Now, for this morning we want you to turn
to Mark chapter 3 in your Scripture...run a little behind and I've got an awful lot
to say...so be patient and we're going to try to unpack a really critical portion of
Scripture. Mark chapter 3 and our text for this morning
starts in verse 20 and goes down to the end of the chapter. We did Part 1 last time and we'll comment
on that in a little bit and then we're going to do Part 2 and kind of wrap it up this morning. The theme of this particular section is the
unforgivable sin...the unforgivable sin. Now drop down to verse 28 for a moment and
let's at least identify this as the core of our study, this morning. Jesus is speaking here and He says, "Truly
I say to you..." By the way, that little formula, "Truly I
say to you," never appears in the book of Acts, never appears in the epistles of the
New Testament. It only appears in the lips of Jesus. It seems to have been a phrase that He used
to identify something that had very significant meaning and was, in fact, a representation
of divine truth that needed to be heard. "Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven
the sons of men and whatever blasphemies they utter. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit
never has forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin." Now it might strike you as strange that there
would be a sin that would not be forgivable. Don't we say that God offers forgiveness to
sinners? Doesn't the gospel promise that the Lord will
forgive all our sins? That He'll pass by all our iniquities? Isn't He a pardoning God who overlooks sin? Doesn't He bury it in the depths of the sea,
remove it as far as the east is from the west and remember it no more? Isn't God gracious and merciful as the prophet
says, who is a pardoning God like You? When we preach the gospel, don't we say that
God will forgive all your trespasses, all your sins? Doesn't this sort of contradict that? It doesn't contradict that and I'll show you
why. But it is a very serious passage to take to
heart. It is in one sense a passage that ought to
frighten the comfortable and comfort the frightened because on the one hand there are people have
no idea that they have committed the unforgivable sin...they have no idea that they have committed
the unforgivable sin. They're comfortable and they ought to be frightened
because they're headed for eternal hell. There are other people who think they've committed
the unforgivable sin and haven't and need to be comforted. Through the years of my ministry, of course
I've met both kinds of people...the comfortable who ought to be frightened and the frightened
who ought to be comfortable. Perhaps in our congregation today there are
some of you who have the notion in your mind that somewhere along the line you've blasphemed
the Holy Spirit and it lingers in your thinking that you may never be able to be forgiven
for that. Now understanding in a simplistic way that
you said something against the Holy Spirit you are somehow beyond the hope of salvation. There are people who believe that. There are people who propagate that. There are people who espouse that. There are people who have accused me of that,
many people through the years have accused me of having committed a blasphemous sin against
the Holy Spirit by denying healings and miracles and tongues and wonders supposedly that are
going on today in the church, and thus I have blasphemed against the Holy Spirit and put
myself in a position of never being forgiven...having committed an eternal sin. Maybe there are some of you who feel that
somebody has told you that and laid that burden upon you and there are others who think that
maybe they've blasphemed the name of Jesus Christ and in blaspheming the name of Jesus
Christ and speaking against Him in some reviling way with calumny and evil thinking and evil
speaking...they're thus beyond the hope of forgiveness. Well this morning the message has two objectives. One would be to frighten the comfortable,
and the other would be to comfort the frightened. Let's look at it together. As we remember last week, the four gospels
are written, all four of them, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, to leave a refutable historical
evidence that Jesus was God. While He was 100 percent a man, He was 100
percent God...He is God in human flesh. He is the Messiah of Israel. He's the Savior of the world but all that
comes from the reality that He is the Lord God. He is God the Son. And that is important, that is critical because
believing that and committing your life to Christ is the only way to escape hell and
enter heaven. There's only one way to escape eternal hell
and eternal heaven and that is by believing in Jesus Christ. There's no other way to be saved, the Bible
makes that absolutely clear. The gospel is exclusive, it alone is the means
of salvation, there is no other way. So it's pretty important then that you believe
in Christ. And in order for you to believe in Christ
savingly and entrust your time and eternity to Him, you have to have the evidence that
He is who He claimed to be and that evidence is presented to us not once, not twice, not
three times, but four times in the gospel. And then that evidence is interpreted for
us in the rest of the New Testament all the way through to the book of Revelation. The evidence is powerful. It is powerful when it's inscripturated and
those of us who have come to believe have come to believe because of the power of the
inscripturated record of the life and ministry of Christ. The evidence is laid down by the power and
inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the pages of the New Testament and we have read it and
we understand the truthfulness of it and we embrace it as true and thus we embrace Christ. The evidence is powerful, I say, even when
inscripturated. But the evidence was powerful, as well, even
when it was demonstrated, when it was lived out in the life and ministry of Jesus. For three years Jesus traversed the land of
Israel, starting His ministry down in Judea with the cleansing of the temple and doing
teaching and miracles and wonders for the beginning year of His ministry in Judea. Then He moved to the north to Galilee, the
bulk of His ministry was in Galilee and all across Galilee and even outside Galilee into
some of the surrounding regions. And then the final portion of His ministry,
the last months, came back into Judea and went from town to town and village to village. Those three years He blanketed the land of
Israel and gave evidence of who He was...more evidence than we have on the pages of the
gospels because John ends his gospel by saying, "If everything that He said and did were to
be written down, the books of the world couldn't contain it." We have stories of healings and stories of
deliverances from demons and stories of raising the dead, and we have them scattered throughout
the gospel record, but they don't begin to come close to the thousands upon thousands
if not tens of thousands of miracles that were being done by Jesus. And so periodically throughout the gospel
record, you have statements that are general, like He went on from village to village doing
signs and wonders and miracles and delivering people from demons. There's just no way to count it all up. So the people who were living at that time
were exposed to that and He had a massive crowd of people following Him everywhere He
went, sprinkled, of course, you remember, with the leaders of Israel, the Pharisees
and the scribes who collectively were responsible for basically the existent Judaism that was
reigning over the minds and hearts of the people at the time. And they were following Jesus doggedly, not
because they believed in Him, because they wanted to rather find ways to discredit Him
in order that they might kill Him. But the only reasonable conclusion that an
eyewitness should have to what he saw and what he heard would be that Jesus is God. The testimony was so clear and so obvious. However, in spite of what was reasonable,
in spite of what was manifestly clear, in spite of the fact that people saw the miracles
day after day after day after day, the human heart, the human mind is hard and blind and
dead to the truth. And so here we are already at the end of the
third chapter of Mark and we haven't heard a human testimony that Jesus is God. The Father said it at His baptism, "This is
My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." The demon said it in chapter 1, "We know who
You are on behalf of the rest of the demons, You're the Holy One of God." So testimony has been affirmed but it is testimony
from before, testimony from demons, testimony from the eternal Father. So all the evidence is being mounted up. People have not made the right response. Some have. Jesus now has disciples and out of the disciples
He has Twelve Apostles more intimately close to Him who will be trained to preach the message
of who He is. But most people haven't come to the right
conclusion in spite of what they've seen, and they've seen it...they've seen it. They've experienced it. Most people would say He's a good teacher. That's what they said. He's a man from God...because only a man from
God could do these things. That pretty much is what they said...He's
a good teacher, He's a humble man, He's wise, He's compassionate, He delivers people from
the horrendous oppression of disease. He delivers them from the terrible possession
of demons. This is a good man. This is a model of virtue. This is a powerful man. He must be...He must be tapping into divine
power. That's what they said but they stopped there. Now that would be pretty much the way it's
been ever since. People say about Jesus He's a good man, He's
a wise man, He's a noble teacher. He's a model of virtue. He's a righteous man. That's pretty much what you hear. Even critics of Christianity, even enemies
of Christianity, even atheists tend to put Jesus in the category of a sort of a misguided
spiritual revolutionary who came to help the poor and the oppressed and deliver people
from their burdens and even though they deny the miracles, they think He was making a noble
effort to help people and thus He's a good man. But that's not an option. That is one option no one has because good
people, wise people, sensible people don't say they are God. As soon as you say you are God, you have just
eliminated yourself from the category of the normal...certainly from the category of the
wise and sensible and reasonable and good because that is such an outlandish claim. When you say you are God, you have just eliminated
the possibility for us to say you're a good teacher because that....that just doesn't
fit into the category of good teaching. I told you in the last century, C.S. Lewis, the great English writer, said, "When
Jesus claimed to be God, there were only three options. Either He is God or He is a lunatic, or He
is a liar pulling off a very, very grand scheme of deception." Those are the options. But you can't really come to Jesus with some
patronizing nonsense about Him being a good teacher. As soon as somebody says they're God, they
have left that category permanently. So we have some options. He is God which would be the right option
since He had power over disease, He had power over demons, and He had power over death. He raised dead people. He healed sick people. And He delivered people from demonic oppression. That's all an evidence of divine power which
gives testimony to the fact that He is God. But if you're still fighting that in your
heart, you have two other options. He is a lunatic, He's a crazy person like
other crazy people who say they're God. Or He is a liar who really pulled off a very
deceptive scheme, in fact so deceptive that we have Christianity today two thousand years
later still flourishing. So those are the options that C.S. Lewis put before us and I kind of think he
probably got them out of this passage. Now last week we looked at option number one
that Jesus is a lunatic and we saw it in verses 20 and 21. Let's look at it. "He came to a house, literally, in Capernaum,
probably which was the headquarters of His Galilean ministry, maybe Peter's house. And the crowd gathered again to such an extent
they couldn't even eat a meal." He is now collecting a massive crowd, swelling
crowd because they're bringing to Him all the sick and all the demon possessed, everybody
with issues and the people who are well are coming because they've never seen anything
like this. Nothing has ever happened like this in the
history of the world and it's just collecting a massive crowd, so great that Jesus is crushed. He can't even eat a meal. This is then dangerous to Him and His family
has gotten word about this, they heard about it. They're not there. They don't believe in Him. John 7:5 says, "His family didn't believe
in Him. His mother did, of course, Mary, she knew
who He was from the time an angel gave her the announcement and she knew she had never
known a man and had a child by the Holy Spirit, so she knew who He was, believed in Him. He was clearly her Savior and her Lord. Joseph believed in Him because it was announced
to him who He would be, as well. And Joseph probably is dead because he doesn't
appear anywhere in the record of the New Testament gospels. But the brothers and the sisters and aunts
and uncles and cousins did not. And it says here in verse 20 that...or verse
21, "When they heard about it..." What did they hear? They heard about Jesus' exploits. They heard that He was just collecting a massive
crowd, numbering in the tens or twenties of thousands of people. They were crushing Him. And their determination was this, they went
out to take custody of Him for they were saying He's lost His senses. They conclude that He's a lunatic. They conclude that He's lost His mind, that
He's insane. Now remember, they're in Nazareth. That's not a very far distance from Capernaum,
but they aren't following Jesus. They don't believe in His claims. And keep in mind, the New Testament says He
did no miracles in Nazareth cause of their unbelief. He had been there but they tried to kill Him
after one visit. So these people are operating with only hearsay
and they're hearing information about the fact that supposed healings and deliverances
are happening and miracles are being done. They're not buying into it. They are not eyewitnesses to it, they haven't
experienced it, their conclusion is that this is the...this is the final expression of a
very odd child. Now remember, He had brothers and sisters
clearly indicated to us in the New Testament. Their names are even given, James and Jude
and Joses. And He had sisters also. They were born to Joseph and Mary, so Joseph
lived a while during those 30 years, the silent years of Jesus, they were having a family. And there were brothers and sisters and they
grew up with Jesus and Jesus is God in human flesh. So this little boy, this kid, this junior
high or early high schooler, this adult man is God in human flesh which while He didn't
show His deity, He didn't do miracles, didn't teach, as far as we know, He was still sinless
and perfect and that would come across as very odd...would it not?...in a family full
of wretched sinners. It's touch enough to get along with your brothers
and sisters without being perfect. That would rankle them endlessly. They would never be able to comprehend Him. They would never be able to understand Him. They would be blown away by every response
that He had which would be a perfect response measured against their imperfect reactions
to everything. And so the conclusion they had was this is
a very bizarre child and now He's gone totally off the deep end. So for the sake of the poor guy, we've got
to go rescue Him, we need to go get Him. So they made that determination...the word
there "to take custody" means to seize, like in an arrest. It's used a number of times...I think eight
times in Mark for arresting someone, including John the Baptist and Jesus. And so they decide they're going to do that
because He's lost His senses. Go down to verse 31, "They come, they arrive
and Mary comes, because I think she knew the truth and she's there as a protective influence. And His brothers arrived and they're standing
outside the house. They sent word to Him and they called Him. The crowd was sitting around Him and they
said to Him, 'Behold, Your mother, Your brothers are outside looking for You.' Answering them, He said, 'Who are My mother
and My brothers?'" Wow! Is He ignorant? No, of course He knows who they are. Not only that, He loves them. In fact, later on they will come to believe
in Him, Acts 1:14 says, they'll believe in Him after the resurrection. They'll be a part of the first church. They'll be there on the Day of Pentecost. So He loved them right into the Kingdom and
He loved His mother because He committed her to John to care for her when He died on the
cross. It's not about that. What He is saying there is, "Look, the time
for all human relationships to end has come. The only relationship to Me that matters is
a spiritual one." So in a sense, He keeps them at a distance. It doesn't matter that you're related to Me
through My mother. That carries no weight in the Kingdom. That's not going to get you into the Kingdom. "Looking about those who were sitting around
Him, He said, 'Behold, My mother and My brothers. These are the people who have a true relationship
to Me cause they're the disciples and the followers who have committed themselves to
Me in faith as their Lord and Messiah. For whoever does the will of God, he's My
brother and sister and mother.'" There's no advantage in having a relationship
to Jesus that is merely human. It gains you nothing. The only relationship to Jesus that matters,
He says, is the one that's spiritual. Listen to what He said in John 6:40 about
that. He said...here He says, "Whoever does the
will of God, he's My brother, sister and mother, he has a relationship to Me." But in John 6:40, "This is the will of My
Father that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life." What is the will of the Father? To behold the Son, that is to assess Him,
to look at Him carefully, thoughtfully, believe in Him and receive eternal life. Jesus said, "The people sitting around Me,
some of them have done that, they have a relationship to Me." If your conclusion about Jesus is that He's
a lunatic, you don't have a relationship to Him...you don't have a relationship to Him. The plus in this is that they were ignorant...they
were ignorant. They were not firsthand eyewitnesses. They hadn't been there following, watching. So they were making their conclusion out of
ignorance. They rejected Him as insane, taking all the
things that were coming back to them as hearsay. And later on they came to faith in Him, they
came to believe in Him because when they got the full information, the full revelation,
they embraced Him, they did the right thing. So there are many people who might conclude
that Jesus was insane, crazy, out of His mind, over the top, had a Messiah complex, thought
He was the Savior of the world when He wasn't. That's forgivable because that might come
from ignorance of the truth. The second possibility is that He is a liar
and that's the one we see in verse 22, and I want you to look at it, verses 22 and following. "The scribes," now we move from the family
to the scribes, they're the ones who decide that He's a liar. "The scribes who come down from Jerusalem." Now that's very important because now we've
got the big boys coming down from the center of authority in Israel, the city of Jerusalem. These are the elite, they start to show up. Now there have been...there are Pharisees
and scribes, those are the theological brains, the brain trust of Judaism of the time, the
ones responsible for designing it and propagating it. They're after Jesus. They don't like His message. They don't like what He says. They don't like what He does. They want Him dead, they've already concluded
that back in chapter 3, just go back to verse 6, "The Pharisees had already begun conspiring
with the Herodians, another power group, as to how they might destroy Him." So they've made their conclusion. They want Him dead. They want Him out of the way. But He keeps going from town to town to town
and we saw that back early in the gospel of Mark. He's just ubiquitous, He's going everywhere
all the time. In fact, in 1:28 it says, "New about Him spread
everywhere and to all the surrounding district of Galilee." And everywhere He went, every village, every
location, out in the countryside, everywhere He went He was doing these miracles, making
His claims, teaching this gospel of the Kingdom, gospel of salvation and the leaders were there
listening and reacting negatively. So finally the word gets to Jerusalem. Jerusalem sends some delegates. This...this shows that the brain trust, the
elite have weighed in on the fate of Jesus. Over in chapter 7 verse 1, "The Pharisees
and some of the scribes gathered around Him when they had come from Jerusalem," chapter
7. Finally they get Him back to Jerusalem and
that's where the same people come together and seal His fate, as it were, and have Him
crucified by the Romans. So the heavyweights come down. They're coming with the party line, folks. This is not their personal opinion, this is
the line that the Pharisees and the scribes have come to. They didn't just confront Him with this once. Matthew has a parallel passage to this, Matthew
12:24 to 32, the same account. But Luke gives this account in Luke 11:14
to 23 of a different occasion. This was in Galilee, the account of Luke is
in Judea at a later time, where the same accusation comes and the same conversation takes place. If you go back to Matthew 9:34, they said
He did what He did by the power of Satan. Back to Matthew 10:25 he reflects on the fact
that they had said what He does He does by the power of Satan. This is their mantra now and they're propagating
this with the people. So this is one of those occasions, we have
at least two of them described, one by Matthew and Mark, the same one by Luke. Now this conclusion can be far more sinister
and spiritually fatal than the first one. Let's see what they said. They said this, they summed it up, "He's possessed
by Beelzebul." That's their final judgment, the final verdict
on the evidence. The verdict on His teaching and the verdict
on His miracles, He's possessed by Beelzebul. Now why don't they conclude that He's just
insane? Because they have to explain the supernatural. Insanity doesn't explain the supernatural. It doesn't tell you anything. You only say that if you don't know that there's
a supernatural element. Look, they knew that He had this massive power
over demons. Demons were running amok out of the people
that He had commanded them to leave. They knew He had power over disease. They had to explain the supernatural power,
no getting around it. And it was either God or Satan because those
are the only two supernatural persons who have that kind of power, God and His holy
angels, Satan and his unholy angels. They're unwilling to say it's the power of
God which was the logical thing to say which is what the sort of popular opinion was and
they had to change that. No man could do this except God be with him. But they had to make people think it was satanic
so that was their mantra. He's possessed by Beelzebul. Now Beelzebul had become a name for Satan. There was another one the Jews used, Belial,
remember that? Beelzebul was a name for Satan. It was basically a name that meant what Mark
says they said in the second statement, verse 22, He cast out the demons by the ruler of
the demons. Beelzebul was a name to designate the ruler
of the demons. And Luke says Beelzebul means the ruler of
the demons in Luke 11:15. By the way, that word Beelzebul is used five
times in the Old Testament, so it had been around a long time. The Jews were familiar with it and used it. Now where did it come from? Probably from Beelzebub which came from Baal. Baal means lord and the Ekronites...Ekron
was a city in Philistia and according to 1 Kings, or rather 2 Kings chapter 1, the Ekronites
had a god named Baalzebub which means the Baal of the high place, or Baal meaning lord,
lord of the high place, lord of the dwelling, lord of the temple. That was Beelzebub, that was the Ekronite
god. Well the Jews purposefully corrupted Beelzebub
into Beelzebul because when you change it from the B to t he L, it goes from being the
lord of the high place, to being the lord of the manure...a very purposeful corruption
showing Jewish disdain for the false Canaanitish god. So through the years, this Beelzebul, lord
of the dung, or lord of the flies that collect on the dung, had become the name for Satan. So what is the conclusion of the elite religious
leadership of Israel? Jesus is not the holy Lord of heaven. They use the vilest possible slander and blasphemy
and say the Son of God is nothing but a servant of Beelzebul. Most people wouldn't say that. I don't think most people in Israel would
say that. I think it was a hard sell for them to convince
the people that this was actually who He was. I don't think there are very many people that
would say that today. Some would, some would say that Jesus was
satanic but it's pretty rare. If you reject Jesus, you probably don't want
to say that, you probably never have said that, you might never have thought that. There are atheists who reject Christianity
who don't go that far. But really, you certainly can't say that He's
just a good man. If He's not a lunatic, He's a very bad man. He is a great liar. He is a massive deceiver. He's trying to convince people that he's God
and he's got supernatural power and if he's not God, that supernatural power has to be
satanic. There was reason in their conclusion. Really, because of their unbelief, they were
stuck with it. They couldn't just say He was crazy because
crazy people can't do that. He had supernatural power. So that's what they said. I love the next verse, verse 23, "He called
them to Himself..." Guys, come here, come here. I love that. Come over here. He knew who they were, He knew where they
had come from and He knew exactly what He needed to say in front of all the people. He began speaking to them in parables, or
analogies, parabole means to lay something alongside. You've got something you don't understand,
you lay something you do understand and it makes it clear. It's not an actual parable in the technical
sense, but an illustration or an analogy. And He gives them a negative one and a positive
one. And they're just logical statements. He starts with a logical absurdity and then
goes to a logical reality. Here's the absurdity. "He called them to Himself and began speaking
to them in these kinds of parables. Number one, how can Satan cast out Satan?" Good teachers ask questions, don't they? Ask questions the students have to answer. Even better, ask questions that put students
on the horns of a dilemma. Even better, ask questions that makes student's
comments absurd. How can Satan cast out Satan? How can he do that? I mean, that is an absurdity. While there might be inconsistency in his
kingdom, and there certainly is because he's not omnipresent and he's not omnipotent, therefore
he can't run everything all the time everywhere among all the demons. And while there's a certain amount of freedom
in the chaos of evil to express itself in different ways, he is certainly not by design
going around tearing up his own kingdom. He's not going around exposing people with
demons who are sitting comfortably in synagogues doing his damning work. He wants them clandestine and unknown, not
exposed. But every time Jesus goes into a synagogue,
the demons scream. And, "Oops, there goes our cover." He's not designing to destroy himself and
his enterprise. Listen, this is a being that was created originally
as a holy angel and lived in the presence of God and is extremely magnificent and wise,
been around a long time. Satan is no fool. He is cunning. He is deceptive. He is wily. He is conniving. It's absurd to think that Satan would be running
around dismantling his kingdom. And then he makes some truisms, some axioms,
self-evident statements. "If a kingdom is divided against itself, the
kingdom can't stand. If a house is divided against itself, the
house will not be able to stand." House being some entity, any entity. That's obvious, that's a truism. So, verse 26, "If Satan has risen up against
himself and is divided, he cannot stand, he is telos ekka(??) , it's over. He's just brought an end to himself. He just brought the whole thing down on his
own head. So he says, "You've got to be kidding. I mean, that is a logical absurdity. Satan is not going to do that. Satan wants to destroy the work of God, he
doesn't want to destroy his own work." From that logical absurdity He goes to a positive
reality that they can't deny in verse 27. Let's go positive on this one. "On the other hand, no one can enter the strong
man's house and plunder his property unless he first binds the strong man and then he
will plunder his house." Is that obvious? That's another truism. That's axiomatic. That's a positive kind of axiom. Look, if you want to go in and get the property
of someone, you have to overpower the guy. You've got to be stronger than he is to get
his property. So Jesus is saying the only logical conclusion
here is that I am stronger than Satan and there is only one who is stronger than Satan
and who is that? It's God. You can't enter the strong man's house. The strong man is Satan. What about his property? His property...if you're going to enter the
strong man's house and plunder his property...what property does Satan have? Well Satan is a spirit, right? He doesn't wear a red suit and a pitchfork
and a pointed tail and horns and all of that. Satan is a spirit. So he doesn't possess anything material. So he doesn't have a warehouse with a lot
of Halloween costumes. Satan doesn't possess anything material. His whole world is immaterial. All his demons are called spirits, they're
called unclean spirits. So you have a spirit world with nothing material. So when He goes into Satan's domain and plunders
his property, what's his property? His property would be the demons and the people
that they have commandeered. If you're going to go in and you're going
to take power over the demons and scatter the demons and deliver the people that they
have possessed, then you have to bind the strong man to pull it off, right? But that's exactly what Jesus did. He exposed the demons. He dismissed the demons. And He rescued the people who had been possessed
by the demons. He plundered the strong man's house. You have to bind the strong man to do that. He's going to pull that off if Satan's stopping
him, therefore, whoever Jesus is, He's stronger than Satan. They've set themselves up for this one because
they said He did what He did by the power of Satan. The problem with that is that's a logical
absurdity for Satan to cast out Satan. And if He's not Satan casting out Satan, then
He's greater than Satan and greater than Satan is God. He's able to crush the kingdom of darkness. No, this is not a lunatic. That doesn't work. And Jesus is not satanic, deceptive liar who
represents hell and wants everybody to think he represents heaven. Oh there's been a lot of religious leaders
like that, but they don't heal diseases, cast out demons and raise dead people. Who is He? Well you're left with one final option and
that is He is God...He's Lord. And we see that kind of played out in the
final verses, verses 28 to 30, I'm going to say this very fast, so hang on. "Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven
the sons of men and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes the Holy Spirit
never has forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin." What's that eternal sin? "Because they were saying He has an unclean
spirit." The eternal sin for them was this...Jesus
is demonic. They went to hell for that. You say, "Wait a minute. What if I said that? Would I go to hell for that?" Not necessarily, if you said that without
full information. That's a blasphemy that's forgivable, right? But if that's your final conclusion with full
revelation, if that's your response to the full understanding of the gospel, the full
revelation of Christ contained on the pages of Scripture, if that's your final conclusion,
you could never be forgiven because you've had full revelation, you've had full light. What else is there? You can't get anymore if that's your final
conclusion, that's an eternal sin. That's what He's saying. Now this is what is called Apostasy. This is an apostate. Now I have to say, these are unusual people
here. This is a very unusual circumstance. This is...you can't just catapult this into
some universal category here. You will please notice that it is blasphemy
against the Holy Spirit but it's not denying tongues, or denying a healing, or denying
some power display, supposed power display of the Holy Spirit. It is blaspheming the Holy Spirit by saying
Jesus is demonic. How does that blaspheme the Holy Spirit? Because when Jesus came into the world, the
New Testament says, He set aside the prerogatives of His own power. He said, "I only do what the Father shows
Me to do, tells Me to do. And He did it by the power of the Spirit." That's what the incarnation meant, that when
He laid aside His glory, became a man, He restricted the independent use of His divine
attributes and He left Himself to the will of the Father and the power of the Spirit. Whatever He did was the Father's will and
was done through the Spirit's power. So if you say Jesus is satanic, you have just
blasphemed the Holy Spirit cause the Holy Spirit doing His work through Him. The Holy Spirit came upon Him at His baptism,
the Holy Spirit led Him from there into the wilderness to be tempted, was with Him through
His temptation. The Holy Spirit then anointed Him to preach
and away He went preaching and doing all His ministry. If you were there and you saw it and you heard
it and your final conclusion was He's demonic...you're damned, you can't be saved because that's
your ultimate conclusion with full revelation. So this is unique to those people who had
that full revelation. What about today? Could somebody commit this? Right. He could? Look, we've all been forgiven for rejecting
Christ, haven't we? We've all been forgiven for rejecting Christ
because we weren't born saved. So we've all been forgiven for that. But the one who won't be forgiven is the one
called the apostate who gets full exposure to the truth, full exposure to the gospel,
full revelation and makes the final conclusion...it's not true, I reject Christ. It's a deception. If that's where you end up after full exposure,
that's what's called apostasy...that's unforgivable. The Holy Spirit's testimony is that He is
Lord. The Holy Spirit did this mighty work through
Him to demonstrate that He is...He is Lord. Now look, there's a commentary on this that
I want to show you, just briefly. Turn to the book of Hebrews, written to Jews,
written to those Jews in the first century who were well aware of the ministry of Jesus,
the miracles of Jesus, the teaching of Jesus, the power over demons, disease, death. But they hadn't come to Christ. They weren't believing. They knew the truth. They knew the gospel. And they were holding back. So in Hebrews 2:3 comes the first of several
warnings to them in this book, written to, obviously, Hebrews, Jews. "How shall we escape if we neglect so great
a salvation?" If you come all the way to the full understanding
of the greatness of this salvation and you walk away, how are you going to escape judgment? Because, "After it was at the first spoken
through the Lord and confirmed to us by those who heard...namely the Apostles...who testified
both by signs and wonders and miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His
own will." He says, "Look, you knew about Christ. You knew about Christ's life and ministry. You knew about it from the eyewitnesses, namely
the Apostles who had the signs and wonders and gifts of an Apostle and affirmation of
all that they said. If you neglect after that kind of evidence,
how you going to escape judgment?" Look at chapter 6, here's another warning
to the same people. Chapter 6 verse 4, "In the case of those who
have once been enlightened...that's knowledge, mental...you are enlightened, you had information,
revelation, you tasted the heavenly gift...heavenly gift being the kingdom, Christ, the message
of salvation, the gospel, you tasted it, you didn't eat and drink of it, but you tasted
it and you were partaker of the Holy Spirit." Maybe you got healed. Maybe somebody you know got healed. You were there when the miracles were poured
out by the power of the Holy Spirit and you tasted the good word of God when Jesus taught
it and you tasted the power of the age to come miracles. In other words, you were exposed to all of
it and you've now fallen away...turn away, walk away. It's impossible to renew you to repentance
because you crucified to yourself the Son of God and put Him to open shame. You say, "I reject full revelation and enlightenment,
you tasted it, you touched it, you were there, you're exposed to it, your decision is to
walk away...you join the crucifiers. You conclude He's not God. And with those supernatural powers, must be
satanic. You're left with that. You say He has an unclean spirit after full
revelation. You can't be saved. Verse 6, "It's impossible to renew them again
to repentance. One final warning that I want to show you
is in chapter 10, verse 26. "If we go on sinning willfully after receiving
the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins." Look, if you just go on living your life of
sin after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there's nothing else. There's no other sacrifice. If you reject Christ and His sacrifice, there's
nothing waiting for you except verse 27, "A terrifying expectation of judgment and the
fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries." And then verse 29, "How much severer punishment
do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and regarded as unclean
the blood of the Covenant by which He was sanctified as insulted...whom?...the Spirit
of grace who is the power behind the life and ministry of Jesus." Look, all that's left for you if your final
decision is with full knowledge to reject, fearful judgment, terrifying judgment, severer
punishment, the hottest hell is for those who rejected with the most knowledge. There are perhaps some of you who have rejected
Christ. Your knowledge is increased today. You are in danger of greater judgment if you
conclude that He is not the Lord He claimed to be. You need to be frightened by this. Some of you perhaps have thought that you
were guilty of some blasphemy that could never be forgiven. May I remind you in final comments that the
Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy, and I love this, said this, chapter 1, verse 12, "I thank Christ
Jesus our Lord who strengthened me because He considered me faithful, putting me into
ministry even though I was formerly a...what?...blasphemer." All manner of blasphemy can be forgiven except
that final blasphemy that says with full revelation, "I reject Christ." And you're left with the fact of explaining
His supernatural power as satanic. And you stand then with the crucifiers, crucifying
Him again and putting Him to open shame. Much better to remember Matthew 12:32 says,
"You can speak a word against the Son of Man and be forgiven." We're all blasphemers of a sort who have been
forgiven if we've come to faith in Christ. Don't turn away, get the full revelation and
respond in full trust. Father, again Your Word is clear to us and
it is convincing and convicting and converting. May it do all those things even today, we
pray to Your glory in Christ's name. Amen.
