Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening and now
for today's program. Welcome to our program today.
I'm glad you could join us for this message. And if you'd like
to follow along in your Bibles with the message, turn to Matthew,
the Gospel of Matthew chapter 12. I'll begin with verse 30.
Matthew 12 and verse 30. And I'm gonna read several passages
of scripture concerning this subject, the title of the message.
It's in the form of a question. What about the unpardonable sin? What about the unpardonable sin?
Now, some of you, I probably can assume safely that most of
you, if not all of you, especially who've grown up in churches or
in religion, have heard the term the unpardonable sin or the unforgivable
sin. And that's what I'm gonna deal
with. What about that? You know, people worry about it. They say,
what is the unpardonable sin? What, have I committed the unpardonable
sin? Preachers will talk about it
and they'll have different views on it, trying to pinpoint this
one unpardonable sin. And as we'll see in the passage
that I'm going to read, some people say, well, it's blasphemy
against the Holy Spirit. Well, whatever that is, that's
the issue that we've got to deal with. All right. There's a lot,
you know, a lot of people, a lot of religionists use that to scare
people. You know, be careful. I remember
as a boy, you know, somebody telling me one time, be careful.
You don't want to commit the unpardonable sin. Well, I want
you to listen to me very carefully. I want you to stay with me, and
I want you to study the scriptures, and I want to show you something
here. And that is this, there is no such sin as an unpardonable
sin. There's no such sin as an unforgivable
sin. I'm gonna show you that from
the scripture. And study with me now. Read the Bible. What
saith the Scripture? What does God's Word say? Now,
I've heard people say this. Think about this. They say, well,
unbelief is the unpardonable sin. My friend, do you know that
everyone, if I'm a believer today, I did not start my life as a
believer. I did not start out as a believer. Listen, the Bible teaches that
we all fell in Adam. fell into sin and death. That's the ruination by the fall. And as a result of that, we're
born spiritually dead. Dead in trespasses and sins.
We start out life as unbelievers. I've heard people tell me and
say, well, I can't remember a time in my life when I wasn't a believer.
Well, you don't know what a believer is. Believers are made so by
the power and the goodness and the grace of God, and it comes
by the new birth. Christ told Nicodemus, you must
be born again, or you cannot see or enter the kingdom of heaven. So it's the new birth. The Bible
says those who receive Christ, they're born of God. It doesn't
come by natural birth, and it doesn't come by their free will,
which doesn't even exist. Our wills are in bondage to sin.
It comes by the new birth. So if I'm forgiven of my sins,
unbelief is included. Now I've heard people say, well,
it's unbelief at death. Well, the Bible doesn't say that.
when it talks about what people call the unpardonable or unforgivable
sin. But let's go to the scripture.
And we'll start in Matthew chapter 12, beginning at verse 30. And
here's the Lord Jesus Christ. He's talking to the Pharisees
who rejected Him as the Messiah. And He says in verse 30 of Matthew
chapter 12, He says, He that is not with Me is against Me. In other words, there's no middle
ground here. If you're an unbeliever, you
are against Christ. He that is not with me. To be
with him means to be saved by grace. To be with him means to
believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. To be with him is to be submitted
to his righteousness as the only way, the only ground, the only
title to salvation. You see, I have no other righteousness
before God but Christ. That gives evidence that I'm
with Him. He's with me. I'm in Him. He's in me. So Christ says, he that is not
with me is against me. And then he says, and he that
gathereth not with me scattereth abroad. Now what he's talking
about there is preaching the gospel. That's what God's preachers
do. They gather in this sense. We
go out and we preach the gospel and God brings His people in
to the foe. Christ brings His sheep into
the foe. You see, we don't save people.
I'm not a savior. I can't save you. I can't make
you believe what I'm preaching here. Only God can do that. God makes His people willing
in the day of His power. But I'm the instrument, like
John the Baptist said, I'm a voice crying in the wilderness, prepare
you the way of the Lord. Behold the Lamb of God, which
taketh away the sin of the world. That's God's people all over
the world. So when he talks about he that gathereth not with me
scattereth abroad, the Pharisees preached a false gospel. And
in essence, what they were doing was scattering abroad. They weren't
gathering people into the kingdom. They were driving people away
from the kingdom. Christ said one time, He said,
you make them two-fold more the child of hell than you are. So
He says, wherefore I say unto you, now listen to this, all
manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, But blasphemy
or except the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven
unto men. Now what is that blasphemy against
the Holy Ghost? What had he just said? He that
is not with me is against me. He that doesn't gather, he that
gathereth not with me scattereth abroad. What's he talking about
there? He's talking about rejection
of the Lord Jesus Christ who is the only way of forgiveness. That's what he's talking about.
He says, but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven
unto me. Now hold that thought. I want
to read on. He says, and whosoever speaketh a word against the Son
of Man, it shall be forgiven him. But whosoever speaketh against
the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this
world, neither in the world to come. Now, let's read the parallel
passages out of Mark and Luke. Over in the book of Mark, Chapter
3 in verse 28, listen to what he says. Verily I say unto you,
all sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies
wherewithsoever they shall blaspheme. Now you know what, let me say
this, you know what blasphemy is? It's speaking against God.
That's what it is. It's basically, it's that which
would defile and deny the true and living God. So anything I
say about God, if it's not true, it's blasphemy. For example, if I were to tell
you, now God will save you if you'll work hard, do you know
that's blasphemy? Most people, when they think
of blasphemy, they think about somebody cussing, saying GD or
something like that. Well, that is blasphemy. But
a preacher standing behind a pulpit pointing you anywhere but Christ
by the grace of God for salvation, for forgiveness, for pardon,
for righteousness, for holiness, for eternal life and glory, pointing
you anywhere but Christ and His blood and righteousness alone,
my friend, that's blasphemy. That's what the Pharisees were
doing. So he says there, 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. They call Christ
a devil. Now somebody says, well that's
the unpardonable sin, to call Christ a devil. Well now let
me tell you something, Saul of Tarsus, before he was converted,
he essentially did the same thing. He was going about trying to
wipe the name of Jesus of Nazareth off the face of the earth and
to have Christians arrested and killed because he believed that
what Christ was and what Christ preached, what Jesus of Nazareth
preached, was of the devil. But Saul was forgiven. Well,
let's look over in the book of Luke. This is Luke chapter 12. beginning at verse eight, and
he says, also I say unto you, whosoever shall confess me before
men, now notice what he's saying there, confessing before men,
that he's the Christ. That he's the only, and that
means this now. That means he's God in human
flesh. He's God manifest in the flesh.
You see the gospel's all about the person and work of Christ.
And that he died for my sins and satisfied justice to make
me righteous before God. He's the only way of salvation. Do you know this? Now listen
to this. Do you know that to preach any other way of salvation
but Christ and Him crucified and raised from the dead, His
righteousness alone, His blood alone, is blasphemy? There are
people who say, well, Christ is the way, but He's not the
only way. That's blasphemy. He said, I am the way, the truth,
and the life. No man cometh unto the Father
but by me. So he says, whosoever, here in
Luke 12, whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the
Son of Man also confess before the angels of God. But he that
denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God.
Go on, he says, and whosoever shall speak a word against the
Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him. But unto him that blasphemeth
against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven. And when they
bring you unto the synagogues and unto magistrates and powers,
take ye no thought how or what things you shall answer or what
you shall say, for the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour
what you ought to say. Now that's Luke. Now I want you
to notice what I read to you in Matthew, What I read to you
in Mark, what I read to you in Luke. Notice that none of these
passages use the term unpardonable or unforgivable. Matthew uses
this term. He says, shall not be forgiven
him. Mark said, hath never forgiven
us. Luke wrote, it shall not be forgiven. The words unpardonable or unforgivable
are only applied to these verses by men, not by God the Holy Spirit,
but by men. And the Bible teaches us no such
thing as a specific sin that is unpardonable or unforgivable. As I said before, that's an invention
of false religionists in their attempts to keep people in line
with their anti-gospel, anti-grace, anti-Christ philosophy and religion. You know the Bible tells us plainly
that Jesus Christ shall save His people from their sins. It doesn't say he shall save
his people from their sins except one sin. It says in 1 John 1
7 that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin, not
all but one sin, but all sin. It says in 1 John 2 1 that Jesus
Christ is the propitiation. for our sins, and that by Him
we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins
according to the riches of His grace." The Bible says Christ
purged, that means cleansed, put away our sins, the sins of
His people, and washed us from our sins in His own blood. His
people, the people of God, are described as those who have washed
their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." Revelation
7 14. And that means that that's a
sinner who's come to Christ for all salvation. And notice that
none of these verses speak of salvation from all sins except
one specific unforgivable sin. Now let me go back over some
things I've already said. Now some people say that the
unpardonable sin is unbelief. But the fact is, we are all by
nature in unbelief, and by nature we're unbelievers. Before God
the Holy Spirit gives us faith to believe in the new birth,
we're all unbelievers. But in Christ, we who believe
are forgiven of that sin by His blood, just like we're forgiven
of all sin by His blood. Some say it's unbelief unto death,
those who die in unbelief. Now listen to me very carefully
here. It is very true that all who die in unbelief are not and
never will be forgiven of their sins. But it is not because unbelief
is unforgivable. It is because all who die in
unbelief have no way of forgiveness because the only way of forgiveness
is by the blood of Jesus Christ which they have rejected." Do
you understand that? Others say that the unpardonable
sin is blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, but most, if not
all, are not sure what that means or what it involves. What is
it specifically to blaspheme the Holy Ghost? Well, you know,
the Lord said there in Matthew 12, somebody said, well, they
can speak against the Son of Man. I've even heard people say
this. He said that you can speak against
the Son of Man and be forgiven, but you cannot blaspheme the
Holy Ghost. I've heard people say this. They
say, well, you can say anything you want against the Father.
You can say anything you want against the Son, but don't say
anything against the Holy Ghost, because that's unpardonable.
That's not what that means. Do you know, that any time a
person is found in unbelief, they're speaking against the
Father and the Son, but those who understand and know that
Christ is the only way of salvation and are brought to faith by the
Holy Spirit, my friend, they believe in Him and they're forgiven.
So what is it specifically to blaspheme the Holy Ghost? To
know this, we have to understand the specific work of the Holy
Ghost as it pertains to Christ. And I want you to look at the
book of John, chapter 16. What Christ was talking about
in all those passages where people talk about the unforgivable or
unpardonable sin is the preaching of the gospel whereby God calls
His people into the kingdom by God-given faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ. In the preaching of the gospel,
Christ is presented as the one and only true way of the forgiveness
of sins. In other words, when we preach
the gospel, here's what we tell people, we're sinners, we deserve
nothing but damnation, we can earn nothing but eternal death,
and the only way that God, who is holy and just and righteous,
can justify us, declare us not guilty, and make us righteous
before God, and the only way that we can experience the forgiveness
of our sins, is through the blood of Jesus Christ that made full
payment for all the sins of all His people and secured their
salvation. You see, there's no other way
of forgiveness but the blood of Christ. And if you die and
stand before God without having been washed in His blood and
without having His righteousness imputed, you can never be forgiven,
you must experience damnation. And it is the specific office
of the Holy Spirit as the great applicator of this power of God
and the salvation in the gospel to, in the new birth, bring sinners
to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And look at what he says
in John chapter 16, verse 7. Christ is speaking to his disciples. This is just prior to his being
arrested and going to the cross. And he says in verse seven, he
says, nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it is expedient or
necessary for you that I go away. Now going away there means he's
going to the cross to die for their sins as their surety and
their substitute. He says, for if I go not away,
the comforter, will not come unto you." That's the Holy Spirit. What he's teaching here is this.
The work of the Holy Spirit in the salvation of a sinner is
the fruit and result of the work of Christ, the Messiah, the Savior,
on the cross. He said it back in John 12. He
said, if I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me. In other
words, if he goes to the cross, as a result of that, his death,
burial, and resurrection, sinners will be born again. One of the
great proofs of that is that sinners had already been born
again by the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, but it was all
based upon what Christ would accomplish on the cross. Life
comes from His death. Life by the Spirit. But he says
here, he says, but if I depart, I will send him unto you, and
listen to this now, when he is come, he will reprove or convict,
convince the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. Three things. He will convict
the world of sin because they believe not on me. You see, without
Christ, I'm nothing but sin. Without Christ, I'm guilty. Without
Christ, I'm unforgiven. Without Christ, I have no hope
of eternal life and forgiveness. He says of righteousness because
I go to my Father and you see me no more. What did Christ go
to the cross to do? He went to be the end of the
law for righteousness to everyone that believe it. Without Christ,
I have no righteousness. Not only am I not forgiven without
Christ, but I have no righteousness without Him. I fall short, I'm
iniquity, I'm sin, I'm deserving of nothing but death and damnation.
He says, he goes on, he says, of judgment because the prince
of this world is judged. In other words, Satan who brings
his charges against the people of God, if you don't have Christ,
those charges will stick. That means that sin is charged
to you and you will die in damnation. He went on to say, I have yet
many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now.
Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide
you into all truth. For he shall not speak of himself,
he's not going to point sinners to himself, but whatsoever he
shall hear, that shall he speak. And he will show you things to
come. He shall glorify me. The Holy Spirit's work in the
salvation of sinners is to glorify the Son as the surety and substitute
of God's people, as the Lord their righteousness. His work
is to bring you to Christ for forgiveness. For he shall receive
of mine, John writes, and shall show it unto you all things that
the Father hath of mine. Therefore said I, that he shall
take of mine and shall show it unto you. So here we're taught
that the specific work of the Holy Spirit in the salvation
of sinners is to convict us of our sinfulness and point us to
the Lord Jesus Christ as the only Savior of sinners, the one
and only way of forgiveness. No other way. So when Christ
said, whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man, it shall
be forgiven him, He was speaking of those who, out of ignorance,
rejected Him as being the Messiah. And we all do that until God
the Holy Spirit brings us to Him. But when He said, but whosoever
speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him,
neither in this world, neither in the world to come. He was
speaking of the Holy Spirit's work of guiding sinners to Christ
for salvation. And that's the only way of forgiveness. There is no other way. There's
no other way of forgiveness but Jesus Christ and Him crucified
and risen from the dead. There's no hope of forgiveness
in this world or the world to come. And that's what he was
talking about. He was speaking of the Holy Spirit's
revelation of Himself, of Christ. as being the one and only Messiah,
the one and only Savior, the one and only way of forgiveness,
the one and only righteousness. Therefore blasphemy against the
Holy Ghost is in essence rejecting the one and only way of forgiveness
of our sins. The Lord Jesus Christ, His blood
shed as the one and only payment for our sins. Now those who reject
Christ cannot be forgiven. They will not be forgiven. And
that's the only way that sinners will know that they have forgiveness. It's not through anything we
do. Unbelief is not unforgivable.
But here's the key. If you die in unbelief and stand
before God without Christ, you will not be forgiven. You cannot
be forgiven. Not because the sin of unbelief
is unforgivable. It's because you have no way
of forgiveness. Do you understand that? I want
to make that clear. There's no way of forgiveness. There's no way of pardon except
through Christ. Over in the book of Hebrews,
it tells us that without the shedding of blood, there's no
forgiveness of sins. That's not because sins are unforgivable. That's not because that there's
specifically one sin that is unforgivable. It's because there's
no justice satisfied. There's no way of forgiveness
without justice being satisfied. Now we can talk about God being
a forgiving God. I'll tell you what, God's forgiveness
is one of the great, great tenets of true Christianity. that I,
a sinner, can stand before God and be forgiven of all my sins. Past sins, present sins, future
sins. That's an amazing thing. And
I know that there are people who object to that because they
say, well, if that's true, we'll just go out and sin as much as
we want to. Do you know Paul anticipated
that objection in the book of Romans? over when he had clearly
stated in so many terms, in so many ways, how the forgiveness
of sins, the pardon of sins, salvation, justification before
God is by the righteousness of another, by the grace of God.
Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ
our Lord. And then he said in Romans 6,
what shall we say then? Shall we sin that grace may abound? And he said, God forbid. You
see, what I'm preaching to you does not give people an excuse
for sin. It shows them the only way of
forgiveness of sin, and that's by the blood of Jesus Christ.
Hope you'll join us next week for another message from God's
Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1102 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia. 317-07. Contact us by
phone at 229-432-6969 or email us through our website at www.theletterofgrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you.