The Unpardonable Sin

The term unpardonable sin isn't directly from the Scripture, but there are scriptures that talk about or sins that God will not forgive. So what is that? What is a sin that God will not forgive? And many times, you know, people who are struggling to obey God, they want to obey God, they love God, but they just have so much guilt. They think they're lost. They think that they can't ever be renewed. Is there a sin that God won't forgive? Actually, there is.

Now, as we go through this and you start to realize what it is, you will begin to realize that you have not committed the unpardonable sin. And two, you'll realize you can't judge whether anybody else has committed the unpardonable sin, because the unpardonable sin isn't just an event. We'll look at that. So you can't just say, oh, that person, they went out and did this, that, or the other, and they haven't repented yet. They've committed the unpardonable sin. Well, we'll be able to define it today enough to look at what it really is and why we should know what it is, because we don't want to ever be in a place where we can commit the unpardonable sin, something that God actually will not forgive.

The basic starting point on this subject is the simple scripture in Romans 6, 3, where it says, for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

When you go through the subject of sin, and we're not going to go through just general sin today, we know that all sin separates us from God. All sin ends up in death. Every human being can live forever. Because of the effects of sin in our minds and our bodies, in who we are, we cannot separate ourselves from sin, and so we all die. But there is a remedy to this that God offers to us.

And it has to do with, of course, the acceptance of Jesus Christ as the penalty we deserve. So we accept Jesus Christ as the penalty we deserve, and we are forgiven, and then God comes into our lives. And it's one of the core messages of the gospel. So even though we are not yet perfect, right? None of us are perfect, God continues to work with us. And that's important to understand. People say, well, I've struggled with whatever, and I've been struggling with my drinking problem, and I haven't had a drink for a year, but the other day I wanted one so bad, and I thought, what's wrong with me?

And if I drink again, will that be the unpardonable sin? Well, let's ask other questions first. When you and I have children—let's just use this example—you have a child, and I remember this with our daughter, one of our daughters. She decided what everybody else had, if it looked nice, it was hers. She'd run over and take it away from people. Did not understand why everybody was upset. Hey, that doll looks nice. It's mine now, you know, and the other little girl's crying, right? And she didn't like it when people did that to her. Now, when she did that as a child, we pulled her aside, explained why she couldn't do that, made her give them back.

It took a few months to get her to work through that. She just worked—she could not understand why, especially if it was something a child left on the floor on their blanket. That means nobody owns it. It's mine. So she'd go pick it up, and it was hers. Now, in that process, we got a little frustrated with her because, like, you, you know, I mean, she's wee little, old enough that—I mean, she could—what was she? Maybe two, you know, so you could reason some.

But she could not get it. And then there had to be a little punishment involved, you know? And she struggled, struggled, and struggled. Now, in all that struggling, there's something that did not happen. Kim and I did not say, you know what? You should have figured this out by now. You're two years old.

You're not our daughter anymore. Right? We forget sometimes that before God were children, and very small, immature children, and He works with us. Now, if our daughter had grown up to do that at 20 years old, it would have been a real problem. First of all, she'd be in jail, right? But at that age, it's a constant training of teaching, sometimes some punishment, but you're working the child through and understanding that this is not morally correct. So God works with us that way. So we're children. He doesn't throw us away very easily. And the Bible is full of all kinds of cases where God has been very patient with people who did some really wrong things.

I mean, Abraham twice lied that his wife was his sister, and twice God had to intervene, or the entire plan of salvation would have had to take in a different route. Because Sarah wouldn't have been the mother of Isaac, right? Because she would have been in somebody's harem, and he kept stepping in. Now, he learned his lesson, and he didn't do it anymore.

But those are pretty big things. Those are pretty big sins to do, and yet God kept working with him. Paul gave permission to kill Christians. Now, that was before he was converted, but God forgave him for that. David committed adultery and murder after he received God's Spirit. Because in Psalm 51, he says, please don't take your Spirit away from him.

I mean, there's not much worse than that that you can do, right? Peter denied Jesus three times. Denied him completely. I don't know him. He's not my rabbi. He's not my Messiah. Yet, God was able to work through all three of them, and they didn't commit the unpardonable sin. And yet, there are sins that God will not forgive. And we have murder? I mean, what is it that God…what could it be that He won't forgive? All we know is that there is an eternal judgment on those who have committed the unpardonable sin. Revelation 21. So, there is something God will not forgive.

We have to be mindful of this, not because we're living in fear that God's just going to throw me away, but in the realization of what we can do to ourselves. Revelation 21.7.

We talk about all of us who have been called by God, have accepted Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, and have accepted that forgiveness, and then entered into this covenant with God that we're being transformed. We've received His Spirit. In that transformation, God says, I will make that transformation work as long as we're submitting to Him, as long as we're participating, following along. And this is what the promise is. But then verse 8 just sort of appears out of nowhere in all this positive statements, because verse 9 goes on and talks about God the Father coming to earth, the New Jerusalem coming to earth at the end of the millennium. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the abominable, the murderers, the sexually immoral, the sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake of fire, which, lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. We know that all people die.

Now, the only ones that won't suffer a physical death are those who are changed at Christ's return, where they're resurrected immediately from the state that they're in. All through history, all Christians die. But there's a second death. And we know that there's two resurrections, and at the end of the second resurrection, those who have committed the unpardonable sin will suffer the second death, which is the lake of fire, total annihilation.

So there is a second death. But you look through here. Well, God's... He's forgiven people that have been immoral. He's forgiven people that were idolaters. He's forgiven these things. So what about this list? And there's other lists. Paul makes lists that says these people will not repent. Why is it they... Because we've known people that have repented... You've repented of some of these things. You're here because you repented. So what is the problem? Why did they end up experiencing the second death? First of all, to answer that, we have to begin with the issue of what is our personal relationship with sin.

Sin is any action, any thought, any uncontrolled emotion that is against God's standards of righteousness. Now we say sin is the breaking of the law. That's true. But sin is actually more than that. Sin is more than just the breaking of the law. Because the breaking of the law, if you take the Ten Commandments, to break those Ten Commandments, something has had to happen inside of you first for that to happen. Sin took place inside of you to even do that. So sin is a very broad definition. But also we realize that we have become sin, that sin is part of our nature. And we have to understand that. Sin has become part of how we naturally are. We naturally have been influenced by Satan till we think in terms of sin. We don't think it's sin. We don't think selfishness is sin, but it is. So we have these tendencies to sin that's inside of us alone. So when we talk about sin, it's not just, okay, if you want salvation, keep the Sabbath, don't commit adultery, don't lie, don't worship idols, and that's it. No, it's not. But it's dealing with all levels of sin, because all levels of sin separates us from God. So when you repented, when you repented before God, and you said, I accept, I can't save myself, and not only do I do sin, I think sin, but sin is part of my nature, and I repent of it, and I want to be changed, and you accept a Jesus Christ as the one who takes your penalty for you. See, sometimes I've talked to lots of people, growing up in the church over the years, we have fifth generation Christians in the church of God, that have said, well, I don't want to get baptized, because if I do, I can lose my salvation. If I sin, I think, and I'll tell them, you've missed the whole point. If you don't get baptized, you're not forgiven of your sins. So you're still in your sins.

Oh, yeah. So you can't, if I baptize, I could lose my salvation. Now, the whole reason for being baptized and receiving God's Spirit is to be given the power to overcome sin. First, you're forgiven of sin, the power to overcome sin, the power to be transformed so that when Christ comes back, you can be changed. Now, nobody will be perfect in this life. Nobody will be perfect until you're changed. So we're going to be struggling with sin our whole lives, because nobody can obtain perfection, even with God's Spirit, while we're in this physical state. So we have to realize that. We have to realize that we can't reach that, but we always are growing towards it. We're always moving towards it, because we entered into a covenant with God at baptism that said to God, I accept your price for me, and I give my life to you.

And we entered into a covenant. When that happens, there is a profound change in your relationship to sin. Now, there's a profound change in your relationship to God, but there's a profound change in your relationship to sin. So let's go to 1 John 1.

Now, John's writing to the church here. He's writing to people that many of them have been baptized for years, because this is going out to all the churches. It's a general epistle, not to a specific church, and this is written towards the end of the century. So we have, this is about three generations after the death of Jesus Christ. John's a very old man, and here's what he tells the church. Verse 8, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Yeah, oh, okay. Well, no, we're coming out of sin. Well, no, I have no sin. I've been baptized. No. That's just the symbol of a covenant. Receiving His Spirit gives us the power now from God to be changed. And so this power is in us to be changed. Our relationship with sin is that our whole nature is being changed, so we no longer want the sin. We're learning to hate it. And so there's an internal struggle. People will come and say, I think I've committed the unpardonable sin because I have this terrible struggle within myself for the things I do. And I say, well, that's not the unpardonable sin. That's called being a Christian. There's an internal struggle. Now there's peace because of our relationship with God, but there's an internal struggle because we're trying to do what's right. We're trying to learn what's right. So he basically tells the church, any of you that think you have no sin, you're missing a point because no matter how much we've grown, there's still some sin in us. You say, well, I don't lie. I don't steal. I don't cheat. I'm better than 90% of the people in the congregation. Self-righteousness is a sin. There's a sin. He says, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So once we enter into this relationship with God, it changes our relationship with sin because we're forgiven, but now we have to overcome it. And now we have to change. A new nature has to be developed in us. We can continually go to God and receive that forgiveness. That forgiveness is available. So, you know, it's realistic to go before God every day and say, forgive me today of my sins. Forgive us of our trespasses. Remember Jesus? That's the model prayer. He didn't say, well, you have to stop after you're baptized. You don't have to pray that prayer anymore. Now we pray all the time, forgive me for my trespasses. Forgive me for today. I don't even know sometimes when I failed, right? You could all think about something you did that day that wasn't right, but then there's times you didn't even know you failed, that you didn't measure up to the standard of Christ. So we confess our sins. I continue on confessing. Now that's not a negative thing. Oh, I'm rotten. I'm terrible. Remember how we started this. You're a child in which God's saying, there's a lot of work to do here, child, and He's working with you. And as He does, and as He teaches you, you're going to keep finding there's things you have to grow up to be an adult, a spiritual adult. You have to grow up. You have to change. You have to stop certain behaviors. You have to stop the way you think sometimes. So He's constantly bringing us into this state of confession. Not to a priest, not to me, to God. And you go to God and you say, this is what I struggle with. This is what I'm dealing with. Help me. So He's talking to the church here. This is the way we are to... This is our relationship with sin. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. That's scary right there. That begins to sort of look at the unpardonable sin. It is a viewpoint about yourself that makes God a liar.

You know, I have no sin.

Verse 1 of chapter 2, My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. So the point is, you should be trying not to sin. He says, if we say we have no sin, we're wrong. We have to confess our sins. But we need to learn how not to sin. The whole life process as a Christian is learning how to love God, love our neighbor, and not do the negative, not do the bad, not do the harmful, do the good. That's what this all is. It's learning how to do the good and not the bad.

So He says, I hope when I'm trying to teach you here, John says, not to sin. And we have sermons about that all the time, about overcoming and growing and things we should do as a Christian. And He says, and if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. He says, but when you fall down, remember the relationship you have with God. Advocate is used in the English language to meet a defense attorney.

In Greek, it could mean it. It had different meanings, but one could, your legal advisor. Your legal defense attorney. So when we sin, we understand this relationship with God is, God holds us responsible for our sins. We go and Christ is there advocating for us. Yes, this is a child of your child. This is a child that has been forgiven. This is a child that has your spirit. Forgiveness is to be given. Now, he's not telling the God he needs to do that. He's trying to show how this works. You know, it's not like I'm telling you an exact conversation. It goes before Christ and the Father. I'm showing you how it works in principle. He advocates and God gives us forgiveness. Okay? That's our relationship. That's your relationship. When you mess up tomorrow and tomorrow night you go and you say, God, thank you for your forgiveness. Thank you for everything you've given to me today. I should not have got so angry that I lost my temper and screamed and yelled at my husband or my wife. I should have done that. It was wrong. And probably what will come into your mind is, then go apologize. God wants you to do something about it. God doesn't say, you're worthless. Don't come to me and pray. Okay? What he says is, go deal with this. Go take care of it. And I will forgive you. I forgive you. You receive the forgiveness. Once you receive forgiveness, you have the power to go deal with the consequences. If you don't receive forgiveness, you will not accept the consequences. When we are forgiven by God, we have the ability, the power from Him, to actually go deal with the consequences. So we receive that forgiveness, and we go deal with the issue that we've created. Verse 2, then, And he himself, Christ, is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. Now, not everybody accepts this forgiveness or stays in this forgiveness, but his sacrifice was for everybody. So everybody has the opportunity to receive this relationship with God. As I've mentioned before, I know every time I use the word propitiation, I have to tell you what it means in Greek because I just find it so fascinating. You know, propitiation was what it had a number of uses, but one was, it's what the pagans had to do to receive favor from the gods. So you'd have to make a sacrifice, you have to do a chant, you have to sing, maybe you have to cut yourself, you have to, in some of the most primitive pagan religions, you had to maybe sacrifice a baby, but, or sacrifice one of your enemies. And this was a way that the gods or the goddesses or whoever you were approaching, you would find favor. What's interesting here is that in the Greek world, it was something you had to do to get the gods to sort of like you.

What this word's turned upside down in the way the Christians use it, this is what God does so that he can like us. It's what God does. Christ is what is the propitiation so that we have favor with God. That's why we have to accept that sacrifice to receive total forgiveness. You cannot receive forgiveness from God unless you accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ because that is what justifies us. That is the acceptance of God because that's justice. You and I either have to pay with our own lives for eternity as justice, or we have to accept this propitiation that God does to satisfy His justice. I find that concept almost unbelievable. You can't, I can't sing, dance, sacrifice enough. We can't do anything that God says, okay, that's good enough, I forgive you because sin's part of us. So it's not just, we think of it only as events. The sin isn't just the event, it's part of us. So it's like, if I pray enough or I give enough money to the church, then I'll be forgiven, right? No! You can't pay your way into acceptance from God. But what do I do? You accept that He pays it for you. That's what we do. That's our relationship with sin. It comes down to, the only thing we have is that. Now, with God's Spirit then, because of that, our nature changes. We become better people. We eventually start to become righteous people, good people.

Excuse me. So, if God through Christ paid this terrible penalty for us, so that we could have a relationship with Him, because we lost that relationship with Him, because humanity got kicked out of Eden. It's this horrendous penalty that He did for us.

Why is it that He won't apply it to everybody under every situation?

Why is it that it just isn't card blanc? Oh, thank you. You believe in Jesus. That's it. But that's not what it says when we go through the Scriptures here. That's not what it says. So, let's go to Hebrews 6.

I know some of you think He never gets to the sermons that I ask the cover. So, I'm starting to catch up on some. Hebrews 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 work of God, and the powers of the age to come. Now, it's impossible for these people. And this is quite a list that explains. They were enlightened to the truth by the power of God. He's not talking about people who never knew God. Two, they tasted the heavenly gift of the favor of God through Christ. So, they understood and received forgiveness. They received the indwelling of God's Spirit, right? Become partakers of the Holy Spirit. They received knowledge of the Word of God. They understood the basic truths. And they received God's vision of the return of Christ and the kingdom of God, right? The powers of the age to come. So, this is what these people knew. They had already, their sins had been forgiven by God.

And they come into this relationship. Verse 6 says, if they fall away, we're going to have to explain what that means too, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God and put Him to an open shame.

In other words, Christ died for everybody once. He's not coming back to ever die again. So, this is now a whole other point that's come into this discussion. The unpardonable sin is an event. The unpardonable sin is something that changes inside that person permanently. Everybody can go through time periods where they're in rebellion against God, or they're caught up in some kind of sin. I mean, everybody can go through those kind of periods. This is a permanent change that they never returned from.

It would mean that they somehow would have to, Christ would have to die a second time for them, because they will accept His first. The unpardonable sin is a long series of things. It's not a singular thing. That's why I said you can never judge whether someone's committed to the unpardonable sin or not, because you don't know where they are on this continuum, because they guarantee your God doesn't throw people away.

So, because of this, it's impossible. And then verse 7 and 8 talks about how, in the end, they will be burned. They end up in the lake of fire. So, the sin that leads to spiritual death, the second death, is the single act. If that was true, when David had Uriah killed, he would have lost his salvation. He did not, although he was on the path to lose his salvation. If David would have continued on the path he was on, he would have lost his salvation. That's why he begs God, please don't take your spirit away from me. He saw what happened when God took his spirit away from Saul. Saul went insane, because it says God took his spirit from him. He went absolutely insane. So, David could see that. It took him a while. It took Nathan coming to see him after the adultery, after having the man killed, clear up to the point where the baby was being born. That's at least nine months. It was a long time. And God finally said, you have to turn around or where you're going is going to become at some point, you're not going to come back to him, to God. Like Saul moved away from God. And what's interesting is God didn't remove him from being the king, but he was no longer being led by God.

He had lost his mind. So, let's go to 2 Peter 2.

And let's look at verse 18.

This is speaking about false teachers that come into the church and teach people to turn around away from where they've been going. Now, this isn't just, sometimes we'll have a false teacher or someone will come up with an idea. They're not teaching heresy. They're just teaching something that's different. And it's wrong. I mean, we've all in the church I've been in, a church of God since I was seven years old, and I can list a pretty good list of things that we've taught that were wrong over that time period.

So teaching something or believing something wrong isn't equal and part of a sin.

But there is a mindset that forms and that mindset becomes something that a person moves so far away from God, they won't come back.

So these teachers, it says, verse 10, for they speak great swelling words of emptiness. Can be translated vanity, but it's just empty. The teachings seem so solid, so good, but they're just empty. And they allure through the lust of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error.

So they allure them. In Creak, that word means they use a bait. They actually use a bait. The bait comes out and the unknowing fish grabs the bait, and they bring them in. So what is the bait that they use? Well, we just saw one of them, emptiness. It appeals to vanity, it appeals to pride, and it leaves in emptiness. Once you get lost into pride, that's an empty place to be. Once you get lost into vanity, it's a very empty place to be. Also, verse 19 says, they promise them what says also lust of the flesh. So the allure is to physical things, money, sex, whatever. There's this allure, total sexual freedom, or total money. It's allure to physical things, and lewdness. Ludeness means to just act without restraints. I can do whatever I want, whenever I want. And so this is the bait, this emptiness. And in this emptiness, then, this vanity and this pride, the lust of the flesh, nothing but physical things and physical pleasures. And then, lewdness, freedom to do whatever I want, whenever I want.

And this is what he was seeing was happening there at that time to the church. Then verse 19 says, while they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption, for by whom a person is overcome, by whom he is also brought into bondage.

So what he says here is that they promise them freedom. You'll be free.

You'll be free from the restraints of this religion that won't let you be yourself. You'll be free from the inability to just think for yourself, do what you want. You'll be free. And they promise them freedom, but of course what happened? They become slaves of corruption. Or that word can actually be translated, depravity. They're slaves of depravity. They become slaves to the pride, slaves to the lust of the flesh, and slaves to the lewdness.

And they give up the power that God had given to them.

Because verse 20 says, for if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome. The latter is worse for them than the beginning. But as the point he's making is, but I want you to notice, it was through the work of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that they'd come out of that. Remember the other point was he won't be sacrificed a second time. Somehow people can get to the place and it's not an individual sin. And it's not drifting away from God. I've seen people drift from God and years later come back and say, I had no idea what happened to me, but I'm back. I've seen it. You know, that can happen. And it's like, where have you been? Where have you been? And suddenly, I don't know.

But in these cases, the person just goes and goes and goes and goes and goes and never, ever returns because they won't accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

This is really important because the whole Woke Jesus movement, which is now taken over close to 50% of the Protestant world, is that you don't need Jesus Christ's sacrifice for salvation.

All you need is to love God and love your neighbor like Jesus told you to do. And God would have never sacrificed him because that makes God a child abuser because he abused his son. I'm not making this up. I mean, I've watched the sermons. I've read the books. It's there. And this is a huge movement in this country. The denial of Jesus Christ.

Oh, they say they won't, they follow Jesus Christ, but they don't.

And it's affected everything in society. It is just bizarre how Christianity has changed. I mean, Christianity was already flawed, right? And now it's changed into something just bizarre. And unfortunately, it's getting control of so much of our political system. This country's headed in a really bad direction. And I don't know what it'll take to turn it around.

So here we see what happens. To end up in this state of mind here, where they just will not. Like I said, I've seen people years, years after going off come back and say, wow, I'm just so glad Scott's willing to forgive me. Ah, you get it. You'll be okay now. You get it. Now you can change. Now something can happen.

So it's a series of conscious decisions. And sometimes people give up on God because bad things happen. I understand that. We all struggle sometimes with faith because bad things are happening. But this is different than that too. Because people go through, all of you have gone through times where bad things happened. But somewhere along the way, God helped you recover with Him. Maybe He didn't help you with all the bad things that happened. In other words, other people or your illnesses or whatever. But you recovered in your relation with Him because He was using that in this human adventure we're on. He uses those things to keep our relationship right with Him. So this is a set of series of conscious decisions that one by one moves the person away from God. It's not unpardonable because God won't forgive.

It's unpardonable because they won't repent.

There's the great tragedy. It's not because God is somehow, oh, I only have enough grace to give. No, they won't repent and God will not ever take anything less than the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the penalty for sin. Nothing less than that because that's who He is. He poured out who He is for us and He won't accept anything less than that. And what happens with the unpardonable sin is the denigration or unacceptance of Jesus Christ as a Savior. And so there is no moving away from sin. Although what they'll do, they'll create another set of what is goodness. It's good to support LGBTQ because those are just marginal people loved by God and true Christians will support them.

You simply replace Jesus Christ with another set of goodness, quote, unquote. And what it does is it leads them into this lawlessness so they don't accept Jesus Christ.

So we understand that this isn't an event and it's not...

people can be in a process but not there. They can be in a process but not there. That's why we always pray. We always hope. And we never say, that person has committed the unpardonable sin. I mean, I can in terms of Saul and a few others in the Bible because it points them out. But I've never met anybody that I could say, I know they've committed the unpardonable sin because I don't know how what the end is. I only know the process and this process scares me. It does. It frightens me to see that process.

Remember, there's lots of people in the world that haven't committed the unpardonable sin because they never had the knowledge. They never had God's Spirit. They never had what we're talking about here. That's why Buddhists haven't committed the unpardonable sin yet. God never revealed himself to him. So they haven't committed the unpardonable sin. Now, they still may when God reveals himself to him. When Christ comes back and reveals himself to, will all Buddhists repent? I don't know.

I tend to think it'll be pretty easy to repent when crazes come back, right?

But that's what I'm saying. We can't say they're all going to the lake of fire. Our understanding of the second resurrection is so profound in this that all those who never knew Christ get a chance to know. And if they don't accept it, and they don't repent, and they don't receive God's Spirit, they don't get to be part of the family. They suffer a second death. But to know, I saw a Calvinist minister just in the last year, a sermon he gave that said that I think it was 96% of all people are going to hell to be tortured forever. I don't know how he came up with 96%, but he hit it down that many. I think, wow.

So we know that some people end up like a fire, but we don't know. We can't judge who is, except the few that we know in the scripture. So let's go from the last scripture to Mark 3.

That's why we always pray for people, hopefully hoping that somewhere along the line, God brings them back to Him.

When you say, well, bring them back to the church. That's not what we're praying for. We're praying, God, bring that person back to you where Christ is accepted. Christ is seen as the reason that they can go to God. Once that happens, and once they say, I need that sacrifice for me, things can now change. Things can now change. Mark 3, verse 20.

Jesus and the apostles are together. The verses before this. Then the multitude came together again so they could not so much as eat bread. So Jesus is there with His disciples.

There's so many people, they don't even get to eat. They're missing meals.

So they're just together. They don't get to rest. There's people constantly coming in to see Him. Verse 21, but when His own people, His own people would have been His family. So when His own people heard about this, they went out to lay hold of Him, for they said He's out of His mind. He's not rest, I can imagine. So Jesus, He hasn't slept in two days. He hasn't eaten anything in two days. All these people in the family is like, okay, get together. We got to go drag Him out of that place and bring Him home. Mary's saying, I'll cook Him up a good meal. He can't do this. So His family says, we got to go get Him. But something else is happening. Verse 21 is just a verse to me that just shows humanity. His family is like, He can't do this. We got to get Him out of there. He's lost His mind. He's going to collapse out there.

So verse 22.

So the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, He has Belzebub. And by the ruler of the demons, He cast out demons. So He called them to Himself and said to them in parables, how can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, the kingdom cannot stand. So He talks to them about, they say He's demon possessed. Now remember, at this point, He's just doing all kinds of miracles. People are being healed. People are being raised from the dead. The blind are being able to see. People's leprosy, it's gone. I mean, they're just miracle after miracle after miracle. Things that Satan does not do. See, things that demons don't do.

And their conclusion is, it's Satan doing this. And so verse 27 says, He finally says to them, No one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man and then he will plunder his house. He says, I'm doing this in Satan's world only because I have control over Satan. Satan can't stop me.

Now, God would take his hands off and He would give up His life. He had to let Satan take His life because He even said, No one takes my life. I give my life up. So He said, Look, how do you think this is happening? It's happening because Satan's bound by me, not because he's doing this. But he makes a very important statement here. Assuredly I say to you, and this is in context of all that we've read, all sins will be forgiven, the sons of men, and whatever blasphemes they may utter. He says, God wants to forgive everyone their sins, and even when they blaspheme. But he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal damnation, because they said he has an unclean spirit. This is a little frightening. He's saying about these religious leaders who know better. Some of them said he is the Christ. They know better. Now, they don't have God's Spirit in them, but they're seeing the power of God's Spirit through Christ on earth as prophesied, and said, ah, that's not the Holy Spirit in him. That's Satan. And he said, be real careful.

Be real careful, because God won't forgive those who take his power and say, that's of Satan, which is what's going to happen at the end time. When the beast and false prophet claim that the two witnesses are satanic, and they're be doing things through the power of God. The two of them are going to say, that's satanic. We know they're not forgiven. The beast and false prophet will commit the unpartable sin because they're throwing it like a fire. Once again, it's this, it's, it's, people didn't understand God's Spirit working through Jesus all the time, but it was the saying. No, no, that's Satan. I know God so well, the Son of God is actually Satan. And he really warns them about that.

So once again, I don't know where that line is on that one. But that's a, he makes a definite line there.

And it has to do with the Holy Spirit.

The average Jew didn't have God's Spirit. They were confused by the whole thing. But he's looking at these religious leaders and saying, you know better.

Be real careful. It's a, it's a warning. It's a warning to us. So the impartable sin, the impartable sin is a worry. It doesn't have to be. Now I want to talk a little bit about this in the Bible study, about worrying about it. And yet at the same time, we can't ignore it. We can't ignore it. Remember, God desires to forgive you, or He would have never sent Christ to die for you. He wants you to have a personal relationship with you. God initiated a relationship with you. You and I did not initiate a relationship with Him. That shows you His desire. He did it. Not you, not me. We didn't say, God, here I am. He initiated it. He negated the eternal death penalty. He's told you, after you entered into that covenant and received His Spirit, that with His Spirit, and you should maintain the course, I will take away from you the eternal death penalty. He already told you that.

So why would He turn His back on us? Because we give up that relationship with Him, and we give up the idea that Jesus Christ is the way that God reconciled us to Him.

And in doing that, we can commit any sin. I mean, once you go down that path far enough, there's no sin, practically, that you can't condone, even if you don't commit it. You condone almost anything. Remember, God promises to never leave or forsake us.

He's going to do that, and He will suffer. He will suffer to hold on to people.

But there is a point where a person will not accept that, and it reaches a point that they could get to the place. They won't repent. And then at that point, their sin is not forgiven by God. So that's what the unpardonable sin is.