Christ is indeed that glorious
Savior. Each time that I sing that song
written by Elizabeth Clephane about the ninety and nine, I'm
struck with awe in considering the soul sufferings of Christ
for his people. Everyone can look upon the Savior
hanging on the cross and they can know that he underwent pain
and agony in his body. And that surely is not to be
taken lightly as we consider his death until he comes again.
But the suffering of Christ was far more than simply hanging on a cross, being tortured. His sufferings were greater in
his heart as he desired to deliver his people from the sin that
bound them. And the only way that that could
occur was that he become sin for them and undergo the anguish
and heartache that's associated with that in their behalf. And the only way he could do
that was to be a man like unto each one of us. And so it is an incredible thing,
far beyond the scope of man's ability to fathom, really. A man that says that he completely
understands the sufferings of Christ, he doesn't know. I mean, he's ignorant of what
he speaks. Because no man can know the depths
of that suffering. I mean, we cannot imagine the
depths of the suffering of one man, let alone a man bearing
the sins of all of his people. May the Lord give us a mind today
to dwell upon not simply the bodily sufferings of Christ,
but the anguish and soul suffering that he bore for us. And he bore
it for us there on Calvary and in the garden as he prayed for
us. We were looking in Mark chapter
four, and we had Mark chapter three. And the Lord had chosen his disciples,
and we're reading in verse 22, and the scribes which came down
from Jerusalem said, he hath Beelzebub, another name for the
devil, Satan, And by the prince of the devils casteth he out
devils. And he called them unto him,
and he said unto them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan? And if a kingdom be divided against
itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house be divided against
itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan rise up against
himself and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end. No man
can enter into a strong man's house and spoil his goods, except
he will first bind the strong man, and then he will spoil his
house. Verily I say unto you, all sins
shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewithsoever
they shall blaspheme. But he that shall blaspheme against
the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation,
because they said he hath an unclean spirit. There came then
his brethren and his mother, and standing without, sent unto
him, calling him. And the multitude sat about him,
and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without
seek for thee. And he answered them saying,
who is my mother or my brethren? And he looked round about on
them which sat about him and said, behold, my mother and my
brethren. For whosoever shall do the will
of God, the same is my brother and my sister and my mother. Now we see the Pharisees in all
of their glory as the religious men and leaders of the day, coming
and accusing Christ of being basically Beelzebub. They said,
by the power of the devil, you're doing what you're doing. And
of course, the Lord then gave them the parable of and spoke to them, how could
Satan cast out Satan? I mean, if he was Satan, why
would he be casting out Satan? Now, it is a common practice
for men to accuse others with whom they
are opposed to of being something terrible. Now, we see this on
the political front, do we not? And both sides are guilty in
these political battles of accusing the others of being devils. And they do that because men
have this notion that there is a great battle between good and
evil. So you had it in like the Star
Wars movie was a good example of man's natural religious concept
of good and evil. God is good and then there's
this dark force over here that's evil and this dark force is arrayed
against the Lord and This, the Lord's doing all this
good. Everything that's good comes
from God and everything that's evil comes from the devil. Now
there's an element of truth in that, no doubt about it, but
the fact is that there is only one kingdom that is over all. There's only one kingdom that
has all power. And that kingdom has a king who
rules over all things. Now that's what the Lord was
teaching the Pharisees here. Now he said, how foolish is it
of you to think that if it were true that you had this power
of evil and the power of good, how much sense would it make
then for the power of evil to destroy itself in order to build
itself up. I mean, what would be the point
in that, he said. But that you may know that the
Son of Man, as he told them, had power to forgive sin. Remember, he said that. And he
said to the man of the palsy, he said, be healed. And he was
healed. He said, so that you might know
that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins. So
he teaches them here, he said this, no man can enter into a
strong man's house and spoil his goods except he will first
bind the strong man and then he will spoil his house. And
so it is that the Lord would teach these Pharisees that he
had bound the strong man insofar as men would consider the devil
to be strong in the power of evil. as Brother Al spoke there
this morning, that the devil is God's devil. Now a lot of
people don't like to think that. Some people kind of think that
the devil just kind of came along and he's just kind of a co-equal
with God, maybe of a little less power. The Lord just got a little
more power over him. Satan has no power at all. He
has no ability at all. except that which the Lord is
pleased to allow him to exercise in order that his will and his
purpose might be done in the earth. And so we need not fear
that there is some power that Satan has wherein he might thwart
the plan, the will, the way, the purpose of God. Because everything
that he does moves in the purpose of God. Now again, that makes
some people nervous. And it shouldn't make us nervous
if we believe God's an absolute God. I mean, how'd the devil
come into being? Except that the Lord created
him for his purpose. And who can say anything about
that? I mean, just like Paul said,
if the Lord creates one vessel under honor and another under
dishonor, what could we say about that? I mean, would a man take
more comfort in thinking that Satan somehow has an existence
of his own? I certainly would not. The Lord
made the devil. And the devil serves God's purpose. Even as we see in the book of
Job. You know, the Lord was the one that instigated Satan's trial
of Job. Satan didn't come to the Lord
and say, Lord, I want to do this. The Lord said, hey, have you
considered my servant Job? Now why did the Lord do that?
Did the Lord just want to cause Job to suffer? No. He wanted to bring his servant,
Joe, to a place of greater understanding of who he was. And he used the
devil to bring this to pass. And he taught the devil, but
the devil did not learn who his master was. Now scriptures say
that the devils tremble. The devils fear God. They believe
in Trump. They know who God is. When these
devils, these demons, when the Lord was coming into their midst
and they said, hey, we know who you are. Wait, you come to torment
us before the time. They know their time is short. And so he does not here speak
of the devil as having power, that he has no power over, but
he comes to show them that he has this power to cast out the
devil whenever he sees fit. And he alone can do so. Now then
he brings up a subject that has caused men great consternation
down through the ages. Anybody that's never trembled
as they've read this passage of scripture and several others
in the scripture that allude to this thing that some have
called the unpardonable sin. Now I can remember as a young
man first hearing about this and having many sleepless nights
wondering whether or not I had committed this sin. If a person has never had any
consideration of that, they probably never thought much about what
he said here. But what did he say? And what
is this? Now, as Brother Thomas has been
teaching us about, this really goes hand in hand. In fact, John
speaks about a sin that's not to be prayed for. I mean, he said, you know, if
a brother, if somebody's overtaken in this, he said, I don't mean
you should pray for them. Because there is a sin which
is unto death. Now it is not a particular sin. See, men want to think that it
is this sin or that sin that causes them to be judged. And so some people think, well,
you could go along and everything's great, but if you commit this
one sin, buddy, you've had it. And they consider that the committing
of sin is an act Now sin does involve acts, but sin itself
is not an act. Sin is a condition of the heart
and mind. And what the Lord was speaking
about here, this blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, is not that a
man comes along and he blasphemes the Holy Ghost and he can never
be forgiven. He did it one time. He came to
repentance and he begged the Lord to forgive him and wanted
to serve the Lord and follow the Lord, but he had committed
this one sin and now he can't do it. Now he's just done for. That's kind of how I was taught
at one time that this was. No, it's not one thing, dear
brethren, but it's a condition of the heart. It is that wherein
a man will denigrate the glory of God and has no regard to it. And so you see, it's like in
the book of Hebrews, I think in about the sixth chapter, it
speaks about this something similar, says that they can never be Yes,
for it's impossible, listen to this. It's impossible for those
who were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift
and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted the
good word of God, the powers of the world to come, if they
shall fall away to renew them again to repentance, seeing they
crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh and put him to
an open chain. It says it's impossible to renew
them unto repentance. Well, why is it impossible to
renew them under repentance? Because they have rejected Christ.
This is not speaking about someone who finds out their error and
turns from it, but it's those that say, I will not walk with
him. And that blasphemy of the Holy
Spirit is that wherein a man will not give God glory. And that's what the Pharisees
were guilty of. You see, they were not in a situation
where if they had desired to repent earnestly, that they would
not have been granted repentance. But rather, that their heart
was so hard that they would not give glory to God. That they
would attribute unto the devil. the very works of Christ, because
they hated Christ. You see, all of man's rebellion
centers in this, does it not? That he will not serve Christ.
I mean, was that not Adam's sin? He said, I will not do what the
Lord said. See, men perish because of sin. Men perish not because of a particular
sin, but men perish because of the condition of their heart
before Almighty God. And apart from the grace of God
to remedy that condition, men will perish. He that shall blaspheme against
the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation. He will perish. There is no remedy
for it. Because they said He hath an
unclean spirit. They rejected Christ as that
Lord of glory. Then came then His brethren and
His mother, and standing without, sent unto Him, calling Him, And
the multitude said about him, and they said unto him, behold,
thy mother and thy brethren are outside seeking for you. They're calling you. Now, you
know, right up here in verse 21, we can understand why. And when his friends heard of
it, they went to lay hold on him, for they said he's beside
himself. See, they were concerned. They said, you know, they didn't
believe, see? Even his friends, you know, a
prophet is not without honor except in his own country, the
Lord said. And so it's hard for people that
know a certain person, they say, well, there's no way that he
could be speaking the truth of God. I know him too good. Now
here's, His friends, they said, well, he's beside himself. I
think we need to have an intervention here. I think he's kind of gone
off the deep end a little bit here. I mean, he's got all these
people following him and stuff, and he's out here teaching this
stuff, and I think he's gone wacko, basically, what they were
saying. He's beside himself. Well, then,
they kind of got word to his family, I think. They said, y'all
really need to go down here and do something about this. I mean,
he thinks he can cast out the devil. He's doing all kinds of
stuff. And the multitude, and his mother
and brethren, they said, when mother and brethren are seeking
him, he said, who's my mother and my brethren? Now here's an
interesting and an important lesson. Now never have any doubt
that the Lord loved his mother. He loved his mother. He was an
obedient son. He was a son who cared for the
well-being of his widowed mother, even on the cross. loved his mother in his dying
hour. And he said to that apostle that
he loved, John, he said, take care of her. Behold, she says
our mother. He didn't leave her without any
help. Know what we might learn from
that with our own parents, that we take care of them. And that,
you know, it's a sad thing in our society, I believe, the way
that some people do treat their parents as they get old and they
get crotchety and, you know, they
don't move as fast as they did at one time. They don't think
quite as clearly as they did. And so it is a needful thing
for parents to remember or for children to remember that when
they were unable to fend for themselves that their mother
and father took care of them. And so it's only right that as
they get older that their children should take care of them. The Lord said here, he's teaching
a lesson here about who it is that belong to the Lord. Men don't come into the kingdom
of God because of family ties. Now as much as we would like
to cause our children to come into the kingdom of God, to embrace
Christ and to love the way of God, we have no power to cause
it to be so. And so, as much as we love them
in carnal fashion, in the flesh, sometimes we may be set against
them in spiritual things. Because if they don't walk with
the Lord, How can we walk together with them? Not that we abandon
them or that we would cast them away, but that we cannot be friends
with them. You know, you can't be friends
with those that are opposed to the one whom you love, can you?
And that's what the Lord said. He said, I love my brethren in
in spiritual things more than I do my natural family. Now it's
a glorious thing when your natural family are one and the same with
your brethren in the Lord. But he said if we've got to make
a choice then may it be that our choice always is with the
brethren. And he looked round about on
them and sat about them and he said, behold, my mother and my
brethren. He said, this is my family. See how pleasant it is
for brethren to dwell together in unity. And so we desire, dear
brethren, that we might love one another with pure hearts
fervently. Well, you know, in natural things,
you don't have to teach a mother to love her child. She's just
gonna love her child. You can't keep her from loving
her child. She's gonna love him in spite of everything. And she
can't see his faults as clearly as you can, but she doesn't care.
Because she sees what she wants to see. Because the Lord made
her that way. Just as he did fathers love their
children. Not as dearly as mothers, they
can't do it. Father will never love his children
as much as a mother loves her children. We want to, and we
desire to, but we haven't been given that. But he said, who
is my mother? Behold, my mother and my brethren,
for whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my mother
and my brethren. To walk with the Lord is the
most important relationship that we can have. to walk with one
another. I know that we have all heard
blood's thicker than water, and I never have really completely
understood what that connotation was. I think that it has reference
to this very thing that is speaking about the water of baptism, and
that blood's thicker than water, that is blood relations greater,
but the Lord said the other. He said, our relationship to
our brethren is stronger than blood. We are bound together
in Christ. And just like we can't help but
love our children, by nature we can't help but love the brethren.
That's what John said. He said, if we don't love the
brethren, then the love of the Father's not in us. Now, again,
that's not something you can teach somebody. But it is something
that the Spirit of God brings to pass. And He causes our love,
one for the other, to increase as time goes on. That's why we
meet together. That's why we pray together.
That's why we bear one another's burdens, is that we might be
knit together in love, one to the other. May the Lord help
us in these things, that He might teach us that it is not that
the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost is not a particular sin,
but it is a continual sin. It is one which there is no repentance
from. You know, you can turn from a
particular sin, but you can't turn from a continual sin. Because repentance is a turning. And there is no turning when
a man would blaspheme the Holy Ghost.