Daily Devotions
Matthew
On Dangerous Grounds
Text: Matthew 12 : 22 - 37
The Pharisees had at first watched Jesus skeptically. They listened to Him and noted what He said. Obviously, there were many differences between their understanding of God, the Scriptures, life issues, and even manner of ministry. There was hardly anything they agreed on.
Jesus had left the Pharisees alone, and concentrated on preaching to the multitudes. To those who made the decision to follow Him as disciples, He gave special time and attention! He committed Himself to grooming them for special ministry in the near future.
Then the Pharisees began to launch one offensive after another. They tried to find fault with Him on every issue, seeking to fault Him and present Him as law breaker to the multitude. All their efforts had failed miserably. They felt that the only way to defeat Jesus was to resort to nefarious ways of undermining His ministry. One of those ways was to begin a whispering campaign that Jesus was successful in casting out demons because He was in league with none other than Beelzebub, the prince of the demons.
Their whispering campaign went aground because Jesus somehow knew how they thought, and how to counter their campaign to malign Him. To their horror, Jesus dismantled their best arguments. They knew that they could not defeat His logic. They could not match His knowledge of the Scriptures too. They were certainly not ready for this word of warning put to them.
“Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy
Will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit
Will not be forgiven men. Anyone who speaks a word against
The Son of Man, it will be forgiven him, but whoever
speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him,
Either in this age or in the age to come.”
MATTHEW 12:31-32
STUDY OF THE DOCTRINE OF SINS
The study of the doctrine of sin, often called “harmatiology” by theologians, would take note of an important chapter in the Pentateuch. Moses made an important distinction between “unintentional sin” and “presumptuous sin”.
1. Unintentional Sin
“If you sin unintentionally, and do not observe all these
commandments which the Lord has spoken to Moses –
all that the Lord has commanded you by the hand of Moses,
from the day the Lord gave commandment and onward
throughout your generations – then it will be, if it is
unintentionally committed…
that the whole congregation shall offer one young bull
as a burnt offering, as a sweet aroma to the Lord,
with its grain offering and its drink offering,
according to the ordinance, and one kid of the goats
as a sin offering. So the priest shall make atonement
for the whole congregation of the children of Israel,
and it shall be forgiven them, for it was unintentional…”
NUMBERS 15:22-25
2. Presumptuous Sin
“But the person who does anything presumptuously,
whether he is native-born or a stranger, that one
brings reproach on the Lord, and he shall be cut off
from among his people. Because he has despised
the word of the Lord, and has broken His commandment,
that person shall be completely cut off; his guilt
shall be upon him.”
NUMBERS 15:30-31
To this study of the doctrine of sins, Jesus added an important new perspective. He added two major thoughts.
3. Men sinning against men (pardonable sin)
It is inevitable that men will sin against each other. The Pharisees obviously saw Jesus as no more than an ordinary man. They gave him little or no credit at all for what He had done so far. Graciously Jesus uttered these words,
“Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men…
(Even if) anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man;
It will be forgiven him…”
MATTHEW 12:31-32
4. Men sinning against the Holy Spirit (unpardonable sin)
It is quite another thing to sin against the Holy Spirit! That constitutes a totally different “type of sin” altogether. The Pharisees had better take heed of this particular sin problem. There was such a thing as an unpardonable sin!
“Whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit,
it will not be forgiven him, either in this age,
or in the age to come.”
MATTHEW 12:32
What is the nature of the unpardonable sin? It seems to be a combination of a number of sins which include the sin of presumption, the sin of despising the Word of the Lord, the sin of maliciously maligning the Spirit of God Himself. Jesus saw the hearts of the Pharisees and saw great evil therein. He could not but warn them using the plainest of language about the way they were resisting the work of God’s Spirit through Him.