The Unpardonable Roadmap

The title is the unpardonable roadmap. The unpardonable roadmap. I'm going to be talking today about the unpardonable sin, blasphemy of the Spirit, as it's been called in Scripture. And I thought since we've gone through a lot of things that I'd like to touch on that because a lot of people say, did I or have I? Well, as one pastor said to me one time, if you're chances are, if you're worried about committing the unpardonable sin, you haven't yet.

So I want to give you a roadmap, something that you can go by to make sure that you don't go in an area considered the unpardonable sin spiritually because it is something mentioned in Scripture. It isn't anything to fear, but it is something that all of us should be very aware of as we realize that the road to the kingdom can be a long one.

It can be a long road. At times it seems longer than other times, doesn't it? At times it seems like, wow, how much longer? So each and every one of us, we need to realize that we have some work to do. And we're not going to work our way into the kingdom of God. That's not how it's done. But as Christ said many times, many talents and gifts are given. What are we going to do with them?

Are you going to waste them? Are you going to bury them? He asks us those questions, and I have to ask myself that quite often. So I'd like to look at a couple of scriptures, first off, that mention this subject. If you will go with me, I will read from the New King James Version. If you'll go with me to Matthew. Matthew 12. Matthew 12, verse 31. Mine says what?

Therefore, which means what? Stop. Stop. What does it mean, therefore? What came before it? That should always be something that we think about, so we don't take something out of context.

So Christ is saying here, Therefore, I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. On my Bible, you turn the page, and you find that in verse 30, it says, He who is not with me is against me, and who who does not gather with me scatters abroad. That's what He says before He talks about this blasphemy of the Spirit. So what's He talking about? Well, all you have to do is go back and look at the previous chapter. It's the Pharisees. It's the Pharisees who are jumping on Christ, and because He healed this blind man, they want to persecute Him.

And I say, you know how He did that? My bell's above. Demon. He's cast now by demons. And Christ then goes into the story, well, wait a minute. If I cast out demons, if I cast out demons, if I cast out demons, a house divided cannot stand. And He makes His point so clearly. Were they thinking about the blind man who can finally see? No. They didn't care about Him. All they were trying to do is find fault with this strange Jewish preacher. And so they're picking Him apart.

And so they're saying that He's using a demonic spirit to cast out demons, not the Holy Spirit. Let's look at that in verse 32. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him. And that's confused a lot of people. Wait a minute. This is the Son of God. Why could you speak against Him? Well, He says, if anybody speaks something against me because I'm human and fully God, but fully human.

No, He didn't make a mistake. You're never seeing, but look at the example. He says, you want to speak something against me? You want to say, well, you know, you dress odd. We don't like the way you conduct yourself on the Sabbath day. We don't like the way you do this. He said, fine. But what is not fine is when you talk against this power of God. What's not okay is when you blaspheme the Spirit of God.

Verse 32, if anyone speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him. But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven of him, either in this age that they were living in now or in the age to come. By our age, think about it. Because a lot of people are confused by this. Oh, wait. Did I do this? I'm going to talk about that. Well, I'd like to go over to Mark, if you will. Another place, Mark 3. Mark 3, verse 28. This is the same story except told by Mark, and it gives us a little different view of it. It gives us something else to think about. Verse 28, Mark 3, said, As surely I say unto you, All sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemings they may utter. We've uttered some blasphemings before, haven't you? Oh, wait a minute. You're so holy you didn't. Yes, we've said things that we should not have said. We've done these things, and Christ is actually saying here, you can be forgiven. The Father will forgive you for that, which I'm thankful for. But let's see what it says, because there's a big but here. 29. But he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness. Well, I thought God was a forgiving God. Is this a contradictory statement? Another but. But is subject to eternal condemnation. Because, and here's why at the end, because they say as he's quoting the Pharisees, he's quoting these religious leaders, he has an unclean spirit. Meaning he did this with the power of Belsabob. He did this because he has a demon in him, because he's demonic, and he's using demonic powers to do this. So God didn't take it lightly. Christ did not take this as like, oh well, you know, he didn't mean that.

You have to make sure that we watch what we say and how we say it when we get into that realm of possibilities.

There's a lot of people that speak evil of God in this world. They may even speak evil of his power, which to me, as I've read from these scriptures, there's an evil guy. He was an evil guy speaking evil things. God says he can be forgiven. But even me, not as hopefully never be considered as evil as that man, but I can be not forgiven. If I walk down this road, show up on this road map called the unpardonable sin. Everything else can be forgiven. That's what he said. So it is dangerous territory when we hear somebody talking and we, well, you may be right. Because you don't want conflict. Can you see where they could lead? We're judged by every word.

We have to make sure that's the purpose of the sermon. It isn't to scare you that, wow, I'm committing the unpardonable sin or you're going to everlasting damnation, as they like to say in other churches. Well, ask you a word. How would you define the unpardonable sin? If you were asked that question, which I have been asked that many times, well, exactly what is the unpardonable sin? Blasphemy of the Spirit? Is it that simple? Yes and no. It can be if you understand what it is, but many people do not. Even professing Christians don't understand. There's some very sacred ground when you're talking about the Holy Spirit according to these Scriptures. Blasphemy means to vilify, speak evil, or to profane. Profane what? What were the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes and the religious leaders at times? What were they vilifying, profaning? It wasn't Christ. It was the Holy Spirit.

You're beginning to get where I'm trying to lead you to because that thing in you could be scary.

Because it says you have the Holy Spirit. Do we profane it by our actions?

Actually, blasphemy is written down 14 times. In the Bible, only two of those in the Old Testament, 12 in the New. And that's because Christ speaks quite a bit about it. Because it is a concern of His for the body of Christ, as it should be. One biblical writer, I quote, says, blasphemy is to proclaim or say evil as an intentional matter.

What about an unintentional matter? It says it is not done by accident. Does that make you feel better? Because I've probably had a few accidents before. But it's an intentional matter. It's an intentional action. It's what it's saying. And it's not done from a lack of knowledge. That means to commit the unpardonable sin. You know what you're doing. You know what you are doing.

So you don't just, oops! It's not one of those things. I don't know that I've ever heard anybody say they went home and repented for committing the unpardonable sin.

I never heard, you know, I've heard people ask me if I thought they did. I told them it really didn't matter what I think. I send them to these scriptures. Matters what God thinks. Because I'm one that still has to stay off that road map. Just like you guys. Just like anybody else. When you know. Unpardonable. I mean, something is so severe that they can't be pardoned for giving for it. Matter of fact, it's unforgivable. And in the realm of things, it's so extreme. Maybe the most extreme thing.

That's why it's a dangerous road to go down. That's why I thought this subject was something that I needed to address and make sure that not only am I sure of what I'm doing, and may have a have a kind of check as David brought out this about the sermon at that we kind of need to check ourselves.

So I think you probably understand blasphemy.

And the intent. So how about the Holy Spirit? God's Holy Spirit. Do we understand? Because that's the thing that we will be held accountable for. What is it? Can you define? Can you define? You should know. Right? Somebody asked you what the Holy Spirit is. What are you going to say? Anybody? The power of God. That's one. Yes. Anybody got something else?

Yes. So it is the way that he works with us. Right? Why is it holy? It's his. It's his. I can't make anything holy. You can't make anything holy. Only God can make something holy because he's holy. I can't say, chair, you're holy. It doesn't change that chair one single day, does it? Doesn't make that chair holy. Only God can make it holy. And he makes certain things holy. What's today? No, it's holy. Right? Today is holy. It's a holy Sabbath. Nobody made tomorrow holy. Nobody made Friday holy. God didn't do that. He only made one day. People want to argue. They argue with God. They don't argue with me. I just follow in what God says. But the Holy Spirit, the power, the energy. So in Genesis 1, he spoke a word and it was created.

So it is the power of God, but it's more than that. It is the very essence of God. The very essence of God. That means he takes part of himself, his Spirit, Holy Spirit, since he is Spirit, and he is holy, he is Holy Spirit, he gives us part of that Spirit. And, as 1 Corinthians says two or three times, you are the sons of God when you have that Spirit. And we become holy because of that. We're not holy without a Spirit. We can't be.

So God gives us the very essence, part of himself, part of what he is about, part of his energy and power. He only gives us a little bit because why? Because we couldn't handle more in there a little bit. That's why he says, growing grace and knowledge as we talked about. He wants us to grow it. How do we grow the Holy Spirit? Because 1 Thessalonians, the Lord says, don't quench it. So if we can quench it, choke it out, obviously there must be a way to grow it.

He said, my word is Spirit. We feed the Spirit by God's word. You expect to grow the Spirit and never read his word. You expect to have a garden and never water it. Oh, it'll grow on its own. That's us. This is how we water it. It's how we grow. Now, I don't expect you to believe me because I don't have to. All you have to do is experiment yourself. Go without reading the Bible. Go without reading his word. See how it goes. See if you feel empowered. See if you feel more spiritual because I can guarantee you, you won't. But sometimes we have to learn on our own.

And God's Spirit is not a person. I don't think it shocks many people in this room. The very essence or part of God is what Jesus Christ was talking about when he cast demons out. He did it by the power of God. He said, I can't do anything. But he used the Spirit of God, the power of God, to cast out the demon from a young man. And they saw the miracle. And they didn't see God.

Saw the miracle and didn't see God. They didn't see God's power. If you were blind and some man came up and in the name of God, he cast the demon out. And you may not even know when you had a demon. Well, all of a sudden you could see.

Do you think you'd be gone? Huh? Wonder what that was? I think you'd know.

When one man was brought up before the Sanhedrin and Christ healed him from being blind, they looked and they said, well, he couldn't do it. He doesn't even obey the Sabbath. He's a lawbreaker. He doesn't believe like we believe. His religion is not like our religion, and it wasn't.

So how did that happen? He said, I don't know. I was blind, but now I see. But he knew it had to do with some power. They gave him a sight. Do we see the power of God in our lives? And do we give credit to that power? Or is it possible we profane it? By not recognizing that it is the power of God. I thank God for a parking place. They sound crazy, but I've asked for a parking place. I don't go, hmm, let me have a parking place. I'm thinking, God, I really need a parking place. And I'm trying to do this. I'm trying to do that. No, that's a small thing for you, but would you help me? And I've got many a parking place. And I need right in front of that building, and somebody will pull out just as I'm ready to go in. I don't go, man, am I lucky? I'm lucky, Chuck. No, I thank you. Because it's by his power. It's a power. His power is more than anything else. And I feel for the people who don't understand that. And I hope someday they will, because all of you have probably experienced that a time or two. Or, boy, that wasn't me, God. Thank you. Thank you. This is what Christ needs us to do.

And he's saying to us, as he said to the spiritual, spiritual, huh, no, religious leaders. Wouldn't dare say that. Spiritual leaders. The religious leaders of his day. How dare you question the power of God?

The very essence of God. Can we do it? Can we live a life that doesn't do that? Do we use the helper? Does it help you?

I've needed help before, and it helped me. I don't ask God, oh, please send me an angel right now. I need to straighten Mary out. She's probably going to do that a few times with me, but it's my helper. When I need help, I don't understand something. How many of you have looked at scripture before and go, well, now I get that. Or you see something magnificent happening, and you go, I didn't ask for it, but thank you because I thought it. That's part of this essence. How about Comforter? You ever needed some comfort? Comforter. I have, and I pray that God gives more of a comfort to some people who have gone through some tragedy lately.

And I know you have here. People had COVID. I had it for 12 days. I can't even remember parts of those 12 days. I felt miserable. I basically didn't care whether I died or not. I felt so rough. But I tried to take comfort in that I didn't have to fight it alone. Or if I did, and God didn't need me anymore. I could take comfort in that, too. Because I know what happens after death. So it does comfort us. The thing is, do we use it enough as a Comforter?

And then it's a teacher. Teacher! Boy, have I ever used it as a teacher.

I appreciate David calling me by my name instead of Mr. Today. I do appreciate that. Some people have a problem with that. I'll need to call you. No. My mentor who hired me, when I called him Mr., he said, My name's Denny. That's why my friends call me. So I hope you are my friends. And you'll call me by my first name. Because I can't find anywhere in Scripture, said Mr. Jesus. Mr. Yahshua, Mr. Joshua, didn't see it. They're working together. We're family. I don't call my sister, Mrs. Penny. As a matter of fact, she said to tell you, although I talked to her last week, I told her I'd be coming, she said, Give everybody your greetings. And I said, Penny, I don't even know who you are anymore. Church has changed. We moved on. She didn't buy it. She didn't buy it. So I will send you her greetings. As she does say, she misses you. Now, I think she misses your potlucks, really. Yes, I wouldn't. That's true. That's true. Teacher, do we use it enough? Brother, I don't feel like we do. I really don't feel like we use the Holy Spirit as a teacher enough. I don't feel like I do. I will pray for it and ask, because I'm in my office, and I'm sitting there working on some sermon, and I'm sitting there, and I've just got a mental block and go, uh, what's give? Where do I need to go with this? I'll marry. Sometimes you'll probably hear me talking to myself. Hopefully she thinks I'm talking on the phone. She didn't think I'm going crazy, but I will. Just like, where do I do? Help me! I need some help. I think we should know our father close enough that we can have a close enough relationship we can talk and say, I need more. I don't have enough to date.

So how does he talk to us? In many ways. Remember Elijah? He had a still, small voice. A still, small voice. How many small voices have you had? Need more? I need more so I'm not in this area of this road map of leading to the unpardonable sin. I'm not in this area of this area of this road map. Back in the 1980s, there was a TV show called Magnum P.I. I don't know if any of you remember that show. The women probably do Tom Selleck in his little bitty short pants. Yes, had the Hawaiian shirt, the mustache, and the car. And it was like every man would go on there and go, yeah, I could see myself doing that. But one unique thing that Thomas Magnum did was in most of his shows when he had an issue or his recalling experience. He was a Navy SEAL who then became a private detective. But he would call upon this experience that he'd had many times. But then he would talk about this little voice. My little voice was telling me that I'd better be aware of this. Anybody remember him saying that many times? This little voice. Brethren, we have a little voice that should be telling us if we have his Holy Spirit. That little voice is sometimes going to tell us, don't go there. Don't watch that. Don't say that.

That little voice can get us out of trouble. That little voice can save us a whole lot of issues and problems. If you don't hear the little voice, are you in trouble?

I see a few heads shaking. Yes. I think you better put together an OSPP, as our sermonette guy said, because we're going to need that. We should be hearing that. We should not be afraid. Well, I don't want to hear voices. Then I know I'm crazy. No, you want to hear. You want God to be talking to you. It's not some out-of-world experience. It's a divine voice that wants to talk to the child that he calls his own. That's us.

So, as I wrap this up today, I want to give you two landmines. Anybody in the military know what landmines were? I had a retired sergeant that worked for me at one time. And he spent three tours in Vietnam. And at the time he took men over. He was a drill sergeant, but at that time they were having trouble losing men. So they started sending the drill sergeant who took them through basic training over there with them. So they could try not to lose as many men instead of handing it off to somebody else. So he took three groups of men over and he told each one of them. He said they were 18, 19, 20 years old. And he said, if you'll listen to me, you'll come back alive and you won't be maimed. And one of the things that he told them was about landmines. Trip cords, as he called, different ones. And he said the thing was they would get bored instead of walking through jungles, walking through miles of jungle, sweating, mosquitoes, everything. And he said next thing you know they would be talking to each other, walking together after he told them spread out, keep your eyes peeled. And he said next thing you know they'd be talking and not looking down. And one of them would step on one of these, one of these, or as he called it, a trip cord, and tragedy struck. Some were killed, but these things weren't really made to kill. They were made to maim to take out arms and legs and so forth like that, to put fear. Brother, I want to bring you up and tell you about two landmines, spiritual landmines, to keep us from committing the unpardonable sin. Because these are two things that we must be aware of that will lead us down that path, because most of you are not down that road yet. That I know that I've met you, met so many of you. You're not going down, but I want to make sure you don't go down that path, because we all need to be in the kingdom. Because I'd like to see a thousand years from today, we're all teaching somewhere, we all get together. You remember those potlucks in Vero Beach we used to have? The first is self-righteousness. Self-righteousness.

If you say, oh no, I've never been self-righteous, yes you are. It's self-righteousness, the best definition is you don't need God. You don't need God. You don't need His Word. You don't need Him through prayer. You don't need God. Because you have got it all figured out yourself. It's a scary landmine. Very scary. I need God. I need His Word. And I need you guys. I do. I need congregation. I need brothers and sisters.

Self-righteousness is when you're wiser than everyone. Ever met those people? Wiser than everyone, including Jesus Christ in God Himself. That's a landmine. The opposite is humility. What's the definition of humility? When you know you need God. Humility is when you know you need God. Brethren, need God. Need Him. The second, number two, is a searing of a conscience. A seared conscience.

And that is probably one of the most prevalent things that happens. I've known it to happen to people. I've had it happen to me. And it is something that we have to be very aware of. Where we're too tempered to sin, where sin doesn't mean what it once meant to us. The breaking of sin, being guilty of sin, doesn't mean the same. A seared conscience is when we become desensitized to the guilt of sin. Oh, God, you know I had this problem. God, I'm asking for forgiveness again because I just have this. You know me, though.

Desensitized. One actually said a seared conscience is one that is completely dead. A conscience is completely dead. I hope no one's at that point. Seared. It's from the Greek word for our nurses here, means to cauterize. Cauterize before they had needles and could sew you up and sutures and everything else. They, a lot of times, just had to pull skin together and take a hot iron and actually melt that skin together. If you've ever seen any world, I mean, Civil War. What's his name? Made a great one there where they had to cut off arms and legs if anything and they would. Yes, Ken Burns. Very good. Yes. Excellent. Excellent. If you can get through it. Ken Burns, yeah, and they had to just cut the bone and wrap up the skin and then sear it with hot irons. It was the fastest way and try to burn out the infection.

But you know the thing that happens when they cut away and our nurses and who know this, or have you ever had surgery? When they cut away, they cut a lot of the nerves. And so your skin doesn't feel. I mean, you can sometimes when I had this big tumor cut out from here, I got placed here. I can just smack and just scratch and can't even feel anything because it killed all the nerves. So I don't really have any feelings there. Or maybe you've had it on your knee. I had one on my knee before. God wants us to have feelings, our conscience, feelings of feeling sin, and not have a seared conscience.

Because we can get spiritual scar tissue to where we don't feel anything anymore. Because we've done it so long. Can it be corrected? Yep. Just takes us working on it. Let's go and finish up. I got three scriptures I'd like you to turn to. If you go to first Timothy. First Timothy 4. First Timothy 4. Verse 2. Let's go up to 1. He doesn't have that here. Now the Spirit expressly says in the latter times, some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrine of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron. Is your conscience seared? He's warning Timothy that this is something you need to teach, making sure the sin doesn't become normalized. Or it's a part of your life. I knew a guy that was married three or four times that I knew of, and he slept with every woman he could find. He worked with me, and I mean it was just unbelievable. It was a good looking guy, had great personality, salesman Bill, you know, that goes so he could sell anything to anybody, and he was sleep with so many women. And he had a beautiful wife, and I'm like, you know, I remember going out and said, Don, why? Why do you do this? He said it bothered me the first time or two. But after the first 10 or 15 times, never even bothered me.

I said, How has this been going on? Well, he said, Well, really my first marriage and my second one, and he did marry ruin his third one. And he's married again, but I don't I've lost contact with him. But his conscience was I said, Doesn't it bother you that she's, you know, that your wife and he goes, Oh, I love my wife.

And he said, I just don't think I can ever stop.

A hundred wasn't enough, he said. Seared conscience.

Go to 1 Timothy 1 verse 5. So now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and a sincere faith. 1 Timothy 1 verse 5. Do you have a good conscience? This is what he's telling Timothy is he's teaching him how to carry on his work, and he does one more. He has Titus. And if you'll turn with me to Titus 1 verse 15. Titus 1 verse 15. He says to the pure, all things are pure. Not right. I mean, if you feel it's just like us having and I don't want to get gross here, and I don't want to make everybody feel uncomfortable. I have no desire to have relations with another man.

That doesn't even enter my mind. It doesn't enter my mind to have relations with an animal. But it does. Some people, their conscience is not pure.

This is what he's talking about when you're pure. You don't think about those things. Now, if we can look at all sin that way, we will begin to grow by leaps and bounds. So the sins that we sometimes struggle with, if we can look at them like that, with a pure conscience to go back, we can make serious inroads in our spiritual life. To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. People make fun of religious people. Oh, you don't really believe there's God. Where is he? I've never seen him. Look at everything going on in the world. You believe in its fantasy. And to the unbelieving, nothing. But even their mind and conscience are defiled, or as the New Living says, corrupted. Corrupted. We have to make sure ours are not corrupted or defiled. And they're trying to be pure. What was Philippians 4? He says, whatever things are good, whatever things are good, whatever things are pure, set your mind on these things. I don't have a problem in my mind unless I let something pull me off. I don't know about you guys. I don't. But let something pull me off and take me down a different path. And next thing you know, my mind, I can see I got to bring it back because it's getting corrupted.

And when we're talking about pure, we're not looking for an escape clause. You're not looking for an escape clause.

The unpardonable sin, the road map, it's clear it should be to us from Scripture. It's not complicated. It's not hard. The blasphemy of the Spirit is not complicated. It's not hard. It's explained. We just have to make sure we don't do it. And we stay as far away from that road, that path. Because there's worse things than getting lost. And sometimes we feel lost. And that is going down a road that should be closed. That is dangerous.