The Holy Spirit: Grieving, Quenching, Blaspheming the Spirit | 2/22/2026

All right, well, welcome back. So good to see you all again.

Thanks for making it out on a snowy Sunday.

And if you're watching online, welcome to you.

So grateful that you're here. And we want to invite you to

come be with us in person at 115 E Main Street, right here in the

historic old part of Gaylord. All right, if you have your

Bibles, please take and turn them to the New Testament to 1st

Corinthians chapter 2. And this is going to be like 95%

through your Bible. It's pretty far to the back

after the letter to the Romans and before 2nd Corinthians.

So this is First Corinthians chapter 2 and this is by the

1 Corinthians 2 · chapter mention

Apostle Paul written to the church at Corinth in the ancient

world. All right.

And this is by the way, just to give you context.

A lot of times I want to give context, right?

And so say this is this is after Jesus has lived and died and was

crucified and then was resurrected.

So this is the time of the early church.

OK, So Jesus has ascended back to heaven and now the early

church is exploding. And you can read about these

churches in the book of Acts. OK, so this is the Apostle Paul

and he writes to the church. He says in verse 12, now we have

received not the Spirit of the world's, but the Spirit who is

from God. And what is the Spirit from God?

Well, the Spirit from God is the Holy Spirit that we might

understand the things freely given to us by God.

We've been given the Holy Spirit so that we can understand the

things have been freely given by God.

So I want to start this morning by just building a foundation to

say that understanding is good. We want to grow to understand

Scripture, understand the Bible. We want to lifelong be getting

better and better at walking in God's truth.

So he establishes that we've been given the Spirit, not the

spirit of the world, but the Spirit of God so that we can

have greater understanding. And then in verse 13, it says,

and we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but

taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truth to

those who are spiritual. Now watch.

I want to just set up this today's message by just saying

that at church, this is what we're doing.

We're imparting in words not taught by human wisdom.

So I don't want to just come to this morning with human wisdom

because that would be empty. I want to come trusting that the

Holy Spirit is our teacher and that the Holy Spirit can shed

light on Scripture today in such a way where you grow and you

have a greater understanding and you're able to go articulate

that to your loved ones and to friends.

You say, hey, have we not been given the Spirit of the world,

but the Spirit of God so that we can have understanding.

And it's not just human wisdom, but instead it's wisdom taught

by the Spirit interpreting spiritual truths to those who

are spiritual. That's what we want to do today.

We want to interpret spiritual truths to those of you who are

spiritual. And you might not consider

yourself super spiritual, but you're in church.

So yes, you are spiritual this morning.

OK, so this morning, in light of this, I want to talk to you

about we, as we continue to talk about the Holy Spirit this

morning I'm going to talk to you about grieving, quenching and

blaspheming the Holy Spirit. And this is going to be a lot to

navigate through, but we're going to do it.

And I'm going to pray this morning in light of this passage

in First Corinthians 2 or First Corinth.

Yeah, First Corinthians 2. And I want to, as an example,

set this up where you can go, hey, you could pray like this

also. When you read Scripture, you can

read a passage and then you can just like turn it into a prayer,

which is what I'm going to do here in the prayer, even that

I've written in your notes. So God, we come to you this

morning and we say, Holy Spirit, teach us that we might

understand things freely given by God, not just by human

wisdom, but Holy Spirit, help us to interpret spiritual truths.

We are spiritual people. We want to walk in light of your

truth and be Spirit filled. And so bring us wisdom beyond

this mere man's wisdom. We're hungry and we're ready in

Jesus name and everyone loudly said Amen.

Now this morning, I just want to remind you that so this is the

fifth week that we've been in this series where we're

wrestling through well, who is the Holy Spirit?

What are his attributes? What is he like?

Where did he show up in the Old Testament and the New Testament?

Where was this spirit poured out?

So I, I don't want to get into the trap of each week repeating

at great length of messages in the back that we've done, but I

do encourage you to go back and maybe you can find those

messages on YouTube or Facebook or Audible.

They're everywhere. Everywhere you podcast, you can

get those messages, especially if you missed one.

Because I'm really trying to be very strategic in how I get to

the end of the series. And I want when I get to the

end, we're going to talk at length about the gifts of the

Holy Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit.

OK, But I want to I want to build a big foundation that is

solid in order for now, now to have a, a balanced approach to

flowing in the gifts of the Spirit.

And this morning's message particularly is going to be

really several things are going to be like, OK, this is building

up when we think about grieving and quenching and blaspheming

the Holy Spirit. Well, I think it's great to have

a good understanding of what those mean before we delve into

really going after the gifts of the Spirit.

OK, so I'm going to unpack those three ideas.

And I must tell you this morning, the worst team, we

always pray appear on the platform before rehearsal.

And I asked the worship team, and I'll ask you this question

too. Do you know what the

unpardonable sin is? Have you?

In fact, it's either it's the unforgivable sin or the

unpardonable sin. How many of you have heard of

the unpardonable sin before? OK, How many of you never heard

of that? There is an unpardonable sin.

Wave it. And if you've never heard it,

OK, Several of you. OK, Good.

All right. So in Scripture, there's an

unpardonable sin. And I must say that growing up

in the church, sometimes you'd hear people reference this

unpardonable sin. And this is mysterious sin, it

seems, and be like, Oh no, I hope I didn't do it because if

it's unpardonable, then I can't be forgiven of it.

And that's a scary place to be. So I'm going to go through

grieving and quenching and blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

And I really want to have a great understanding of how

they're uniquely different. I asked the worship team today,

what is the unpardonable sin? And some of them said grieving,

and some of them said blaspheming.

And I will tell you it is blaspheming.

Blaspheming the Holy Spirit, according to Jesus, is an

unforgivable sin. But what does blasphemy the Holy

Spirit look like? Is it simply disobeying one of

the 10 commandments? Is it disobeying other commands

in Scripture? Is it ignoring the conviction

that the Holy Spirit can bring? Well, I'll tell you when we get

to the end. I'll build up to it.

But but it according to Jesus, it is the unforgivable sin.

So it was interesting to ask the worship team this morning.

And again, it's blaspheming, but some thought it was maybe some

of the others. So I want to start first, I want

to unpack this idea of grieving the Holy Spirit.

Did you know that according to Scripture it's possible to

grieve the Spirit of God, which is a really profound truth.

So we read about this in Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

The apostle Paul writes, Let no corrupting talk come out of your

mouth, but only such is as good for building up as fits the

occasion that it may give grace to those who hear and do not

grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you were sealed for the day of

redemption. Now watch says don't grieve the

Holy Spirit. You have been sealed.

You have God's brand on you when you come to Christ, you were

branded. You're you've got that.

You know the seal like you know in a grocery store jars,

something's like that's who you belong to.

OK, You're of God's family now. So he's not saying don't grieve

the Holy Spirit or you get kicked out of the family of God.

No, you're sealed and God's family, but you can grieve God.

And according to you know the word that the apostle Paul is

using here for grieve, It's the Greek word lipeo.

And it means to distress reflexively or passively, to be

sad, to cause grief, grieve, be in heaviness, sorrow or sorry.

Now here's one of the things that's so beautiful to me about

God and the Holy Spirit, and it's true of Jesus also, is that

God who is all powerful, omnipresent, omniscient, he

knows everything. He's in control of all things

God. He's there's nothing comparing

to him. And yet God puts on human skin

in 2007 years ago, he comes to earth and he is born in

Bethlehem. And Jesus, God becomes

vulnerable. He comes as a baby.

There's nothing more vulnerable than a baby that has to be taken

care of. And even in the Old Testament,

God would. God would take risks with his

people, and often he would get betrayed and hurt and saddened.

And so Jesus comes. He's vulnerable, and so he lives

among us, and he is hurt. He's betrayed.

Think about it. Jesus leaves in his inner circle

Judas. Judas is there, right, stealing

the money. How does he steal the money?

But because Jesus put him in a place where he could be trusted,

and so he's Jesus makes himself vulnerable.

He can be hurt. And this is true of the Holy

Spirit. You and I have the ability to

sadden the heart of God. And again, to me that shows so

much about the character of God, how God is.

I mean, God is willing because you might think, Oh, God's up

there on his throne with the big long white beard and the big

staff. He's going to ZAP you with

lightning bolt or something. If you if you get out of light,

it's like, Nah, instead, when we do these things like corrupt

that no corrupting talk come out of your mouth only such as good,

like when we have corrupt talk or other things that I'll get to

it like it saddens God. And so when we live in light of

the idea, it's like, wow, I could sadden God doesn't make me

powerful. It makes God more powerful.

And the type of God that I want to be close to and I want to

love because it's like, wow, God, you've set this

relationship up where I can disappoint you.

You're not guarded. Instead, God, you're open, Holy

Spirit, you're open to being near me and dwelling in me.

But if I do things that are ungodly, then I can sadden the

heart of God. So Jesus made himself

vulnerable. Now watch.

He's going to go on and he's going to talk about, OK, what

are the things sadden or grieve the heart of God?

Ephesians 4 now 31 and 32 it says let all bitterness and

wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you all

along with all malice and be kind to one another.

Be tender hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave

you. What he's contrasting here that

we can grieve sad in the heart of God by again, bitterness and

wrath and anger and clamor and slander, or we can delight the

heart of God by being kind to one another and tender hearted,

forgiving one another as Christ forgave us.

So I want to be the type of person that doesn't grieve the

heart of God. I want our church to be the type

of church that doesn't grieve the heart of God.

And knowing that Scripture says we have that ability, I think

again shapes the relationship that we have with the Holy

Spirit because He dwells in US and He dwells in US in such a

way where He has interest in our lives.

God has interest in you. He knows the hairs on your head.

He wants to be close to you. And him being close to us means

that He gives us the ability to sadden or grieve His heart.

So that's the idea of grieving. But what about quenching?

What does it mean to quench the Holy Spirit?

I'm going to read you a pretty long passage, so stick with me

on this. But I want you to see the

context of where Paul to the church at Thessalonica talks

about now quenching the Holy Spirit.

And he says this like he was saying before, it's like he's

got, he's winding down his letter.

Paul often had a way of seeming like he was going to end this

letter and then he restarts up again.

But so it feels like his blessing, like his benediction,

but he's gonna list a whole bunch of encouragements, OK.

And watching encouragements. We ask you, brothers and

sisters, to respect those who labour among you and are over

you and the Lord and admonish you and esteem them very highly

and love because of their work. Be at peace among yourself.

So here, interestingly, if he's talking about, you know, those

who serve among you this morning, we have volunteers, we

have staff and they're serving you and the wanting to lead you

to greater depths in the Lord. And so he's saying, you know, to

respect those OK who labor among you.

They labor among you, not over you, but among you.

And he says, be at peace with yourselves, among yourselves.

And then he says, so this is like the church.

Hey church, be at peace with each other and admonish,

appreciate those who serve. And then he says, and we urge

you, brothers, admonish the idol.

Well, not the idol, like idol, but idol.

In other words, people that are lazy, they're just idle, they're

going nowhere, maybe spiritually right in their life.

So he's like, we urge you to admonish the idol, OK, and

encourage the faint hearted and help the weak and be patient

with them all. So these are just like random

encouragements, OK? Random encouragements.

As he's winding down his letter, he says, see that no one repays

anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another

and to everyone. So admonish, encourage, help.

And then he says rejoice always. This is a big command, and pray

without ceasing and give thanks in all circumstances, for this

is the will of God in Christ Jesus in you.

And then he gets to the idea of quenching the Holy Spirit and

he's going to say three things. He's going to say do not quench

the Spirit, do not quench the Holy Spirit, and do not despise

prophecies, but test everything. Hold fast what is good.

So he's giving it, if you will, a bunch of practical

encouragement on how we should behave with each other.

And then he gets the sight of do not quench the Holy Spirit.

Now then he's going to go on verse 22.

I'll get back to what quenching means.

But he says abstain from every form of evil.

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely and may

your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the

coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. So all of us, He wants it to be

blameless in the sight. Now he says don't unwatch the

order here. He says don't quench, don't

despise prophecy, but test everything.

OK, well what does quenching mean?

Well, the Greek word here is too hard for me to say, but it's

like some Benny me or something like this.

And it's a prolonged form or apparently a primary verb to

communicate extinguishing something.

If you went and got a fire extinguisher and there was a

fire and the Holy Spirit is portrayed as fire in the Bible.

It's the fire of God on the day of Pentecost.

He came down with like fire on their tongues.

And Paul is saying don't extinguish, don't quench, don't

put out the Holy Spirit, the fire of the Holy Spirit.

And this is a curious idea. So on the one hand, you can

grieve the Holy Spirit. These are things that we can do

to the Holy Spirit. We can grieve sad in the heart

of God, and now we can quench. It's possible for us to quench

the Spirit of God. God gives us that much authority

and power. That seems odd.

God, who is all powerful, He's giving us the ability to

extinguish what he wants to do. Now, how are grieving and

quenching different? Well, grieving seems to be about

the feelings of God. God has feelings.

OK, God has feelings. And, and I wonder, like for

couples, how many of how many of you admit as a couple that maybe

one of the maybe one of the two of you is more sensitive than

the other? Anybody in your marriage, in

your relationships, some of you are pointing to your spouse,

Pokémon. It's like I must submit.

Jason's not in the room right now.

I think she's up with the high school kids.

But I'm I'm kind of I'm kind of the more sensitive one and

asking the first services that that was true.

And she said, well, about some things.

But I will tell you this. I get my feelings hurt easier

and I'll just tell you that. And even by her, sometimes it's

like that hurt my feelings. And she's like, come on, are you

really like yeah, right. So what's interesting is that

that in me is not a strength, but when it comes to God, it's a

it is a strength that God permits and allows us to have

the ability to, if you will. This is not condescending God or

the Holy Spirit. It's what the Scripture says

that God gives us the ability to grieve him and to quench.

So we're grieving is more about feelings and saddening of God.

Well, quenching is more again about quenching, extinguishing,

stopping the workings of the Holy Spirit.

And some people quench the works of the Holy Spirit in our lives

and our churches and our relationships.

And Paul saying, don't do that. If anything, you should fan the

flame of what God is doing in our lives through the Holy

Spirit. We have the ability and power to

do that also. So I'm going and I want you to

get the progression of this because this is, and I want to

really unpack this in a way where you you get this because

it's important where we're going in the weeks to come.

OK, so when Paul says do not quench and do not despise

prophecy. And then he says, but test

everything. There's a real order here and

it's being missed by a lot of people that are Christians

today. And I want this is track with me

here. There are two camps within the

Church of Christians who love God and who mean well and are

often highly educated and well versed in Scripture.

And these two camps are what we call the cessationist and the

continuationist. OK, now the cessationist, they

and their churches in our town, I have friends that are

cessationist and what do they believe?

They believe that the gifts, the supernatural gifts of the Holy

Spirit ceased when the Bible was completed and when the apostles

died. So they're cessationist.

They believe there are really no miraculous gifts going on

anymore, OK? And these people love Jesus and

they're well versed in Scripture and they've wrestled through and

that's where they come. There's another camp that I land

in and our church lands in and that is we are continuationist

and we believe that the gifts of the Spirit, the supernatural

gifts of God, the miraculous gifts of God are still available

to us today. OK, now where both of these can

get, I think you know, often with when it comes to

cessationist or continuationist or Calvinist and Armenian, it's

like often like we have a lot of agreement and it's the abuses of

each thought that is the glaring one.

OK, now cessationist would argue that this idea of prophecy, they

would say that when Scripture also when it was completed that

everything that God was going to say, he said everything that you

need to know about God is in Scripture.

And I believe they're right, but there are some Christian

traditions that they chase after prophecy.

They don't read their Bibles, they don't preach the Bible.

They get together and they have meetings where they prophecy.

And what does that mean? Well, they just make up stuff

that they and they say thus saith the Lord.

This is what God is saying. Thus, thus thus saith the Lord.

And when they say that, it makes it sound like it's equal to the

Bible. So the cessationist would argue

and say, man, you are, you are belittling the Bible when you

talk that way, right? So you're belittling Scripture.

You don't have a high view of scripture, would say the

cessationist, the continuationist would say, man,

you say that God totally stopped speaking, but God still is

speaking through the gifts of the Spirit.

So God can use words of discernment and words of

knowledge and wisdom. God can speak to us

supernaturally through each other.

So we believe, you know, now how far apart are they?

Well, I mean, it depends on how what stringent you want to be

about this. But so the cessationist, the

gifts have ceased. The continuationist know the

gifts are still available. The problem also with the

continuationist, which I am, but the problem with many of our

continuationist is that they're sensationalistic and they're

weird and there are abuses because they don't test.

So Paul says don't quench the Spirit, don't despise prophecy.

In other words, I think through the cessation, is he saying,

hey, don't despise the spiritual gifts, they're still available.

Don't despise prophecy. Or I think in my opinion, it

means like the gifts in general. So healing prophecy, those don't

despise those but but also test. And maybe you've been part of a

church or you flipped when you were watching something on the

TV and you saw some spiritual Christian gathering and it was

just weird. And they were supposedly

prophesying, but they weren't testing anything.

And so when they don't test, well, then you get like what I

call National Enquirer, like Christians, right?

They're just super sensationalistic.

And they, you know, think about the National Enquirer.

Those of you who are younger, you probably don't know what it

is, but those of us my age and older certainly do.

For many years in the grocery store, if you went, there would

be this magazine in the periodical called the National

Enquirer. And it always had these super

crazy stories. Elvis is at Burger King and JFK

is at KFC or something, right? Aliens coming down, right?

So those are people, some people.

And remember what the slogan was.

The slogan was inquiring minds want to know, right?

And inquiring minds want to know.

But what you get is you get Christians who are like, they're

inquiring minds. So they're looking for the next

strangest doctrine and the next prophecy, but they don't read

their Bibles and they don't know scripture in general.

So watch this, the creationist or the creationist, The

cessationist, they believe that the gifts ceased and the oath

has been set. OK.

But the, the continuationist, we again, we don't want abuses.

We want to be balanced. OK, so where we're going, what

some of you when we talk about the gifts of the Holy Spirit,

some of you have maybe been around certain traditions of

Christianity where when you saw the gifts of the Spirit talked

about or trying to utilize them, it just got weird.

So then some of you may be a part of a Christian tradition

where no, the gifts were never talked about.

The Holy Spirit was never talked about, right?

It just was, it was like, because you saw because one side

saw the abuses, they just went completely to another extreme.

So I hope for our church that we find a great balance where we

think the gifts are still available, but we're not going

to get weird and abuse them and get strange.

OK, so, so Paul's saying don't, don't quench the Spirit, don't

despise prophecy, but test. And I think that's a really

great balance to getting to a place where you can be be

utilizing the spiritual gifts that we're going to talk about

in some of the weeks to come. All right, so that, so we talked

about grieving, saddening the heart of God.

We've talked about quenching, extinguishing the workings of

God. And if you don't believe that

God's still doing miracles today, then in my opinion, you

are then quenching and not looking for God to be moving in

a fire type of way, miraculously.

So there's one last one and that is blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

And this one is wildly misunderstood and it's

confusing. So I want to, I want to unpack

it for you. Well, and I think RT Kendall's

book, Holy Fire is a tool that I read in order to get my head

around this a little bit better. So this occasion, Jesus is going

to say that there is an unpardonable, unforgivable sin.

Is it one of the 10 commandments?

Is it found in the law? What is this unforgivable sin?

Let me show you. In Matthew chapter 12, Jesus

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

heals a man who was blind and mute, and when he heals this

man, he's now going to have interaction with people who who

saw the healing and then he's going to have interaction with

the Pharisees. The Pharisees were these

religious types. They were religious leaders and

they were critical of Jesus. OK, so they're the uptight ones.

OK, So verse 22 then a demon oppressed man who was blind and

mute was brought to him, meaning Jesus, and he healed him so that

the man spoke and he saw. And all the people were amazed

and said, can this be the son of David?

Now when they asked this question, can this be the son of

David? You must remember that in the

Old Testament it was prophesied that Jesus would be born in

Bethlehem and it was prophesied that he would be wounded for our

transgressions and bruised for our iniquities.

The chastisement of our peace would be upon him and by his

wounds we would be saved or healed.

And so now when they see Jesus perform this miracle, they're

like, maybe this is the Messiah, maybe this is God.

They were amazed and like the Son of David, the one that had

been prophesied about, is it him?

Well, verse 24. But when the Pharisees heard it,

they said it's only be houseable, the Prince of demons

that this man cast out demons. So the people see the miracle.

Could this be the Messiah? And the Pharisees say, Nope,

it's the devil. He's doing this by the devil.

And Jason is saying she likes to see in cahoots.

So what they're saying is Jesus is in cahoots.

And I misspelled on your notes because I don't know how to

spell cahoots. But so it it says here that they

were saying Jesus is in cahoots with the devil in verse 25.

Knowing their thoughts, he said to them, every Kingdom divided

against itself is laid waste and no city or house divided against

itself will stand. He knew their thoughts.

They're like, oh, he's he's in with the devil and and he's

like, no, no, no, no, that would be I'm against the devil and

he's going to tell you what he's going to do with the devil.

So he's like, we're not in cahoots together.

You're wrong. Verse 26.

And if Satan cast out Satan, he's divided against himself.

He's like, if I'm of Satan and I go around casting out demons and

healing people, that doesn't make sense.

The logic melts down. How then will this Kingdom

stand? And if I cast out demons by be

eligible, by whom do your sons cast them out?

Therefore they will be your judges.

So Jesus is like, Hey, your your followers are also trying to go

and cast out demons. Is it of the devil also?

He's like, no, I'm not even going to say that's of the

devil. Jesus is saying your criticism

doesn't add up. Watch Jesus in verse 28.

But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then

the Kingdom of God has come upon you, right?

He's like, OK, so if I'm doing this through the Spirit of God,

then the Kingdom is now here. And Jesus talked about the

Kingdom all the time. The Kingdom of God is at hand.

The Kingdom of God is here. The king, he told parables where

he'd say the Kingdom of heaven is like a man who went out and

sowed wheat. The Kingdom of heaven is like

this. So Jesus is saying the fact that

I'm healing, it's by the Spirit of God.

How is he doing it? It's by the Spirit.

Jesus is healing by the Holy Spirit, and He's declaring the

Kingdom of God is at hand. And verse 29 Or how can someone

enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods?

Unless he first binds the strongman, then indeed he may

plunder his house. In verse 30, whoever is not with

me is against me, and whoever does not gather me with the

other, with me scatters. Now stick with me here.

Jesus is here saying that I've not come to be in cahoots with

the devil. If anything, I've come to

plunder the devil. I've come.

Jesus is coming to die on the cross for our sins and he's

going to take out death hell in the grave.

He's going to conquer Satan. So what he's saying here is he's

like, I've come to plunder Satan.

I'm going to bind him up and I'm going to conquer him.

I'm not here to cast out demons with demons.

OK, So then and then Jesus says therefore, therefore is there to

say this, because I've come to plunder Satan, tie him up.

Therefore I tell you, and here's where really stick with me.

I tell you every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven

people. The Spirit will not be forgiven.

Jesus is saying when I bind up Satan, when I plunder him, sin

is going. To be forgiven.

All sin, all blasphemy, it's going to get forgiven.

Wow. When he plunder Satan we will

get forgiveness. But he says but the blasphemy

against the Spirit will not be forgiven.

Jesus is. Blasphemy, even.

Against me every sin, every blasphemy will be forgiven

people, but the blasphemy against the spirit will not be

forgiven and word blasphemy here is is Greek word blasphemia and

it means vilification, vilification especially against

God, evil speaking or railing so which watch this Jesus is saying

when I plunder Satan all this. Stuff is going to get.

Forgiven forgiveness will be available, but the sin that will

not be available is vilifying, blaspheming, demonizing the Holy

Spirit. Jesus said, how did I heal?

I healed through the power of the Holy Spirit and they're

saying all that power that you healed with, it's demonic.

It's and when, when they say this, by the way, they're the

people were going, oh, Jesus is the Messiah.

Is he the Messiah? And they come along and say, no,

he's demonic. He's not God, he's not the

Messiah, and Jesus is saying that type of talk and that type

of belief, that type of blasphemy is the only

unforgivable sin. So when Jesus is saying.

This. He's not saying that that like

one of the 10 commandments makes you unforgivable any other sin.

He's saying the sin that gets unforgiven is the one where you

allow people or you speak that Jesus is not the Messiah.

That's the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit because the Holy

Spirit, we, we've talked about the Holy Spirit declares Jesus

as God, the Holy Spirit declares Jesus as our Savior, our

Messiah. And when people come along, or

you come along and say, no, he's not, he's the devil, then that

blocks the forgiveness of God. Verse 30. 2 Jesus goes on.

And whoever speaks and watches, he goes, Whoever speaks the word

against the Son of Man, and they'll be forgiven.

He's like, you can talk bad about me, you talk bad about me,

but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven

either in this age or the age to come.

Jesus is saying, hey, I can take it, you can criticize me, but

the Holy Spirit who comes to promote me, the Holy Spirit who

comes to declare all over the world that Jesus is God, He is

the Messiah. That's what keeps people from

forgiveness. It leads to the unpardonable

sin. Now many have used the

unpardonable. Oh, it's I see in my notes here

it says unpardonable sing. That's supposed to be

unpardonable sin. I wonder if there's such thing

as an unpardonable sing. I've heard people on American

Idol like they were unpardonable and they're singing OK.

So many use the unpardonable sin to manipulate and cause fear in

people. And I've I've heard stories.

About people who are 6080, a hundred years old and they're

like, oh, I did this thing, you know, I cursed God when I was 19

years old in this terrible season of my life.

I cursed God and I rebelled. I spoke bad about God and and

they might think that's unpardonable.

I'll never get forgiven. Or maybe there's some other sin

that you did years ago and you're like, I don't know if

this is forgivable. Jesus is saying every sin gets

forgiven when I plunder Satan and bind him up.

So forgiveness is available to you.

And if you're questioning if you have the unforgivable sin, then

likely you don't because it's that conviction where you're

going. OK God, I want to be close to

you. I don't want to grieve you.

I don't want to quench your spirit and the unpardonable sin.

Oh, I recognize that it's not some random sin.

No, it's the sin of denying that Jesus is the Messiah.

It's vilifying the Holy Spirit for what he says about Jesus.

Now, this is not a license for excesses and abuse.

In some traditions, some traditions of Christianity,

again, they take this and they just run with it to a place

where you know it is. They just keep people in fear.

And I don't want you to be in fear that you have committed the

unpardonable sin. But I'm going to give a a call

here in a few minutes. And if you've never decided to

follow Jesus, then I'm going to say yes, you should.

Here's what the Holy Spirit says about Jesus.

You should receive him as your Savior and Lord.

When you receive Jesus as your Savior Lord, you get forgiveness

that comes through him. The unpardonable 1 is ignoring

the prodding of the Holy Spirit, the calling of the Holy Spirit

to come to Jesus. Now Paul says in Romans 1513

when it comes to sight that we should not live in fear of

having the unpardonable sin. He says, may the God of hope

fill you with all joy and peace and believing so that by the

power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

What do we get from the Holy Spirit where we get joy and

peace and we get that joint peace And believing what the

Holy Spirit says, the Holy Spirit declares that Jesus is

the Messiah, he is God. So there's joy and peace that

comes in believing that. And when we believe it with that

joint peace, then there's the power of the Holy Spirit that

leads us to even greater hope. And my prayer for you is that

you live a life of hope, committed to not grieving the

Holy Spirit or quenching him, and knowing that as long as

you've received Jesus as your Savior and Lord, you're not

blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Let me pray for us.

God, I thank. You that wow, this is this is

just not a little devotional. No offense at devotionals, but

this is this is deep stuff and this is profound stuff about who

you are. So we want to be sensitive to

not living lives that grieve you or sadden you.

We want to see you. We want to see you delighted in

our lives and in the life of our church.

So lead us as we want to be sensitive to you.

God lead us in that way. And then we don't want to, we

don't want to extinguish. You moving in our lives?

So give us wisdom even though we succumb, like how to navigate

through what are still valid expressions of your spiritual

gifts? What are when?

How do we, how do we utilize them instead of just ignoring

them? How do we utilize them in a way

that honors you? And then God, I pray that you

would give us confidence. As long as we receive your

salvation, then you have bound up Satan in our lives, and now

we can walk in your complete forgiveness.

Let. These truths, well, let us.

Carry these truths away in such a way where we just really

internalize them and they affect the way that we practically live

our lives in Jesus name. Now before we go, I want to just

briefly give you an opportunity. If you're here this morning,

maybe you've been sensing the pulling of the Holy Spirit, God

pulling you to have a relationship with him.

But maybe you've been saying no. And so this morning I want to

say this is the great morning to say yes to inviting Christ to be

the Lord of your life. And Jesus came, God came into

human skin and lived a perfect life and he offered himself as a

sacrifice for us. And then he conquered death in

the grave and was resurrected. And now he invites us to have

relationship and forgiveness with him, but he doesn't force

it. So you can receive his

forgiveness. You can welcome it.

And when you do, we believe that you receive eternal life.

You don't have to wait to die to get the eternal life.

You get it now. And so you live with purpose and

meaning now that will last for eternity.

So if you have never made that decision, I want to leave you in

that today. And that's the saying yes to

Jesus. And we encourage you to tell

other people, if you believe in your heart and confess with your

mouth that Jesus is Lord, then you shall be saved.

So tell others. And then we encourage you to be

baptized. And we will have baptisms coming

up here in the next several weeks or months here at our

church. So let me pray for you.

And I would encourage you to echo this prayer with me.

Heavenly Father, I come in Jesus name.

In Jesus, I want to receive you as my Savior and Lord.

So I turn away from my own sin and I say I surrender my life to

you. I thank you for the lengths that

you went to to have a relationship with me.

And I say, Holy Spirit, come and dwell in me.

And so I welcome you. I don't completely understand

the doctrines and all the theology of Christianity, but I

pray you'll grow me in my understandings and grow me as a

part of a church family and grow me in my faith and hope that

comes from you. I thank you for your salvation

in me and Jesus name and everyone together said Amen and

Amen. Let's all stand together.

Thank you again for being here today.

Don't forget. What's the next next event

Chase. There's nothing on Wednesday

night this week we forgot to see the men's event is the first

Wednesday for a second Wednesday.

The guy's event is just Wednesday.

No, we just had ours. Yeah, there you go.

All right, so there you go. And blind leading the blind.

All right. Man, oh man, we do have.

Fun serving together. I got to say that Jason and I do

have fun serving together. All right, if you'll prepare

your heart to receive this blessing before you go.

And now may the Lord. Bless you and keep you, and may

He make his face to shine upon him.

And may the joy of the Lord that is unspeakable and full of

glory, may it abound to you. And may the peace of God that

passes all understanding, may it surprise you in the midst of all

of the challenges that life brings.

And then may the mercies of the Lord, in other words, the

forgiveness of God, that is new every morning.

May it be especially new to you and your mornings to come.

And now may the Lord Jesus Christ guard your heart and your

mind. You are salt and your light.

Go now and be salt and light into the world.

You are blessed. We'll see you again soon.