Ask Pastor Mike Live

Speaker 1

Today on Focal Point, you're invited into the pastor's study for a conversation with Mike Fabarez about an important question from a listener. I'm Dave Drouy, your host for this special edition of Focal Point.

Mike Fabarez is an author, teacher, and the senior pastor of Compass Bible Church located in southern California. And for the next half hour, we'll join pastor Mike and executive director Jay Wortin as they tackle a question that, frankly, intimidates a lot of us.

So grab a cup of coffee, get comfortable, and let's sit down together for today's edition of Ask Pastor Mike.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Dave. I am here with Pastor Mike.

Pastor Mike, we have an interesting question today. The listener asks, what does it mean to blaspheme the Holy Spirit?

I'm sure many people are frightened about this particular passage because they're afraid they might do it, but maybe you can give us a little background on this question.

Speaker 3

Yeah, well, we're frightened by it because he makes very clear that this is a sin that will not be forgiven. So it gets our attention because of that. But we must understand the context.

Here's Jesus, who's done nothing but fulfill everything the scripture has said. He's done the right things. He's lived a righteous life. And the Pharisees who watch him with their own eyes, they watch him cast out this demon of a man who was blind and mute, and now all of a sudden, he can see, he can hear, he can speak.

And they say to the crowd, out of envy and jealousy, knowing the scriptures, seminary grads, I mean, they know their bibles. And they looked at this and they said to the people, hey, this man is casting out demons by the power of Satan.

Now, that was the context, right? You just saw with your own eyes as this well-trained, biblically studied man, man, I should say, a bunch of them, they're. This is demonic. And knowing full well that this Christ, you know, there was nothing unbiblical about what he had done or what he was doing.

Speaker 2

So this wasn't evil. This was actually a good thing.

Speaker 3

Exactly. And everything he'd done was good. He went about doing good.

So we need to understand, to have that sin singled out and said to the crowd, listen, this is unforgivable. I mean, they crossed the line that they couldn't come back from. This was an unforgivable thing. To assign the miraculous power of the Messiah on earth that you witnessed with your eyes, to have that assigned to demons, to have that say, that was something done by Satan.

So it's a very unique setting. It was an egregious sin; it was an illogical statement. It was done out of a great deal of envy and jealousy for all the notoriety that Christ was receiving.

So Christ, you know, so that's it, you can't be forgiven.

Speaker 2

And Jesus was saying that that action by the Pharisees was a blaspheming of the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 3

Right? Yeah. You are taking something holy and saying it's not only common, which could be called blasphemy. You're saying it is evil, it is satanic, it is demonic.

People sit around sometimes and have asked me in counseling or at the church, you know, hey, I feel like when I was a non-Christian I said that these Christian people and the Christianity and the truth of Christianity, I said that was stupid and ridiculous. I may even say that's evil, you know, have I committed this unforgivable sin? And the answer is no.

Right. This is a very different setting to be a Pharisee, a leader amongst the people and to take a miracle you saw with your very own eyes and to assign that to Satan. So very different kind of situation.

I would say it's very unique to the first century. And because we are not there witnessing first century miracles of Christ, I just can't say, hey yeah, because you spoke poorly of Christianity at one point in your past, you've committed the unpardonable sin. You haven't.

Speaker 2

So just to be clear, there's no possibility that a Christian today can commit this unpardonable sin of blaspheming against the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 3

Not the one that was described there in the gospels in Matthew 12. No, I mean that to me is a non-recurable situation. Not to say that sin is not the problem that we face. And if people are going to turn their backs on Christ and say, "I want nothing to do with him," right? Even though, as the Bible says repeatedly, if we have this exposure to Christianity and we turn our backs on it and we say, as the writer of Hebrews, that we trample underfoot the blood of Christ, well then yeah, I mean, I think there are parallels to the modern Christian life.

And I say Christian life, I should say the modern Christian era, where we can expose people to the truth and they vehemently walk away from it knowing the full implications of the gospel. But here's the thing. The people that come to me and ask the question have a soft heart. Their concern, their conscience is bothering them, and they're people that want to follow and serve Christ.

The fruit of the people that blaspheme the Spirit and turn their back on the gospel? They're not coming and asking the question. To even ask the question with concern shows me you have not turned your back on the gospel and walked away from the truth that you knew. You're someone who sees the error of your ways and you're coming in contrition. That's a work of God.

Speaker 2

They're genuinely seeking to make sure that they're still right with God. And that tells you that their heart is in the right place.

Speaker 4

Right.

Speaker 3

And you got to understand what the Bible says about that, that interest to come and seek God and to come with repentance to God, that's a gift of God. God grants that gift to people.

So he's not granting that gift to you. Wanting God and being contrite before God and repentant, that's not something you get.

If God has turned you over to your sin and said, fine, you've wronged me, you've ridiculed me, you've turned your back on the truth. I have nothing to do with you anymore.

Speaker 2

Versus those people in Hebrews 4 and 6, I think it is that you're talking about where they've turned away.

Speaker 3

Right? Yeah. I mean, that's a kind. I mean, again, even that. How can I even judge that? Right. I hear people's testimonies and there's aspects of life where it looks like that's what's going on. And then they come to a place where God gets a hold of their lives and the Spirit brings them to conviction and guilt and contrition and repentance and faith, and they become Christians.

So I don't know when exactly that is, but God would know. God would know when someone has been so, you know, exposed to the gospel and so benefited by so many things that are relating to Christianity in the church or Christian relatives or whatever, and they turn their back on that. God might know when that time is, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't know when that time is.

I just have to know that I'm calling people always to repent. And if they are able to repent, as it says in Acts, they are granted that repentance, then I know, well, they haven't gone too far. God has pulled them out of their ignorance and their sin and their unbelief and brought them to belief in Christ.

Speaker 2

And somebody can look at their life and see a changed life that would reflect that repentance and trust in Christ. Right.

Speaker 3

And I think we glorify Christ's mercy and his grace and forgiveness. When we realize our past, regardless of how egregious it is to us, has been forgiven. I mean, so I don't think we need to carry around this concern.

If we see that our faith is biblical faith, our repentance is true repentance, our contrition over sin is real, then let's not keep going back and saying, well, God's grace wasn't greater than all my sin. No sin may abound, but grace abounds even more.

And we need to celebrate that when we experience the gifts of God, which are repentance and faith and salvation. And when you have that forgiveness, celebrate it because that grace is greater than all your sin.

Speaker 2

We can be thankful for it, not doubting it.

Speaker 3

Right. Because I think that becomes an offense if I've forgiven your debt, if you've done something, Jay, against me and racked up a financial debt, and I. For you to constantly question that would really be an insult at some point to you.

Speaker 2

Offensive. Yeah, you're right.

Speaker 3

Yeah. I don't want you to keep questioning my forgiveness of your debt. I forgave it if I forgave it, trust me, believe me.

And so if we have the signs of real repentance and real faith in our lives, we need to accept that, embrace that, and trust that God's grace is greater than our sin.

Speaker 2

Well, is there any sin that we can commit that would be unpardonable in our Christian lives?

Speaker 3

Perpetual unbelief. Right? I mean, continual, chronic unbelief, turning from God, waywardness. Yeah, sure. I mean, you'll know them by their fruits. If you continue to bear bad fruit, if you turn away from the living God and walk away from him, and you are walking in your own.

As the old analogy, the Old Testament says, like sheep without a shepherd, you continue in that. Well, then, yeah, that's unforgivable. But that's not what we're dealing with.

Speaker 2

In this specific question.

Speaker 3

Well, the question is always, have I committed the unpardonable sin? And I think most people who ask that haven't.

Right. Because you're not asking that question. You're not concerned about forgiveness. You're not concerned about pardon. You're concerned about doing whatever you want to do.

And those people will be unforgiven. They'll have to pay for their own sin one day.

Speaker 2

Well, thank you, Pastor Mike. I trust that today's question will help some people rest easy in terms of that issue. And we're going to continue this topic with a message you gave called the Holy Spirit in the ministry of Christ.

Speaker 4

Can’t be a Christian very long at all. Well, I shouldn't say that these days. Hopefully, you're a new Christian. When you're reading through the Gospels and you run into this thrice-repeated warning that you can do a lot of bad things in your life, you can blaspheme a lot of people, but if you blaspheme the Holy Spirit, there is no forgiveness for you. That's scary. That's Luke 12, Mark 3, and Matthew 12 all say the same thing. So let's turn to this passage and let's look at the whole thing: Matthew 12, 22-32. And let's once and for all understand what this means—the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

First of all, letter A, the scene. Before we even look and read the text, I want to give you the scene. Jesus, one of the things that he's doing, as we'll see in Luke, and we already have twice now, is encountering unclean spirits, as Luke likes to call them—demons, fallen angels—and sends them away, casting them out and separating people from the damage of demonic spirits. That's been happening a lot in Christ's ministry, and all the Gospels are talking about it. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in cases both in Capernaum, Judea, and in Galilee, in the region of Galilee, in all three settings, you have people claiming that Jesus is doing this miraculous work that is so dramatic. He's doing it by the power of Satan. That's a continuous claim, and the ones that like to make that claim were the religious elite of the day. So that's the backdrop.

Now, let's read the text of Matthew 12, 22-33. Then a demon-oppressed man who was blind and mute was brought to him. It's pretty bad. I mean, this guy's a mess. According to the text, this is a demonically induced kind of craziness here, of impairment healed him so that the man spoke and saw. The guy's normal now. All the people were amazed, and they said, "Can this be the son of David?" That's the winner, right? I mean, that’s the point. The kingdom is coming. The kingdom is upon you. The king has arrived. He's transferring people from the dominion of darkness to light. He's batting back the gates of hell. This is him.

But the Pharisees, they just can't stand it. The Pharisees heard it and said, "It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons." And that goes back to the Old Testament. It's a modification of the god Baal—Baal, the prince of Baal. It was their nickname for Satan, Beelzebul, the prince of demons. "It's by the prince of demons that he casts out demons." Okay, we understand this is miraculous and supernatural. There's no denying that. But you know, there's more than one supernatural being out there that can do stuff like this. Satan can do that. Now, that's not even rational. But they're saying it because they're jealous and envious.

Knowing their thoughts, he said to them, "Every kingdom divided by itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? Make much sense, guys? And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? You're out there trying to do the same things. You're out there trying to fix people that are spiritually oppressed, who've got harassing problems in their lives and associated symptoms from their oppression. How do you do it? Therefore, they will be your judges. Ask them. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you."

So he's crediting, in this case, the agency of the Holy Spirit in this act of power. And then he says, because I'm claiming who I'm claiming to be from the very beginning of the reading of the Isaiah scroll in the Capernaum synagogue, he's saying, "You should know, the King is here. The kingdom is arriving."

Verse 29: "How can someone enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man? And indeed, then he can plunder the house. Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. Therefore, I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven. But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or the age to come."

There's your chilling verse that every Christian has read at one point and wondered, "Maybe I've committed this sin." There's a problem. Blasphemy, remember, is to take something that is holy and to call it profane. That's what blasphemy is. Blasphemy is being able to say something about something that is holy and righteous and to say that it's wicked and evil. That's blasphemous. This warning against blasphemy regarding the work of the Holy Spirit is significant.

The charge is, if you think this through, the charge is that you are not doing these good deeds and helping these people. You're not fixing their problems with their harassment from demons by God. You're doing it by Satan. Satan can do these things too. Therefore, you don't want to get in league with a guy who's in league with Satan. You don't want to follow a guy who's doing this by Satan's power. Now here are the religious leaders talking to people who they're, you know, wanting to be, I suppose, right with God. They're saying, "Don't follow this guy. He's in league with Satan." That's the charge. What he's doing is Satanic.

Christ's response: Let's break this down, verses 25 and 26. He says this: "Satan's not defeating Satan here." Knowing their thoughts, he said, "Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste. No city or house divided against itself can stand. If Satan is casting out Satan, he's divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?" All right, that's his response. Now he wraps this up by saying, "If you blaspheme the Holy Spirit, it's unforgivable."

Let's look through the components of the unforgivable sin. Let's just think it through. We've got the context. We thought it through. You picture it. It's the same in Mark and it's the same in Luke. Same context. Here are the components. Number one: These are people witnessing Christ's miracles, which are, according to the claim of Christ, by the Holy Spirit. But here was a demonstration of the Spirit's power, a miraculous sign. And the miraculous sign was for good. In this case, you could even put a subset of this—the miraculous work of God to benefit and to do good, clearly to bat back the work of the enemy. They witnessed that. They saw it. They could testify to seeing it. Then the Pharisees, who are being addressed here, are telling other people...

Speaker 3

The work of Satan.

Speaker 4

That, by the way, is the blasphemy. Holy Spirit doing good work is now castigated by critics for jealousy and envy’s sake to tell other people, that’s the exact opposite. That’s evil satanic work that’s being done. There’s your two components of the unforgivable sin. You have to be there to see the miraculous event. Then you have to attribute that miraculous event done by Christ through the work of the Spirit. You have to attribute that, credit that to Satan. There’s nothing more blasphemous than that.

And Jesus makes clear in his judgments to Chorazin and other cities, I did miracles in your midst. It’s going to be better for Sodom and Gomorrah on Judgment Day than for you guys, because I did this work in your presence. If there was anybody that should have seen who I was, and if the kingdom had arrived, it should have been you to whom much is given. Much is required, I guess is another way to say this. Now, that should be clear just in how I’ve broken that down. That sin is not now possible. It’s impossible. Someone cannot commit, in the context of Matthew 12, the unpardonable sin.

Now it’s a record of what Christ said. The question may be, well, then, why was it recorded? Because there’s a parallel to it. Obstinacy is still possible. It is still possible to blaspheme not in the manner of the unforgivable sin. In other words, these can be reversed, but the context in which these are stated are stated to make it very clear to us that we ought to have a chilling, fearful concern that these things do not persist in our lives. And that’s how they’re presented.

Let’s turn to this one and call it Hard Hearts. Hard hearts. Hebrews, chapter three, verse seven through 15. These folks were blaspheming. The parallels that we can find with this chilling warning are found in the heart of the people that are willing to see the good news of the Gospel, to hear the opportunity for forgiveness and infilling by the Spirit, and to say, I don’t want it. There’s a parallel there. It’s not blasphemy of the Spirit, but if it persists, that obstinacy is judged.

Verse 7. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, I wanted to pick a passage that would show you that the Holy Spirit is involved in the plea for the Gospel. And when he convicts hearts, as he quotes now the old psalm today, if you’d hear his voice, he says, don’t harden your hearts as they did in the rebellion. On the day of testing, in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for 40 years.

Now think that through. Same paradigm, the miracles of the crossing of the Red Sea, of the manna, of the water, out of the rock, they saw all those things and they hardened their hearts. That’s how it’s described here. In verse 8, he says, don’t do that. You can do the same thing now. You don’t see the works of Moses and you don’t see the works of Christ second hand. And it was secondhand for the Hebrews here, as we saw in chapter two, verses one through four. But even as secondhand recipients of the message of the Gospel, when the conviction of the Holy Spirit comes, don’t harden your heart. That’s a damning problem.

Is it reversible? It is, but only to a point. Keep reading. Therefore I was provoked with that generation and said they always go astray in their hearts. Parallel that to verse eight. They have hard hearts. They’re not interested in the truth. They’ve not known my ways as I swore in my anger, my wrath. They shall not enter my rest. Now there is a trigger there. There’s a point in which there, God says, I’m done. I’ve decided you’re done. Why? Because of a persistent hard heart.

Now that’s not blasphemy of the Spirit, but the parallels are there. And the Spirit is involved. The Spirit is offering life. And you’re saying, even though he’s convicting you, I don’t want it at any time. There’s a no more. At least that’s the parallel. That’s why he says in verse 12, Take care, brothers. They’re not first in recipients of the message of the Gospel of Christ. They are under the ministry of Moses. And yet they have to be careful lest there be an evil heart there, an unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the living God.

We’re not talking about Christians that are losing their salvation. We’re talking about people that are hearing the message of the Gospel, feeling the conviction of the Spirit. And now they’re going to go, forget it. They have a hard heart. They don’t want to respond. Instead, you ought to be exhorting one another, verse 13, every day, as long as it’s called today that none of you should be, here’s our word again, hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

For we have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence to the end, as it is said today. If you’d hear his voice, do not harden your heart as they did in the rebellion. Just because I tell you you cannot contextually or historically commit the unpardonable sin. And that’s what I’m teaching you. You can’t. It’s not possible contextually or historically anymore. You can, through the obstinate hard heart, have the conviction of the Spirit, harden your heart and have God say, I’m done. Then he can, like he did in the desert, swear in his wrath. You’re not going to enter my rest.

Hard hearts. It’s put another way later in the book, in chapter 10, and let’s just call it deliberate refusal. There’s a deliberate decision and refusal after the full laying out of the Gospel. There’s clarity about it, and we assume based on chapter three, because all these warnings need to be grouped together. There was adequate conviction. The Spirit convicted you. You knew it. You only knew it intellectually. You knew it in your heart, but your heart fought it. And then there was a deliberate decision.

Verse 26, Hebrews 10. For if we go on sinning, this is a life of determined, deliberate refusal. As it says in the next word there, deliberately, after receiving the knowledge of the truth, then what else is? There no longer remains a sacrifice for sin done, only a fearful expectation of judgment and the fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. For anyone who had set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy, on the evidence of two or three witnesses. That’s how it worked in the Old Covenant.

How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who is trampled underfoot, the Son of God? There’s a poetic way of saying, I’ve heard it, don’t want it. You know, I’m done. He’s profaned the blood of the covenant by which he were sanctified, quote, unquote, set apart not in salvation, but clearly he was part of the band who sat there, just like they did in the desert, having all the benefits of the manna and the water and the deliverance. And instead, they’re outraging the Spirit of grace.

There again, I connect this to the Spirit of God. There’s a blasphemy, an outrage. It’s not a point in time, it’s not a sentence, it’s not something you do, but a deliberate refusal of the truth over some matter of time. I suppose we know him, verse 30, who has said, Vengeance is mine, I will repay. And again the Lord will judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

The warning in the Bible is equally as grave as the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. People, though in Christian circles today, fear the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit as though it’s something they said at some point in time. All I’m trying to do in this comparison is saying, listen, the sin of the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is not possible. But the obstinate heart is possible. And at some point, God has had enough and he’s fed up and he’s done, and all that’s left for that person is the judgment of God.

I think what you need to be careful of is saying when that point takes place, I don’t know. The people that come up to me after a service and they say, I think I’ve hit that place. I’m so afraid those aren’t the people that are at that place. You are there with a great deal of dread and concern. In other words, the warnings of Scripture are working on you. God is speaking to you and you’re responding to that. It’s the people that have marched away that I’ll never talk to because they don’t want to talk to a pastor. That’s for sure. Those are the people who certainly this text might apply to. I mean, that’s the kind of profile we’re looking at.

Speaker 1

A warning against the hardening of the heart from Pastor Mike Fabarez today on Focal Point. It's part of our weekly segment called Ask Pastor Mike, and you can get the unedited version of this message at focal.radio.org. Look for the title "The Holy Spirit in the Ministry of Christ."

When people habitually silence the convictions of the Holy Spirit, they're blocking God's work in their lives. That's something that hits home in today's politically charged environment. Why does it seem like appeals to common sense and moral justice fall on deaf ears? Maybe we're seeing the natural result of ignoring God.

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I'm Dave Drouy, inviting you to come back next week when Pastor Mike Fabarez dives back into the Book of Romans with more about exemplifying Christ, Monday on Focal Point. Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.