This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of “The Holy Spirit” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, September 24, 1995.

Tonight we are reading once more from Matthew 12, and again we are beginning at verse 14. I’ll give you attention to the infallible Word of God. that the Pharisees went out and counseled together against him as to how they might destroy him. But Jesus, aware of this, withdrew from there, and then he followed him, and he healed them all, and warned them not to make him known, in order that what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, Behold my servant whom I have chosen, in whom my soul is well pleased.

I will put my spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not quarrel nor cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. A battered greed he will not break out, and a smoldering whip he will not put out until he leads justice to victory, and in his name Then there was brought to him a demon-possessed man who was both blind and dumb, and he healed him so that the dumb man spoke and saw.

And all the multitudes were amazed and began to say, This man cannot be the son of David, can he? But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This man cast out demons only by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons. Knowing their thoughts, he said to them, Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and any city or house divided against itself shall not stand. And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself.

How then shall his kingdom stand? And if I by Beelzebub cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? Consequently they shall be your judges. But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come upon you. For how can anyone enter the strongman’s house and carry off his property, unless he first binds the strongman, and then he will plunder his house?

He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven then. that blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. And whoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him. But whoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.

Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree rotten and its fruit rotten, for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, How can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. The good man out of his good treasure brings forth what is good, and the evil man out of his evil treasure brings forth what is evil. And I say to you that every careless word that men shall speak, they shall render account for it in the day of judgment. For by your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned.

Our Father, we are giving you thanks for the means of grace today. This morning we were thankful in your presence for prayer, and for your word, and especially, Lord, we are thankful, yes, for its recitation in our presence and for its proclamation. We are also thankful, O God, that you bless us with the sacraments, and we ask, Lord, that as we think about the sacraments in relationship to the other means of grace, that we would be encouraged with respect to the full identity of your Church and its proper marks. Lord, we would not balk, therefore, at that mark which is ignored by and large in your Church today, the mark of discipline. Surely the sacraments in a special way set before us that mark. We ask, Lord, that you would encourage your church throughout the world with respect to the sacraments and with respect also to this mark, this distinguishing mark of your people.

To this end, our God, grant us good rule, that we might have those who rule well over us. Help your church with good preachers. Help your church, Lord, with a strong administration of your word, as it is most helpful in correcting and encouraging your children. And be pleased as well, Lord, to grant to your church good rulers, good elders.

We ask, Father, for the elders that serve here, that your grace would abide on them mightily. and that they would do well in their office, and that we of this congregation would be a support to them. We pray these things now as we approach your word, as we think and reflect upon the great blessings you have given us in the means of grace, and also the responsibility that is ours under the discipline that you have established for your church, in and through Jesus Christ. by the Spirit. Amen.

Finally, at long last, Matthew 12, verses 31 and 32. Therefore I say unto you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. And whoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him. But whoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.” Now, how are we to understand what Jesus is saying here? There is, of course, no question about the weightiness of these words. to read them has made many shudder. But what do they mean?

Over the years, because of the seriousness of them, the Church has strained to identify the unforgivable sin. It has also strained to identify those who have committed the unforgivable sin. The early Church Father, Irenaeus, saw the unforgivable sin in the most general way as the rejection of the gospel.

His interpretation of the unforgivable sin had special application in his own time to the attack upon the gospel by the Gnostics. Now, if you don’t know who the Gnostics are, I direct your attention to the most recent issue of New Horizons and to the article by Peter Jones. Athanasius thought that the unpardonable sin was the denial of Christ’s deity. This makes sense to those of you who know something about Athanasius’s great battle for Christ’s deity against Arius in the fourth century.

A century before, Origen made himself famous by contending that the unpardonable sin was the committing of any mortal sin after baptism. Is it any wonder that some in the ancient church then delayed their baptisms until immediately before their deaths, in order to keep their records clean from damning mortal sin? And Augustine, in the 5th century, he was especially jealous for the authority of the church and that every individual who at death was impenitent in the eyes of the Church was guilty of the unforgivable sin.

But the trouble with these approaches, regardless of how coarsely they may touch the central concern of Jesus’ way he works, as is especially the case in the approaches of Erroneous and Athanasius, all these approaches seem to be, in the end, somewhat arbitrary, motivated too much by immediate, pressing controversies, and not sufficiently grounded in the text itself.

Now, from the late Middle Ages to the modern era, closer scrutiny has been paid to the interior logic of Jesus’ words. But even this has been done with questionable success, for example. A popular approach has been to zero in on the specific sin of the Pharisees. by cataloging Jesus with Beelzebub and not with the Spirit of God, the Pharisees have been guilty of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. So it is stated.

But Calvin, as Robert Rollins of the 16th century very doubtfully pointed out, that the Pharisees as yet seem more guilty of the sin against the Son of Man, for which there is forgiveness, than the sin against the Holy Spirit, for which there is no forgiveness. And since the rise of the charismatic movement from the last century, The habit has been by some interpreters from that movement to identify the unforgivable sin and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit as that insistence that is found within the Church that the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, particularly the casting out of demons and the ministry of healing, have ceased. In other words, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, in the judgment of many from within the charismatic movement, has been committed by all who oppose the charismatic movement. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit has been committed by all who believe that the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit have ceased with the cessation of the New Testament period.

How this approach relates to our text is never made very clear by the Charismatics, since in the text the Pharisees who oppose Jesus and the Holy Spirit are themselves firm believers in miracles. In fact, according to Jesus, some of the Pharisees’ disciples, if not the Pharisees themselves, were actively engaged in miracle ministries.

So you see, even though we move away from the overt arbitrariness of the early Church, and more towards the text itself, or the identification of the unpardonable sin, The returns, many of the returns that we have received, have not been much more favorable.

So what are we to do? Where are we to turn? How are we to understand better the meaning of Jesus’ words? we do well to keep in mind that central to Jesus’ message is the fact that the critical time has come in God’s dealings with the world. I cannot stress this enough for you. and maybe you become weary with me stressing it as much as I do.

But central to Jesus’ message is this truth and reality. The critical time in God’s dealings with this world has arrived. And it has arrived specifically in Christ, in his ministry, in what he has come to do. Now it is this that is at work at the most fundamental level in what Jesus has to say in the text that we have read this evening. It is even at work, you see, as Matthew makes his assessment of things and turns our attention in the long quotation of Isaiah 42. We find his quotation there in verses 18 through 20. Moving through that quotation, it becomes apparent that Matthew’s assessment of things follows.

It is the time for the unveiling of the servant of the Lord. the servant of the Lord who is so important to the prophecies of Isaiah, the most solid figure of those prophecies. It is the time of fulfillment for God’s promise to give his Spirit to his great servant. It is the time for the triumph of neatness through the Spirit in God’s servant. Ironically, such meekness being powerful to subdue nations and to create hope worldwide.

The critical time that is central to Jesus’ message and central to Matthew’s message, as he quotes from Isaiah 42, the critical time and its arrival. is in view in Jesus’ exchange with the Pharisees that follows. In verse 28, Jesus reflects on this critical time which has arrived when he says, If I, by the Spirit of God, cast out demons, then the kingdom of God is come upon me. The critical time has arrived. Now, you will note in this that Jesus does not identify the critical time’s arrival with the casting out of demons per se, since the sons of the Pharisees, verse 27, have been casting out demons all along.

Jesus’ point is that now that He, He personally, is casting out demons, then, because that is true, the critical time has arrived. It is not miracles generally conceived. It is not wonders performed. It is not amazing feats by religious personalities. It is the fact that Jesus himself now casts out demons.

That marks the arrival of the critical period in God’s dealings with this world. That demarcates the arrival of the kingdom of God. But further, as Jesus progresses in his words, verse 29, this verse explains the arrival of the critical time in terms of the binding of Satan. The man who enters the strong man’s house in this verse, in verse 29, is none other than the Spirit-endowed servant of the Lord. And it is he who binds that strong man in order that he might despoil his house, take off his property, take off those who have been bound by him.

And that is exactly what Jesus is doing. Jesus’ activity means the binding of Satan. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, as I review my life, as I look over my life and think about my struggles with sin, it doesn’t seem to me as if Satan has been bound. But that’s the truth of it. Jesus’ ministry means. that Satan is bound. How so? In the language of the book of Revelation, Satan is bound in that he no more, no longer, universally, uniformly, deceives the nations.

And that individuals, yes, groups even, of people from those nations are being saved out of Satan’s grasp. The critical time in God’s dealings with this world has arrived, and that is evident, says Jesus, because now Satan is, as the strong man, bound, and yet his property is being carried off. But the arrival of the critical time is also apparent in verse 30. Here Jesus sets that arrival of the critical time in terms first of the presence of the great division that is occurring because of Jesus Christ.

Either you are for him or you are against him. There is no middle ground. You cannot be neutral with regard to the person of Jesus Christ. The critical time has arrived, and it is defined in terms of allegiance to Jesus Christ. But secondly, in this 30th verse, the critical time is addressed through the figure of the harvest. The harvest is the road no longer. It has commenced. And whoever doesn’t gather with Christ, So is it cooperative with Christ? It’s actually at work tearing apart.

And finally, we come then to verses 31 and 32. And the entrance into these verses is also by way of this truth and reality. The critical time has come. We are talking not just about division, not just about harvest, but lest there be any question about it, We are talking about eternal judgment. That is what is in the balance.

But very interestingly now, and it takes a little patience to get through the argument because of the words that Jesus used, but very interestingly now, eternal judgment is not coming into play because someone violates the third commandment with regard to the person of the Holy Spirit. In other words, the focus of Jesus’ comments is not a profanity. In other words, the focus of Jesus’ words is not a specific profanity. in which the Holy Spirit’s name is blasphemed. Now, please don’t misunderstand me here.

Such blasphemy is reprehensible and is gross sin, as is all blasphemy. But what Jesus has in mind here is something much more sweeping and comprehensive than the breach of any one commandment. As serious as that breach may be, what Jesus is doing here is he’s actually taking that sin which would be considered the most heinous, the most reprehensible, and he’s sending that in front of the people to accent the seriousness of what he’s saying. He is using it illustratively. What is more heinous, what is more serious than the sin of blasphemy?

Have you caught yourself? Before you knew what you were saying, it was out? It didn’t matter that there were some people around you who used that kind of language all the time. You were thoroughly embarrassed, and then ashamed, and then even internally frightened.

Jesus here has in mind something more sweeping and comprehensive than the breach of any one commandment. Be that commandment as serious as the third, and the attack upon the person of God, or the persons of the Godhead, thy way of blasphemy. He uses the contrast between blasphemy of against the Son of Man and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, yes, but in using this contrast he means to say something about then the progress and the development of God’s entire program for His humanity and for this world. That work, in his extreme language here, is the redefinition of the most serious sin, the redefinition of the identity of the unpardonable sin. And he will do that as he works out that identification in relationship to the development and the progress of the history of redemption, as you move from the economy of the Son of Man to the economy of the Holy Spirit. In fact, the rejection of the progress and the movement in the history of redemption that centers in the arrival of the Son of Man and in the coming of the Holy Spirit is the unpardonable sin.

Here is precisely what the Pharisees are guilty of. They fail to acknowledge what time it is. They refuse to believe that God’s critical time in dealing with this world has arrived in the coming of Jesus Christ and in the dispensing of the Spirit that shall follow. They have failed in their biblical theology and in their grasp of the redemptive historical schema that is at work in the sovereign administration of God. Here is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, here is the most serious of sins, which cannot be and is not forgiven. It is the rejection of the plan of God.

Now, if you would claim that you are innocent of this sin, please don’t content yourself with a quiet, calm, safe religiosity that leaves you somehow detached from involvement with what God has done in history by sending his Son and dispensing his Spirit for his people’s benefit. And if you would claim that you are innocent from this sin, then show in your fruits and in your language that you believe with all of your heart that the critical time in God’s dealing with this world has arrived. in and through Jesus Christ, and that you trust Jesus Christ with all your heart. For after all, as Jesus goes on to say, by your fruits you shall be known, and by your words you shall be justified.

Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we might well be distracted by Jesus’ identification of one sin. his comment about blasphemy. But Lord, we would understand by his comment that he is drawing into view the most serious of sin. And Lord, what might be that most serious sin? Is it not the determined rejection of what you are doing in your Son and in your Spirit who follows?

Indeed, O God, while it is still the time of the Son of Man and Jesus ministers in his flesh in the world, Though the critical time has been announced, the period in which there is this grace abounds. But once the Holy Spirit appears, O Lord, then the critical time has been sealed. We pray, our Father, that we would not be guilty of the sin of rejecting your plan, even in our hearts, and that we would apply ourselves as we are aware that the critical time has arrived, that Jesus Christ is Lord, that the Holy Spirit has come, and that the Kingdom of God has made its appearance in this world. We pray this through Christ. Amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.