All right, well, welcome back. So good to see you all again.
Thanks for making it out on a snowy Sunday.
And if you're watching online, welcome to you.
So grateful that you're here. And we want to invite you to
come be with us in person at 115 E Main Street, right here in the
historic old part of Gaylord. All right, if you have your
Bibles, please take and turn them to the New Testament to 1st
Corinthians chapter 2. And this is going to be like 95%
through your Bible. It's pretty far to the back
after the letter to the Romans and before 2nd Corinthians.
So this is First Corinthians chapter 2 and this is by the
Apostle Paul written to the church at Corinth in the ancient
world. All right.
And this is by the way, just to give you context.
A lot of times I want to give context, right?
And so say this is this is after Jesus has lived and died and was
crucified and then was resurrected.
So this is the time of the early church.
OK, So Jesus has ascended back to heaven and now the early
church is exploding. And you can read about these
churches in the book of Acts. OK, so this is the Apostle Paul
and he writes to the church. He says in verse 12, now we have
received not the Spirit of the world's, but the Spirit who is
from God. And what is the Spirit from God?
Well, the Spirit from God is the Holy Spirit that we might
understand the things freely given to us by God.
We've been given the Holy Spirit so that we can understand the
things have been freely given by God.
So I want to start this morning by just building a foundation to
say that understanding is good. We want to grow to understand
Scripture, understand the Bible. We want to lifelong be getting
better and better at walking in God's truth.
So he establishes that we've been given the Spirit, not the
spirit of the world, but the Spirit of God so that we can
have greater understanding. And then in verse 13, it says,
and we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but
taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truth to
those who are spiritual. Now watch.
I want to just set up this today's message by just saying
that at church, this is what we're doing.
We're imparting in words not taught by human wisdom.
So I don't want to just come to this morning with human wisdom
because that would be empty. I want to come trusting that the
Holy Spirit is our teacher and that the Holy Spirit can shed
light on Scripture today in such a way where you grow and you
have a greater understanding and you're able to go articulate
that to your loved ones and to friends.
You say, hey, have we not been given the Spirit of the world,
but the Spirit of God so that we can have understanding.
And it's not just human wisdom, but instead it's wisdom taught
by the Spirit interpreting spiritual truths to those who
are spiritual. That's what we want to do today.
We want to interpret spiritual truths to those of you who are
spiritual. And you might not consider
yourself super spiritual, but you're in church.
So yes, you are spiritual this morning.
OK, so this morning, in light of this, I want to talk to you
about we, as we continue to talk about the Holy Spirit this
morning I'm going to talk to you about grieving, quenching and
blaspheming the Holy Spirit. And this is going to be a lot to
navigate through, but we're going to do it.
And I'm going to pray this morning in light of this passage
in First Corinthians 2 or First Corinth.
Yeah, First Corinthians 2. And I want to, as an example,
set this up where you can go, hey, you could pray like this
also. When you read Scripture, you can
read a passage and then you can just like turn it into a prayer,
which is what I'm going to do here in the prayer, even that
I've written in your notes. So God, we come to you this
morning and we say, Holy Spirit, teach us that we might
understand things freely given by God, not just by human
wisdom, but Holy Spirit, help us to interpret spiritual truths.
We are spiritual people. We want to walk in light of your
truth and be Spirit filled. And so bring us wisdom beyond
this mere man's wisdom. We're hungry and we're ready in
Jesus name and everyone loudly said Amen.
Now this morning, I just want to remind you that so this is the
fifth week that we've been in this series where we're
wrestling through well, who is the Holy Spirit?
What are his attributes? What is he like?
Where did he show up in the Old Testament and the New Testament?
Where was this spirit poured out?
So I, I don't want to get into the trap of each week repeating
at great length of messages in the back that we've done, but I
do encourage you to go back and maybe you can find those
messages on YouTube or Facebook or Audible.
They're everywhere. Everywhere you podcast, you can
get those messages, especially if you missed one.
Because I'm really trying to be very strategic in how I get to
the end of the series. And I want when I get to the
end, we're going to talk at length about the gifts of the
Holy Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit.
OK, But I want to I want to build a big foundation that is
solid in order for now, now to have a, a balanced approach to
flowing in the gifts of the Spirit.
And this morning's message particularly is going to be
really several things are going to be like, OK, this is building
up when we think about grieving and quenching and blaspheming
the Holy Spirit. Well, I think it's great to have
a good understanding of what those mean before we delve into
really going after the gifts of the Spirit.
OK, so I'm going to unpack those three ideas.
And I must tell you this morning, the worst team, we
always pray appear on the platform before rehearsal.
And I asked the worship team, and I'll ask you this question
too. Do you know what the
unpardonable sin is? Have you?
In fact, it's either it's the unforgivable sin or the
unpardonable sin. How many of you have heard of
the unpardonable sin before? OK, How many of you never heard
of that? There is an unpardonable sin.
Wave it. And if you've never heard it,
OK, Several of you. OK, Good.
All right. So in Scripture, there's an
unpardonable sin. And I must say that growing up
in the church, sometimes you'd hear people reference this
unpardonable sin. And this is mysterious sin, it
seems, and be like, Oh no, I hope I didn't do it because if
it's unpardonable, then I can't be forgiven of it.
And that's a scary place to be. So I'm going to go through
grieving and quenching and blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
And I really want to have a great understanding of how
they're uniquely different. I asked the worship team today,
what is the unpardonable sin? And some of them said grieving,
and some of them said blaspheming.
And I will tell you it is blaspheming.
Blaspheming the Holy Spirit, according to Jesus, is an
unforgivable sin. But what does blasphemy the Holy
Spirit look like? Is it simply disobeying one of
the 10 commandments? Is it disobeying other commands
in Scripture? Is it ignoring the conviction
that the Holy Spirit can bring? Well, I'll tell you when we get
to the end. I'll build up to it.
But but it according to Jesus, it is the unforgivable sin.
So it was interesting to ask the worship team this morning.
And again, it's blaspheming, but some thought it was maybe some
of the others. So I want to start first, I want
to unpack this idea of grieving the Holy Spirit.
Did you know that according to Scripture it's possible to
grieve the Spirit of God, which is a really profound truth.
So we read about this in Ephesians chapter 4.
The apostle Paul writes, Let no corrupting talk come out of your
mouth, but only such is as good for building up as fits the
occasion that it may give grace to those who hear and do not
grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you were sealed for the day of
redemption. Now watch says don't grieve the
Holy Spirit. You have been sealed.
You have God's brand on you when you come to Christ, you were
branded. You're you've got that.
You know the seal like you know in a grocery store jars,
something's like that's who you belong to.
OK, You're of God's family now. So he's not saying don't grieve
the Holy Spirit or you get kicked out of the family of God.
No, you're sealed and God's family, but you can grieve God.
And according to you know the word that the apostle Paul is
using here for grieve, It's the Greek word lipeo.
And it means to distress reflexively or passively, to be
sad, to cause grief, grieve, be in heaviness, sorrow or sorry.
Now here's one of the things that's so beautiful to me about
God and the Holy Spirit, and it's true of Jesus also, is that
God who is all powerful, omnipresent, omniscient, he
knows everything. He's in control of all things
God. He's there's nothing comparing
to him. And yet God puts on human skin
in 2007 years ago, he comes to earth and he is born in
Bethlehem. And Jesus, God becomes
vulnerable. He comes as a baby.
There's nothing more vulnerable than a baby that has to be taken
care of. And even in the Old Testament,
God would. God would take risks with his
people, and often he would get betrayed and hurt and saddened.
And so Jesus comes. He's vulnerable, and so he lives
among us, and he is hurt. He's betrayed.
Think about it. Jesus leaves in his inner circle
Judas. Judas is there, right, stealing
the money. How does he steal the money?
But because Jesus put him in a place where he could be trusted,
and so he's Jesus makes himself vulnerable.
He can be hurt. And this is true of the Holy
Spirit. You and I have the ability to
sadden the heart of God. And again, to me that shows so
much about the character of God, how God is.
I mean, God is willing because you might think, Oh, God's up
there on his throne with the big long white beard and the big
staff. He's going to ZAP you with
lightning bolt or something. If you if you get out of light,
it's like, Nah, instead, when we do these things like corrupt
that no corrupting talk come out of your mouth only such as good,
like when we have corrupt talk or other things that I'll get to
it like it saddens God. And so when we live in light of
the idea, it's like, wow, I could sadden God doesn't make me
powerful. It makes God more powerful.
And the type of God that I want to be close to and I want to
love because it's like, wow, God, you've set this
relationship up where I can disappoint you.
You're not guarded. Instead, God, you're open, Holy
Spirit, you're open to being near me and dwelling in me.
But if I do things that are ungodly, then I can sadden the
heart of God. So Jesus made himself
vulnerable. Now watch.
He's going to go on and he's going to talk about, OK, what
are the things sadden or grieve the heart of God?
Ephesians 4 now 31 and 32 it says let all bitterness and
wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you all
along with all malice and be kind to one another.
Be tender hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave
you. What he's contrasting here that
we can grieve sad in the heart of God by again, bitterness and
wrath and anger and clamor and slander, or we can delight the
heart of God by being kind to one another and tender hearted,
forgiving one another as Christ forgave us.
So I want to be the type of person that doesn't grieve the
heart of God. I want our church to be the type
of church that doesn't grieve the heart of God.
And knowing that Scripture says we have that ability, I think
again shapes the relationship that we have with the Holy
Spirit because He dwells in US and He dwells in US in such a
way where He has interest in our lives.
God has interest in you. He knows the hairs on your head.
He wants to be close to you. And him being close to us means
that He gives us the ability to sadden or grieve His heart.
So that's the idea of grieving. But what about quenching?
What does it mean to quench the Holy Spirit?
I'm going to read you a pretty long passage, so stick with me
on this. But I want you to see the
context of where Paul to the church at Thessalonica talks
about now quenching the Holy Spirit.
And he says this like he was saying before, it's like he's
got, he's winding down his letter.
Paul often had a way of seeming like he was going to end this
letter and then he restarts up again.
But so it feels like his blessing, like his benediction,
but he's gonna list a whole bunch of encouragements, OK.
And watching encouragements. We ask you, brothers and
sisters, to respect those who labour among you and are over
you and the Lord and admonish you and esteem them very highly
and love because of their work. Be at peace among yourself.
So here, interestingly, if he's talking about, you know, those
who serve among you this morning, we have volunteers, we
have staff and they're serving you and the wanting to lead you
to greater depths in the Lord. And so he's saying, you know, to
respect those OK who labor among you.
They labor among you, not over you, but among you.
And he says, be at peace with yourselves, among yourselves.
And then he says, so this is like the church.
Hey church, be at peace with each other and admonish,
appreciate those who serve. And then he says, and we urge
you, brothers, admonish the idol.
Well, not the idol, like idol, but idol.
In other words, people that are lazy, they're just idle, they're
going nowhere, maybe spiritually right in their life.
So he's like, we urge you to admonish the idol, OK, and
encourage the faint hearted and help the weak and be patient
with them all. So these are just like random
encouragements, OK? Random encouragements.
As he's winding down his letter, he says, see that no one repays
anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another
and to everyone. So admonish, encourage, help.
And then he says rejoice always. This is a big command, and pray
without ceasing and give thanks in all circumstances, for this
is the will of God in Christ Jesus in you.
And then he gets to the idea of quenching the Holy Spirit and
he's going to say three things. He's going to say do not quench
the Spirit, do not quench the Holy Spirit, and do not despise
prophecies, but test everything. Hold fast what is good.
So he's giving it, if you will, a bunch of practical
encouragement on how we should behave with each other.
And then he gets the sight of do not quench the Holy Spirit.
Now then he's going to go on verse 22.
I'll get back to what quenching means.
But he says abstain from every form of evil.
Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely and may
your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. So all of us, He wants it to be
blameless in the sight. Now he says don't unwatch the
order here. He says don't quench, don't
despise prophecy, but test everything.
OK, well what does quenching mean?
Well, the Greek word here is too hard for me to say, but it's
like some Benny me or something like this.
And it's a prolonged form or apparently a primary verb to
communicate extinguishing something.
If you went and got a fire extinguisher and there was a
fire and the Holy Spirit is portrayed as fire in the Bible.
It's the fire of God on the day of Pentecost.
He came down with like fire on their tongues.
And Paul is saying don't extinguish, don't quench, don't
put out the Holy Spirit, the fire of the Holy Spirit.
And this is a curious idea. So on the one hand, you can
grieve the Holy Spirit. These are things that we can do
to the Holy Spirit. We can grieve sad in the heart
of God, and now we can quench. It's possible for us to quench
the Spirit of God. God gives us that much authority
and power. That seems odd.
God, who is all powerful, He's giving us the ability to
extinguish what he wants to do. Now, how are grieving and
quenching different? Well, grieving seems to be about
the feelings of God. God has feelings.
OK, God has feelings. And, and I wonder, like for
couples, how many of how many of you admit as a couple that maybe
one of the maybe one of the two of you is more sensitive than
the other? Anybody in your marriage, in
your relationships, some of you are pointing to your spouse,
Pokémon. It's like I must submit.
Jason's not in the room right now.
I think she's up with the high school kids.
But I'm I'm kind of I'm kind of the more sensitive one and
asking the first services that that was true.
And she said, well, about some things.
But I will tell you this. I get my feelings hurt easier
and I'll just tell you that. And even by her, sometimes it's
like that hurt my feelings. And she's like, come on, are you
really like yeah, right. So what's interesting is that
that in me is not a strength, but when it comes to God, it's a
it is a strength that God permits and allows us to have
the ability to, if you will. This is not condescending God or
the Holy Spirit. It's what the Scripture says
that God gives us the ability to grieve him and to quench.
So we're grieving is more about feelings and saddening of God.
Well, quenching is more again about quenching, extinguishing,
stopping the workings of the Holy Spirit.
And some people quench the works of the Holy Spirit in our lives
and our churches and our relationships.
And Paul saying, don't do that. If anything, you should fan the
flame of what God is doing in our lives through the Holy
Spirit. We have the ability and power to
do that also. So I'm going and I want you to
get the progression of this because this is, and I want to
really unpack this in a way where you you get this because
it's important where we're going in the weeks to come.
OK, so when Paul says do not quench and do not despise
prophecy. And then he says, but test
everything. There's a real order here and
it's being missed by a lot of people that are Christians
today. And I want this is track with me
here. There are two camps within the
Church of Christians who love God and who mean well and are
often highly educated and well versed in Scripture.
And these two camps are what we call the cessationist and the
continuationist. OK, now the cessationist, they
and their churches in our town, I have friends that are
cessationist and what do they believe?
They believe that the gifts, the supernatural gifts of the Holy
Spirit ceased when the Bible was completed and when the apostles
died. So they're cessationist.
They believe there are really no miraculous gifts going on
anymore, OK? And these people love Jesus and
they're well versed in Scripture and they've wrestled through and
that's where they come. There's another camp that I land
in and our church lands in and that is we are continuationist
and we believe that the gifts of the Spirit, the supernatural
gifts of God, the miraculous gifts of God are still available
to us today. OK, now where both of these can
get, I think you know, often with when it comes to
cessationist or continuationist or Calvinist and Armenian, it's
like often like we have a lot of agreement and it's the abuses of
each thought that is the glaring one.
OK, now cessationist would argue that this idea of prophecy, they
would say that when Scripture also when it was completed that
everything that God was going to say, he said everything that you
need to know about God is in Scripture.
And I believe they're right, but there are some Christian
traditions that they chase after prophecy.
They don't read their Bibles, they don't preach the Bible.
They get together and they have meetings where they prophecy.
And what does that mean? Well, they just make up stuff
that they and they say thus saith the Lord.
This is what God is saying. Thus, thus thus saith the Lord.
And when they say that, it makes it sound like it's equal to the
Bible. So the cessationist would argue
and say, man, you are, you are belittling the Bible when you
talk that way, right? So you're belittling Scripture.
You don't have a high view of scripture, would say the
cessationist, the continuationist would say, man,
you say that God totally stopped speaking, but God still is
speaking through the gifts of the Spirit.
So God can use words of discernment and words of
knowledge and wisdom. God can speak to us
supernaturally through each other.
So we believe, you know, now how far apart are they?
Well, I mean, it depends on how what stringent you want to be
about this. But so the cessationist, the
gifts have ceased. The continuationist know the
gifts are still available. The problem also with the
continuationist, which I am, but the problem with many of our
continuationist is that they're sensationalistic and they're
weird and there are abuses because they don't test.
So Paul says don't quench the Spirit, don't despise prophecy.
In other words, I think through the cessation, is he saying,
hey, don't despise the spiritual gifts, they're still available.
Don't despise prophecy. Or I think in my opinion, it
means like the gifts in general. So healing prophecy, those don't
despise those but but also test. And maybe you've been part of a
church or you flipped when you were watching something on the
TV and you saw some spiritual Christian gathering and it was
just weird. And they were supposedly
prophesying, but they weren't testing anything.
And so when they don't test, well, then you get like what I
call National Enquirer, like Christians, right?
They're just super sensationalistic.
And they, you know, think about the National Enquirer.
Those of you who are younger, you probably don't know what it
is, but those of us my age and older certainly do.
For many years in the grocery store, if you went, there would
be this magazine in the periodical called the National
Enquirer. And it always had these super
crazy stories. Elvis is at Burger King and JFK
is at KFC or something, right? Aliens coming down, right?
So those are people, some people.
And remember what the slogan was.
The slogan was inquiring minds want to know, right?
And inquiring minds want to know.
But what you get is you get Christians who are like, they're
inquiring minds. So they're looking for the next
strangest doctrine and the next prophecy, but they don't read
their Bibles and they don't know scripture in general.
So watch this, the creationist or the creationist, The
cessationist, they believe that the gifts ceased and the oath
has been set. OK.
But the, the continuationist, we again, we don't want abuses.
We want to be balanced. OK, so where we're going, what
some of you when we talk about the gifts of the Holy Spirit,
some of you have maybe been around certain traditions of
Christianity where when you saw the gifts of the Spirit talked
about or trying to utilize them, it just got weird.
So then some of you may be a part of a Christian tradition
where no, the gifts were never talked about.
The Holy Spirit was never talked about, right?
It just was, it was like, because you saw because one side
saw the abuses, they just went completely to another extreme.
So I hope for our church that we find a great balance where we
think the gifts are still available, but we're not going
to get weird and abuse them and get strange.
OK, so, so Paul's saying don't, don't quench the Spirit, don't
despise prophecy, but test. And I think that's a really
great balance to getting to a place where you can be be
utilizing the spiritual gifts that we're going to talk about
in some of the weeks to come. All right, so that, so we talked
about grieving, saddening the heart of God.
We've talked about quenching, extinguishing the workings of
God. And if you don't believe that
God's still doing miracles today, then in my opinion, you
are then quenching and not looking for God to be moving in
a fire type of way, miraculously.
So there's one last one and that is blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
And this one is wildly misunderstood and it's
confusing. So I want to, I want to unpack
it for you. Well, and I think RT Kendall's
book, Holy Fire is a tool that I read in order to get my head
around this a little bit better. So this occasion, Jesus is going
to say that there is an unpardonable, unforgivable sin.
Is it one of the 10 commandments?
Is it found in the law? What is this unforgivable sin?
Let me show you. In Matthew chapter 12, Jesus
heals a man who was blind and mute, and when he heals this
man, he's now going to have interaction with people who who
saw the healing and then he's going to have interaction with
the Pharisees. The Pharisees were these
religious types. They were religious leaders and
they were critical of Jesus. OK, so they're the uptight ones.
OK, So verse 22 then a demon oppressed man who was blind and
mute was brought to him, meaning Jesus, and he healed him so that
the man spoke and he saw. And all the people were amazed
and said, can this be the son of David?
Now when they asked this question, can this be the son of
David? You must remember that in the
Old Testament it was prophesied that Jesus would be born in
Bethlehem and it was prophesied that he would be wounded for our
transgressions and bruised for our iniquities.
The chastisement of our peace would be upon him and by his
wounds we would be saved or healed.
And so now when they see Jesus perform this miracle, they're
like, maybe this is the Messiah, maybe this is God.
They were amazed and like the Son of David, the one that had
been prophesied about, is it him?
Well, verse 24. But when the Pharisees heard it,
they said it's only be houseable, the Prince of demons
that this man cast out demons. So the people see the miracle.
Could this be the Messiah? And the Pharisees say, Nope,
it's the devil. He's doing this by the devil.
And Jason is saying she likes to see in cahoots.
So what they're saying is Jesus is in cahoots.
And I misspelled on your notes because I don't know how to
spell cahoots. But so it it says here that they
were saying Jesus is in cahoots with the devil in verse 25.
Knowing their thoughts, he said to them, every Kingdom divided
against itself is laid waste and no city or house divided against
itself will stand. He knew their thoughts.
They're like, oh, he's he's in with the devil and and he's
like, no, no, no, no, that would be I'm against the devil and
he's going to tell you what he's going to do with the devil.
So he's like, we're not in cahoots together.
You're wrong. Verse 26.
And if Satan cast out Satan, he's divided against himself.
He's like, if I'm of Satan and I go around casting out demons and
healing people, that doesn't make sense.
The logic melts down. How then will this Kingdom
stand? And if I cast out demons by be
eligible, by whom do your sons cast them out?
Therefore they will be your judges.
So Jesus is like, Hey, your your followers are also trying to go
and cast out demons. Is it of the devil also?
He's like, no, I'm not even going to say that's of the
devil. Jesus is saying your criticism
doesn't add up. Watch Jesus in verse 28.
But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then
the Kingdom of God has come upon you, right?
He's like, OK, so if I'm doing this through the Spirit of God,
then the Kingdom is now here. And Jesus talked about the
Kingdom all the time. The Kingdom of God is at hand.
The Kingdom of God is here. The king, he told parables where
he'd say the Kingdom of heaven is like a man who went out and
sowed wheat. The Kingdom of heaven is like
this. So Jesus is saying the fact that
I'm healing, it's by the Spirit of God.
How is he doing it? It's by the Spirit.
Jesus is healing by the Holy Spirit, and He's declaring the
Kingdom of God is at hand. And verse 29 Or how can someone
enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods?
Unless he first binds the strongman, then indeed he may
plunder his house. In verse 30, whoever is not with
me is against me, and whoever does not gather me with the
other, with me scatters. Now stick with me here.
Jesus is here saying that I've not come to be in cahoots with
the devil. If anything, I've come to
plunder the devil. I've come.
Jesus is coming to die on the cross for our sins and he's
going to take out death hell in the grave.
He's going to conquer Satan. So what he's saying here is he's
like, I've come to plunder Satan.
I'm going to bind him up and I'm going to conquer him.
I'm not here to cast out demons with demons.
OK, So then and then Jesus says therefore, therefore is there to
say this, because I've come to plunder Satan, tie him up.
Therefore I tell you, and here's where really stick with me.
I tell you every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven
people. The Spirit will not be forgiven.
Jesus is saying when I bind up Satan, when I plunder him, sin
is going. To be forgiven.
All sin, all blasphemy, it's going to get forgiven.
Wow. When he plunder Satan we will
get forgiveness. But he says but the blasphemy
against the Spirit will not be forgiven.
Jesus is. Blasphemy, even.
Against me every sin, every blasphemy will be forgiven
people, but the blasphemy against the spirit will not be
forgiven and word blasphemy here is is Greek word blasphemia and
it means vilification, vilification especially against
God, evil speaking or railing so which watch this Jesus is saying
when I plunder Satan all this. Stuff is going to get.
Forgiven forgiveness will be available, but the sin that will
not be available is vilifying, blaspheming, demonizing the Holy
Spirit. Jesus said, how did I heal?
I healed through the power of the Holy Spirit and they're
saying all that power that you healed with, it's demonic.
It's and when, when they say this, by the way, they're the
people were going, oh, Jesus is the Messiah.
Is he the Messiah? And they come along and say, no,
he's demonic. He's not God, he's not the
Messiah, and Jesus is saying that type of talk and that type
of belief, that type of blasphemy is the only
unforgivable sin. So when Jesus is saying.
This. He's not saying that that like
one of the 10 commandments makes you unforgivable any other sin.
He's saying the sin that gets unforgiven is the one where you
allow people or you speak that Jesus is not the Messiah.
That's the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit because the Holy
Spirit, we, we've talked about the Holy Spirit declares Jesus
as God, the Holy Spirit declares Jesus as our Savior, our
Messiah. And when people come along, or
you come along and say, no, he's not, he's the devil, then that
blocks the forgiveness of God. Verse 30. 2 Jesus goes on.
And whoever speaks and watches, he goes, Whoever speaks the word
against the Son of Man, and they'll be forgiven.
He's like, you can talk bad about me, you talk bad about me,
but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven
either in this age or the age to come.
Jesus is saying, hey, I can take it, you can criticize me, but
the Holy Spirit who comes to promote me, the Holy Spirit who
comes to declare all over the world that Jesus is God, He is
the Messiah. That's what keeps people from
forgiveness. It leads to the unpardonable
sin. Now many have used the
unpardonable. Oh, it's I see in my notes here
it says unpardonable sing. That's supposed to be
unpardonable sin. I wonder if there's such thing
as an unpardonable sing. I've heard people on American
Idol like they were unpardonable and they're singing OK.
So many use the unpardonable sin to manipulate and cause fear in
people. And I've I've heard stories.
About people who are 6080, a hundred years old and they're
like, oh, I did this thing, you know, I cursed God when I was 19
years old in this terrible season of my life.
I cursed God and I rebelled. I spoke bad about God and and
they might think that's unpardonable.
I'll never get forgiven. Or maybe there's some other sin
that you did years ago and you're like, I don't know if
this is forgivable. Jesus is saying every sin gets
forgiven when I plunder Satan and bind him up.
So forgiveness is available to you.
And if you're questioning if you have the unforgivable sin, then
likely you don't because it's that conviction where you're
going. OK God, I want to be close to
you. I don't want to grieve you.
I don't want to quench your spirit and the unpardonable sin.
Oh, I recognize that it's not some random sin.
No, it's the sin of denying that Jesus is the Messiah.
It's vilifying the Holy Spirit for what he says about Jesus.
Now, this is not a license for excesses and abuse.
In some traditions, some traditions of Christianity,
again, they take this and they just run with it to a place
where you know it is. They just keep people in fear.
And I don't want you to be in fear that you have committed the
unpardonable sin. But I'm going to give a a call
here in a few minutes. And if you've never decided to
follow Jesus, then I'm going to say yes, you should.
Here's what the Holy Spirit says about Jesus.
You should receive him as your Savior and Lord.
When you receive Jesus as your Savior Lord, you get forgiveness
that comes through him. The unpardonable 1 is ignoring
the prodding of the Holy Spirit, the calling of the Holy Spirit
to come to Jesus. Now Paul says in Romans 1513
when it comes to sight that we should not live in fear of
having the unpardonable sin. He says, may the God of hope
fill you with all joy and peace and believing so that by the
power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
What do we get from the Holy Spirit where we get joy and
peace and we get that joint peace And believing what the
Holy Spirit says, the Holy Spirit declares that Jesus is
the Messiah, he is God. So there's joy and peace that
comes in believing that. And when we believe it with that
joint peace, then there's the power of the Holy Spirit that
leads us to even greater hope. And my prayer for you is that
you live a life of hope, committed to not grieving the
Holy Spirit or quenching him, and knowing that as long as
you've received Jesus as your Savior and Lord, you're not
blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Let me pray for us.
God, I thank. You that wow, this is this is
just not a little devotional. No offense at devotionals, but
this is this is deep stuff and this is profound stuff about who
you are. So we want to be sensitive to
not living lives that grieve you or sadden you.
We want to see you. We want to see you delighted in
our lives and in the life of our church.
So lead us as we want to be sensitive to you.
God lead us in that way. And then we don't want to, we
don't want to extinguish. You moving in our lives?
So give us wisdom even though we succumb, like how to navigate
through what are still valid expressions of your spiritual
gifts? What are when?
How do we, how do we utilize them instead of just ignoring
them? How do we utilize them in a way
that honors you? And then God, I pray that you
would give us confidence. As long as we receive your
salvation, then you have bound up Satan in our lives, and now
we can walk in your complete forgiveness.
Let. These truths, well, let us.
Carry these truths away in such a way where we just really
internalize them and they affect the way that we practically live
our lives in Jesus name. Now before we go, I want to just
briefly give you an opportunity. If you're here this morning,
maybe you've been sensing the pulling of the Holy Spirit, God
pulling you to have a relationship with him.
But maybe you've been saying no. And so this morning I want to
say this is the great morning to say yes to inviting Christ to be
the Lord of your life. And Jesus came, God came into
human skin and lived a perfect life and he offered himself as a
sacrifice for us. And then he conquered death in
the grave and was resurrected. And now he invites us to have
relationship and forgiveness with him, but he doesn't force
it. So you can receive his
forgiveness. You can welcome it.
And when you do, we believe that you receive eternal life.
You don't have to wait to die to get the eternal life.
You get it now. And so you live with purpose and
meaning now that will last for eternity.
So if you have never made that decision, I want to leave you in
that today. And that's the saying yes to
Jesus. And we encourage you to tell
other people, if you believe in your heart and confess with your
mouth that Jesus is Lord, then you shall be saved.
So tell others. And then we encourage you to be
baptized. And we will have baptisms coming
up here in the next several weeks or months here at our
church. So let me pray for you.
And I would encourage you to echo this prayer with me.
Heavenly Father, I come in Jesus name.
In Jesus, I want to receive you as my Savior and Lord.
So I turn away from my own sin and I say I surrender my life to
you. I thank you for the lengths that
you went to to have a relationship with me.
And I say, Holy Spirit, come and dwell in me.
And so I welcome you. I don't completely understand
the doctrines and all the theology of Christianity, but I
pray you'll grow me in my understandings and grow me as a
part of a church family and grow me in my faith and hope that
comes from you. I thank you for your salvation
in me and Jesus name and everyone together said Amen and
Amen. Let's all stand together.
Thank you again for being here today.
Don't forget. What's the next next event
Chase. There's nothing on Wednesday
night this week we forgot to see the men's event is the first
Wednesday for a second Wednesday.
The guy's event is just Wednesday.
No, we just had ours. Yeah, there you go.
All right, so there you go. And blind leading the blind.
All right. Man, oh man, we do have.
Fun serving together. I got to say that Jason and I do
have fun serving together. All right, if you'll prepare
your heart to receive this blessing before you go.
And now may the Lord. Bless you and keep you, and may
He make his face to shine upon him.
And may the joy of the Lord that is unspeakable and full of
glory, may it abound to you. And may the peace of God that
passes all understanding, may it surprise you in the midst of all
of the challenges that life brings.
And then may the mercies of the Lord, in other words, the
forgiveness of God, that is new every morning.
May it be especially new to you and your mornings to come.
And now may the Lord Jesus Christ guard your heart and your
mind. You are salt and your light.
Go now and be salt and light into the world.
You are blessed. We'll see you again soon.