Telling the Truth for Women

Show Name: Telling the Truth for Women

Episode Title: The Dove that Can Be Abused

Date: 2026-05-07

Host(s): Jill Briscoe

Jill Briscoe: I’d like you to open your Bibles today at John’s Gospel, chapter 1. We’ve been thinking about the symbols of the Holy Spirit. I hope you remember all the symbols and what they stood for. We thought about fire: the fire of the spirit setting our hearts alight or ablaze. Then we thought about wind: the gentle breeze and the mighty blast.

We talked about oil in our lamps that keeps us burning, lighting us up in a dark world. Of course, we must make sure that the oil is in our lamps or in our lives, that the Holy Spirit is there, or Christ might come again and find us unready for his coming.

Today we’re going to talk about the gentle dove. Actually, we’re going to deal with two symbols: the dove and the seal. But we’ll give the title as "The Dove" because I’m going to be talking most about the symbol of the dove as a symbol of the Holy Spirit.

The passage that we see this very clearly defined for us is in John 1, starting to read at verse 29. "The next day John saw Jesus coming towards him and said, 'Look, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is the one I mentioned when I said, a man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.' Then John gave this testimony: 'I saw the spirit come down from heaven as a dove, remaining on him. I wouldn’t have known him except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, "The man on whom you see the spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit." I have seen and I testify that this is the son of God.'"

So here we see very clearly defined some shape, some manifestation of the Holy Spirit appearing over the head of Christ as he was baptized, beginning his earthly ministry. This is what we term the anointing of Christ, the anointing of the Messiah. It’s a term used throughout the Bible to designate God’s selection and commissioning at the point where he gives the authority to the person for a particular service.

Most of the commentaries I read as I read around the subject matter today led me back to Isaiah chapter 61. Isaiah 61 is the very familiar passage speaking of the Messiah and what he will do when he comes that begins like this: "The spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from the darkness for prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God," etc.

This was the passage of scripture in Luke’s Gospel chapter 4 that Jesus chose to use when he stood up in his own home church. After he had been into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, he came to his own home church. There he took the scroll of the book of Isaiah and he read this very chapter.

Up to this point, Jesus had, as the scriptures tell us in that passage, obtained favor with all the people. He had grown in wisdom and stature in favor with God and in favor with man. Everybody around him, all the people that he knew—his family, his friends, the people in his hometown—had acknowledged this is a wonderful person that we have living among us, this is Joseph’s son.

But when he stood up that day and he read these words, "The spirit of the Lord has anointed me to," and he just read it and then said, "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears," and he sat down. Well, that was the shortest sermon probably on record but perhaps the most powerful. As he went on to explain and to answer the questions that came to him over that, they became incensed. They became angry, they became hostile, and they took the son of Joseph that had lived among them all those years and tried to kill him.

That day Jesus walked through them because his time had not yet come. They were not allowed or able to touch him or to kill him. So Jesus is anointed by John, and God in effect tells his little world that he has selected, commissioned, and given authority to Joseph’s son, Jesus of Nazareth, for a special task.

He is anointed as the Christ, and the name Christ means the anointed one. Jesus means savior. The word is the Logos: the thought, the word, the idea of God made flesh and appearing amongst us. Christ means God’s anointed one, the same word as Messiah. The Messiah, the one that would come that would be anointed to open the blind eyes and to set the captives free and to bring redemption to the world.

So Christ was saying, "You know me as Jesus, you’ve known me as Joseph’s son, but now I am telling you today the scripture is fulfilled in your ears. I am the Messiah." Ta-da! They didn’t like that. In fact, they found that that bordered on blasphemy and they tried to throw him over a cliff because of his statement.

Now the incredible thing is this: the same anointing is to be experienced by the believer. You and I are to come to the realization of this after we have become a Christian. It’s a doctrine that you can’t really grapple with until you have become a believer yourself. But I want you to turn to two scriptures here: 2 Corinthians 1:21 and 1 John 2:20 and 27.

First, turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 21. "Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ, in the anointed one. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his spirit in our hearts as a deposit guaranteeing what is to come."

Then turn over to 1 John 2, verse 20. "You have an anointing from the holy one and all of you know the truth. I don’t write to you because you don’t know the truth but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar? It’s the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ."

But you, says John, have an anointing from the holy one. Look at verse 27. "As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you. You don’t need anyone to teach you, but as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit, just as it has taught you, remain in him."

This is going back to the idea that Jesus told the disciples in the upper room. When he, the spirit of truth, has come, he will lead you into all truth. So when John says you don’t need anyone to teach you, don’t take that as an excuse not to come to Bible anymore, saying, "Jill told us today nobody needs to teach us, we’ve got the Holy Spirit, he’s the one that teaches us." We need our teachers to explain things to us.

Actually, what this is saying is when false teachers come along, you don’t need to run to a teacher to check it out. The Holy Spirit within will alert you to error, he will alert you to truth, for he has come within to be your teacher.

It says something more back in that Corinthians passage, 2 Corinthians 1:21. It’s God who gives you your firm standing in the anointed one. He anointed us. It is no mistake that the word Christ is used there. He could have used Jesus. But he put the two words next to each other.

What he’s trying to do is to draw an idea from the two words: in exactly the same way that God anointed the anointed one, he has anointed us with the same anointing. In exactly the same way that God anointed Christ, the anointed one, he anointed us.

He is talking to ordinary Christians, very ordinary Christians. He’s talking to the Corinthians. And yet he says to these people that are carnal, that are worldly, that are not the sort of Christians you would expect them to be after all this wonderful teaching that Paul has been giving them: God anointed you in exactly the same way he anointed Christ. He commissioned you, he set you apart, he consecrated you, and he gave you a seal of this. He sealed you, he made it sure.

So the same anointing is to be experienced by the believer and we are to come to the realization of this. We are supposed to be able to discern it. The dove has come. Whether you saw him or not, whether you felt him or not, the moment you experienced Christ in his reality and you became a believer, the symbol appeared over your head for the angels and God to see if for no one else.

The Holy Spirit, the dove, had come. With him, the anointing, the commissioning, the consecration of you and I and every single believer, whether a small child or an old person, has been anointed with the same anointing.

Now this is very exciting to me. When we get into the picture now of the seal that you saw in that verse, "He has sealed us," then it even gets more exciting. The anointing is for you and the anointing is for me. Secondly, there is not only the anointing of the spirit, there is the assurance of the spirit. The seal, which we will investigate now, speaks of this.

Now a seal was the signature of the person. Often it was engraved on a big ring. This would be the ring that the people did business with. Remember when the prodigal son came home, he put a ring on his finger? The ring was supposed to be the father’s signature given to the son that the son might run around the world and do the father’s business for him. This was very, very common practice in the East. In the Old Testament, it was common practice.

It spoke of authenticity. There was only one original signature. You know how hard it is to counterfeit a signature. Can you imagine how hard it would be to counterfeit a solid signature in a signet ring on somebody’s finger? That would be very difficult to duplicate. So the stamp of that ring spoke of authenticity, of genuineness. It would be examined if somebody tried to forge it and it would be very, very unlikely that it would ever happen. There was absolutely no way that the stamp of that signature could not be observed as real.

When the dove comes into our lives, when the Holy Spirit who is like a dove comes into our lives, he is the seal of God on our life. He stamps us. We are branded believers with the stamp of genuine authenticity upon our lives. If that is not there, then I ask you: has the dove come? Are you sure there is the stamp of the genuine mark of Christianity upon your life? Because that’s what the spirit does. He is the seal.

Secondly, the seal speaks of ownership. That’s where the assurance of the spirit comes in. The spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. Not only children but heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. The spirit himself bears witness inside with our spirit that we are his. There is a sense of "I belong" once the spirit comes into your life.

It might be that you lack the assurance of your salvation and the dove really has come, but make sure. Because there should be an assurance from within. The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And therefore, if children and Christ our brother, then heirs with him, joint heirs with Christ, heirs of God. The assurance of the spirit: ownership.

The seal speaks of a finished transaction. We are bought, we are paid for, we are signed, we are sealed in front of witnesses. Now this picture is all over the scriptures and I had a wonderful time tracing things I hadn’t even seen till this morning as I was putting the finishing touches in my head to this message and making sure I got it all together. It’s a little complicated today.

But when you think about this seal, in Jeremiah 32, there is a story of Jeremiah under house arrest. Here he is sitting in the courtyard of the palace. It’s not too bad a prison; he had known worse. But here he is under house arrest, basically because the king of the time didn’t like his sermons.

Whenever Jeremiah preached, he said things to the king like, "The Babylonians are coming because of your sin and the sin of the people and because they’ve fallen away from Jehovah. God is allowing Jehovah to allow the Babylonians to come. So it’s no good resisting them, just give up. It’ll make it easier for yourself." Of course, the king didn’t like that. So he put Jeremiah under house arrest.

Now the Babylonians came. They were besieging the city at this point in the story. Nothing was going to stop them. They were laying ramps against the city, they had besieged it, there was no food, there was no water. The situation was absolutely desperate. Here is Jeremiah still under house arrest. Here was the king, mad with Jeremiah for telling him exactly what was happening at that very moment.

Suddenly the Lord speaks to Jeremiah and says, "Your cousin is coming to see you. He’s going to sell you a piece of land." Jeremiah in essence in this chapter says, "Now? Great! Because once the Babylonians have come, they’re going to raze everything to the ground, make it a heap of rubble, burn everything that’s on the land, and then start again. And you want me to buy a piece of this real estate?"

God says, "Yes. Buy it from your cousin in the presence of witnesses. Stamp it with your signet ring. Put it in a clay jar because it’s going to be there for a long time. Leave it. This is a little visual aid for everybody. Seeing you’re in the palace and you’re among the top leaders, I want you to do this as a little sermon with a visual aid."

So he did. Sure enough, his cousin came just as the Lord had told him he would. Because the Lord had told him he would, Jeremiah said, "The Lord has told me I’ve got to buy this piece of land." I think his cousin was laughing all the way to the bank.

So Jeremiah forks out silver—apparently an immense amount of silver, so it must have been a very valuable piece of land—and in front of witnesses, it’s all signed and sealed and he stamps the seal. It’s put in a clay jar and the jar is stamped with the seal. It’s sealed up and stamped with Jeremiah’s signature.

Then there is an incredible passage of scripture where Jeremiah prays about this. His cousin goes and all his money is gone, I presume, and here he is, still a captive. He can hear the Babylonians, the city’s in an uproar, and here he is doing this bit of business. God says, "Now Jeremiah, what’s the matter?"

Jeremiah pours his heart out and says, "You’ve said what’s going to happen and now I’ve got this bit of useless land. It’s in this clay jar, but that’s not even going to survive. What are you doing?" God says, "Well, Jeremiah, this is a picture because one day I will bring Israel back into the promised land and there will be business done again. Your clay jar will be opened and this little piece of land you have bought will be for your descendants."

Now this is a very obscure passage of scripture but it’s very meaningful. All the promises of God are poured out upon this promise, this little clay jar. In the book of Haggai, God says to another man, "I will make you like my signet ring. I will make you like my signet ring." Here and there in the Old Testament, God has these beautiful pictures of what it means to own something, to buy it, to sign the deed in front of witnesses, to seal it with his signet ring. It’s safe, it’s secure.

That is the word that is used here of the Holy Spirit in Corinthians and 1 John. They’re thinking about this seal. The people that they were speaking to would understand the passage of scripture and Jeremiah’s little play and his sermon. God is trying to tell everybody the Holy Spirit is like a seal. He is the deposit of the purchased possession.

In Ephesians chapter 1, verse 13: "You were also included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession to the praise of his glory." It says it a lot better than I’m trying to say it to you.

The Holy Spirit is the stamp of ownership. It is the seal. The deeds of your security, your eternal security, are safe. The Holy Spirit is the deposit of that. He’s a little bit of the payment of what you will finally receive when you get to heaven. So the seal speaks of ownership and security in a very real way.

How secure are we? Now this is a big subject. Some people say, "Well, you can lose your salvation." Other people say you are eternally secure. All I am doing is telling you one of the pictures in the Bible and I’ll let you make your own minds up. But I tell you, if God has sealed the transaction between us by giving me the Holy Spirit, then I believe that this bought purchased possession—myself, my soul—is safe in him.

I believe that and I believe it is eternally secure. One day I have the deposit, I have God’s signet ring stamp on my life, but then I will in heaven open the clay pot and enjoy the fruits of what has been bought here on earth.

Let me give you a little illustration that might take it out of the principle of scripture—and all illustrations fall down—but this might sum up what I feel about eternal security or the assurance of my salvation. I’m going to tell it to you again.

When Stuart and I got engaged, we chose a very romantic hour of the day. It was midday in the rush hour in Liverpool. This was not the most romantic hour of the day. I’m being cynical; that’s British humor. But I have always been a dreamer. I’m the mystical one; Stuart’s the practical one.

I always remember thinking, I wonder what it’ll be like the day that the man that I’m going to marry puts the ring on my finger. What will he say? I envisaged all these Shakespearean phrases pouring out of his mouth. I dreamed my way through my teenage years. Of course, I met Stuart when I was 21 or 22. We decided to get engaged.

He said he had a couple of meetings but he had time to get engaged in between them. So we went downtown Liverpool. He was in Liverpool for some meetings and in between the two meetings in the rush hour in Liverpool, we found this little shop. We didn’t research it or anything; we just ran into this shop and there was a nice diamond and we knew what we wanted.

We wanted three diamonds: Christ in the middle, Stuart one side, and Jill the other to remind me every time I look at my ring. Christ in the center of our marriage. We bought it. It was the second one, I think, we looked at. So Stuart popped it in the little box and off we ran through the traffic, nearly got killed on the way back, honking horns. Never mind, I was in my little dream world. Now he was going to put it on my finger. Maybe it wasn’t the most romantic place but I was sure, being an Englishman, he would find the most suitable phrase. So we sat there and he put the ring on my finger and he looked at me and he said, "Well, Jill, that’s that."

Can you imagine? Well, that was all right. We got home and my mother had tried to help because she had somebody that owned a jewelry shop and she knew we were thinking of getting engaged that day. So she called this lady called Mrs. Cannell. As I walked in the door, she was actually on the phone with this lady. Of course, I ran in showing her my ring and she said, "Oh, I’ve just talked to Mrs. Cannell." So she threw the phone at me and she said, "You tell her. You tell her you’ve got it."

So I said, "Oh, Mrs. Cannell, I’m so sorry we just got out and bought the ring, but maybe next time." The lady was rather startled. It was at that point my husband took the phone out of my hand and put it down and took me in his arms and he said, "Jill, don’t you remember? That’s that. There won’t be a next time." Suddenly those two little words, "That’s that," became the most romantic, wonderful, secure words in the whole world.

When God gives you his engagement ring, the Holy Spirit, that’s what he’s saying to you: "That’s that." Marvelous words! It’s a deposit until you get your wedding ring in heaven. Maybe that helps to bring it down to earth a little bit more.

So there is the anointing of the spirit and the assurance of the spirit. God has given us a signet ring with his stamp of authenticity upon it to wear proudly and gladly until the day of the purchased redemption, until the day in heaven when the marriage supper of the lamb takes place.

Thirdly, after the anointing and the assurance of the spirit, there is unfortunately the abuse of the spirit. Leaving the picture of the seal, we come to the picture of the dove: the gentle, loving, peaceful, innocent, good, vulnerable bird. The poor man’s sacrifice, open to abuse.

Did you know that the dove was the poor man’s sacrifice, but it was the only animal in the temple that offered its neck to the knife? Its whole nature was that of sacrifice. When John, the fiery, strong preacher, saw Jesus walking along, he did not say, "Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah," although he could have done. He said, "Behold the lamb of God." He used another picture of an animal to depict the sacrificial nature of the anointed one, the Christ.

Here again in the picture of the dove, there is a symbol of its nature. Therefore, it leads us to understand that we, you and I, can abuse the spirit. The one whom God has sent, said John in John 3:31 to 36, speaks the words of God. To him, God gives the spirit without limit. I love that phrase. The spirit without limit.

God gave Jesus the spirit without limit. God’s anointing on you and I is the same. Remember, he has given us this anointing, the anointing of the Christ. You and I have the spirit without limit. I remember the day after I was converted, lying in the hospital bed saying, "All of God in all of me, all of God in all of me, all of God in all of me." That was my conversion thought given to me by the girl that led me to Christ. Thank you, Janet, for doing that for me.

I did not think I’d received a little bit of the spirit. He is a person. You can’t receive a bit of a person. You can’t receive a hand or an arm or an eye. When you received Christ, you received all you were going to get. He did not receive all he’s going to get of you. That’s the problem. Because though you are given the spirit without limit, the Holy Spirit is a person, we can limit him. And when you limit God, you are abusing the dove. You are abusing the spirit.

Now we hear a lot about abuse: child abuse, wife abuse, husband abuse, old people’s abuse. There is such a thing as Holy Spirit abuse that we don’t hear too much about. But the nature of the Holy Spirit makes him vulnerable to abuse. First of all, you can quench the spirit, the Bible says. The word means to suppress, to subdue, to limit him in your life.

There is often a little picture I use with children of Jesus coming into our house. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man opens the door, I will come in, will sup with him and him with me." That’s often used in an evangelistic sense with children. It’s a useful verse; my husband was converted a little boy of five with that verse. Amazing what God can do.

However, when Christ comes into our house, it is a lovely picture. We can limit him. He comes in without limit. He comes in by his spirit. The Godhead enters our life without limit. We’re told the fullness of Christ dwells in us. We’re told we have the mind of Christ. In all sorts of ways in the New Testament, we are told all of God in all of us.

Certainly all of God, the spirit without limit. That’s involved in the anointing, in the sealing and this deposit into our life of all his fullness we will experience in heaven. But unfortunately, we abuse him by suppressing him, quenching him, subduing him in our lives.

Secondly, we can grieve the spirit. "Grieve not the Holy Spirit," the Bible says. That’s a command. And if we do not obey the command, then we are sinning. Grieve not the spirit. Be careful in case you give him limited access. Keep him in the hall or let him in the dining room but don’t let him in the living room or let him in the bedroom but don’t let him in the cellar or the attic. Don’t grieve the spirit, for the dove is innocent, pure, and sin grieves the gentle dove.

There is a wonderful book of Ruth Paxson’s—it’s one of my favorites—it’s called *Life on the Highest Plane*. There’s a section in there on grieving the spirit. Let me read it to you. "He is the spirit of faith, so doubt, unbelief, distrust, worry, anxiety grieve him. He is the spirit of grace, so that which is hard, bitter, ungracious, unthankful, malicious, unforgiving, or unloving grieves him. He is the spirit of holiness, so anything unclean, defiling, or degrading grieves him."

"He is the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so ignorance, conceit, arrogance grieve him. He is the spirit of power, love, and discipline, so that which is barren, fruitless, disorderly, confused, and uncontrolled grieves him. He is the spirit of life, so anything that savors of indifference, lukewarmness, spiritual dullness, and deadness grieves him. He is the spirit of glory, so anything worldly, fleshly, carnal grieves him. He is the spirit of truth, so anything false, deceitful, hypocritical grieves him."

So we must not grieve the spirit. There’s a wonderful example of this: he is the spirit of truth, therefore lies grieve him. Do you remember Ananias and Sapphira in Acts chapter 5? They did a very stupid thing: they lied to the Holy Ghost. Peter says, "You haven’t lied to men, you’ve lied to God."

What had they done? They’d seen Barnabas getting a whole lot of affirmation and appreciation because he’d sold a piece of land and brought the money that he got and put it at the apostles’ feet for the poor. So Ananias and Sapphira were having dinner one night and they said, "Boy, it’d be nice to have everybody say those things about us. We’ve got a piece of land."

His wife said, "Yes, but we were going to do all sorts of things with that land. Maybe we could do other things for the church. We don’t need to give the land." "No, I know we don’t need to, I know it’s ours, but why don’t we sell it, keep half the money, don’t tell anyone, take the other half and put that at the apostles’ feet and pretend we’ve sold it all? And then we’ll get all the affirmation and everybody will think we’re great people just like they think Barnabas is a great man."

Ananias’s wife said, "I think that’s a super idea, let’s do it." So they went out and they did it, and they brought the money and they laid it down hypocritically at the apostles’ feet. Peter said, "Why have you lied to the Holy Spirit?" Somehow God revealed the deed to him. But they lied to the Holy Spirit, and as soon as the husband heard that, he dropped dead. Then fear came on all the church.

Then his wife came in and he gave her a chance. He said, "Have you sold the land for such and such?" And she, having agreed with her husband to lie to the Holy Ghost, lied: not to man but to God. This is one of the most scary passages of scripture. I often hear people say, "I wish we could get back to Acts of the Apostles days. Let’s get back to first-century Christianity." Do you really want to do that? Because if you do, you might find a whole lot of dead bodies every Sunday.

It’s so easy to say, "You’ve got all my money, Lord," and the Holy Spirit says, "It’s a lie." Or, "You’ve got my house, Lord." It’s a lie. "You’ve got all my time, Lord." And he doesn’t. He has half of it. It’s a lie. "You’ve got all my heart, Lord." It’s a lie. That’s called grieving the spirit. Grieve is a love word. You can’t grieve somebody that doesn’t love you.

To keep back part was no sin, but to pretend you haven’t is. To pretend you’ve given the whole of your life to Christ when you haven’t is grieving the Holy Spirit. Don’t quench the spirit. Don’t resist the spirit. Don’t limit the spirit. Don’t use the spirit for your own ends.

A fellow called Simon did that. He wanted to buy the Holy Spirit so he could have the power to lay his hands on people and see them receive the Holy Spirit. The apostle said to him, "Your gift perish with you." Simon got real scared and he said, "Oh, pray for me that that doesn’t happen." He wanted to use the spirit for his own ends.

If we want some power or some position or we want to be known for a great teacher or preacher or leader or a great anything, and we want to use the spirit’s gifts for our own ends, then that’s a very dangerous thing to do. And of course, we must never blaspheme the Holy Spirit.

This again is very inadequate, but let me try to sum up the two schools of thought on what is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Blasphemy itself is slandering or insulting someone. It can include an action or any word that devalues another person. In religious terms, it means to insult, mock, or doubt the power of God.

In the Old Testament, it’s the opposite of praising God. Idolatry is the ultimate blasphemy in the Old Testament, punishable by stoning. In the New Testament, there’s a wider Greek meaning to the word. People as well as God could be blasphemed. Christians were blasphemed. Backslidden Christians were warned of this because they had done that before they became Christians.

It’s also evil to blaspheme, to mock, insult, or devalue angelic or demonic powers. I hear Christians say awfully silly things about the devil, and it’s forbidden in scripture. The New Testament looks on such mockery as gross presumption, a pride based on a false claim to knowledge and power. The angels are forbidden to do it. Who do I think I am to blaspheme even Satan or the devil and his demons?

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is a sin mentioned in Mark, Luke, and Matthew. The context makes it clear. It is not a serious moral failure, a persistence in sin, insulting or rejecting Jesus or God due to ignorance or rebellion. It is, so says one school of thought, a willful and conscious rejection of God’s activity and its attribution to the devil.

In other words, a person who chooses to call God the devil is blaspheming the spirit. If you’re worried you’ve committed this sin, then you haven’t, because it rules out a troubled conscience. The other school of thought says that the unforgivable sin—which Jesus said is not forgivable in this life or the next—is really opposing what God wishes to reveal through your conscience by the spirit.

It is talking about the unregenerate person. An attitude of heart closed to God’s self-disclosure. An eternal sin, unpardonable in that such persistence will never hear God’s call of grace and therefore the person can never be forgiven. One blasphemes the Holy Spirit when he repudiates the spirit’s call to Christ as the one way of salvation.

Augustine said all who are finally impenitent are guilty of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Oswald Saunders says it’s not a sin of ignorance. God hasn’t set a mysterious line over which one might unknowingly cross. It’s a sin of the heart, continually hardening the heart against the wooing, the gentle cooing of the Holy Spirit within. Why is there no forgiveness for it? There must be two parties to forgiveness: the forgiver and the one to be forgiven. The sin is unforgivable because it rejects forgiveness, and therefore there is no provision for it.

Let all who as yet have not yielded to the wooings of the spirit, therefore, cease to gamble upon the goodness of God and yield at once lest they cross the fatal line. You can only come to God when the spirit draws you. That’s a mystery. But if you sense God wooing you and calling you gently to himself, presenting Christ as your only way of salvation, then do not continually harden your heart against that.

Because if you do, there might come a point where the spirit ceases to draw. "My spirit will not always strive with man," says the Lord. Then you might find yourself in that terrible position while yet here on earth where you have blasphemed the Holy Spirit, and at that point you are so hardened there is no way you will come to repentance. You cannot come to God just when you choose to. The Holy Spirit is working in the hearts of men now and perhaps in your heart.

Let’s pray together. Heavenly Father, we have been talking about some difficult things today: the anointing, the sealing, the assurance of our salvation, and the abuse of the gentle dove. God, we have much to think about, much to study about, much to talk about. There are some sobering thoughts here. You apparently look very seriously upon any of us who grieves or resists or limits the spirit of God in our lives.

We pray for people who are unbelievers, perhaps people in our own families. Oh God, by your spirit, draw them to thee, and may they not resist the spirit’s voice. May they come quickly to Christ, their only means of salvation. May we be part of that witness to them.

Fill us with these thoughts, give us joy in the assurance of knowing that you have branded us as believers and that we are yours. That’s that. Now may we take the joy of our salvation and share it with a hungry world. And may we not be guilty as Ananias and Sapphira were of holding back half of anything: our lives, our love, our homes, our money, our time, our attention. We ask it, gentle dove, that you may be comfortable within our lives. May we treat you carefully for Christ’s sake. Amen.