MARK 3:22-30
THE UNPARDONABLE SIN
I. CONFRONTATION: * Mark 3:22
A. Concurrence.
B. Charge.
C. Contempt.
II. COUNTEREVIDENCE:** Mark 3:23-27
A. Confrontation. 3:23
B. Contradiction. 3:24-26
C. Conqueror. 3:27
III. CHOICE: *** Mark 3:28-30
A. Cognitive.
B. Contumacy.
C. Conclusive.
Jesus does not waste too much time in the early part of His ministry to set the tone for what is and for what is not acceptable. He had been doing many wonderful things such as healing the sick, forgiving the sinners and casting out demons when He encounters a group of nay-Sayers from Jerusalem who come to dispute His authority. Instead of slinking away from them and the issue-He meets it head on. Not only does He confront them but He states something that was a clear warning to everyone who would think about Him and follow Him. He delivers a shot across the bow of those who would dare to diminish His work and neutralize it-that which He characterizes as, “The Unpardonable Sin.” In this passage of Scriptures, He defines what that sin is.
I see three things about the passage of Scriptures under study for this sermon. They are: THE CONFRONTATION, THE COUNTEREVIDENCE, and THE CHOICE. These three are still pertinent to today’s world.
* THE CONFRONTATION: it always seems that when Christians are trying their best it is at that time that they are hit with many doubts and disturbances. Such was the case here. While Jesus was doing good, there arrived a group of “scholars” of the Jewish faith who came to “investigate” the Man and what He was doing.
The first thing I note about this distinguished group of scholars was the fact of their Concurrence in what they had seen and witnessed-miracles. They could not nor would not dare to deny what Jesus had been doing because the evidence was too plain for anyone to ignore. They did not bother to compliment Him on His good work, instead they decided to attack Him for who He claimed to be.
Their Charge to Him was that He was in cahoots with Satan and for some odd reason, He and Satan were buddy buddies and the two of them were hood winking the mass of people into believing that He was God. Only off centered thinking could ever devise anything so warped as this.
Then, to add insult to injury, they held Him in utter Contempt and they were not afraid to show it. Some people are so ignorant they never realize the depth of their stupidity but vaunt themselves up above the rest thinking that they really are the better while all the time looking down on the ones who really are their superiors. They thought that Jesus was a country bumpkin and they had arrived in time to save Him from Himself and to set the matters straight.
**THE COUNTEREVIDENCE: I note that Jesus was never afraid to meet His enemies on their own ground. After all, he was the Creator and He knew them and their twisted thinking, hence He did what He had to do: He forced a Confrontation with them. The Bible says that He called them to Him. Evidently they were not meeting Him face-to-face, but were busy spreading their malicious nonsense among the people causing them to doubt what had actually happened to them. Jesus was not going to let them come, then go and not force them to face facts-He summoned them to Him. What a Man!
Next, I note where He carefully outlined to them His Contradiction of the whole garbage they were spewing out of their twisted minds. How could He and Satan ever be in league together? These two were mortal enemies and He had come to wrest control from the hands of Satan all which he took in the Fall of Man and to win the final war. To say that these two were in union was an affront to God, Himself.
Not only did He tell them that they were wrong, but He told them in no uncertain words that He came, He met Satan in the Temptations and that He-not Satan-had won. What he was doing now was His rightful role in His Father’s Kingdom. He was going to win the war because He had already won the battle and bound Satan. The One they were talking to that day was the Victor over Satan, Death, Hell and the Grave and they had best recognize that for their own good.
***THE CHOICE: Jesus then swings from the fact of Him being the Victor to extend a dire warning to these august visitors about what they need to know regarding calling God and Satan as being together. He informed them that they were on dangerous territory and unless they were careful they were about to cross a line where there would never be any help for them to be reached regarding their salvation. Oh, how much we need to read and heed this lesson for today.
The first thing about which He warns them has to do with their thinking process. Sin starts in the mind and when one allows it to enter and then to stay and grow, the sin is then easy upon which to act. Here they were thinking the wrong thing and Jesus told them that their thinking of this garbage could ultimately lead them to commit a sin which there would never be any cleansing. One cannot think, nor ascribe the mercies of our God to that of Satan and that was what they were thinking. They saw the evidence of His mercies and yet, they continued to think otherwise. Their Cognitive abilities were being darkened ever so slowly and that was the exact spot to stop the sin before it took control of them.
Next, Jesus warns them about holding on to that thought-the Contumacy of it all-was wrong. It is one thing to have a thought enter the mind and it is another thing to allow it to remain and to feed it. Not only were they nurturing the sins of wrongful thinking but they were practicing it and allowing it to grow until they called black white and white black. They allowed that thought to overtake them and they then acted on that thought telling all that what God had done for them was really of Satanic origin. Wow!!! We need to think about this for our day. Too many people are willing to try and accommodate the world and throw away God’s laws and merge them into humanistic, devilish thinking until they cannot tell which is of God or of Satan. All too often people are willing to deny the miracles of the Bible and of God’s actions even in today’s world and call them something else.
The world has mixed the truth of God with its own thinking or has denied the very essence of God and put Him on a par with Satan. Creation is now evolution. Salvation is now considered a facet of the mind and/or emotionalism. Heaven is now viewed as being non-existent. There is no such thing as a Hell because God is too good to send anyone there. Jesus was no more than a good teacher, a great philosopher, a kind man, etc., but never God. There is no God and there is no validity to the Bible and the list goes on and on with people who claim to be so much smarter than Jesus and deny Him outright. The things He did: His death, His resurrection, His glorification, all are under attack and the world says that they are not of God but something else. Jesus says this type of talk is an insult to the Holy Spirit and there can not be any salvation accorded to those who nurture these things and then continue to preach them.
His Conclusion is stark and hard. Man cannot ascribe to Satan that which pertains to God. To do so is to deny God and His existence. Jesus sets the record straight for all times.
