Go ahead and take out your copy of God's Word and turn to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 3.
We proceed with our study through Mark's Gospel account.
! We have come now to chapter 3, verse 20.
Mark chapter 3, I'll begin reading in verse 20.
Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again so that they could not even eat.
And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying,
He is out of his mind.
And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying,
He is possessed by Beelzebul, and by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.
And he called them to him and said to them in parables,
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 will not be able to stand.
And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand.
But is coming to an end.
But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods,
unless he first binds the strong man.
Then indeed he may plunder his house.
Truly I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man,
and whatever blasphemies they utter.
But whoever blasphemies against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness,
but is guilty of an eternal sin.
For they were saying, He has an unclean spirit.
And his mother and his brothers came.
And standing outside, they sent to him and called him.
And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him,
Your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you.
And he answered them, Who are my mother and my brothers?
And looking about those who sat around him, he said,
Here are my mother and my brothers.
For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.
Please pray with me.
Father God, we thank you for your word,
and the reading of it, and the preaching of it.
And pray, Father, this day, by the power of your Spirit,
for those of us who know you,
and have been given the gift of the Helper,
that you will apply these words to our heart,
that we might be transformed this day.
And I pray, Father, for anyone here who may not have placed faith in Christ,
who may not believe he is who he says he is,
and that he did, in fact, accomplish the things that we see recorded in the Scriptures,
that this will be the last day that would be true of them,
that they might believe today and be saved.
And we pray this in Christ's precious, holy, and magnified name.
Amen.
So this is a bit of a chunk of text,
particularly for us as we typically try to take a little bit smaller bites of things
and ruminate on them a bit more.
But I had a very difficult time not including verse 20 down through 35.
For most of you, as we read that,
you probably noticed that we passed by a couple of subheadings.
Please know that those are not inspired in any way whatsoever.
From the ESV that I'm reading here,
these are inserted,
and most of us have the same insertions of this.
But you'll find that as we looked at verse 28 and verse 29,
this is the text that is often talked about.
This is where the unpardonable sin is preached from.
And there's lots and lots of misunderstanding about what that is and what that means.
And I hope for us here,
those of you who are regulars with us,
this causes a little bit of grief in you
to see when he says at the end of verse 29,
but is guilty of an eternal sin.
What does that mean?
Because we preach a gospel of forgiveness.
A gospel that comes by grace alone through faith
and Christ alone forever.
We believe that our sins are expunged from us.
That they are cast as far as the east is from the west.
That they are forgotten.
That when God looks at us who have believed in Christ,
He sees the righteousness of Christ.
So we preach a gospel of forgiveness.
And here we see it taught that there's a sin that cannot be forgiven
and that should cause a little bit of conflict in you
until we arrive together, I hope,
at what this really means and how we should understand it.
There are lots and lots of entirely unacceptable understandings
of what the unpardonable sin is.
Some people believe it's just simply saying something against the Holy Spirit.
That if in some way you speak poorly of,
it's what this term blasphemy means,
is to belittle or to utter a,
some kind of a condemnation against the Spirit,
that you are therefore cursed.
That there is no way you could possibly ever have
forgiveness and acceptance in God.
I've actually seen some people make the case
that it's perfectly acceptable to cuss in God's name
and Jesus Christ's name,
but not in the Spirit's name,
which if you think cussing is cool,
that would definitely take your cool factor down
if you cuss the Holy Spirit's name.
That's not what this means.
Rather commonly,
it's believed to be that
it's the act of denying some work of the Spirit,
whether that's a real work or a supposed work.
The charismatic movement is classic for railing this against
those of us who don't believe that the Spirit works
in exactly the same way they do,
that we are committing a blasphemy of the Spirit
because we don't think that the falling out
and the speaking in tongues
and all these things that are happening
in these particular settings
are actually the work of the Spirit,
and therefore that is a blasphemy of the Spirit.
I'd say to you now,
none of these are what Jesus means at all.
There are some more acceptable understandings of it,
although I think we'll see
as we look at the context together
that they're a little bit narrow.
One being an act of resistance
which belittles the Holy Spirit so grievously
that He withdraws forever
with His convicting power.
So we're not able to repent and be forgiven.
Others say that it's simply,
as Jesus is responding to the Pharisees,
that it is to say that Jesus worked by a power
other than the power of the Holy Spirit.
And both of these things are true
in their proper sense,
but I don't think they're quite inclusive enough
of what Jesus is trying to teach here.
And so let me tell you,
not to leave you hanging too long,
quick summary,
and then I'll build the case
for why I believe
that what Jesus is saying here
is that the unpardonable sin
is denying that Jesus is the Christ
or the anointed one with finality.
Denying that Jesus is the Christ
with finality.
And I arrive at that
by looking at the context.
That's why we started in verse 20
and we're ending in verse 35.
It's incredibly important.
But before we even get to that,
we should look at the context
of the Gospel of Mark to this point.
There have been many proclamations
up to this point
that Jesus is in fact the Son of God,
the Christ,
the one who has come
to bring forgiveness to His people.
Mark states that
in chapter 1, verse 1.
He says the beginning of the Gospel
of Jesus Christ,
the Son of God.
John the Baptist makes that declaration
in chapter 1, verse 8.
He says,
I have baptized you with water,
but He will baptize you
with the Holy Spirit.
God the Spirit and God the Father
have declared that Jesus is the Christ.
When Jesus was baptized,
the Spirit of God descended on Him
like a dove,
which would have been representative
of both the indwelling power
of the Spirit in His life
and the blessing of the Spirit.
And God spoke out of heaven
and said in verse 11 of chapter 1,
You are my beloved Son.
With you I am well pleased.
This was a fulfillment
of messianic prophecy.
2 Samuel 7, 12-14.
A promise given to David
speaking of his son Solomon,
but in a greater way
speaking of the Christ.
Nathan said to David,
When your days are fulfilled
and you lie down with your fathers,
I will raise up your offspring after you
who shall come from your body
and I will establish his kingdom.
He shall build a house for my name
and I will establish the throne
of his kingdom forever.
I will be to him a father
and he shall be to me a son.
This is speaking both of Solomon
and of our Lord.
And Jesus has declared this of himself,
that he is the Christ.
When he states in chapter 2,
verses 10-11,
that he has the power to forgive sin.
And in chapter 2, verse 28,
when he says that he is the Lord
of the Sabbath.
This has been established,
this reality,
throughout the book so far.
Now as we look at our text today,
beginning in verse 20
and going through verse 35,
there emerges a common literary device
that was used in the days of Mark.
I've said to you before
that this was a rhetorical writing,
not in the sense that we use rhetoric today,
which is typically pointless argument
or unvaluable argument,
just meant to convince people of something.
But this would have been considered
valuable argument,
based in fact,
but aimed at convincing us of something.
You see here,
we're being driven towards understanding
that Jesus is in fact the Christ.
And he uses a literary form
called a chiasm.
It's not important for you to write down,
but I happen to know what it's called.
So there you have it.
It's called a chiasm.
And he follows a pattern,
beginning in verse 20
and working himself down to verse 35.
And a chiasm is reflective.
So if you can track this in your mind,
we have A, B, C, C prime, B prime, A prime.
They reflect one another.
And we see this in verse 20.
We see a crowd.
In verse 21, we see Jesus' family.
There's A and B.
C, verse 22, we see the scribes.
Then in verses 23 through 30,
he addresses the scribes.
Verse 31 through 33,
he addresses the family.
In verse 34 through 35,
he addresses the crowd.
This is significant.
It means that this was meant
to be taken together.
So as we look at verse 28 and 29,
and we really try to understand
what is it that Jesus was teaching,
we can't simply look at verse 28 and 29.
We have to look at the context.
We have to back up to this broader picture
of this situation that's happening
with the scribes and the crowd
and his family.
Very significant in this way.
So let me say to you again,
my assertion is that the unpardonable sin
is denying that Jesus is the Christ
with finality.
The same account of this story
in Matthew chapter 12.
Let me ask you to actually turn there.
I'm going to show you a few things
from this text.
Matthew chapter 12, verse 32.
Jesus says,
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.
So here, Jesus is saying,
If you speak words against me,
Jesus, the Christ,
you'll be forgiven.
But if you speak words against the Spirit,
you will not be forgiven.
So this seems to be contradictory
to the very thing I just told you,
that the unpardonable sin is denying that Jesus is the Christ with finality.
So as he's making this point to us,
we must understand why would he have chosen to say this the way that he said it.
Now note firstly, in verse 32 of chapter 12,
he uses a term he gives to himself consistently and constantly,
son of man.
He talks about his humanity in this case.
And we see many, many insults railed against him,
many blasphemies spoken against Jesus himself as he is here on earth.
So keep that in mind.
But also recognize that when Jesus was here on earth in human form,
his will and his power,
his will and his power as he was absolutely God,
his will and his power bowed to that of the Father and of the Spirit.
He set aside that part of his deity.
Jesus could have come down and done whatever he wanted to do,
but he set it aside and he bowed that will and that power
to that of the Father and of the Spirit.
John chapter 5, verse 19.
Jesus says,
Truly, truly, truly, I say to you,
the Son can do nothing of his own accord,
but only what he sees the Father doing.
For whatever the Father does,
the Son does likewise.
Right?
He was humble in that way.
He took direction from the Father.
John chapter 14, verses 10 and 11.
He says,
Do you not believe that I am in the Father
and the Father is in me?
The words that I say to you,
I do not speak on my own authority,
but the Father who dwells in me
does his work.
Here's the Spirit abiding within him.
Believe me that I am in the Father
and the Father is in me.
Or else, believe on account of the works themselves.
So both the things that he spoke
and the things that he did
were in submission to the work of the Father
and of the Spirit.
So here we have this understanding
that he's bowing now to the will of the Father
that is accomplished by the work of the Spirit.
And we have to then talk a bit about
what is it that the Spirit exists to do?
Why is it that not believing
that Jesus is the Christ with finality
would be to blaspheme the Spirit?
Would be to insult the Holy Spirit of God?
It's kind of a phrase that we've lost.
I think it's been mentioned here now
in the last couple of months
a couple of times.
But that the Spirit of God
is often referred to as the shy spirit.
The Spirit of God works in this world
not to magnify himself,
as many believe,
but to rather magnify and exalt Christ.
Listen to what Jesus says about the Spirit.
John 14, verse 26.
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit...
So we see this term Helper.
He defines for us what he means.
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit,
whom the Father will send in my name,
he will teach you all things
and to bring remembrance to all things
that I have said to you.
He is going to come to help you remember
all of the things,
he's speaking to the apostles,
that Jesus had taught them.
Chapter 15, verse 26.
Jesus says,
But when the Helper comes,
whom I will send to you from the Father,
the Spirit of truth,
who proceeds from the Father,
he will bear witness about me.
Chapter 16, verses 12-14.
I still have many things to say to you,
but you cannot bear them now.
When the Spirit of truth comes,
he will guide you into all the truth.
For he will not speak on his own authority,
but whatever he hears, he will speak.
And he will declare to you
the things that are to come.
He will glorify me,
for he will take what is mine
and declare it to you.
So here is the work of the Spirit.
It's to exalt Jesus as the Christ.
So denying that Jesus is the Christ
with finality
is to blaspheme the Spirit
and that his work is not taking effect.
It's not having an effectual work
in your heart.
All of this is really a matter of the heart.
Not so much about what we say,
but about what we believe.
About who we are at our very core.
And we become who we are as Christians
by the work of the Spirit.
We were once dead in trespasses and sins.
Our heart were stoned.
But God sent his Son
that by his Son,
he could send a Spirit into our hearts
to make them hearts of flesh.
That we might believe
that faith would be birthed in us
to pursue him
and be disciple-making disciples
of Jesus Christ.
So this is a matter ultimately of the heart.
I hope you're still in Matthew 12.
I didn't deceive you
and tell you I wouldn't show you
something from there
and just show you verse 32.
This is the more extended account
of this interaction with these scribes.
Now, I want to point out to you
that in verse 22,
the record in Mark
is that the scribes
who came down from Jerusalem...
Jesus at this point
has already had
many scribes and Pharisees
following him around,
railing accusations at him,
trying to discredit
the things that he was saying
to be true of himself.
Ultimately,
what he would be crucified for
would be for blaspheming God,
for saying that he himself
was God.
And here we see
now kind of a raising of the bar.
They've called in the big shots.
The scribes were the theological experts
of the day for apostate Judaism.
Right?
So they've called in the big wigs now.
The ones who reside in Jerusalem
have now come to accuse him.
So beginning in verse 30
of Matthew 12,
Jesus sets for us some position.
He says,
For whoever is not with me
is against me.
And whoever does not gather with me
scatters.
Two categories of humanity.
Those who are with Christ,
who believe he is
who he says he is,
and those who do not.
Verse 31,
Therefore I tell you,
every sin and blasphemy
will be forgiven people,
but the blasphemy against the Spirit
will not be forgiven.
It's our same thing
we found in verse 29.
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.
Now here we go.
Here's my context.
It's so important.
Jesus goes on to say
in verse 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.
You brood of vipers,
how can you speak good
when you are evil?
For out of the abundance
of the heart
the mouth speaks.
The good person
out of his good treasure
brings forth good.
And the evil person
out of his evil treasure
brings forth evil.
I tell you,
on the day of judgment
people will give an account
for every careless word
they speak.
For by your words
you will be justified
and by your words
you will be condemned.
Our words give evidence
of what we believe.
Right?
Out of the outflow of the heart
the mouth speaks.
So for you to deny
that Jesus is the Christ
with finality,
and I'll explain what I mean
by that here eventually,
to deny that
gives evidence
of where your heart is.
If you do not believe
that Jesus is the Christ,
you are not regenerate.
You do not have
the Spirit of God.
You do not have that seal
that the accomplished work
of Christ was done
on your behalf
and therefore
you are damned.
But if you do,
if you do recognize
that Jesus Christ
is who He says He is,
you believe
in His person
and His work,
you can have great confidence
in that.
this is important doctrine
for us.
It's important for us
to get this right.
As John MacArthur said,
properly understanding this
brings comfort
to the fearful
and should bring fear
to the comforted.
Those of us
who understand
the weight of sin,
understand the great offense
that it is
to our God
should be fearful
of judgment.
But this should bring us
great comfort
that we believe
that Jesus
is the Christ.
That His accomplished
work on the cross
has meaning
for my life
today.
That there is no thing
that I can do
that will not be
forgiven
by grace
in Christ.
There's a
fairly common argument
made,
was originally
penned,
I'm sure it was made
prior to this,
by C.S. Lewis.
It's often summed up
as the liar,
lunatic,
or Lord argument.
If you ever heard this,
it's an argument
against Jesus
simply being a good
and moral teacher.
I heard it said
that a lot of people
in this world
think that Jesus
was just a rather
good guy.
I've heard very few
people say
that He wasn't.
Just kind of a good guy,
but He made some
really audacious claims,
didn't He?
He claimed to be
the Son of God.
He claimed to be
the way,
the truth,
the life.
And so,
C.S. Lewis wrote
in this great quote,
essentially,
in summation,
that you have to believe
either that He's a liar,
a lunatic,
or Lord.
And I think He probably
pulled that
from this text itself.
So listen carefully
to what C.S. Lewis wrote
in a book he wrote
called Mere Christianity.
A man who was merely
a man and said
the sort of things
Jesus said
would not be
a great moral teacher.
He would either
be a lunatic
on the level
with a man
who says he is
a poached egg,
or he would be
the devil of hell.
You must take
your choice.
Either this was
and is the Son of God,
or else a madman,
or something worse.
You can shut him up
for a fool,
or you can fall
at his feet
and call him Lord
and God.
But let us not come
with any patronizing nonsense
about his being
a great human teacher.
He has not left
that open to us.
The things he said
were so audacious
that we either
have to dismiss him
completely
or worship him
as the Christ.
We see in our text here,
we see all of these
different summations
of who Jesus was.
Liar, lunatic,
or Lord.
The Pharisees
are essentially
the scribes
who are accusing him
of being a liar.
Verse 22,
they said,
and the scribes
came down from Jerusalem
and were saying,
he is possessed
by Beelzebul
and by the prince
of demons.
He casts out
the demons.
This term they gave
to him,
Beelzebul,
was a bit of a changing
of a common term
used of the devil.
We use today
Beelzebub.
It's used five times
in the Old Testament
and it's derived
from a Canaanite god,
the lord of the
Ekronites,
which was
Beelzebub,
which meant in Hebrew
lord of the high place.
But they had changed
that word a bit
and just swapped out
the B
and replaced it
with the L
and that one little letter
changed the meaning
to mean lord of the flies.
Interesting.
Right?
Which expressed
the Jewish disdain
for the god of the Canaanites.
This was their way
of really saying
that they hated Satan.
Right?
This false god.
That was a way
of really belittling him.
And this is the very accusation
that they're making
of Christ
who has said,
I am myself god.
They're calling him
the great antithesis
to who God is
and was
and will be forever.
And that is this
false god
of the Ekronites
that they contorted
the word
to mean the lord
of the flies.
They're accusing him
of being a liar.
They're calling him
something completely different.
And he responds to them
so cleverly
as Jesus always does
in our first
recorded parables
that we see
in the Gospel of Mark
and we'll see many more
in the coming months.
Verse 23 says,
And he called to them,
Hey, come over here.
And he said to them
in parables.
And he essentially
goes through
a number of true statements.
Things that would be
really hard for anybody
to deny.
How can Satan
cast out Satan?
That makes no sense.
How can someone
who is possessed
by Satan
cast out Satan?
If a kingdom
is divided against itself,
that kingdom cannot stand.
Much civil unrest.
And if a house
is divided against itself,
that house
will not be able
to stand.
Those of you
who are married
know this to be true.
Your house
will not stand
if you seek strife
in it.
And if Satan
has risen up
against himself
and is divided,
he cannot stand
but is coming to an end.
He's simply
rattling off points.
How ridiculous
is it that you're
making an accusation
that I'm casting out
evil spirits
and you're saying
I'm doing that
by an evil spirit.
That makes no sense.
And they would have been
entirely on board
with him at this point.
But then he makes
an even more
audacious statement
when he says,
No one can enter
a strong man's house
and plunder his goods
unless he first
binds the strong man
then indeed
he may plunder his house.
And he's referring here
to the world
being Satan's house
and Satan being
that strong man.
So you wanted to
break into somebody's home
and they're there.
You've got to do something
with the man of the house
or else you're not
going to be able
to take his stuff.
He's going to
overpower you
and call the police.
This is what will happen.
You come into my house
you better come armed.
You better have
more ammunition
and better aim
than I do
if you're going to
plunder my goods
in my house.
This is what you would
have to do
if you're going to
plunder somebody's house.
So it would take
a stronger man
to accomplish this.
So Jesus is again
proclaiming his deity.
Who's stronger
than Beelzebul?
God.
And that is the very thing
that he's saying
to them here.
I am working
by the power
of the Spirit.
I am working
by the power
of God
and that is how
I'm able to cast out
demons.
A very simple
and poignant
argument.
Jesus is
the Christ.
You could take
Jesus for a lunatic.
It's a possibility.
We see his family here
do that very thing.
They come to him.
He's more than likely
in Capernaum.
He's not back
in Nazareth
Nazareth
in Bethlehem
but in Capernaum
kind of his home base
for where he was operating
and there's such a crowd
that they can't even
recline at table
and eat.
They're pressed
into the house.
They're pressed in
around him
and his family comes
and they're in
probably with good motive
trying to get him
out of the situation
he's found himself in
with countless
thousands of people
pressing him in
around him
to see these miracles
because they just
think that he's crazy.
They just think
that he's absolutely
lost his mind.
I like to muse
we have no record
of it but I like to muse
about what it must have
been like to be
the brother of Jesus
and hear your mom
and dad say to you
constantly
why can't you be
more like your brother?
It cracks me up
or what it would even
be like to raise
a perfect child
I'm not sure
I have no idea
what that would
possibly look like
I can dream of that
but here they come
to him and they
have missed the point
at this station
in their life.
They do not get
who he is.
Here in the record
they're denying
that Jesus is the Christ.
Are they not?
They're calling him
a lunatic.
They think he's
absolutely out of
his gourd.
There's no way
that our brother
that my son
Mary
like Mary
she was visited
by an angel
who told him
who he was going
to be.
She gave birth
to an immaculately
conceived child.
How could she not
believe at this point?
Right?
We know
that it's her
because we see
later on
that his mother
and brothers
are outside.
Don't piecemeal
this up.
This is all happening
at the same time.
They've come.
We see the record
of them coming.
He's inside
dealing with the scribes
and the crowd reports
that his mother
and his brothers
are standing outside
to seize him.
Right?
Because they think
he's crazy.
The blessing of this
is that
Jesus must be denied
as the Christ
with finality
for that not
to be forgiven.
John 7.5
says for not
even his brothers
believed in him.
But then we have
a record
in Acts 1
that as they were
fearfully gathered
together and praying
together,
those who were
faithful to Christ,
his mother
and his brothers
were there.
That they had
accepted him
for who he is
and who he was
to them.
Right?
So it's important
for us to see
that that is the
case.
Just because
you've denied
that Jesus
is the Christ
at some point
in your life
doesn't mean
that you can't
begin to believe
by the work
of the Spirit
that he is now
the Christ.
Right?
That can happen.
So you must
reject to be
guilty of an
eternal sin.
You must
blaspheme the
Spirit by
rejecting that
Jesus is the
Christ with
finality.
So you live
your life,
you go about
your days,
and when you
pass and you're
judged,
if you have not
believed that
Jesus is the
Christ,
you don't
believe in
his person
and his
work for
the forgiveness
of your sins,
that will not
be forgiven.
And there is
your consistency
with this gospel
of forgiveness
that is taught
over and over
and over and
over again in
the Scriptures.
This entire book
speaks of Christ
and this gospel
of forgiveness.
It is all about
redemptive history.
So the final thing
that we're left with
is to believe
that he's Lord.
To believe that he's
Lord,
verse 34 and 35
in Mark chapter 3,
he looks around
at those who sat
around and he said,
here are my mother
and my brothers.
For whoever does
the will of God,
he is my brother
and sister
and mother.
John chapter 6,
beginning in verse 26,
Jesus says,
truly, truly,
I say to you,
you are seeking me
not because you saw
signs,
but because you ate
your fill of the loaves.
So there's a massive
group of people
that followed him
around everywhere
and as we've said
repeatedly,
these people were
not to understand
as disciples of Christ.
Many of them,
most of them,
were following him
because of the things
he was doing.
He was feeding them.
He was healing sicknesses.
He was giving all
this affirmation
to the gospel message
that he was preaching.
But we're not to understand
that they all
were regenerate believers
that were pursuing him
and he gives us
evidence of that
in John 6, 26.
You are seeking me
not because you saw signs,
but because you ate
your fill of the loaves.
Do not work
for the food
that perishes,
but for the food
that endures
to eternal life,
which the Son of Man
will give to you.
For on him
God the Father
has set his seal,
the Spirit.
Then they said to him,
what must we do
to be doing
the works of God?
Jesus answered,
so here's the question
they're asking,
right?
We get this,
verse 35,
whoever does the will
of God,
he is my brother
and sister and mother.
What is the will of God?
This is the question
they ask in verse 28.
Jesus answered them,
this is the work of God,
that you believe in him
whom he has sent.
Want to be in the will of God?
There's your starting point.
Believe that Jesus
is the Christ.
John 6, 40.
Later in that chapter,
Jesus says,
for this is the will
of my Father,
that everyone who looks
on the Son
and believes in him
should have eternal life,
and I will raise him up
on the last day.
And how do we do this?
How is it that we
become regenerate?
Well, it's a work
of the Spirit,
so hear that clearly.
It is a work of God
on our behalf.
He works in our hearts.
He shifts who we are
and causes us to believe.
But that has to have
some necessary outflow.
There has to be
some visible evidence
of this thing happening,
and there's a life of that.
Oh, the New Testament
is full of all the things
that should be happening
in our lives
if we do have faith
in Christ.
But the simplest
and the first thing
that starts at regeneration
and continues on,
Romans 10, 9.
If you confess with your mouth
that Jesus is Lord
and believe in your heart
that God raised him
from the dead,
you will be saved.
Back in Matthew,
this is why he's saying
that we will be judged
by the words
that come out
of our mouth.
And so we ought to believe
that Jesus is
who he says he is.
You've only got
three categories
that you can put him in.
Call him a liar,
call him a lunatic,
or bow at his feet
and call him Lord.
There's a great,
great stake
in this whole thing.
There's a meta-narrative
that hangs over this world.
And it is the reality,
no matter what people's stories are,
whatever situation they come from,
whatever country
they were born in,
socioeconomic,
ethnic,
it does not matter.
There's a commonality
between all mankind,
and that is that
we are affected by sin.
That it has changed
who we are,
and it has made us rebels.
Standing in opposition
to God.
That everything we do
is in hatred of him.
It sets us up
on our own thrones.
The sovereign of heaven,
we try to supplant him
in our own lives.
And this is a damnable offense.
God will send those
who are found in this state
to hell forever.
Rightly so.
Justly so.
Don't think that's unfair.
If you think it's unfair,
you don't understand sin.
You deserve this
if this is where you stand.
But then he sent his Son,
righteous,
perfect,
in every respect,
to be the perfect sacrifice
on our behalf.
That he might trade with us
our sin
and give to us
his righteousness.
That we would be seen in him.
So God doesn't pass over sin,
but he punished our sin
in Christ.
And if you're not found in Christ,
you have an eternal doom
waiting you.
This is the most
important question.
There's this meta-narrative,
this reality
that all of us
are headed towards death
and miserable death
forever.
How do we fix that?
That is the question
that everyone needs to answer
in their hearts.
So today,
if you have already
answered that question,
and I truly hope
everyone in this room
can say it with great confidence,
Jesus is the Christ.
I know that.
I can say that with finality.
I know forever and ever
I am redeemed in him.
Praise God for that.
But if not,
I'd ask today
that you repent
and believe.
I've said things
about the Spirit
working in your life
and you may not even
understand what that looks like.
If there's anything
going on in your mind
that ascends
to this kind of truth,
just respond to it.
That is the work
of the Spirit
in your heart.
Just respond
to the Gospel of grace
in faith.
Let's pray together.