Passing the Point of No Return

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At some point, I realized that with children, just like with adults, when they do something wrong, it’s a heart problem before it’s a behavioral problem. And so I’ve tried to carry that spiritual understanding into parenting. I don’t just want to deal with their behavior because I can deal with their behavior and get them to act right outwardly, and still their heart inwardly is rebellious.

So a lot of times my first go-to with the kids is we’re going to sit down and talk about what just happened. And we’re going to address the spiritual problem. Now that doesn’t mean there’s never a consequence.

It doesn’t mean that just because I like the diplomatic option, it doesn’t mean that there’s never room for the military option. And each of my kids know that there is a point of no return. There is a point at which daddy gives that look that only daddy gives, and that certain vein sticks out, and they know the party’s over, they know there’s a consequence.

And Charlie, you know, and that consequence may be something simple like you’re going to go sit down and be grounded for a little while, or it can be the loss of a privilege. It can be all the way up to a spanking. I know some people don’t like spanking nowadays, but I still think it has its place.

It’s never my first resort, but it still has its place if it’s a severe enough infraction. And they know that there’s this point of no return to the point of, I can ask, Charlie, did you do X, Y, and Z? And Charlie will yell from the other room, no, daddy, I get a spanking next time, because he knows.

If he’s done this, he’s crossed the point of no return. We can do this. One of the most famous examples of this in history was Julius Caesar.

We think of him as the Roman emperor, but before he was the Roman emperor, he was a military governor of Gaul, which is now France. And the Roman Senate was in charge of him as one of the governors of one of the colonies. And the Roman Senate decided they were done with him being the military governor of Gaul.

And so they told him, come back to Rome, but don’t bring your army with you. We want you to disband your army and we want you to come back to Rome and I forget what their plans were, but whatever their plans were, Julius Caesar didn’t, they weren’t his plans. All right.

So they said, you disband your army before you come back to Italy and come back to Italy. He had other ideas and said, no, I think I’ll take my army back to Italy. But when he marched into a certain territory, it was considered a declaration of war on the Senate.

That just by doing this, he was defying them and saying, I don’t work for you, you work for me. And that point of no return was a place called the Rubicon River. That was sort of the boundary of the Roman homeland.

And so if Caesar marched with his armies across the Rubicon River down into southern Italy without having disbanded his army, then he was in rebellion. There was no coming back from that. It was either going to be him or the Senate, but there wasn’t going to be room for both of them.

And so Julius Caesar marched with his armies across the Rubicon River, and legend says, and it may be a true legend, but legend says that when he crossed the river, he said the die is cast. And to this day, the phrase crossing the Rubicon means committing an action that you can’t take back. You’re past the point of no return. There’s no coming back this.

In the passage we’re going to look at tonight in the book of Mark, Jesus talks about one of these points of no return, one of these lines that once you cross, there’s no going back. And I want to spend some time talking about it tonight and what it is and what it isn’t. But Jesus identifies this line as the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

If you would, turn with me to Mark chapter 3. Mark chapter 3, turn there in your Bibles or if you’re using a device, we have a link in our bulletin. It’ll be But once you get there, if you’ll stand with me and we’ll read from God’s Word together.

And we’re going to start in verse 22. Now, the last couple of times that we’ve met on a Sunday night when I’ve preached, I looked at some of the text before this and we looked at some of the text after this because the two stories went together. And so we’re now going to come and look at the middle section here starting in verse 22.

It says, And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, He has Beelzebub, and by the ruler of demons, he casts out demons. So he called them to himself and said to them in parables, Jesus told a story. He said, How can Satan cast out Satan?

If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but has an end.

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. Assuredly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven, the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation, because they said he has an unclean spirit. And you may be seated.

what has happened in in this period of time I know it’s we’ve been spread out a couple weeks so it may be a little difficult to remember but we’ve we’ve spent some time looking at the very early ministry of jesus and in this early ministry he healed people he did some miraculous works in order to draw a crowd and preach to them he also got away from the crowd when the crowd started to get too fixated on the miracles because the star of the show was always Jesus and his message rather than Jesus and his miracles. Jesus and his miracles was just the opening act for Jesus and the message. And so, but he had healed these people.

He had done miraculous things. And the religious leaders were sent groping for an explanation because they were opposed to Jesus. And I’m sure they were getting the question, well, how can you speak against such a man who does miracles like this?

What do you have to say about somebody like this? Doesn’t he have to be some kind of teacher from God? Doesn’t he have to be somebody we should listen to?

And their explanation was that he’s doing these things by the power of Satan. They were looking at Jesus Christ, who we know as God the Son, who was sent by God the Father, and performing these miracles under the power of God, the Holy Spirit. They were looking at God at work, and they were attributing these miracles to Satan.

Now one of the problems with that that Jesus points out, he points out the absurdity of it, is that one of the miracles that he had performed was to cast out demons. And here they were making the leap of logic of saying he casts out demons by the power of demons. He’s working with Satan to cast Satan out.

That doesn’t make sense. But this is what they did. They looked at Jesus.

They were eyewitness to Jesus’ ministry. They were part of the privileged few who got to see with their own what we would give anything to see. And they watched what Jesus did, not only saw the miracles he performed, but they heard the teaching that backed it up.

And they wrote it off and said, that’s all a bunch of nonsense from the devil. And the ultimate sin here is to be eyewitness to Jesus’ ministry and attribute his works to Satan. Because at that point, you’re denying everything God has done.

You’re denying everything that God wants to show you. Now, this was a unique moment in time. I know people ask from time to time, is it still possible to commit the unforgivable sin?

And I’m not even sure, I’ll get to that in a minute, I’m not even sure that’s the right terminology for it, the unforgivable sin. But is it possible to do this same thing today? And some people even worry that they may have committed that sin.

And so I want us to talk about what it is and what isn’t. But it was a unique moment in time. And when we look at the context of the passage, he says that they have blasphemed the Holy Spirit.

He says that they will never be forgiven. But looking at what he’s talking about and what they actually did, I don’t see any indication in scripture that we can commit this sin today, at least not in the exact same way. But he talks about there being this sin that they can never receive forgiveness for.

And I really do think it had to have been that they were eyewitnesses to what Jesus was doing. They were looking at proof, which is an exceedingly rare thing. When I talk to you about apologetics and how we can know this is true or that’s true, how we can know that Jesus rose from the dead, how we can know that the virgin birth happened, how we can know that the Bible is reliable today, that it’s God’s Word.

When we talk about these things, very rarely do I use the word proof because we live in a world where people can question anything. They can even pull questions out of thin air, and quite often they do. And so it’s really hard to, when we live in a world where philosophers sit around and speculate, how do I know I’m a person and not just a butterfly that dreams it’s a person?

In a world where that goes on, how can you prove anything, right? Where somebody’s not going to say, oh yeah, but what if? And it doesn’t matter how absurd the what if is, it’s just out there.

In a world like that, we don’t really deal in proof, we deal in evidence. I can’t show you surveillance video of all the things Jesus did. I wish I could.

Man, I wish they had simply safe or nest or whatever back at the empty tomb. I wish I could just take you to the video. That would be proof.

Now, as it stands, we have pretty good evidence. By ancient standards, we have incredible evidence. But they were looking at proof.

They saw it with their own eyes, Jesus being God. And they got the benefit of seeing that proof with their own eyes and said, no, that’s the devil. And Jesus said they weren’t going to be forgiven.

That was the sin. That was the sin to look at Jesus and all that he was doing as eyewitnesses and say, no, that’s not God. That’s the devil.

Now, people have talked about what the unforgivable sin is, whether you can commit it today. Are there other unforgivable sins? Some people have said that today the unforgivable sin is unbelief.

I think we’re using the word sin differently. And you using unforgivable differently. Unbelief today, let me finish this before you think I’m heretical, all right?

Unbelief today is not necessarily unforgivable. And what I mean by that is somebody can not believe in Jesus, and then later on they can believe in Jesus, and he still forgives them. So it’s not unforgivable in the sense that of anything we’re talking about here.

Well, what about going on to the end of your life until you’re deaf and you still don’t believe? I would call that unforgiven. I wouldn’t say unforgivable because if that person, if that person was, was hardened in their unbelief right up until the, the, the very last moment and with their dying breath, they came under the conviction of the Holy spirit and they believe they’re going to be just as forgivable as anybody else.

It’s kind of like with our children. We have trouble sometimes getting them to eat what we’ve made. And I don’t run a restaurant and I’ve encouraged charla not to run a restaurant so we just say you eat or you can go the other room and sometimes they’ll come back 20 minutes after dinner’s over and say I’m ready to eat now I’m sorry dinner’s over the restaurant’s closed now they are unfed but at no point were they unfeedable they could have come back at any point while the while the offer was there and they could have been fed so they were they were never unfeedable they’re just unfed and by the same token unbelief is unforgiven but it’s not unforgivable.

Some people have said that suicide is, I had a teacher in junior high who said suicide is the unforgivable sin. And I understand what his, where he was coming from, because he was coming from a standpoint that says you can lose your salvation, and you have to make sure you’re prayed up constantly, or you’re not getting into heaven. And so if you commit this sin of suicide, and by the way, it is a sin, and not something we want to courage.

But you commit this sin and you don’t have time to ask for forgiveness, he would say, you’re going to hell. My reading of the Bible tells me that we are secure in Christ, no matter what sin we’ve committed. He paid for it past, present, and future.

And my relationship with him is not dependent on my performance. Now, if you understand the atonement is something that applies, it is absolutely not something that I don’t want to speak positively of it at all or give you the idea that it’s a good thing. But he would say that’s the unforgivable sin.

I say that’s twisting scripture to fit your preconceived notion. There’s a group today that I forget what the group is actually called, but they started something probably 10 or 15 years ago called the Blasphemy Challenge. And they went on YouTube and said, atheists, and they said, we are so confident that there’s no God that we’re going to commit blasphemy of the Holy Spirit just so even if there is a God, we can’t be forgiven and we’re just putting all our chips out on the table.

Okay, and so they’ll deny the existence of the Holy Spirit on these YouTube videos, or maybe even say horrible things about the Holy Spirit. If you look at this in context, that’s not what Jesus called the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Now you are blaspheming or denying the Holy Spirit, but you’re not doing what Jesus talked about there.

And I tell you all this because I’ve known faithful Christians who were worried that at some point in their life, at some point in their life, they have said something or done something that constituted blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. And so I’ll tell you this based on the context of this passage, and I know there are people that disagree with me out there, but I’ll tell you based on the context of this passage, if you have not been an eyewitness to the miracles of Jesus and turned around and attributed those to Satan, I don’t believe you’ve committed blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Now, it doesn’t mean that you’ve not done or said something sinful that you need to deal with the Lord about, but it also doesn’t mean that God can’t or won’t forgive you if you repent and ask Him to.

These people, it said in verse 22, they said, He has Beelzebub, and by the ruler of demons, he casts out demons. They saw his miracles with their own eyes. They witnessed the miracles he carried out with the power of God’s Holy Spirit, and they attributed those works to Satan.

That’s what they did. And the reason why this sin was such a big deal is because it was a uniquely hardened rejection of Jesus Christ. Lots of people through Jesus’ earthly ministry rejected him and later on became Christians. The Apostle Paul went from somebody who was a hardened rejecter of Jesus Christ and yet became one of the greatest advocates of Jesus Christ in the history of the church.

At least two of Jesus’ half-brothers were skeptical. Remember we talked a few weeks ago about how they thought he was crazy and came to take him home. James and Jude wrote books of the New Testament based on their faith in Jesus Christ later on. But these, they were eyewitnesses and they said it’s got to be from Satan.

That is a point of rejection of Jesus that you have made up your mind and you have dug in your heels and you have said, I don’t care what God shows me. This is what I want to believe and this is what I’m going to believe. And so I’ve wondered, I talked about this with the ladies in the office this week.

And they said, well, we’re not going to try to tell you anything because it’s such a challenging passage. And I was just kind of working through some of these issues. I wonder about what Jesus meant when he said they wouldn’t be forgiven.

We’ve interpreted this for a long time as kind of a judicial ruling where Jesus said, I’ll never forgive you because of this. But I noticed in every telling of this passage in the gospel accounts, he says, you will not have forgiveness, not you cannot have forgiveness. And so while it’s possible that Jesus said, I will never forgive you for saying this, I wonder if it doesn’t fit better with Jesus’ character simply to say, I recognize that if you’ve gone this far, you’re never going to come to me for forgiveness.

It may have been. So rather than saying it’s unforgivable, it may just be that Jesus said, I recognize if you are that stuck in your position, that you can look at this over here and say, no, no, that’s got to be Satan. You are so hardened in your unbelief that you’re just never.

. . I’ve got no bullets left in the gun.

Jesus had shown his miracles. He’d proven who he was. There was nothing left to show them that was going to change their mind.

They had decided that they were not going to believe. And this was just the worst way that they could reject him, was to see everything he had done and to say that it was from Satan rather than God. Because what was so incredible about Jesus’ miracles was what they demonstrated.

They demonstrated Jesus’ central role in the Father’s plans. They told us so much that we needed to know about who he is. And if you look in verses 23 through 27, Jesus refutes this idea that he could be acting on Satan’s behalf in any way.

People quote this all the time as though it came from Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln just stole it. Jesus is the one who said it, that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

Jesus said, if a kingdom is divided against itself, basically if there’s a civil war and the two sides of the kingdom are fighting with each other, they’re going to fall when somebody else invades from the outside because they’re not going to be able to stand united against the external threat. He says the same thing about a house. So the idea is, what kind of sense does it make for Satan to be fighting against Satan.

Because it was clear that not only was Jesus casting out demons, but the demons didn’t particularly like him. They were upset that he showed up. And so by their logic, you had part of Satan’s kingdom fighting against another part of Satan’s kingdom.

And Satan’s too crafty for that. Instead, Jesus said that by attributing his works to Satan, they were blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. Now, why that’s important to say that again, because I know I’ve already talk to you about that phrase and what it means now.

The reason why it’s important to point out again that Jesus said they were blaspheming the Holy Spirit is because of the implication there is that he’s working with the Holy Spirit or that he’s working in the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus says, when you talk about me and you attribute my works to Satan, you’re blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Now, the only way that that’s blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is if the Holy Spirit’s involved in what Jesus is doing.

And if he’s working with the Spirit, then he’s working for the Father. And that was the point of his miracles. That was the point was to demonstrate when he taught that he had the authority as one sent from God, to demonstrate that he was serving the Father, that he was the Son of the Father, that he was sent in the Father’s name, and that he was sent to carry out the Father’s redemptive plans.

His miracles were not just to entertain the people. They weren’t even really to heal a sick guy. Although I’ve told you, I believe Jesus really was motivated by compassion to heal people because he loves people.

But I think that was secondary. Jesus did these things to demonstrate first and foremost who he is. That’s why later on when they asked him if he was the Messiah in John 10, 25, he told them, I told you and you do not believe the works that I do in my father’s name.

They bear witness of me. So when 10 chapters into the book of John, they’re asking, toward the end of his ministry, they’re asking, are you or are you not the Messiah? And he says, I’ve told you and I’ve shown you.

My miracles, the works that I’ve done, they were there to show you that what I’m doing, I’m doing in the Father’s name. And they were looking again at proof, not evidence, not just evidence, but proof that Jesus was working on behalf of the Father. And so those miracles were so important because, again, they are setting the stage for them and for us to understand that Jesus is at the center of the Father’s plans.

Jesus is not just a good moral teacher who showed up to teach people some truths about God. He is God’s plan for us. Everything God had done with mankind up to this point, the stories that we’re reading about and studying about and discussing and asking questions about on Wednesday nights, all these stories in order, they were leading to the cross.

They were pointing ahead and preparing the way for what Jesus was coming to do. Because Jesus was at the center of God’s plans for us. And His miracles were supposed to show who He was.

Because there’s no plan B after Jesus. God didn’t have a plan B. This was why this was such bad news for the Pharisees and scribes.

Jesus came so we could be forgiven. That’s why He says in verse 28, Assuredly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven, the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter. Jesus was saying, no matter what you do.

Somebody needs to hear that tonight. No matter what you do, it can be forgiven. Assuredly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven, the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter.

Whatever you’ve done or said in the past, Jesus has the power to forgive you. That’s not me saying it. It’s Jesus Christ saying it right here in the book of Mark.

It can all be forgiven. Preacher, you don’t know what I’ve done. You don’t know what I’ve said.

Does Jesus know what you’ve done or said? Does all mean all? He says it can all be forgiven in verse 28.

Everything can be forgiven. If we will come to Jesus for that forgiveness, if we will come to the one who came to be the only sacrifice for our sins, If we will come to Him in faith and we will acknowledge our sin and our need for a Savior, if we’ll acknowledge Him as the only one who ever could be that Savior, and that He paid for our sins on the cross, if we’ll believe that, and believe that He rose again, there’s not a sin we can commit that can’t be forgiven. Now, that’s not a license to go out and continue committing all the sin we want, which we’ll address at a later point.

I’m saying we come to Him and it does not matter what’s happened in the past. he can forgive it. But they were so hardened in their rejection of Jesus that he said they’re never going to find forgiveness. Verse 29, but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation.

He said that the men who’ve done this, who’ve just stood there and done this, they are so hardened in their unbelief that they were never going to come to Jesus for forgiveness. They were already condemned. Their sin had condemned them.

And here he was offering a way out. Here he was offering forgiveness. Here he was offering a clean slate and peace with God.

And the one thing that God gave them to accomplish that, they were willing to reject because it didn’t fit the ideas they had of what it should look like. And that’s why they would never have forgiveness. That’s why they would never have forgiveness because they were so hardened in their hearts that they were willing to walk past plan A, but there was no plan B.

And folks, I told you, I don’t believe we can commit this exact sin today because none of us are eyewitnesses to Jesus’ ministry unless you’re really, really old. And in that case, if you were old enough to be eyewitness to Jesus’ ministry, you look really good. But none of us were old enough to be eyewitnesses to Jesus’ ministry.

But the fact remains that we can behave similarly. Even if we may not be that hardened in our rejection, we can still reject Him. And at that point, it doesn’t matter whether our hearts are a little cold or cold as ice.

If we continue to reject Him, we won’t have that forgiveness. If we refuse to come to Him, there’s no plan B. If we refuse to trust Him as that one and only Savior, there’s no plan B that God offers.

And even if we don’t commit the same sin, we’re still under eternal condemnation. Because the Bible teaches that it’s not just them, it says it of all of us. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

There is no plan B. And many times people want to try to find another plan. They want to try to find another way.

The gospel doesn’t necessarily make sense to our human sensibilities. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody’s paying for it somewhere.

And usually in life there’s a gimmick. So when God tells us, listen, you can’t earn it or deserve it, You just need to believe. Believe that you’re a sinner.

Believe that Jesus came to be your Savior, that He is who He says He is, that He died on the cross for you, that He rose again, and believe that if you ask for that forgiveness, you’ll have it. We look at an offer like that and say, no, it’s got to be too good to be true. I know, I’ll go to church too.

Going to church is a good thing, and I’m glad you’re here. But it’s not adding to your salvation. I know, I’ll give money.

I’ll be a nice person. I’ll be kind to animals. I’ll volunteer.

I’ll do this or that. and looking for a plan B. I had a friend one time who said, and I think I’ve mentioned this before, that if the Bible said, this is when I was living in Seminole, that if the Bible said in order to be saved, you had to get down on your hands and knees, I think this is what he said, and roll a quarter with your nose down I-40 all the way to Oklahoma City, people would be out there getting blood and skin all over I-40.

Okay, then I’ll do that. They tell people you’ve got to believe, and they say, no, that’s too easy. walking past Jesus looking for a plan B in religious rituals, in church attendance, in good works and there is no plan B.

If it was all about our good works, these were good religious upstanding men but they rejected Jesus and they were determined to continue rejecting Jesus and so he said they’d never be forgiven. So the lesson we can take from this tonight is that there is no plan B. We have to decide whether or not to acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God and the fulfillment of the Father’s redemptive plans.

We have to decide whether we believe what He said about coming to save us or not. And we can choose to accept Him. We can choose to reject Him.

But if we reject Him, we need to understand there is no plan B.