This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

This is day three together of our look through Matthew chapter 12, and we saw
yesterday that this is a chapter that answers some of our strongest questions.
Yesterday, why didn't Jesus let everyone tell about His healing? And today, what
about the unforgivable sin?

What does the Bible have to say about that? Well Jesus talked about it in verses
22, down all the way through verse 32. Let me read all of those verses.

Let's get these verses in mind, and then we can look together at what Jesus'
teaching is about the unforgivable sin. So starting in verse 22, "Then they
brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him,
so that he could both talk and see. All the people were astonished, and they
said, 'Could this be the son of David?

' But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, 'It is only by Beelzebub, the
prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons. ' Jesus knew their
thoughts and said to them, 'Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined,
and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan
drives out Satan, he is divided against himself.

How can his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do
your people drive them out? So then they will be your judges.

But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come
upon you. '" Or again, "How can anyone enter a strong man's house and carry off
his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can rob his
house.

He who is not with me is against me; he who does not gather with me scatters.
And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the
blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word
against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy
Spirit will not be forgiven.

Either in this age or in the age to come. " What is Jesus talking about here?
How do we understand this?

I want to give today understanding of this difficult passage, both for you and
for people that you might be able to share this with, because for many people
this is a depressing and defeating and confusing passage. So let's walk through
this passage using just some simple rules of Bible study to help us to
understand what Jesus is talking about here. Now there's some questions we have
at the beginning.

What is this blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? What does it mean? And I know
that these questions can be very personal for many people.

I remember just recently a young man, John, called me on the phone and I didn't
know him. He just called in for some help with the church and he said, "I don't
think I can ever be saved. " And I said, "Why don't you think you can be saved?

" He said, "Because a year ago I was sitting in my room and I swore and I said,
'I hate you Holy Spirit. ' And because I blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, I
can't ever be saved. " That's a lot of confusion about what God's doing in our
lives.

It's a lot of confusion about what this passage means. And so we've got to clear
up that confusion. Can I commit this sin?

How do I give assurance to somebody like John who falsely believes that they've
committed this sin? How can I give truth to someone who actually may be on the
edge of committing this sin? Well, we're going to walk through just some basic
rules of Bible study with this passage.

Let me show you what this means, this blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. One
rule of Bible study you have to be aware of is that scripture always best
explains scripture. So if you want to understand a scripture, you go to other
scriptures.

And there's many that we could go to, but let me just go to a few here because
we only have a few minutes together. What does the Bible say about blasphemy,
for instance? Well, 1 Timothy 1.

13, Paul said, "Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a
violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. " So
blasphemy, you see from that passage, blasphemy itself is not the unforgivable
sin. It's blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

In fact, Jesus in the passage, he just said all blasphemies will be forgiven.
Paul says he was a blasphemer, but he's forgiven. He was obviously a Christian.

So it's blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. What does the Bible say about the
Holy Spirit? There are many verses we could look at, but there's one passage
over in John 16, 8 to 9 that's very important to understand with what Jesus is
teaching here.

That passage, Jesus said, "When the helper comes, the Holy Spirit, he will prove
to the world, the people of the world, the truth about sin, about being right
with God, and about judgment. He will prove to them that sin is not believing in
me. " This may be the key verse to unlock our understanding of what Jesus is
talking about here.

The Spirit's work is to prove or to convict the world of the fact that we need
God. We need Jesus. So if you reject the Spirit's work, you're rejecting the
work that's going to get you to the place of forgiveness.

This is why Jesus said to sin against him, that would be forgiven, but not
against the Spirit, because it's the Spirit that leads us to him. He's the one
who's working in the life of an unbeliever, the Holy Spirit. So if you
blaspheme, if you reject the work of the Holy Spirit, then you reject the
opportunity.

If you blaspheme against the Son, the Spirit remains, but if you blaspheme
against the Spirit, you are holding out the work of the Son in your life. So
scripture best explains scripture. That gets us towards an understanding.

A second rule of Bible study helps us to understand, and that is you always
understand unclear passages in the light of clear passages. People love to take
a scripture like this, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and make up all kinds
of things of what it could mean. Totally ignoring many clear passages in the
scripture, because it's a difficult passage to understand.

You can easily attach your own ideas to it, and then say, "This is what it
means. " Well, no, that's not what it means. That's your idea.

You're just trying to attach to it. You're not trying to really understand it.
To understand it, you've got to go to the easily understood scriptures, and know
that scriptures are always going to agree with each other.

For instance, John 3. 16, "God so loved the world that he gave his one and only
Son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. " The
idea that you could somehow commit this blasphemy, and later want to believe in
Jesus, but God would say, "Oh, I'm sorry, you can't believe because you
committed that sin.

" No, whoever believes will not perish. That's extremely clear. Only one of
those scriptures, this is only one of many, many scriptures that clearly teaches
that.

John 10. 28, "Jesus said of believers, 'I give them eternal life, and they shall
never perish, and no one can snatch them out of my hand. '" Some people think,
"Well, maybe after you're a believer you can do something against the Holy
Spirit, and now God will reject you, and you can never be saved again.

" But Jesus promised, "The minute you're saved, you have security in my
salvation. I give you eternal life. " So if you're truly saved, you are truly
secure.

Now this answers one of the common questions about this blasphemy against the
Holy Spirit, this unforgivable sin. I often have people ask me, "Isn't suicide
the unforgivable sin? " Well, it doesn't say that in the Bible.

It does say that all sin is forgiven the moment you come to know Christ. Your
past sin, your present sin, your future sin. Now suicide is short-circuiting the
plan of God.

Suicide is missing out on the rewards of God. It is keeping God at arm's length
in your life. It is a horrific sin, but it is not the unforgivable sin.

The idea that it's the unforgivable sin comes from the idea that you have to
confess all your sins right before you die in order to be able to get to heaven.
Well, that doesn't make any sense when you think about it because many, many,
many things in life keep us from confessing all our sins the moment before we
die. So it is not suicide.

It is some action against the Holy Spirit. Now let's go a little deeper into
this. Another rule of Bible study is that you understand words and verses in
light of their context.

So you can't just look at what Jesus said about the unforgivable sin here. You
have to look at the context. And the context is these Pharisees who are saying
Jesus heals.

He drives out demons by the power of Beelzebub, by Satan's power. Here's God in
human flesh in front of them and they're calling him Satan. They're calling God
Satan.

They have a serious failure to see what God is at work on in the world. They
were looking at God incarnate and they were calling him Satan incarnate. This is
not about someone who angrily says a swear word to God in a prayer.

This is about totally rejecting the work and person of God in your life. Now
there's a very simple test for you and others, by the way. People say, "Have I
committed this blasphemy against the Holy Spirit?

" I always say to people, "If you're asking that question, you have not
committed that sin. " If you'd committed this sin, you wouldn't be asking a
pastor that question. You wouldn't be thinking about spiritual things.

You wouldn't be thinking about God at all. You wouldn't be concerned one bit
about your spiritual life. So when you look at the Pharisees here, you see
there's a very, very serious line that they've crossed.

But they cannot see God's work anymore. They've rejected the Spirit's work in
their life. They have no spiritual sensitivity left because they reject it again
and again and again.

I can't know when that's happened in someone's life. You can't know when that's
happened in someone's life. Only God can know that.

But He warns us against it, that it can't happen. A fourth law of Bible study is
that you understand personal experience in light of Scripture. And I put that
one in because sometimes I'll have people say to me, "Well, I know a guy who
read this verse as a believer about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and it so
frightened him that it turned his life around.

" So maybe it is something for believers. No, no, you can't let your personal
experience be imposed on the Scripture. I mean, if I said to you, "I know a guy
who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and he lived through it, and he turned his
life around because of it," you wouldn't give anybody the advice to jump off the
Golden Gate Bridge because of that.

You can't read back into Scripture based on your personal experience. I'm glad
God did that in that person's life, but it doesn't change the truth that you're
secure in Him. There's a fifth rule of Bible study, and that is the primary
purpose of the Bible is to change our lives.

The primary purpose of the Bible is not to argue about what this means, but to
look at What does it say about how I'm to change my life? And there's three
things, just very briefly, that I hear in this warning that Jesus gives. Number
one, my life changes when I understand the seriousness of my sin.

I never want to get past understanding that. God is gracious with our sin, but
He's also serious about sin. If I could get a glimpse of sin as God sees it, I
would see why He's so serious about it, how destructive, how horrific it really
is.

And sin can keep me from God's presence forever. So my life changes when I
understand the seriousness of my sin. A second truth in this passage for me is
that my life changes when I understand the security of my salvation.

That when the Holy Spirit speaks to me and I listen to the Holy Spirit and I
turn my life over to Jesus, I have gone past this line to a different place in
my life where I'm living in His love. So you live in that security. But then,
and probably most powerfully in this passage for me, my life changes when I
understand the power of God's Spirit.

Before I was a believer, the power of God's Spirit is, even though I didn't know
it, is what led me to know Jesus Christ. And to reject His power would have been
to be lost. Now that I am a believer, and once you become a believer, to live
without His power is to live a wasted life.

To live without His power is to live a life that misses the point of what God
put you on this planet to do, because you need the Spirit's power in your life.
The opposite of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is being filled with the Holy
Spirit. That is the life that God means for us to live.

Not holding the Spirit out of our lives, but inviting the Spirit into our life
to do God's work in our lives. Let's take a minute to pray together for that
very thing today. Lord, we pray that first You'd help us to teach someone these
truths we've just looked to encourage someone, to encourage someone to see the
seriousness of their sin, but also to see the love that You have for them.

Satan tries to twist these words sometimes to scare people that they could never
be saved. Help us to encourage someone, Lord, today that Your love is reaching
out to them, whether it's an issue of this verse or anything else in their
lives. And then in our own lives, Lord, help us to live in the power of Your
Spirit today, trusting You, knowing that You want to work through us.

Thank You that You love us as we are, but You're also growing us to be all that
You want us to be. And help us to rejoice in what You're doing in our lives
today, we pray, in Your name. Amen.

Tomorrow, we're going to talk together about the power of Your words.