Last time on the 10 minute Bible Hour podcast.

So it's like tennis, sometimes you played offensive tennis and sometimes you play defensive tennis.

And it's like the Pharisees, we're playing offensive tennis and then Jesus defended it,

but then after that then Jesus is on the offensive and he hits a tennis ball real hard at him

And that's how the Bible is. So in the middle of Matthew chapter 12 the tension is ratcheting way up between

Jesus and the religious leaders they just had a couple of Sabbath controversies

where they're fighting about

whether you can rub grain together in your hands on the Sabbath and

whether or not you can heal somebody on the Sabbath.

Finally the religious leaders are like we're just kept to murder Jesus and Jesus

is like oh I know everybody's

thoughts and it's not time for me to get murdered right now so I'm going to go to a place where

you don't get murdered as much so he strategically withdraws. Matthew then goes on to

explain how this is in fulfillment, this and Jesus' behavior in general is in fulfillment of the first of the prophetic Isaiah servant songs,

and then while Jesus is in this strategic withdrawal place people are still tracking him down

they bring somebody to Jesus who is demon possessed and that demonic possession manifests in the form of being

mute and blind and then Jesus heals him and everybody's like whoa dang maybe we were wrong about this guy like maybe he's the Messiah the son of David that's a pretty big deal

But then the Pharisees who are still looming around like there's no fully strategically

withdrawing from these guys because they have nothing better to do than follow

Jesus around the countryside figuring out what might be another good reason to

murder him and they are like this is a stupid miracle anyway

making somebody who can't talk talk maybe there's a reason he couldn't talk

...