of God, the kingdom of light, the kingdom of the holy. Otherwise, we remain sinners displaced from Eden, rebels erecting countless towers of Babel (Gen 11), and you see how that worked out.

You don’t have to check your mind to submit to the power and authority of God and His Word; you only have to check your pride, and that is a lesson it takes God’s Spirit to accomplish.