This is another CD Brooks sermon transcript, Bible Facts: The Unpardonable Sin Explained (A Sing Against The Holy Spirit). It is from the Breath of Life Series transcribed and edited by Derek Morris
Bible Facts: The Unpardonable Sin Explained – CD Brooks Sermon Transcript (A Sin Against The Holy Spirit)
Our topic tonight is “The Unpardonable Sin.” If there is a condition so grave that no grace and no power can rescue us, we ought to know what it is. Would you say Amen? In Matthew 12:31 Jesus is speaking, and He says, “All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven unto men.”
You know, there are many topics that we don’t hear too much about, and I think I know why. We hear a lot in the world today about political unrest and about arms control and social action. I suggest to you tonight that it is the Devil’s settled purpose to keep us so preoccupied with these issues that we have no time to think about the things that really count. They call that in military terms, diversionary tactics. Simply stated, that means that they keep you busy and preoccupied over here while they launch a major offensive over there.
Now, if there is a condition so grave that all the grace of God cannot remove, I suggest that we ought to know what it is. Would you say Amen? I’d like to start with a definition. 1 John 3:4. We read it together before. In order to understand the unpardonable sin, we have to understand what sin is. Right? The Bible says, “Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness, for sin is the transgression of the law.” That’s a simple definition. Now, the word used there for sin is a Greek word (the New Testament was written in Greek) and the word used for sin is the Greek word hamartia.
I want to share with you what that word hamartia means. It is taken from the situation of an archer with a bow and an arrow. I want you to picture the scene: Here I am. I have my bow and I have my arrow. The word sin, hamartia, means “to miss the mark.” But it will become very clear to you as we proceed that there are different ways to miss the target. Let’s suggest that you give me a bow and an arrow, and I have never shot the bow before.
I am ignorant. Right? That’s not an insult! It’s the truth! I don’t know how to do it. And so I take that bow and I pick up my arrow, and I draw back the string of that bow just as far as I can, and there’s the target. I try to take aim, and let go, and the arrow goes PLOP! I missed the mark. The Bible calls that a sin, but it is a sin of ignorance. I don’t know how to do it. I tried, but I don’t know-how. I don’t know how to live for God. I don’t even know what God wants.
Now, let’s suggest I know how to shoot the bow. I understand now where to put my left hand, and how to draw back the string. I really want to hit that target and I’m following all that I know God wants me to do. But I’m not strong enough and skilled enough to hit the target. Sometimes it falls a little short, or a little to the left or to the right. I don’t always hit the mark. That, too, is missing the mark; that, too, is sin. A sin of infirmity, or human weakness.
You know how that is from your own experience. You really try to do what’s right. You commit your life to Christ and you ask Him to lead you and fill you with His Spirit, but once in a while the pressure gets to you and you say an impatient word, or you act in a thoughtless way. You lose your cool. No point in making excuses. You know it was wrong. And so you bow your head and say, God forgive me for what I just did. I hate that. That happens, doesn’t it? We stumble, we fall. We are weak. At times our humanness gets the best of us. A sin of infirmity.
Most Serious of all sins
And then there is the third kind of missing the mark, and that is the most serious of all. It’s where I know how to shoot the bow and arrow. I know what God wants me to do. I know that it is possible for me by God’s grace to hit the target, and I draw back the string, take aim, and I deliberately miss my mark. That is what the Bible calls iniquity. When I am rebellious and hard-headed. When I know what God wants me to do. When I know what God’s Word says. When I’ve read it for myself in the Bible. When the Holy Spirit has spoken to my heart and it’s clear to me what He wants me to do, and through the grace of God and His power I know that I can make it, but I deliberately miss the mark! That the Bible says is iniquity.
Now, Jesus made it clear that sin is more than just actions, isn’t it? Sin is a mental problem. It is a sickness of the mind: A sickness in the mind that manifests itself in the actions. Jesus said, if you think dirty, you’re dirty. If you think adultery, you’re an adulterer. If you think stealing, you’re a thief. If you think falsehood, you’re a liar. If you’re doing it in your mind, even if it hasn’t yet been manifested in action, Jesus says, you’re guilty of it. Sin starts in the mind. It messes up our thinking. Anybody who would rather sin and go to hell than serve the Lord and go to heaven, has a problem in his mind! Would you say Amen? Anybody who would choose Satan rather than the loving Savior Jesus Christ isn’t wrapped tight!
But the Bible says whether we sin in thought or word or deed, it’s still sin. Not only wrong action, but omission of right. So don’t you sit around gossiping about your neighbor who was caught stealing. If you’ve thought about it, but never had the nerve to do it, you’re just as guilty as he is. Would you say Amen? The righteous folk may put down a young man who had an affair with another man’s wife, but the Bible says if you’ve been unfaithful in your mind, you need the same forgiveness and the same cleansing. Would you say Amen?
God’s Message To All Sinners
Well, what does the Bible say to those who have fallen short of the glory of God? Who have missed the mark? 1 John 1:9. Please write it down. The Bible says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Cleanse us from how much unrighteousness? All. I want to remind you this evening that A-L-L means all. There is nothing that you have done that God cannot forgive if you confess it. Nothing. And that’s Good News! Would you say Amen?
In fact, in 1 Corinthians 6:9, Paul is speaking to the church there. Corinth was a wicked city. Its name still stands for that which is immoral and licentious. He says to the church members there, “Do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators”–that’s folks who engage in sexual activity outside of marriage; “nor idolaters”–that’s folks who put things ahead of God; “nor adulterers”–that’s when you fool around with someone else’s spouse; “nor effeminate”–that’s homosexuals; “nor abusers of themselves with mankind”–that’s sexual perverts; “nor thieves, nor coveters, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God.”
And after Paul has run through the who’s who of sinners, he says to the church members there in verse 2, “And such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the power of the Spirit of our God.” Would you say Amen?
Paul says, you were filthy. You were on the Devil’s honor roll, but you’ve been washed clean by the blood of the Lamb. Let’s say Amen out there! I say to you again on the authority of God’s Word, there is no one who is out of the reach of the loving Savior if only he will turn to the Savior and confess his sins. The Bible says He can cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The sorriest person here tonight can go to heaven if he wants to. If we’ve got good sense we all ought to want to. What do you say?
But now we really have a problem. We’ve just read that God can forgive how much unrighteousness? All. We heard on Monday night about prostitutes and crooks and adulterers who were washed clean by the blood of Jesus and are going to be in the Kingdom. God can forgive all unrighteousness. Then what is the unpardonable sin?
It comes back to what I said earlier about the archer, with his bow and arrow, aiming for the target. I want to read to you from Acts 17:30. Write these texts down and check them when you get home. Acts 17:30. The Bible says, “And the times of our ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent.”
You remember our first illustration of the archer who had never shot a bow and arrow before, and the arrow just plopped down on the ground. He didn’t know how. Didn’t have a clue. The sin of ignorance. He never read it in his Bible. He never heard it preached. Didn’t know. But the text goes on to say, “but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent.” Why? Because the light has come. The truth has been preached. You’re not ignorant anymore.
I want to say something now, and it’s very important. I don’t want you to miss this. God never condemns people for being in darkness. That’s so important that I’m going to repeat it. God never condemns people for being in darkness. You say, “But Derek, what about so and so, doesn’t even know about the seventh-day Sabbath. He’s been told to keep the first day of the week. Never heard the truth of God’s Word. What if the Lord comes? Will he be lost for his disobedience?”
The Bible says, “The times of our ignorance God winked at.” God never condemns anyone for not knowing. Would you say Amen? But what then is the condemnation? John 3:19. Listen to what the Bible says, “This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” God will never condemn you for not knowing. But if you are sincerely seeking, He will lead you to further light. He will lead you out of darkness. Would you say Amen?
Many are experiencing that very thing from night to night. But when He leads you out of darkness, once you’ve seen the light, then you’ve got a decision to make–an intelligent decision for truth. Will you stay in the light and walk in the light and be saved, or will you go back into darkness and be lost?
After the sin of ignorance, there is a sin of infirmity. We’ve seen the light. We want to live for Christ and do His will. I believe that every person here wants to do that, don’t you folks? We set out on the Christian journey, but we quickly discover that we’re not angels. No halo to be found. Maybe I had some wrong traits of character when I became a Christian. Do they all at once disappear? Come on now, do they?
But now we have Jesus in control of our lives to give us victory over those besetting sins. And friends, there is victory in Christ, and all that have truly walked the Christian way know that it is so. God can give the gossiper power to shut up. God can give the liar the power to speak the truth. There is victory in Christ. Let’s say Amen out there?
But there are times when we take our eyes off of Christ. There are times when we stumble and fall. And Satan is right there, laughing. He says, “You blew it now. You didn’t make it. You might as well throw in the towel.”
How should you answer him? “Get behind me, Satan!” Cry out to Jesus, confess your sin, and believe that through His shed blood there is forgiveness and cleansing, and then get up and go on.
Peter struggled with a sin of infirmity. He had a bad temper. He seemed like he would always get mad. When the soldiers came to the Garden of Gethsemane to take Jesus, Peter lost his cool. In the heat of the moment, Peter took hold of a sword of one of the soldiers and cut off the right ear of the High Priest’s servant. The Bible says in Luke 22:51 that Jesus answered and said, “‘Suffer ye thus far.’ And He touched his ear and healed him.”
I just want to point out that some people can become so hardened that they will never believe. Remember that point. We’ll come back to it. Jesus performed a miracle right in front of those who were ready to take Him and put Him to death, and it didn’t even phase them. Jesus picked up that ear, and healed the servant, but they had cherished darkness for so long, they could no longer see the light. Notice that Jesus doesn’t turn to Peter and say, “You deliberate sinner, you.”
Just a few moments earlier He had said to Peter, “Watch and pray, for the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” I’m thankful tonight that if we stumble and fall into sin, but we hate that sin, and get up and go to Jesus in repentance, asking His mercy, He will always forgive us. I’m very thankful for that, aren’t you?
But then there is the most serious sin of all. It’s not simply a sin of ignorance—didn’t know better. It’s not a sin of infirmity where we stumble and our humanness gets the better of us. It’s deliberate willful sin, after you know better.
After you know what God’s word tells you to do. After you’ve read it for yourself in the Bible. That kind of deliberate, willful sin is iniquity. When you say, I’m going to keep on doing what I’ve always been doing. I’m going to keep on walking in darkness even though I’ve seen the light. I’m not going to listen to God’s word, even though I know better.
That is deliberate sin. The Bible calls it presumptuous sin. It is deliberately missing the mark. And that sin can carry you past the point of no return.
And when you go too far, there is no more power and no more grace that can save you. You have grieved away the Holy Spirit, through willful transgression. That means with your eyes wide open, knowing what God wants you to do, knowing that it’s possible through Christ, but deliberately turning away.
In Psalm 19:13 David realizes how dangerous this attitude can be–iniquity. Psalm 19:12. David prays, “Who can understand his errors?”–That’s sins of infirmity; “cleanse thou me from secret faults”–that’s the sins of ignorance, things he’s doing because the light of God’s word hasn’t come to him yet, and things he should be doing but he doesn’t know about yet; sins of ignorance. But then he says in verse 13, “Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.”
David says there are sins of ignorance I commit. Forgive me for those. And there are times when I stumble and fall; I hate the sin. Forgive me Lord. But most of all keep me back from committing the great transgression, the great transgression of knowing God’s will, knowing that power is available, and yet deliberately turning away. Spitting in the face of Christ. David says, Lord, keep me back from that. He prays in Psalm 51:11, “Cast me not away from Thy presence and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.”
David realizes that it is possible through willful transgression to go past the point of no return, it is possible to be guilty of the great transgression.
When Jesus spoke about the unpardonable sin in Matthew 12, He was talking to people who knew better. He was talking to people who had seen Him heal the sick. They had seen Him touch blind eyes; they knew they were blind. They weren’t people that had been brought in by some healing outfit. Healed each time they go to a different place. They saw Jesus heal people who had been blind since birth.
They’d seen these blind beggars sitting alongside the road to Jericho, and Jesus touched their eyes and they could see. They had seen Him raise Lazarus from the dead. They knew he had been dead–for four days. They had smelled the stench. And now they saw Lazarus walk out of the tomb. They knew that Jesus was the Messiah. But because they didn’t like His Word, because they didn’t want to live the truth, they deliberately turned away from Him and they committed an unpardonable sin.
They said, “He’s just a magician. It’s all from Satan.” That, friends, is an insult to the Holy Spirit, when you hear the truth, when you know what God wants you to do but you say, that’s not important, that’s not from God; when you deliberately turn away, that is spitting in the face of Christ, that insults the Holy Spirit; when you say you don’t want to change, when you hold on to darkness when light comes, what you’re really saying is my cherished error, my cherished sin is more important to me than Christ dying on the cross. And that insults the Holy Spirit.
He was there. He saw Christ suffer. Angels covered their faces. Unfallen worlds could not bear it. His cry of anguish echoed throughout the universe to the very courts of heaven, “My God, My God, why has Thou forsaken Me?” The Holy Spirit was there. It was for your sin and mine that Jesus bled and died. Jesus suffered the terrors of the damned for you. He tasted the second death, death without hope.
He did all this to save us from sin’s penalty and from sin’s power. When you deliberately choose darkness rather than light, error, and tradition rather than truth, you are hardening your heart and sinning against the Holy Spirit. That kind of deliberate rejection of Christ and His truth will lead you past the point of no return. You will grieve away the Holy Spirit through willful transgression, and then there is no grace and no power that can save you. And only God knows when you’ve gone too far.
Let’s go to the screen.
I’m pleading with you this evening. Don’t trifle with God’s mercy. Don’t sin against light. As soon as you see the truth of God’s Word, as soon as you sense the convicting presence of the Holy Spirit, as soon as you learn God’s will, obey it. Let’s get right with God, and let’s do it now. What do you say? It’s true that Jesus may not come for another five years. But you could commit the unpardonable sin tomorrow, and as far as grace is concerned, that’s it.
I want the grace of God to cover me tonight, don’t you? If you see the danger of deliberate sin, of knowing what God wants you to do and yet deliberately turn away, if you see the great danger of that, say Amen. If, then, you see the danger of trifling with God’s mercy, how many of you here this evening want the Holy Spirit to so possess you that you will do what you know to be God’s Word? If that’s you, I want you to stand right now with me, and bow your head.
Closing Prayer (CD Brooks Sermons)
Look at us, Lord. Look at us. You know whether we’re sincere or not. If there’s somebody trifling with You, I’m praying especially for mercy on that one. Help us Lord, tonight. And as we go home to our beds, help us not to rest until we’ve made an intelligent commitment based on truth. Make us Thine. Make us what we ought to be. And then keep us every day until that day when Jesus comes.
Help us to remember that the hours we now have are sacred hours of the Sabbath. Help us to make a commitment to Thee and to reflect on truth until sunset tomorrow evening. Bless these people, Lord. You know that I love them. You know that I’m not after anything for myself. You know that Lord. You know that when I plead for them, I’m sincere. Have mercy Lord. In Jesus’ name.
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CD Brooks Sermon Video: Unpardonable Sin
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