The Unpardonable Sin

I think most of us, if probably all of us, have one time or another in life, have looked at our own lives, looked at our own behaviors, looked at our own sins, and wondered, how can God forgive me? How can God ever forgive me?

I mean, here I am. He's called me. He gave me His Spirit. I've been part of the Church, and yet I still struggle with sins. I have a new sin, you know, I never noticed before, or new behavior, or different things, and we struggle with that. And I've had many people come to me over 40 years of ministry and said, I think I've committed the unpardonable sin, and they're in agony over have I committed the unpardonable sin. And it's a legitimate question that we need to discuss. I've had a number of people in Nashville and Murfreesboro ask me to give a sermon on the unpardonable sin here in the last few months, and I thought, well, I just covered it.

And then I went and looked. It was eight years ago, so it's probably good to bring it up again. What is it? Have you committed it? Are you in danger of committing it? And it is a real burden to carry, to think, have I done that? And there's a legitimate time to ask, have I done that in your own mind as you interact with God.

So we have to define what it is and what it isn't, and understand it in a deeper way than just a sin. Is there a sin that God won't forgive? And how do you know if you've done it? Our starting point isn't where you think, because as we go through this, there's some phrases in the verses we use to talk about the unpardonable sin that are very, very important, and you'll find them over and over again in the passages.

So let's start at a different place, and I'll just read this. You know this by heart, Romans 6.23, for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. We start with every human being is going to die because of sin, because it's entered into our lives, and it's more than just actions, it's more than behaviors. Yes, we do sinful behaviors all the time, but it's actually part of who we are.

It's at the core of who we are as humans. You know, we talk about human nature. I gave this last week in Nashville, and afterwards someone came up and said, well, when did human nature go bad, or why was it created bad? And I said it wasn't. Human nature is just, was just the way God created us, and there's something important we have to really think about, so that we're not just animals.

We have consciousness. We have to have choices. We had to be given the ability to make choices. Love requires choice. You've heard me say that over and over again. God makes a choice to love us. It's a choice because you choose to love somebody, and that means you put up with their issues. It means you help them when they're hurt. You sacrifice yourself. One of the biggest things that people find when they have children is the realization of how much they have to sacrifice of who they are for their child.

That's what love is. You do that, and it becomes so much a part of you. So in order to do that, he had to give us the ability to make choices, and when he made Adam and Eve, they had no choices. Everything was simple. Do this. Okay. Do that. They didn't know anything else. And so they end up, of course, we know the issue where Satan comes in, and they get a choice, and they chose wrong.

And we live in a world that for all these years, everybody has been choosing wrong. We choose some right, some wrong. You can find a person that's a pretty evil person and find that, oh, in this one case, they chose right.

We're a mixture of that, and we can't live as a mixture of that. And this is the core of the gospel, a message, that God says, you're corrupted and you must receive salvation. You must be saved. Well, you know, I've had people say, I'm a little afraid to get baptized because if I receive God's Spirit, then I'll be held accountable. Okay, step back a minute. Step back a minute. According to the Scripture, the term is used. You are lost.

The Protestants overuse that. You're lost. In other words, you don't have salvation. God calls you into a point where you can receive salvation. And to say, I can't go there because they may lose it, you can't lose something you never had. You don't have salvation until you enter into this relationship with God. Then He gives you, He puts you in this process of salvation. So you can't lose something you don't have. But it is true, it's possible to have received from God the promise of salvation and to lose it.

And that's a fear sometimes that strikes into the core of people because of a fear of failure. We'll go through why. When we understand the apartable sin, we'll have to go through why that fear of failure should not hold us back because you've already failed before you get there. So, no, this is the way to fix the failure. So, no one is perfect until we are changed at the return of Jesus Christ. So when we come to the apartable sin, we have two extremes. One is fear always that you're not going to make it. And the other is God loves me so it doesn't matter.

Both of those are wrong. God loves me so it doesn't matter if I sin. The other is I can't make it because I'm not perfect. Well, we're not perfect until we're changed. This is a life. When you go through Hebrews 6, I haven't done this in years, I used to go, every couple years, I go through Hebrews 6 and go through all those basic doctrines and just give six, seven sermons on them. A lot of them is going on to perfection. It doesn't say obtaining perfection in this life, it's a journey to perfection.

We're on a journey. It's okay. What can interrupt that journey? We have to look how God sees us, too, in this journey, which is a journey of transformation. Say you have a child, a young child, doesn't understand the idea that things that other children have belong to them.

Okay? We had some trouble with some of our kids at an early age, especially our oldest daughter. Oh, that looks pretty. Grab some of this toy and walk away. It seemed... Why? It's nice. They laid it down. It's mine now. No, it belongs to somebody else. Now, as an adult, when you're teaching a child that, you don't walk over to them, slap them around, and say, how dare you pick up that other child's doll? You explain. Now, along the way, you may have to do a little punishment. No, you know, you took somebody else's things, you have to give it back, and then you have to give them something.

You have to give. You teach them. And it is very stressful for that child to learn. But over time, if you keep teaching a child, they will stop taking other people's things, right? As the parent, it's frustrating, but you keep teaching. And you keep correcting. For the child, it's frustrating because that's what I want to do. Well, welcome to God's job with us. We're just little children that He's constantly saying, don't do that! And He keeps working, keep working. And then once we get something really, okay, I'm not doing that anymore, He'll just show us something else to do.

That's why this is a constant progress towards where He wants us to be. But He wants us to get there. His purpose isn't, I like to punish you. His purpose is, I must punish you and teach you and help you to be where you need to be. To deal with the corrupt human nature we have. You know, I think of God's patience.

Think of Abraham. Abraham lied to the Pharaoh that his wife was his sister. Well, she was half a lie because she was half sister. But it's a lie, right? Almost destroyed or sidetracked the plan of salvation. Because she would have ended up in his harem and couldn't have been the mother of the one that would continue the line that would become the Messiah, which was what he was promised.

He was messing up God's plan. God stepped in, saved him. He looked like a fool. They basically ran him out of Egypt. But God was patient. Well, that's nice. Do you realize He did that twice? Next time it wasn't with the Pharaoh, it was with a Philistine king.

He did it again! And God had to intervene and say, don't do that. And finally, He began to realize, I trust in God to work out these things. I can't work them out by lying. He figured it out. Now, Abraham suffered a lot in all this. I'm not saying, God, let him suffer in these decisions. You know, pretty soon you're kicked out of every place. Nobody wants Abraham to show up, right? So, God worked with him. God works with us. God didn't say, you've committed the unpardonable sin. He said, you have to repent of this, and you have to stop doing this.

We have to change this behavior. So that's not the unpardonable sin. I mean, Paul, before he was converted, gave permission for people to kill Christians. But that was before he was converted. David committed adultery and he had a man murdered, and that was after he received God's word.

Because in Psalms, when he repents, he says, please don't take your spirit away from me. He saw what happened with Saul. When God took his spirit away from Saul, he went insane. Absolutely insane. And yet, he realized, if God didn't forgive him, that's where he would end up. He would end up in insanity. And God forgave him. Now, David lived a miserable life at times for the rest of his life. The baby died. He was made a public laughingstock. The whole country knew what had happened.

His children kept rebelling against him. One son actually formed an army and ended up dying, trying to kill David. One of his daughters was raped by a half-brother. You know, you look at his life because God has told him, you did this, I will forgive you, but there's consequences from this. You'll suffer the rest of your life, and he did. But it wasn't unpardonable. God just kept working with him. David knew he was close to the impart. That's why he begs God. He understands it. Now, the Bible tells us it's appointed to all men to die once. But Revelation 21, let's go there. Once again, these are just a couple of primus. Now, we start with, God wants to forgive you. That has to be our starting point in this. God wants to forgive us. And Jesus Christ sacrificed for us. There's nothing more he could do than that. I mean, that's the greatest step God and Christ could do. To show us how much they want to forgive us. And with the price that has to be paid, because our crimes, and that's what it is. You know, sin, you use the word crime, it's a little harder, right? It's like hitting a hammer. Yeah, it's crime. We commit crimes against God. And we have a whole list of crimes we've all committed against God. And yet he wants to forgive us. Revelation 21, verse 7, one of the most encouraging statements in the book of Revelation. He will overcome, shall inherit all things. I will be his God, and he shall be my son. This is it. He will overcome. I will work with him, God says, and he will overcome all things, and he's going to be my child in my kingdom.

Then verse 8, but the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderer, sexually immortal, sorcerers, idolaters, and all lawyers shall have their part in the lake which burned with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. So when we talk about an unpardonable sin, that is something that leads to not the first death, because all sin leads to death.

The only people that will not die, you know, and end up physically dying, are the people who are right there, the saints that are still alive, and Christ comes back, and they're changed immediately, which is still a form of death. The body goes away. You know, they receive a spiritual body, and they're changed. Those are the few who don't suffer death the way the majority of people who follow God will suffer death. We will die. That's part of this process.

Second death doesn't have to be part of this process.

The second death is something that we must understand and not choose. You say, how do I choose that? You know, sin is more than just breaking the letter of the Ten Commandments.

Jesus taught that in the Sermon on the Mount, right? It's not just wrong to murder. It's wrong to hate. That's breaking the law. When we get into the law of God, it goes down, as Dave would say, it gets down into the core of who you are. The law of God gets down into what are your motivations, what are your thoughts, what are your emotions, all these things that we struggle with.

He says, look at that and understand that is also sin, because sin is part of our being. This is what the Pharisees could not understand.

Sin was just action, and they were right. There were lots of actions they were against that are sin, but they could not understand that it went deeper than that. You do all these actions, you're right with God, you get all these brownie points for doing the right actions, and you earn salvation. No. We have to be forgiven, and we must be changed.

We must go through a transformation so that then we can become perfect before God at the change. That's why we talk about making a covenant with God, and we talk about baptism. I mean, baptism itself is just a ceremony. You know, when you're put under the water, the water doesn't wash away your sins. Every time I lay hands on somebody afterwards for them to receive God's Spirit, that God's Spirit doesn't come through my hands. I know a minister who said that once. I give God's Spirit, I can take it away, and I thought, what up?

I'm trying to think of a nice way to say this. What an arrogant man!

It's the Spirit of God. We just do the ceremony, and God does it.

We put someone under water as a symbol of what God's doing. That's why it is so important in this covenant. This covenant with God is, you are lost. I will find you, and I will give you salvation, and you will be in my family forever. That's what this is. But it starts with, I'm really messed up, and I can't fix this, and I am lost. That's where it starts.

You say, wow, we're not into the unpardonable sin yet. No, because we have to understand why God is so willing to forgive, and why the unpardonable sin is so egregious.

Why it's so egregious. So let's go to 1 John 1, and here we have our relationship to sin as Christians. 1 John 1, and let's start at verse 8.

I got new glasses here about a month ago, and every once in a while you'll see me sort of lost. You know, they're the ones, the reading part is at the bottom, and sometimes I'm like, uh, oh, there it is. Okay, so I'm okay.

He said, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. He says, even as those who have been forgiven, we still have some sin. And he said, in us. That's very interesting. You may not be out committing adultery, not killing anybody, you're not worshiping an idol, but the spirit of the law we're still struggling with, and that's still sin.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He says, remember, God is faithful to forgive and to cleanse. You know, it's not just, I forgive you, you have a license to do whatever you want. That's not what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is, I will forgive you so you can be cleansed, so that that sin can be removed from you. Sometimes it takes a long time struggling with certain sins to have that removed. You know, we could have an anger issue that we can become violent, and sometimes it takes a while to get through that one, right? And that's God cleansing us. So this, we're in a state of relationship with God. We're forgiveness and cleansing, and if we say we have no sin, we're really in bad trouble here. He says, if we say, because of verse 10, that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. He says, it's a dangerous thing to look at yourself as not still struggling with sin. Chapter 2 says, my little children, these things I write to you so that you may not sin. He says, I'm writing to you because you need to stop, we need to learn how not to sin.

So this forgiveness isn't a license to sin. It's an understanding of we struggle with sin, and we will struggle with sin in one level or another until we're changed. Until we're changed.

And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. Now, advocate in Greek is very similar to the word in the way we use it in English. You know, it's someone who sticks up for someone else. It's someone who steps in and helps someone else. But it also can mean a defense attorney, basically. And in English, you know, an advocate can be used as a defense attorney. In other words, in the court of law, God's court of law, we are guilty and we have a defense attorney who stands beside us and says, this one should be forgiven. You say, well, we're still not into the impartable sin. No, no, no. We've got to understand what God's doing before we can understand the other or we have a totally wrong idea of it.

He then goes on, for he himself is a propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. I know every time I read propitiation, I say the same thing, even when I don't put in my notes, because it's just amazing to me. Propitiation in Greek usually meant in the Greek world, specifically. It's what you did to basically get the God's attention. You know, I want this God to do this. I want this goddess to do this. So I do a sacrifice. I, or if it's Athena, you'd go to the prostitutes because that was part of getting her attention. They had temple prostitutes to get, so you could go there and get her attention. You know, where you give a large sum of money or you do a sacrifice, and now you're getting their attention. God says, here's how you have my attention. Christ is the propitiation. In other words, I'm doing, you can't do anything to somehow make me do what you want. I will do this for you. So he turns, they turn the concept upside down in the New Testament. Just turn it upside down. No, no, no, you're not doing all this to please the gods. God's doing this to please himself so that you can have a relationship with him. And what he did was sacrifice Jesus Christ because we are at our core sinners, criminals, against him.

That doesn't mean we don't still do some good things. Like I said, that human nature can be 100% evil. We've seen it, but most people are mixture, right? But the evil can't be accepted by God under any circumstance. So now let's get into the unpardonable sin. This foundation is to give us an understanding now of the other verses we're going to look at. Hebrews chapter 6.

Hebrews chapter 6.

Verse 4.

For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted the heavenly gift and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come. That's quite an interesting list there. He's saying it's impossible for people who have done this. They've been enlightened. The light has come on from God that shows them the truth. They have seen it. They've understood it and understanding it's come from God. They are enlightened. It's not like they just read it and got something out of it. They are enlightened by God. They're enlightened. They have tasted the heavenly gift. The heavenly gift can be two things here. We'll see where both of them apply. One is Christ is the heavenly gift for propitiation. This is the gift that allows you to come to me. You can't bring a gift big enough. You can't. It's like David said, am I going to kill a thousand animals? And then you'll be happy with me, right?

Now that's just a symbol showing what God was going to do in reality.

So this gift that comes from Christ, that is Christ, we have then received the indwelling of God's Spirit. It says, they've been come for takers of the Holy Spirit and received this vision of the things that come. To understand the two comings of Christ, the second coming of Christ, and to want to be part of what he's doing, part of what God's doing, and be there with him when he comes to save the world. That's a pretty big list right there. And it says, someone who has had all this, known all this, done all this, verse 8, if they fall away, they give up the enlightened truth that was given to them. They give up the heavenly gift of Jesus Christ. They give up the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. They give up the knowledge of the Word of God. They give up the vision of what God is doing. They just give it up. Now I'm going to make a little caveat here. This is important. We all have seen people do that, and someone will say, well they've committed the unpardonable sin. As we go through this, you'll realize the unpardonable sin isn't an event.

It is a conclusion. We can't judge if somebody's committed the unpardonable sin. We can see if they're on the road, right? They may be on the road, but you can't judge whether they've done it or not. Only God can judge that. Only God can judge whether they've committed the unpardonable sin. So when we see people go down this road, we should be concerned. If you are going down that road, you need to be concerned. But at the same time, only God can make the judgment.

The only reason I say that, I've seen people go so far away, I thought they'd never come back, and I've seen them come back 20 years later. Devastated. Life ruined, saying, I've got to get back with God. Well, that means they never lost all this, or they couldn't come back. Because it says if you lose all of it, you can't. If someone comes back, that means they didn't lose all of it. Somehow, God was still there. And sometimes they ruined their lives, destroyed their lives. So we can't judge it. We only know the process. We know when somebody's on it, sort of in that process, and we should be aware if we're in that process. So it's not an event.

It's a place you end up in a series of choices, which includes events. It's the place where you end up. So he says, verse 6, if they fall away, it's impossible to renew them again to repentance.

Since they do what here? Remember I started with Romans, that we receive salvation through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ? Since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God and put him to an open shame. They refuse the forgiveness of God through Christ. And when they do, when a person does that and stays there, that is the impartable sin. All the sins that lead up to that's the journey. You see what I'm saying? See, we're looking for an event. Oh, that person committed adultery. That's the impartable sin. Not necessarily. David did. He suffered, but God forgave him.

But what we realize is this is a lifestyle, a way of thinking, a way of thinking, a relationship with God that disappears. And in it disappearing, they give up the Holy Spirit. They give up the truth. They give up everything. Another caveat. There are people who appear to have done that who never knew it anyways. There are people who will come into the church and play act.

And when things get tough, they give it all up. Because they never had God's Spirit to begin with. They just play act. It's just playing church. And it's fun to play church.

So you can play church and never be in this state.

But it is a grave warning, because verse 7 and 8 talks about how they will be burned up like fire. So we do need to talk about this once in a while.

I've had a number of people tell me I gave this to Nashville. I always hate a sermon on the unpardonable sin. It always makes me uncomfortable. It's supposed to make you a little uncomfortable.

It's not supposed to drive us to despair. It's supposed to drive us to God. You understand?

It drives us to God. Well, I've got to do this, and I've got to do that. But first of all, no. We go back to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That still is there.

You know, once again, that's why this is never a license to keep sinning. We have to overcome sin.

It takes a lot of work, a lot of hard times, a lot of God working in us to do that. But that's the whole point. That's the process. They leave the process.

Second Peter 2. Peter approaches this from an interesting way, because he's dealing with a very specific problem that was happening in the church. And that is that there were people who were coming into the church and teaching people to commit the unpardonable sin.

They were teaching people to do things that would take them so far from God they wouldn't receive forgiveness anymore. You've already received the forgiveness. This is what Peter's deal with. People who had received it, and then the Holy Spirit, and this constant life of struggle, this constant life of learning, this constant life of growing. They gave it up. It was easier to do something else, and we'll see exactly what Peter says. Verse 18. For when they speak great swelling words of emptiness, they allure through the lust of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error. He says these are people who escaped the world, and now there's teachers that are taking them back into the world. Emptiness is just another word for vanity. It's meaninglessness. You know, if you follow a lot of the woke philosophy that is now infiltrated about half of Christianity and about half of the politics of this country, it's empty. There's an emptiness to it. There's nothing. They don't realize they end up in nothingness. That's why it ends up in violence. It ends up in mental breakdowns because it ends up in nothingness. But the word sounds so good. The word sounds so good.

But there's an emptiness in it. And in that emptiness, it says they allure them.

The Greek word there means to fish with bait.

Every once in a while you find a word in another language that says, wow, that's rather... it's graphic, right? Hebrew is very graphic. I don't know much Hebrew. Mr. Raines is taking a Greek class, so I'm going to ask him to teach me Greek. Do you have the alphabet down yet? Okay. Alpha, beta, gamma... Yeah, that's it. So, but this word, the fish with bait, you know, and they didn't use fishing rods back then, but this is what it's like. You're in the church and there's some person, and they're waiting for you to grab the bait, the... bring it in. And it's emptiness, but it sounds so good. And we're not thinking through what they're saying. Usually it's an emotional... some kind of emotional appeal, and it sounds so good. And in it is the lust of the flesh. In other words, God accepts you the way you are. It's okay.

It's okay. And they especially tie it into sexual issues. Love is love, right? And there's lots of churches. Lots of churches here in Nashville that love is love is a poster they have.

That means as long as sex is between two people who love each other, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter if there's six of them involved, as long as they love each other.

And through lewdness.

Ludeness means just freedom to do whatever you want. In fact, you look at verse 19.

While they promised them liberty, say, this is a freedom, God takes all the shackles off. Christ is...Christ didn't die for you. He came to show you that you're free. You have liberty.

By they promised them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption or depravity. That can be translated. For by whom a person is overcome, by him also is he brought into bondage.

He says, here's what happens. These people are leaving the faith and going back out into the world where they're worse off than when they began. They're worse off than when they came to the truth.

Verse 20, if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we're back to the knowledge of Lord Savior Jesus Christ. In other words, they've come to God through Christ, so they've been forgiven. The problem here is they're giving up this relationship of forgiveness. They're giving up a relationship of having God's Spirit. They're giving up a relationship where God gives us the ability and the power to keep struggling to where changed. They're giving all that up just to do what they want to do. They are again entangled in them and overcome. The latter end is worse for them than the beginning. For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than having known it to turn from the Holy Commandment delivered to them.

See, it's interesting. There's nothing in the Bible that talks about pagans like this because they don't know. They didn't have the opportunity. I just find that interesting. They're condemned, but there's nothing like this. This is for those who have it and say, no, this is better. They become convinced to give up everything, including Jesus Christ as Savior.

See, we don't think of that as the impartable sin, but if that's the only way to receive salvation, right? God supplies the propitiation to satisfy His justice.

We accept that. We repent. We understand that we're corrupted and receive His Spirit, and He then goes through this transformation process. That's the only way. The only way.

To say, I don't accept Christ as my Savior anymore because they don't need it, or to come up with, well, He just loves me so it doesn't matter, and to go back and be worse than you were before. This is what false teachers do. There's always going to be someone coming along telling you this. Always. And we have to realize the danger of that. This is a series of conscious choices.

It's not an event. A series of... Now, those choices might be, yes, I've decided to commit adultery, and I'm going to continue to commit adultery, and I'm not going to repent. And you never repent. And so then you also become a liar and a thief. See, you continue these choices. Until you get to the place where you no longer desire the forgiveness of God. You no longer accept the propitiation from God. And you'll just accept something like either God is cruel, and I don't believe in Him anyways, or Jesus understands. Both of those decisions, conscious decisions, take us away from this whole conversion salvation process. And that's where they end up. And I've had so many people say to me over the last 40 years, over 40 years, well, you know what? God just seems so cruel. God wouldn't punish me because of this. Besides, I don't believe He killed people and sought Him. No, my God doesn't do that. Or, you know, I believe in Jesus. Jesus loves me, and He accepts. He accepts me just the way I am. So I don't, I've decided the Sabbath is rather stupid, and I've decided that, you know, if lying and cheating makes me more successful, that's okay. That's just the way of the world. He doesn't judge me for that. Yeah, and they, both of these directions are very dangerous.

And we have to be aware of them. Let's go to Mark 3. What are we going to do for the Bible study? I actually want to, I want to talk a little bit about how do we get on these roads? How do you get on a road that you go from being accepted by God, forgiven by God, have God give you His Spirit, be involved with Him, and then end up down here worse off than before He called you?

How does that happen? So we'll talk a little bit about that in the Bible study. Mark 3.

Because this one really, it's a difficult set of verses, but it tells us something about choices. Mark 3.20.

Then the multitude came together again so they could not so much as eat bread. So Jesus is with His disciples, and there's so many people coming that they're sort of trapped in this place. They can't get out, and people come. They're not getting to eat. You know, they're not even getting the rest. As soon as they deal with a few people, other people come in, and it's just this crowd pressing on them all the time. Then I love this little verse, verse 21. But when His own people, that would have been Jesus's family, basically, when His own people heard about this, they went out to lay hold of Him, for He said He's out of His mind.

It's like, Jesus must be crazy. He's got to eat. I could hear Mary saying that, right? A mother?

What? She doesn't literally mean He's crazy, but you know what I mean? He can't do this. He'll get sick.

So the family's going to try to save Him out of that. And it says, And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, He has bells above, and by the ruler of the demons, He cast out demons. So what happens here is Jesus is now openly doing all kinds of miracles. He's healing people. I mean, miracles that have never been done before or since. I say, never been done. I mean, there's individual things that God does. He heals a person. He does this, He does that. But this was in mass, in public.

And He's doing it, and they can see Him do it. So He's growing just huge attention to Him. Crowds are coming. We know there were thousands, in some cases, coming just to see Him, because He could take a few glows of bread and make enough food for everybody to eat. Remember He even said to them, You just come because you want food. You're missing what I'm teaching. So there's incredible miracles that tens and tens of thousands of people are seeing.

So they decide He's doing this because He is under the power of Satan.

Now, He's preaching repentance before God. He's preaching the coming Kingdom of God. He talks about that. He's preaching about how to have a right relationship with God. He's quoting the Old Testament. Everything He's doing is righteous, and now these miracles have to be from God. And here's why He gets so upset with them, because He's casting out demons all over the place. And I see what he says, that's Satan. And he says, Satan doesn't do this.

This isn't what he does. This is what God does. He was the active Spirit of God among humanity. Remember that God's Spirit isn't a third person in a trinity. It's the power, the mind, the love of both the Father and the Son. The Spirit comes from both of them.

He is the active Spirit of God. God's doing these things through Him right there for everybody to see. And they're saying, that's Satan. And he's saying, you know better than that. And he gives them a grave warning in verse 23. Assuredly I say to you, all sins will be forgiven, the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they may utter. He said, God's going to forgive people when they repent.

It's a pretty big statement there. But you blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is rejected, subject to eternal condemnation, because they said He has an unclean spirit. Now this is real interesting. They didn't have God's spirit, but God worked with them, and they should have known the difference. This was not Satan. And he says, you're really close here to eternal judgment. He doesn't pass it. He doesn't say you're under eternal judgment, but he's telling them you're real close. When the power of God is manifest through the Son of God, and you know the Scriptures, and you say, that's Satan, he said that's a very serious thing to do. Once again, it's rejecting the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit, and it's rejecting Jesus as the Son of God.

And he says, you guys are real close to this.

So we see how this all fits together. Yes, there's sin involved, and sin is what gets to us and drags us away.

But it is a series of conscious decisions in sin that we eventually deny the power of God's Spirit in us, and we deny the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

As the only means to come into a relationship with God.

And that's unpardonable. You know why? Because you won't repent.

The great thing about the unpardonable sin, a person may say, right before they're put in the lake of fire, oh wait a minute, I'm sorry, but they're not. It's impossible to renew them again.

In other words, their will is so hardened. This is an issue of human will. Their will is so hardened, they will not repent. It's not my fault.

And God, you're not fair.

And they won't accept the fact that God will do this in them.

We have to believe God will do this in us.

We have to believe He's going to, in spite of us, as long as we keep submitting, as long as we keep praying, as long as we keep taking the punishment, right, taking the correction, just like the little kid. You can't do that anymore, right? We keep working, letting Him work in us. It is His power.

When we submit to His power, you can't commit the unpardonable sin.

The unpardonable sin.

You commit, we commit the unpardonable sin when we deny Him and the propitiation.

And then we can end up in a place we don't want to go.

Remember, after doing all this, why would God and Christ turn their back on us?

Why? We have to turn our back. And He will not. God says, okay, justice is what you'll get.

And He'll give us exactly what we deserve.

So He's not looking down on us, saying, I say looking down, He's around us all the time, we have God's Spirit in us, right? Yeah, that's a little scary when you think about that one.

He's in here. At least He doesn't know what we think. Oh, yeah, He does.

But He is not going to just easily give up on any of us.

But we can make the choice. He gives us that choice. That's why God says, I never, God promises to never leave us or forsake us. That's a promise. What happens is we get where we don't believe the promise, and we leave and forsake Him. That's that direction down the unpardonable sin. And Satan's always going to try to get us to think certain ways to head down that road. If we stay close to God, it cannot happen. So that's the great fear of the unpardonable sin, but that's the great positiveness. If we stay with God, it won't happen.

Now, it may be a difficult path because it's going to be. Conversion is a difficult path, but it won't happen because of Him. If it happens, it's because we choose it.