How Did The House Become Divided?

How did the house become divided?

Luke 11:14 – 20

Rabbi Rev. Dr. Michael H. Koplitz

14 And He was casting out a mute demon; when the demon had gone out, the man

who was previously unable to speak talked, and the crowds were amazed. 15 But some

of them said, “He casts out the demons by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons.” 16

Others, to test Him, were demanding of Him a sign from heaven. 17 But He knew

their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste;

and a house divided against 1itself falls. 18 “And if Satan also has been divided against

himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you claim that I cast out the demons by

Beelzebul. 19 “Yet if by Beelzebul I cast out the demons, by whom do your sons

cast them out? Therefore, they will be your judges. 20 “But if I cast out the demons

by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

In Luke chapter 11, verse 14, running to verse 20, we have a story where Jesus cast out

a demon from a mute person who then was able to speak. Since people in Jesus’ time

believed that any disease or infirmity was caused by demons from Satan, it makes sense

that the author would’ve written this narrative this way. Jesus helped the mute speak

again. Then we have the reaction from the crowd. There must’ve been some religious

leaders in the crowd and what they wanted to know was what Jesus thought about

demons because they were evaluating whether he was a Pharisee, Sadducees, or even

an Essene. Perhaps he might’ve even been a Zealot according to the religious

leadership. Every time the gospel says that Jesus is tested, it is really opening a debate

between the religious leaders and him so that they could have determined what his point

of view was about many different doctrines and theologies.

One of the points of this narrative is unity. Jesus is accused of being allied with Satan.

Jesus responded to this by saying how can he be allied Satan because he was tearing

down Satan’s kingdom by healing people? Let me repeat that healing people meant that

he was able to cast out demons because people in those days did not understand what

infirmities or diseases came from. Therefore, they placed the blame on Satan and his

angels. Now, if you want to know the story about how Satan is an angel that fell from

heaven and his followers you need to go and read something called the Book of the

Watchers which is from 1 Enoch. It is a fascinating read because it expands Genesis

6:1-6 and tells us about the angels that came to earth and what happened to them. Satan

is a fallen angel that gets placed in the pit, which becomes Hell. Be that as it may let us

go back to what was happening in this narrative.

The author of Luke’s gospel took this opportunity to show us what it means to be

unified. In the time that Luke’s gospel was being written, the persecution by the Roman

government against the new faith called Christianity was starting to get intense.

Christians needed to live in communities almost as communes to protect themselves.

If you happen to have a government job and you became a Christian, you are

immediately fired and chastised. The only way for the fledgling religion to survive was

for the people to live together and work together. Oh, by the way, that also meant that

every person had to like each other and work out their differences.

Jesus speaks about unity in many places in the gospel, and it’s so sad that the house that

he was setting up, the kingdom of God, never became unified. I should say that when

Jesus was alive the 12 disciples may have argued with each other and with him but

overall, they were unified in bringing the message to the people that God love them

and wanted to save them from their sins. But once Jesus was gone, things started to

fragment. The biggest fragmentation is when Paul decided that he was going to define

what it meant to live in faith to Christ. We call this the laws of Christ, and you can find

them in the letters of Paul, which are in the New Testament.

In 48 CE there was the first church council held in Jerusalem. Paul and Peter debated

with each other about what it meant to be a follower of Jesus and what people had to

do to get into the faith. The book of Acts tells us about this meeting and what the two

men finally agreed to. What is sad to me is that history says that as soon as Paul left that