The Unforgivable Sin

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For those of you who don't know me, my name is Tyler. I'm the youth and hospitality director here at Mosaic Boston, and whenever I get the opportunity to preach, I always say it is my honor and my privilege to be able to deliver God's word to all of us today. We will be continuing our sermon series through the book of Mark. We'll be in Mark 3:20-35, and the sermon series title is Kingdom Come. And we're going to be looking at what does life in the kingdom of God look like? What does that look like here? But before we get into the text in today's sermon, I have something to say. "I will never forgive you." Harsh words to hear on a Sunday morning. First service was even more appalled. No, I hope you know that I'm not saying that seriously. You have not offended me. You have not done anything to cause me to hold forgiveness from you.

But I want to know what would it take for us to say that to someone? What would someone have to do to us to say to them, "I will never forgive you." Maybe it's something as simple as, "If you lie to me, you break my trust, there's no way I could ever trust you again. I will never forgive you." Maybe say, "Oh, I'm a little bit more holy than that. They would have to cheat on me in a relationship. That I couldn't forgive." And then maybe someone says, "I'm a little bit more holy than that they would have to murder someone I love in order for me not to forgive them." Maybe it's things going on in the world and you say, "I could never forgive that." Maybe you're here and you're saying this is church on a Sunday. This is a trap. I know the right Sunday school answer is, "I'll forgive everyone of everything." I would ask you, does your heart really truly reflect that? If we're honest with ourselves, is there anything that we say and believe someone can do to us and we will never forgive them?

Now, what if I told you that there is something that God Himself says he will never forgive? Now, this is the harsh reality of the text that we will be in is what we call the unforgivable sin that Jesus says is an eternal sin that will never be forgiven. We're going to get to that. But before we do, I want to point out something that's really important about it. It's a sin against God, not a sin against man. So what does that mean? It means that we are not able to have a sin that we withhold forgiveness from others, right? That's not our job. God is the one who forgives and declares that this one sin is unforgivable. So with that sombering mood to set the tone for our service today, will you pray with me over the reading and preaching of God's word.

Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you that you are a God who forgives. You are a God of mercy and grace, but you do not take sin lightly. Lord, help us to not take our sins against you lightly. Convict us where we need to be convicted. Help us to turn and run to you in repentance, knowing that you do desire to forgive and you are willing, ready, and able to forgive. Help us to trust you more. Lord, use this time. Encourage your church, speak through me. Speak through your word and your scriptures to encourage and strengthen your church and convict us where we need to be convicted. In Jesus' name, amen.

So it is going to be a hard text today and there's a lot going on in it, but I do want to say I believe it is an encouragement to us. I have been greatly encouraged in my studies of this text this week, and I hope it's an encouragement to you. And so to be able to frame up our time, we're going to be spending in three sections. I hesitate to call them points. They are pretty distinct thoughts, but at the end we'll wrap it all together. We'll see how it's all connected. But our three ideas for the sermon are one, liar or lunatic, liar, or Lord, we'll get to that. Number two, the unforgivable sin. And number three, right relationship with Jesus Christ. So that's how we'll be framing our time today.

And this is what we see in our text in Mark 3:20-35. If you have your Bibles, you could open it, you could find it on your phone or you could follow along on the screens behind me. God's word says, "Then He, Jesus, 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's possessed by Beelzebul and by the prince of demons, he cast out 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, the 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 blasphemes they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin,' for they had said 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 at those who sat around Him, He said, 'here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother'." This is the reading of God's holy, inherent, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Point number one, the fun one, lunatic, liar or Lord? This is a phrase that was coined by C.S. Lewis in terms of these are the options that he presented that we can believe about Jesus and who He is. You can either believe that He is a lunatic, a man out of His mind claiming to be God. Think about it. Where in society today do we see people who claim to be God? Most of the times it's in some sort of institution because society has said, "You're not in your right mind." Second is liar, that Jesus claimed to be God. And so He willfully led people onto believe that even though He knew he wasn't and He was lying to lead people to follow Him. Or thirdly, that He is Lord, that He is who He says He is.

And this idea was brought up by C.S. Lewis to combat the idea of Jesus as a good moral teacher and philosopher. This is something that I think is still prevalent in our society today. We're okay with saying that Jesus brought good ideas that help society, that Jesus is a good man with moral teachings, and so it was good for society that He came. But C.S. Lewis argues we cannot hold that position because good people do not claim to be God. If He willingly knew that He was God, then He was who He says He was. And if He willingly knew He wasn't and lied about it, then He's a liar and He is not a good person. So these are the only three options that C.S. Lewis presents. And many scholars believe that this text in Mark is where C.S. Lewis gets this idea from because we see all of these options here and we're going to go through them.

The first option is lunatic. And this is the very first two verses, verse 20 and 21. "Then He, Jesus, 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'." His family, His mother and His siblings said about Him, "You're out of your mind. You're crazy." This is what we mean when we say lunatic.

And for the context of where this chapter falls, in the previous sections, Jesus has been healing people and been casting out demons. And while He's doing that, more and more people are coming to Him, bringing their sick, bringing those that are demon oppressed for Jesus to heal them. And so such a great crowd comes around Jesus that He goes down by the sea, He goes, "I can't stay in the city anymore. It's too much chaos. We're going down by the sea." And then the crowd got greater and greater and greater to the point that Jesus was like, "I need to retreat up in the mountains. I'm taking my disciples. We're going up to the mountains to be with the Lord and then we'll come back eventually."

So Jesus is up in the mountains and then verse 20, "Then He went home." So He's coming down from His retreat in the mountains to home, but where is home? Home is in Capernaum. It is most likely Peter's house, not His own home. Why is this what we believe? Is because Peter's house is the only house mentioned in the book of Mark and His family had to go out to find Him. So it's not His parents' house, 'cause they wouldn't have to go anywhere to find Jesus. So it's not His parents' house. It's most likely Peter's house.

So He comes down from this retreat and everyone's like, "He's back. Let's go find Him." So the crowd gathers again and they're swarming Him with so many people that need healing and casting out of demons that they don't have time to even eat. They can't gather anything, they're just working the miracles of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. And His family sees it and they're like, what kind of person draws such a crowd? What kind of person spends so much time with the sick and demon oppressed? He must be out of His mind. He must be crazy. So that's the first option that we see people believing about who Jesus is.

And the second is that He's a liar. And this is the next verse, verse 22. "And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, 'He is possessed by Beelzebub and by the prince of demons, he casts out demons'." And so the scribes come down to see what's going on with this great gathering and they find Jesus casting out demons and they're saying, no, no, He's saying He's doing it by the power of God. He has claimed to be God the Messiah, but no, He's a liar. He's doing it by the power of Satan instead. That's a bold, bold claim.

Now the purpose of the book of Mark is to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus is the one true messiah, that He is God come to earth and Mark has written this book to convince the Jewish readers of his day that Jesus is the Messiah and its purpose is the same for us today. Yes, I agree with C.S. Lewis in a lot of ways that these are the only three options. We cannot say Jesus is a good person, but the Gospel's point is there's only one option. You could say that He looks like a lunatic. You can accuse Him of being a liar, but those do not hold any weight. He is clearly who He says He is. He is Lord. And Jesus proves that point in the following verses. This is Mark 3:23-26.

"Jesus then calls the scribes to Him and said to them in parables, 'how can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, the 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'." Jesus defeats the arguments of lunatic or liar by these few sentences and appeals to the scribe's natural understanding of the world. Logically, He says, can Satan cast out Satan? How is that even possible? Think about it this way, if that doesn't make sense to you, how can a kingdom divided against itself stand? Think about a kingdom that's at constant civil war with one another. How is that kingdom going to stand until one of the side cedes to the other and there is unity between the two. It can't. Constant battle will eventually destroy them. So a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. And if you're saying Jesus is casting out demons by the power of demons that makes no sense. It would be a kingdom divided.

But maybe the kingdom analogy doesn't work as well. So what about a household? It says a house divided against itself cannot stand? Unfortunately, this is one that many of us are much more familiar with in our day and age is the broken household. How can a broken household stand? How can a household where mother and father are constantly pitted against one another, arguing without any unity, without any forgiveness, how can that household stand? And most of the times it does not.

And Jesus is appealing to their logic. He's appealing to their reason, He's appealing to their natural sense of saying, what you are accusing me of makes no sense. And by doing this, He defeats both arguments of lunatic and liar. The argument that He's making is against Him being a liar. He is saying, "I'm not lying. What you're saying, it doesn't make any sense."

And He proves not to be a lunatic because He's in His right mind and He's able to out reason the scribes. Well, the question is who are the scribes? Scribes aren't just your average, everyday Joe Schmo on the block who likes to pick fights and argue? No, the scribes were religious lawyers. So they were the ones who were charged with interpreting the laws of scripture and giving it to the synagogues, that's the temple to the Jewish people, for what to follow. It was their job essentially to be the most logical and reasonable. And Jesus outlogiced and reasoned them. And He is saying, I cannot be a lunatic. I'm in my right mind. I'm more reasonable than the most reasonable people in our society. And I'm not a liar. I just proved that in the argument. So what else is there? Is Jesus who He says He is? Is He Lord? Is He God?

And this is verse 27. Verse 27 is actually a statement, a claim of divinity by Jesus. Jesus says, "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." The strong man here is not Jesus. The strong man here is Satan. The argument is if you're casting out demons by the power of Satan, that's what they're accusing Him of, He's saying, how can I do that unless I first bind the strong man, bind Satan, then I can cast out the demons, then I could go in and plunder his house. So what Jesus is saying is He's not the strong man, but in order to be able to bind a strong man, what do you need to be? You need to be stronger. Jesus is saying, I am the stronger man. I am the strongest man.

And that is where the statement takes place in terms of Jesus claiming His divine authority that he is God, because in the spiritual realm, everyone at this time understood that the most powerful spiritual being was Satan, apart from one, that there was only one who was greater in power and might than Satan, and that was God Himself. So by Jesus saying, I am stronger than Satan, He is saying to the people and they well understood it, I am God.

Jesus doesn't just defeat plausible arguments about who He might be. He declares boldly that He is God. And as we are going to transition into this topic of the unforgivable sin, the first thing that we need to talk about before we get anywhere near there is who do you say Jesus is? Who is Jesus to you? I want to put forward this to you and argue and plead with you to hear that Jesus is who He says He is. He is Lord, whatever cultural or societal or prejudices or ideas about Jesus that you might have, I urge you to consider is He who He says He is? And I promise you that He is God, He is Lord, and He is savior. And that is the setup for this section on the unforgivable sin. And this is verses 28 through 30 where Jesus says, "'Truly I say to you, all sins will be forgiven. The children of man and whatever blasphemes they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin,' for they had said He has an unclean spirit."

So before we get to the awkwardness of the unforgivable sin, we have to understand that this is ultimately about forgiveness as a whole and it's forgiveness by God. This is what I mentioned in the beginning, and John Piper wrote an article on his website about these verses and he says this, "First, the forgiveness in view is God's forgiveness. The sweetest news for a sinner is that God has forgiven him, that God no longer holds his sins against him. But the worst news in the world is that God will never forgive you. God is the one to reckon with. What men think about our sin is relatively unimportant. What God thinks is infinitely important." So we're talking about forgiveness from God and what does Jesus say? The first part that he says, "All sins will be forgiven the children of man and whatever blasphemes they utter."

I want to pause there because oftentimes this gets lost by the following section of the unforgivable sin, we can't even hear these words of Jesus. Do you feel the weight of these words, all sins will be forgiven the children of man? I kind of say, do you feel the weight of that facetiously because it's light, it's freeing, it's something that sets us free, that we know with certainty God is able and willing to forgive us of anything we do. Do we run to Him in forgiveness? And not only is He willing, He is able, He's able, He's powerful enough to do it. This is my favorite part of that strong man section that I skimmed over a little bit. But He says He's going to go in and plunder the goods once He binds the strong man. So Jesus is strong enough to bind the strong man and plunder his goods.

What is pluming goods? It's taking the goods from, say, someone's house and then bringing them into your own and saying, These are now mine, making them your own. Well, what are the goods of the kingdom of Satan and what are the goods of the kingdom of God? What are the most valuable possessions of them? It's people, it's you, it's me. It's souls. It's eternal beings that Jesus doesn't just sit back and say, "I could forgive you if you want," but he says, I am actively going in and I am plundering. I am setting free those who are in captivity to the kingdom of Satan, those who are in captivity to sin and to death and to Satan. Jesus comes in and plunders us. He sets us free from that and brings us into His kingdom and says, "You are mine now." That is the freedom of this verse and it's really important that we get it before we get to the blaspheme of the Holy Spirit because we like to hold onto the like, what about the but?

But the main thing here is that there is ultimate complete forgiveness from God for all sins. Psalm 130:10-13 says this, "He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His steadfast love towards those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to His children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him."

God's love is so great. It is higher than the heavens. It is so great that He's willing and able and powerful enough to forgive us of all of our sins if we just turn to Him and repent. And the incredible thing about this is even if you called Jesus a lunatic or a liar or anything else, any other words under the sun, Jesus is willing to forgive you of that. Many of us at one point in time, maybe were angry with God, maybe said some things we didn't necessarily mean or maybe we did mean and don't want to admit that we meant it. But if we have called Jesus a lunatic or a liar, God is willing to forgive. If we have hated Jesus and even hated some of His teachings and said, "I don't like what the Bible says about X, Y, or Z," God is willing to forgive. Even if we say, "I hate God's people, I hate Christians, I hate the church," even if we have ever said any of those things, God is still willing and ready and able to forgive.

So if you're here today and you're not a Christian, I want to encourage you, God is looking to forgive you. He is willing and ready to forgive. Nothing that you have done is so grievous that He will not forgive. And if you're here today and you're a Christian, what this means is that we can joyfully repent when we have the conviction of sin because we know that He wants to forgive us. So then you're all wondering, we're all wondering what about the exception to the rule? What about this blasphemy of the Holy Spirit? Where does this come in? I have always said that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is equating the works of the Holy Spirit to the work of Satan or to the demonic, and that is true in a lot of senses. I think it's a clear example of how we see this sin take place and it's the example we see here in our text, but I think it's a little bit more nuanced and the heart of the sin is a little bit more nuanced.

And John Piper, in his article on these verses, again, the same article says this, "What then is it? The unforgivable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is an act of resistance which belittles the Holy Spirit so grievously that He withdraws forever His convicting power so that we are never able to repent and be forgiven." I'm going to say that again. "Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is an act of resistance, which belittles the Holy Spirit so grievously that He withdraws forever with His convicting power so that we are never able to repent and be forgiven." This is important because what it means is there is no sin so grievous that God holds a grudge and won't forgive. I think the initial thought-provoking question of what would someone have to do for us to say to them, "I will never forgive you?" Our mind immediately goes to how bad of a sin is that thing going to be?

And the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is not unforgivable because it's so bad that God is incapable of forgiving. No, and it's not that. It just is this one thing God said, "I guess I can't forgive it, so I'm stuck in this and I can't forgive." No, it's a belittling of the Holy Spirit so grievously that the Holy Spirit who convicts us of sin, we push away, we say we want nothing to do with you. We remove the ability of God's convicting power from our lives so that way we are never caused to repent and therefore cannot be forgiven. This is where the word that the scribes use to describe the spirit that they believe God is or that Jesus is working through is so important. It's the word Beelzebul. Beelzebul. It's a actual nickname for Satan. Not a good nickname. But the title for Satan that they're kind of doing a play on is Beelzebub. The name Beelzebub means Prince of Demons or Ruler of Demons. And so that was kind of the formal name that Satan was called by.

But man, the Jewish people and the scribes, they had a great sense of humor. We think that we're the greatest memers of all time, memers, look at me, I don't use memes ever, but we think that we have the best memes of all time, but it's just that we have the internet to spread it more. But the Jewish people are like, yeah, Beelzebub, we'll call them Beelzebul. Well, what does that mean? Beelzebul, by changing one letter, they changed the name from Ruler of Demons to Lord of the Flies or Lord of Dung.

In a lot of ways this was a relatively good thing. Satan is not Lord of anything good, all that he rules leads to death, destruction, despair, you could say dung. The issue is the scribe said the clear working of the Holy Spirit is as dung to us. Those are harsh words to say about the Holy Spirit. It's a harsh thing to say about the Spirit of God. And Jesus's warning against the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. He uses the words very specifically saying, Holy Spirit.

This is something that I learned. I don't know when, but I didn't know growing up, and I don't know if you guys know this, but the Holy Spirit is not His formal name. It's not like Holy, His first name, Spirit, His last name. It's a descriptive word many times throughout scripture, Jesus just calls Him Spirit or the Spirit of God. Holy is not a requirement to be attached, but it's an identifier. And Jesus uses this very intentionally here to counteract the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which is saying the spirit you are working with is dung to us. And He says, no, no, I'm going to tell you who the spirit is. It's the Holy Spirit, it's the anointed one, it's the cleanse, holy, clean spirit of God. That is the power by which Jesus is working His miracles here.

So the question then becomes, okay, that's a whole lot of theological talk. What does it mean for us today? First, very simply, honor the Holy Spirit. Bestow honor upon whom honor is due. And this is one of the beautiful things that I love about the Trinity, is that each person of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit bestows honor on the others. The Father bestows honor upon the Son and upon the Spirit, the Son bestows honor upon the Spirit and upon the Father, and the Spirit bestows honor upon the Son and on the Father. And I think oftentimes we neglect to honor the spirit because of two temptations. One is that we are very academic, intellectually based people. And so spiritual things tend to be harder to understand. They don't come as naturally to understand. And so we kind of shy away from it a little bit. Or the other temptation is to over exalt the giftings of the spirit, right? We say the Spirit enables people to do good things, to prophesy, to teach, to do all these wonderful good things. So we want the gifts more than we want the Spirit.

And so, one thing that we are called to do in terms of avoiding and getting as far away from the sin of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is to just honor the Spirit, recognize His working in our lives, recognize the conviction of sin when we feel it, recognize the gift of comfort and peace in hard times as a gift of the Holy Spirit, that God is with us, He is not leaving us. That when we are able to do work for the glory of God, that it is a blessing of the Holy Spirit and praise God for His spirit and ask for more. Say, Lord, I need more help. Lord, give me more of your spirit. Help me to live for you.

And the second thing, and I think the most directly relatable to this text that we are called to do in terms of avoiding the sin of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, is if you feel conviction of sin, don't take it for granted. Don't take it for granted. If you feel conviction of sin, don't say, "Yeah, but it's not that bad of a sin. I know I got to work on it, but I'll deal with it later." Don't say, "No, I don't believe that's a sin. God, I think I'm okay. I'm going to hold onto this for now." When you feel conviction of sin, repent quickly. And while you are able and ready to forgive or ready to be forgiven and to repent, remembering again that God is willing, all sins, He says, will be forgiven the children of man and whatever blasphemes they utter. So God wants to forgive when you feel that conviction go and repent.

And I think one of the lies of Satan is that when we feel conviction, we associate it with guilt and with shame. What I want to tell you today is recognize that the conviction is a gift from God of the Holy Spirit. It's a good thing. It is something to rejoice over when we feel conviction and not be ashamed about because we could say, hey, the Holy Spirit's still with me. God is with me. He's talking to me. He's correcting me, He's guiding me. It's a blessing. It is a good thing to feel conviction of the Holy Spirit.

And the other side of this is the more that we reject that conviction, the easier it becomes to continually reject that conviction of sin. In a separate account of Jesus warning His disciples about this sin a second time, in Luke chapter 12, it immediately follows the passage on the warning of the leaven of the Pharisees. Well, what is that? Jesus is warning His disciples about what He calls the leaven of the Pharisees, which is a little bit of yeast, a little bit of leaven that gets into a loaf of dough will eventually take over the whole thing and the whole thing will be infected with this leaven. And so beware of the little things, beware of the little sins that continually perpetuate within you and ultimately lead to something that is much greater than what it set out and started out as.

And I believe that this connection is very intentional with the blaspheme of the Holy Spirit because the more we continually reject the conviction of the Holy Spirit, the more we're going to do it, the more we're going to say, "No, that's okay. I'm good. No, I don't need to repent. I'm fine. I'm good." Until we get to the point where we're like the scribes who stand above the law, they say, we're the ones given the right to interpret the law. We're the ones given authority to say the do's and don'ts of the scriptures. I don't need to repent 'cause I know what I'm talking about. I know what I'm doing. Beware in the leaven of the Pharisees, beware the rejection of the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

And the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is not a one-time event. It's not something that you say once and it's like, "Oh, sorry, you're done. No hope." It actually comes out of the state of our hearts. It reveals the state of our hearts. And in Matthew chapter 12, it's the same story of Jesus warning, the scribes and the Pharisees about the sin of the blaspheme of the Holy Spirit. But He doesn't stop there. He continues. Matthew continues the account of what Jesus says to them. And in Matthew 12:33, it says, "Either make the tree good and it's fruit good or make the tree bad and it's 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." I'm going to stop there for now. But for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

Jesus knew the heart of the scribes and of the Pharisees. This wasn't just something that they were wrong about. This wasn't just them not believing in Jesus. Within their hearts, they had built up this resentment towards the working of God. Why? Because they had a nice job. They had a good living. They were high in society and anything that challenged that, they wanted nothing to do with. And so they put themselves over God and over His scriptures rather than submitting to it and trusting the conviction of the Holy Spirit to the point that they have belittled the spirit so much that they couldn't hear that conviction any longer.

What I want to say to you is I do believe that this text is an encouragement. I know you might be like, "How? Why?" It's an encouragement because again, we cannot forget God's willingness and readiness to forgive us when we repent. And also it's an encouragement because if you have ever worried, maybe you're worried now, have I done that? Have I committed the sin? Oh, maybe I'm headed down that way. That's a good sign because it means that God is convicting you, right? It means that the Holy Spirit is still with you, is still active, is still moving in your life. Many people when they talk about this sin, they'll say, if you ever fear that you have committed it's proof that you haven't. And I agree because that is the conviction of the Holy Spirit within you saying that you're not in a right place with God. And then whatever you need to do to get in a right place with God, do and repent of whatever sins the Holy Spirit is convicting you of.

So Jesus proves that He is Lord, which proves that the working He is doing is by the power of the Holy Spirit and He exalts and lifts up the Holy Spirit, calls us to repentance. So now what brings us into right relationship with Jesus Christ. This is the last section of our text which connects back to the very beginning of this text. In verse 31 it says, "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 at those who sat around Him, He said, 'here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother'."

Remember back in verse 20, it said that Jesus's family was going out to seize Him. In other words, seize is take by force. So they go and they finally get there. They get to where He is, and the crowd's still there and they're looking around at the crowd and they're like, maybe it's not the best idea to take Him by force. We might cause an uprising. Let's just tell people, "Hey, we're here to see Jesus. Can you tell Him His mother and His brothers are here?" So the crowd is like, "Jesus, your family's here. Go see them."

If you want to start a fight with your family, go home and say these words, "Who are my mother or my brothers or my fathers?" Oh man, I said first my mom would never hit me, but she would want to slap me if I said that to her. But she wouldn't. She wouldn't. But she would want to because that is offensive. That is harsh words, Jesus. What are you getting at? What are you saying here? And Jesus is defeating another argument about Him, not just who He is, but how do we have relationship with Him? You see, Jesus's family thought, we're His family. We have the right to tell Him when He's going too far. We have the right to tell Him that He is wrong and tell Him what to do because we have that familial relationship.

I want to tell you friends, no external relationship will make you right with God. I work with the teens, the middle school and high schoolers, so I often tell them, but any kids, teens that are here, you're not saved just because your parents bring you to church. The question is, who do you say Jesus is? Do you repent of your sins? Do you have right relationship with God? Maybe you're here because you're an adult, but family or friends invited you and God is good to them, so I just want to know a little bit more about this God. We're glad you're here, but God being a friend of a friend is not going to save you. Are you right with God? Do you repent of sins and trust in Him and recognize Him as Lord of all?

And I also want to point out that Jesus has already, and I just wanted to loop it in here, defeated the other second presumption of the scribes and the Pharisees on how they thought they could have right relationship with God. Scribes said, we are the religious lawyers of the day. You get all the benefits of being a lawyer. We think of lawyers, what do we think of? Liars, cheaters, swindlers. My wife's a lawyer. She's none of those things. Praise God. But we think negatively of lawyers, but we recognize they make a lot of money. They do good work. They're very smart people. So take all the benefits of a lawyer and all the benefits of being a religious leader like, oh, great, they're the moral virtuous lawyers. We are so upstanding in our society. Jesus didn't care. Jesus understood their hearts were not right with God.

They had the most schooling. They had the highest education of the people of their days. Friends, I tell you, God doesn't care about how many letters come after or before your name. They don't care about what degree titles you have. Those are good. I'm not saying don't study, don't get education. But when you stand before God, He's not going to say, "Wow, PhD. Nice, nice. Okay, I guess you could come in." No. What makes us right with God is right relationship with Jesus Christ alone. Nothing societal, nothing external, nothing but faith and trust in Jesus Christ and obedience to Him will make us right with God. This is why Jesus says, "Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother." Do we do the will of God? Do we understand the will of God? This is where it connects back to blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is the one who guides us in the will of God. So if you reject the Holy Spirit, you will never be able to do the will of God.

So I challenge you today, Christians, anyone who is here, Christian or not, ask God for His Holy Spirit to guide you, to lead you in His will. Study scriptures that reveal God's will to all of humanity for us, and listen and obey them. I pray that we can be humble and quick in our repentance of our sin and bold in our obedience and faithfulness to Him. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, Lord, you are good and You are stronger than sin, you are stronger than Satan, you are stronger than the penalty of death. Lord, we thank you and we praise you. Remind us of your greatness, of your ability to forgive and your willingness to forgive when we are in sin. Help us to run to you quickly, to confess our sins to you and to repent quickly. As soon as we are convicted, help us repent, because we know how good you are, because we know how willing and ready you are to forgive. Lord, help us to then change our lives. Help us to live in accordance to your word, to faithfully follow Jesus, to recognize Him as our one true Lord over our lives and overall, and submit faithfully to you and to Him. So Lord, we thank you and we praise you. Encourage us with this text in Jesus name. Amen.