MISREADING THE WORKS OF JESUS – Mark 3:19b-30

Message preached Sunday, January 25, 2015 from Mark 3:19b-30

Theme: A persistence in misreading the works of Jesus may lead to permanent hardness of heart.

(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)

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As we continue our study this morning through the Gospel of Mark, we come to the middle of Chapter 3; and to a passage that is—to my mind—one of the most serious and sobering in the New Testament.
First, I want to stress that it’s a passage that contains some very good news. And that good news is that our gracious God is ready and willing to forgive the sins of anyone who comes to Him. It tells us, from no less an authority than Jesus Christ Himself, that
all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they may utter . . .” (v. 28).

As a sinner, that’s certainly news that I’m grateful for. I hope you are too. But this same passage also contains one of the most serious warnings that I believe the Lord Jesus gives in Mark’s Gospel. He went on to say,
but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation . . .” (v. 29).
In other words, this passage tells us that there is one sin—or as I think it might be better to put it, one persistent sinful attitude of heart that shows itself in a sinful act of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit—for which there is absolutely no forgiveness available. Jesus said that it is a sin that places whoever is guilty of it under the threat of eternal condemnation before God. And it was not a sin that characterized drunkards or thieves or sexually immoral people—not the liars or murderers or outwardly wicked people—but, surprisingly, the religious and outwardly pious people of the day who dared to blaspheme the Holy Spirit whose works they saw through the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Now; before we look at this passage in detail, would you please allow me to share with you a couple of things that the Lord Jesus told us about the ministry of the Holy Spirit in this world? I believe it would help us to better understand what is happening in this morning’s passage.
In the Gospel of John—just before our Lord went to the cross for us—He told His apostles that He would be leaving them; and that, in His place, He would send the Holy Spirit. Jesus called Him “the Helper” or “the Comforter”; because He would help guide and enable the apostles after Jesus left them and returned to the Father. And one of the things that Jesus told them is that the Holy Spirit would go on to bear witness of Him in this world. He told them;
“But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with Me from the beginning” (John 5:26-27).
I have to tell you—I draw a great deal of comfort from that. I don’t believe I could possibly be a good witness to the Lord Jesus in this dark and fallen world in my own power. But it’s not me that is the primary witness. Nor is it you. It’s the Holy Spirit—the third Person of the Trinity. He is the Spirit of truth, sent into this world to be the God-sent Witness—the primary Testimony-Bearer—of the Lord Jesus. And you and I are empowered to be a witness of Jesus in this world because of His ministry.
So Jesus didn’t leave it all up to the apostles; and He didn’t leave it all up to you and me. He gave us a divine Helper—the Spirit of truth—who has constantly been in this world ever since Jesus left it, and who faithfully testifies of Jesus though us as His people. And as we read on a few verses farther, we see how Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would do this great work;
And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they do not believe in Me; of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged” (John 16:8-11).
And think of the implication of that word “convict”. Jesus’ use of it does not suggest to us that, when the Holy Spirit came into the world, people would necessarily welcome His testimony and naturally embraced it. Rather, it seems to suggest that the opposite would happen—that people would have a natural inclination to resist that testimony. The Spirit would have to “convict” people of such key things as sin, righteousness and judgment, in order to help them see their need for the Savior.
Now; I’m very glad that that’s the Holy Spirit’s work, and not our own. We are to do the testifying to people; and it’s the Holy Spirit who does the work of conviction. But this whole idea of “conviction” does seem to suggest to us that there would be a battle in people’s hearts against what it was that they were hearing—and that there might also be hostility directed against us for bearing that convicting testimony. The first Christian in history to have been put to death for bearing that witness was a godly man named Stephen. He was arrested by the Jewish authorities for bearing an unrelenting testimony of Jesus. And Acts 7 tells us that—after having reviewed the biblical history of God’s long work toward them throughout the centuries of pointed to the coming of the promised Lord Jesus—whom they then crucified—Stephen told them plainly;
You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit . . .” (Acts 7:51).
And with that, his Jewish kinsmen demonstrated their resistance toward the Holy Spirit by rising up and stoning Stephen to death. That attitude of resistance to the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit is a very real thing. And I believe that it’s that attitude that underlies our passage this morning in Mark’s Gospel.
And it’s not, it seems to me, the resistance itself that’s the main point of this passage. Rather, it’s the way that a persistence in resisting the testimony of the Holy Spirit about Jesus—an ongoing rejection the Spirit’s convicting ministry, and an unrepentant refusal to believe what the Spirit is showing us concerning Jesus—will eventually lead to a hardness of heart that cannot be redeemed; a hardness that even goes so far as to blaspheme the very Holy Spirit of truth.

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What a serious passage this is! So then; let’s take our time to look closely at it. We pick it up at Mark 3:19; where we read that, after Jesus had called His twelve apostles to Himself, and had given them the authority to heal the sick and cast out demons, “And they went into a house” (Mark 3:19b).
This might have been the same house in Capernaum that they had been in before—the house of Peter and his brother Andrew. And if that’s the case, then it would mean that they were still in the place where people had seen so many of His miracles. It was not long before this, you’ll remember, that Jesus had cast an unclean spirit out of a man in the local synagogue—so that the spirit cried out in fear of Jesus and said, “Let us alone! What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Did you come to destroy us? I know who You are—the Holy One of God!” (1:24). It would have been the same place where Jesus, a short time before, had healed a man with a withered hand in the synagogue; and where the whole town had come to Jesus with their sick and their demon-possessed folks, and saw Jesus heal them all. Word was getting out about Him, and many were coming to Him.
But it’s not the house that’s the important thing. Rather, it’s what happened once they went into it. It’s then that we begin to see the indications of trouble—trouble, in fact, from the people who most ought to have been receptive to Him. We begin to see . . .

1. THE INCREASING MISUNDERSTANDING.

We’re told,
Then the multitude came together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread. But when His own people heard about this, they went out to lay hold of Him, for they said, “He is out of His mind” (vv. 20-21).
Who were these people that Mark calls ‘His own people’? I believe we see who it is in verses 31-32; where we’re told,
Then His brothers and His mother came, and standing outside they sent to Him, calling Him. And a multitude was sitting around Him; and they said to Him, “Look, Your mother and Your brothers are outside seeking You” (vv. 31-32).
Imagine that! We’re being told that our Lord’s own earthly family—His mother and His half-brothers, and perhaps even some others of His relatives and friends—were coming to apprehend Him and take Him away. Why would they do this? Perhaps the clue is in the fact that He was in a house with so many followers and so many people crowding in around Him that He and His disciples couldn’t even so much as eat. Perhaps this troubled ‘His own people’ greatly. “This is getting out of hand,” they may have been thinking. “He is allowing His own popularity to get the better of Him. He’s not even listening to us anymore. He’s not even eating. He’s going way overboard; and it’s going to destroy Him and those who follow Him. He’s out of His mind. He’s lost His senses. He’s beside Himself. We need to go in and get Him and take Him home.”
Now, when we come to verses 31-35 during a future time together, we’ll consider how it was that He answered their concern. But for now, let’s just think of how even His own family members misunderstood and misinterpreted who He was, and what it was that He was doing. That shows us that an attitude of misunderstanding was growing in and among those closest to Him.
If I may offer an aside: That certainly illustrates what happens when we decide to follow Jesus in a devoted way; doesn’t it? People misunderstand our devotion, and misinterpret our actions as unhealthy fanaticism. Think of it. You can get fanatically excited over just about anything else in this world. You can be so devoted to a football game that you can show up to work with your face painted in the team colors, and wearing a jersey, and talking about the upcoming game non-stop; and no one will think anything bad about you for it. You can be so devoted to a political cause or a social concern that you give all your time to it, and collect petitions for it, and seek to recruit other people to join you in it; and everyone will think that that’s noble. I’ve even heard of people so devoted to Star Trek that they spend money decorating their home to look like the Enterprise; or so devoted to The Hobbit that they show up for work looking like one; and everyone thinks that’s cute. But if you try to live as if the message of the gospel is true, and if you live with anything like the appropriate kind of devotion to Jesus that He truly requires—if you respond with genuine gratitude to Him for the forgiveness of your sins, and go on to live your daily life in deliberate and intentional fellowship with Him—you’re getting ‘too fanatical’ about it. People get offended at you; and they misunderstand your devotion, and misrepresent you as being a fanatic, and try to talk you out of it.
Well; we should just know that even the Lord Jesus felt that. He felt it deeply—from even His own family. We shouldn’t be worried or fearful if people misunderstand our devotion to Jesus, or misrepresent it as if it was something that had gotten out of balance, or say that we’ve gone off the deep end. We should keep on living for Him, and following after Him step-by-step in obedience; and pray that their eyes would be opened to His love—just as ours was.

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Now; the reaction from His family might be safely considered a “misunderstanding”. His mother—especially!—would certainly have known who He is; and yet even she misunderstood and thought He was getting carried away. But what happened next was not mere misunderstanding. It was what we instead might call . . .

2. THE DELIBERATE MISREPRESENTATION.

We’re told that a group of scribes came to Galilee from Jerusalem. The scribes were the religious scholars of the day—the professors of the law of Scripture. They were the ones who, in the opinion of everyone else, offered the expert opinion on matters of religious faith and scriptural truth. They must have heard about the things that Jesus was doing; and they came all the way from Jerusalem to Capernaum to see it all for themselves.
Perhaps some of them had heard that Jesus had cast a demon out of a man in the synagogue. And perhaps they even saw for themselves how unclean spirits would see Jesus, and fall down before Him in terror, and cry out saying, “You are the Son of God” (v. 11). It may be that they saw these things, and heard various other reports about them; but however it happened, they had to come to a conclusion concerning the things they saw.
And what official conclusion did they come to? Mark tells us;
And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebub,” and, “By the ruler of the demons He casts out demons” (v. 22).
Beelzebub was the name of the ancient pagan god of the Moabite people. You can read about their worship of this false god in the first few verses of the Old Testament book of 2 Kings. And in time, the Jewish people referred to this false god derisively as “the lord of the flies”; and they came to associate him with Satan—the ruler over the demons. And so; what these scribes were doing was to say that Jesus was deceiving everyone—casting out demons by the power of the devil himself.
Now; I ask you to think carefully about this. There is a remarkable testimony of the truth being given to us here. In our day, when people want to deny that Jesus is the Son of God, they simply deny that any of the miracles that the Bible tells us about ever actually happened. They simply dismiss it all by telling us that it was all a bunch of myths and legends—one big, giant “fish story”—that grew, and grew, and got passed down from generation to generation for which there never was one shred of truth. You hear that all the time. Unbelieving scholars, living twenty centuries after the facts, write whole books and give lectures to show that none of these ‘inflated miracle stories’ ever actually happened.
But when it came to the unbelieving people of Jesus’ day—those who were the closest in time to these events—that’s not how they argued against them. They didn’t say that the miracles never happened. They weren’t trying to suppress stories that people were inflating about Jesus’ works. They were trying to put a different ‘spin’ on His works as they happened. They didn’t say that Jesus didn’t heal the blind or the lame, for example. They admitted that He did; and they complained instead that He was a a lawbreaker because He healed people on the Sabbath. And note here that the scribes didn’t argue that demons weren’t really being cast out of people. They clearly couldn’t deny the things that were happening before them. They testified in their complaint that Jesus really did seem to have the authority to cast out demons. Perhaps we could say that by accident, they were testifying to us—living twenty centuries later—of the truth of the things they saw.
But rather than allow the truth of what they saw to sink in, they reinterpreted the Holy Spirit’s testimony to them; and put an angle on it all that freed them from a sense of personal conviction. They argued that Jesus really did these things—but did them in the power of Satan. That way, they wouldn’t have to believe what the facts were telling them about Jesus. They wouldn’t have to think through what the demons were saying when they cried out that He is the Son of God. They wouldn’t have to submit to the convicting testimony of the Holy Spirit, as He worked through Jesus before their very eyes. They wouldn’t have to admit that the kingdom of God had come upon them. They just deliberately misinterpreted and misrepresented it—merely dismissed it all by saying that He did it in the power of Satan—and they then wouldn’t have to respond with repentant faith.

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Now; there’s a very important element in all this. The way this reads in the original language of Mark’s gospel, it’s apparent that they weren’t saying these kinds of things just this one time. Mark tells us that they had and ongoing habit of saying that Jesus was casting out demons by the power of Satan. Perhaps they gave the same spin on the matter each time they saw Him exercise His authority.
And that’s when we read of . . .

3. THE REASONED RESPONSE.

We’re told that Jesus called them to Himself. And I love that about our Lord. He didn’t hide from the false accusations. He didn’t try to ignore them. He boldly faced them head-on; and courageously confronted their phony interpretation of things. We’re told that He addressed the matter in “parables”; and I don’t believe we’re meant to understand that He therefore spoke to them in perplexing stories. The word “parable” means “to place one thing along side another”; and that’s what it seems to me He did. Mark tells us;
So He called them to Himself and said to them in parables: “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself, and is divided, he cannot stand, but has an end. No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. And then he will plunder his house” (vv. 23-27).
Think of His argument—and how He demonstrated the absurdity of their claim. They had been claiming that He had cast out demons by the power of the one who was the prince of the demons. But how could that even be possible? “How”, He asks, “can Satan cast out Satan?” If Jesus was casting out Satan, then logically, it couldn’t be Satan that was doing the ‘out-casting’.
He argues from common sense. A kingdom that is divided against itself cannot stand. A house—or an estate—that is filled with internal fighting is doomed to fall. And if Satan has risen up against himself, then he—like such a kingdom or such a house—cannot stand. His kingdom will eventually fail. If the scribes really believed that Jesus was casting out demons in the power of Satan, then they shouldn’t complain. Instead, they should celebrate! They should stand back and watch Satan to destroy himself!
But Jesus instead forces these scribes to the very conclusion they are trying so desperately to avoid. Just as no one can enter the house of a strong man and rob him of his precious goods without first binding him—proving that he was stronger than the strong man; Jesus was proving to them that He truly is the Son of God by plundering the devil of his kingdom. That’s why the demons cried out in terror when they saw Him.

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Now; these were things that the Holy Spirit was testifying to them through the works of Jesus. They could see with their own eyes who Jesus was proving Himself to be; and they could feel the prompting of the Holy Spirit to repent of their hardness of heart and believe on Him.
But they wouldn’t do so. In fact, their persistent hardness of heart was leading them to do something dreadful—to blaspheme the work of the Holy Spirit that they were witnessing, and repeatedly slander it instead as being a work of the devil. And that leads us to what I believe is meant to be taken as the main point of this passage . . .

4. THE SERIOUS WARNING.

Jesus tells them,
Assuredly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they may utter; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation”—because they said, “He has an unclean spirit” (vv. 28-30).
What a terrible thing it is to continually resist the Holy Spirit, and to persistently harden one’s own heart against His testimony of Jesus, and to refuse to submit to His work of conviction. Soon, such a person’s heart becomes so permanently hard that they blaspheme the Holy Spirit’s ministry to them. And when they get to that point—and they will no longer hear the Spirit’s call—there’s nothing more that can be done for them. They cannot be brought to repentance and be saved. There is no forgiveness for them; but they are subject to eternal condemnation.

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I think it’s important to think through this passage very carefully. On the one hand, I have met some Christians along the way that were deeply troubled by this passage; and were afraid that they have committed what is often called “the unpardonable sin” and are lost to God’s grace. I would hate for any sincere Christian to misunderstand this passage and have such fears. I believe what many wise pastors and Bible teachers have said about this—that if you are haunted by fears that you have committed such a sin, then it’s proof-positive that you haven’t. You should place your faith fully in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus for you on the cross; and trust in Jesus’ that “ all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they may utter”.
But on the other hand, the very sober warning from the Lord Jesus that follows after is given for a reason! I used to be among those who say that this ‘unforgivable’ sin cannot be committed today; because someone would have to be physically present to see the works of Jesus in order to commit it. But I no longer believe that. The same Holy Spirit still today convicts people through the testimony of Jesus’ works in the Scriptures. And I feel very sure that someone today can so repeatedly harden their own heart against Spirit’s conviction of sin, and against His testimony of the salvation available in the Lord Jesus, that they bring themselves to a point of permanent unrepentance; that such permanent hardness can become expressed in a deliberate misrepresentation of Jesus’ works, and in outright blasphemy against the gracious ministry of the Holy Spirit; and that they end up making themselves into objects of eternal condemnation before God. As it says in the Book of Hebrews;
For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. And again, “The Lord will judge His people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:26-31).
Please don’t harden your heart against that! May God help us, instead, to never misinterpret and deliberately misrepresent to ourselves the works of our Lord Jesus! May we always hear—and whole-heartedly receive—the testimony of the Holy Spirit about Him!