The Unpardonable Sin

Introduction

I know it has been a tough few weeks for many of you with the sudden rise in COVID cases again, and some of you falling sick with COVID, some with viral fever.

And I really want to start the sermon today by giving you two points of encouragement

God is sovereign, and

Christian fellowship matters.

Recap

So, this sermon is the second part of a two part sermon on the passage in Matthew 12 that most of your Bibles have titled ‘The Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit’, or what theologians refer to as the unpardonable or the unforgivable sin.

Last week, we looked at v22-28, and today, we’ll be covering v29 all the way to v37.

Let me remind you of our context again. A demon-oppressed man was brought before Jesus who was blind and mute and Jesus healed him. And the Pharisees had the audacity to say “it is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons.”

These are men who spent hours pouring over God’s word and memorising his law, and yet they couldn’t recognise their God. Spending hours learning the doctrines in the Bible is not going to open your eyes to see God. Spending hours in the Bible seeking to meet with God, praying and waiting upon His Holy Spirit, that is what opens your eyes to see God.

[academic vs spiritual pursuit]

Knowing their thoughts, Jesus responds with several arguments, and we looked at the first two.

The logical argument of the divided kingdom

The moral argument of how their own sons cast out demons

Exegesis

What we have in front of us now is v29-31, but I’ve included v33-37 as well because what Jesus says there really stems from these verses.

Here is the third argument which is again a logical argument, Matthew 12:29

Matthew 12:29 ESV

29 Or how can someone enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house.

Here, I pose two questions. Who is the strong man, and which house are we talking about? If we stay with the context of Jesus’ argument, the strong man is Satan and his house refers to Satan’s kingdom.

We know from the first two arguments, that

There is a kingdom of darkenss, of Satanic rule of spiritual forces in the dark places, demons.

The miracle of the casting out of demons that Jesus does by the Spirit of God, is evidence now that the Kingdom of God is upon us.

The Kingdom of God has waged war on the kingdom of satan. How? By overcoming and binding the strong man, the enemy, satan.

Jesus, the king of God’s kingdom, has come down in human flesh, and all through his narrative, Matthew the apostle has been showing us how he has come to overcome the enemy. We see the first collission of these kingdoms when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness and Satan could not overcome him.

And now we hear from the very mouth of Christ, that what he has come to do is plunder the house of the enemy. Ever since Adam sinned by disobeying God and obeying the serpent, mankind has lived under the bondage of darkness, of sin. And now, Christ has come to set us free.

How? By binding the strong man.

Colossians 1:13 ESV

13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,

Jesus has come to plunder his house and rescue people for the kingdom of God.

Now, do you know that one of the most popular beliefs regarding the end times (or what we call eschatology), is that in the second coming of Jesus, he will establish a 1000 year period (a millenium) of peace where Christ rules the earth. The view is called the pre-millenial view, that the final return of Christ is pre-millenium, before the millenium.

But notice that there is a description given in Revelation 20:2 regarding that millenium

Revelation 20:2 NASB95

2 And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years;

So which is it? Is Satan going to be bound at some point in the future, or as we read here in Matthew, is the strong man already bound? Could it be that we live in a post-millenial world, where the prophecies of Christ’s coming in judgment has already occurred and we are the early church living in the millenial period of Christ’s rule, at the end of which (post) Christ will finally return to establish the new heavens and the new earth?

I believe so.

Then Jesus goes on to say,

Matthew 12:30 ESV

30 Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

Brothers and sisters, there is no position of neutrality in this fight. Either you’re with Jesus or you’re against him. Nobody stands on the sidelines of this battle.

When the Kingdom of God plunders the kingdom of darkness, when Jesus and his disciples plunder the house of Satan and his demons, those who do not gather with Christ, scatters.

Imagine an enemy camp of enslaved soldiers who follow the orders of their captor. Then the good guys come, bind the enemy captain, and set the soldiers free. Those that do not gather with the good guys, are scattered out into the same battlefield, and anyone who hasn’t changed the callsigns will be destroyed in the end.

Anyone who does not hoist the flag of God’s kingdom, belongs to the enemy’s kingdom.

And now we come to the fourth and final conclusive argument, Matthew 12:31-32

Matthew 12:31–32 ESV

31 Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32 And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

This is one of the more haunting verses for many Christians today who wrestle to understand what this text means. Some worry over whether they’ve committed this sin already, in which case they fear they can never be saved in this age or the age to come.

No beloved, this sin cannot be committed by the believer. It refers to the degraded decline of the unbelieving mind that refuses to believe in Christ.

I will make this case in three points

The harmony of Scripture

We know from several passages in Scripture such as John 6:39 and Philippians 1:6, that an unpardonable sin committed by a believer is contradictory to the redemptive promises of God.

This gives us a sure footing to know that what this text is saying is something else. Jesus is not compromising his promises when he says this, but he is referring to a sin unrepentent blasphemy.

[Paul’s salvation]

Why is the Holy Spirit distincly identified here as opposed to the Father or the Son?

I grew up listening to theologians who used to say that the Holy Spirit is so much more sensitive than the Father or the Son. So they love the Spirit most in the trinity. Heresy!

Or they would say things like, the Holy Spirit is the most holy person of the Trinity. Heresy!

Don’t play around with the trinity brothers. The Father, Son and Spirit are three co-equal and co-eternal persons in one Being called God.

The reason Jesus differentiates this sin as the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit as opposed to the Son or the Father, is because of the role or function of the Holy Spirit in our salvation.

The Father sends his Son to die for the sins of the world, the Son joyfully and obediently comes, becoming the propitiation for our sins. Jesus died and rose again, that we who believe him are dead to our sins and alive in him.

It is the Spirit of God that convicts and transforms the human heart from stone to flesh.

[Salvation examples]

The natural progression of sin and unbelief in Romans 1.

The natural progression of unbelief is unrepentance. The key to understanding the unpardonable sin is that it is the ongoing blasphemy of the Holy Spirit by someone who refuses to repent.

In Romans 1, God hands them over. And beloved the final stages of handing over, is depicted as homosexuality. Homosexuality is a blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. To be unrepentant in that state, is life in the unpardonable sin.

[A word on Cessationism - John MacArthur vs his disciples]

Here again, the pre-millenial view that Jesus is about to return anytime now to establish his millenial kingdom has to deal with the phrase ‘this age or age to come’.

If this age refers to the present, and the age to come refers to the new heavens and the new earth (eternal life), then it is difficult for us to resolve this text. Because we know for a fact that there is no forgiveness or repentance in eternal life because there is no sin in eternal life. Those in hell will endure the wrath of God for an eternity, and those in heaven will enjoy the love of God for an eternity. The argument of the unpardonable sin doesn’t hold theological for that age.

However, in a post-millenial concept, we consdier the phrase ‘this age or age to come’ referring to the Jewish age of the time when Jesus came, and the Christian age, that followed. In other words, the era of the Old Testament, and the era of the New.

Conclusion

In concluding, I would like to use the verses 33-37

Matthew 12:33–35 ESV

33 “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. 34 You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 35 The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.

I am reminded of Joshua’s words in Joshua 24:15

Joshua 24:15 ESV

15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

I find a similar tone in Jesus words where he calls them out to decide whether to be a good tree or a bad tree. You can’t make good fruits without first being a good tree. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.

Out of the abundance of he heart the mouth speaks. The point here is not that bad people can’t say good things, or that unbelieving people can’t say theologically sound things. Instead what Jesus is teaching us here is that the genuine outbursts of the mouth, especially in those crucial times of the test, we will speak out of the abundance of the heart.

[David in the psalms - when bible believing Christians doubt the bible]

Matthew 12:36–37 ESV

36 I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, 37 for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”