43 “When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. 44 Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. 45 Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked gener (Matthew 12:43-46 NIV)
In 12:22-27 Jesus drove a demon out of a suffering man, which precipitated the attack on him by his Pharisee critics. Still on the subject of exorcizing demons, Jesus warns his critics that superficial and legalistic "cleaning house" such as their generation of Jewish leaders were engaged in cannot permanently rid them of evil. That generation of Jewish leaders prided themselves in ridding their nation of the idolatries that brought on the exile to Babylonia. And years after their return from exile under Ezra and Nehemiah, they had fought long and hard against the idolatry that their Greek rulers had sought to impose upon them by force. The brave Maccabean family led the fight and won. That idolatry was the worship of false gods, the equivalent of "evil spirits." These evil spirits had now been evict from Israel. But Jesus warned them: evil spirits temporarily evicted could and would come back. The worship of physical images of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses was easy enough to recognize as "idolatry." But they had replaced these idols with others of their own making: the worship of rabbinical traditions. Only repentance and acceptance of God's messiah would permanently expel evil from their hearts, replacing the traditions of men with the pure Word of God, and replacing law-keeping as a means of cleansing from sin with faith in the sacrificial death and resurrection of the son of man, Jesus.
What "idols" have you created for yourself? Are there goals and aspirations in your life that are obscuring or taking the place of the one goal that we all have: to follow Jesus and please him?
Check back tomorrow (Saturday) for the next segment of Matthew 12.
