In the eighth chapter of John, coming to
verse 48 and on, and answered the Jews
and said unto him, Say we not well
that thou art a Samaritan and hast a
devil?
Jesus answered, I have not a devil, but
I honor my father and you do dishonor
me.
Thy seek not mine own glory, there is
one that seeketh and judges.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a
man keep my saying, he shall never see
death.
Then said the Jews unto him, Now we
know that thou hast a devil.
Abraham is dead and the prophets, and thou
sayest, If a man keep my saying, he
shall never taste of death.
But thou greater than our father Abraham, which
is dead, and the prophets are dead, whom
makest thou thyself?
See, in verse 48, they said, Say we
not well, isn't it true what we said?
And that takes us back to the seventh
chapter, verse 20.
The people answered and said, Thou hast a
devil.
Who goes about to kill thee?
We wince when we read that.
Thou hast a devil, talking to the Son
of God.
And in 1020, that is repeated.
Many of them said, He has a devil
and is mad.
Why hear ye him?
Don't listen to him, he has a devil
and is crazy.
Now, four times in John, this is said,
that the Lord had a devil.
It is said elsewhere also, but it is
recorded these four places in John.
And it requires that we deal with this
tasteful subject tonight.
And I should like to handle it by
showing that this is the sin that can
never be forgiven, commonly called the unpardonable sin.
And I want to treat it like this,
that there is a sin that can never
be forgiven, what it is not, what it
is, why it cannot be forgiven, and how
we can know that we have not committed
it.
And that's a little five-point sermon which
I hope to get through without too much
difficulty.
There's just about as much lift in this
as there is in, I can't think of
any simile.
It has no wings in it, no lift
of any sort.
You're in ugly, dark theology here.
And you're just going to have to grit
your teeth and take it.
It's a bitter medicine, but it's here.
Now, there is a sin that can never
be forgiven.
That is found several places in the Bible.
For instance, in Mark 22 and following, these
words.
And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem
said, He hath bills above, and by the
prince of the devils cast he out devils.
And he called them unto him and said
unto them in parables, How can Satan cast
out Satan?
And if a kingdom be divided against itself,
that kingdom cannot stand.
And if a house be divided against itself,
that house cannot stand.
Satan rise up against himself and be divided,
he cannot stand.
But hath a man.
No man can enter into a strong man's
house and spoil his goods, except he will
first bind the strong man.
Then he will spoil his house.
Then verse 28, Verily I say unto you,
all sins shall be forgiven unto the sons
of men.
And all blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme.
But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy
Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger
of eternal damnation.
And verse 30, Because they said, he hath
an unclean spirit.
That is, it's like this.
This he said, because they said, he hath
an unclean spirit.
I have copied here on a card to
read to you two texts that is the
same text out of two different translations.
Listen to this.
Believe me, there is pardon for all the
other sins of mankind.
And the blasphemies they utter.
But if a man blaspheme against the Holy
Spirit, there is no pardon for him in
all eternity.
He is guilty of a sin which is
eternal.
This was because they were saying, he has
an unclean spirit.
That's Knox translation, Berkeley.
I assure you that all the sins the
sons of men commit and all the blasphemies
they utter are pardonable.
But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit shall
have no forgiveness forever.
He is guilty of eternal sin.
Because they said, he has an unclean spirit.
Now, I don't think we need to go
any further in showing that there is a
sin that can never be pardoned.
Because our Lord states it here in omniquivocal
language.
It is not an obscure text hidden away.
It is not buried in obscurity.
There are no variations of readings that I
can discover any place in the various translations.
Sometimes a tough passage will more than be
too much for the finest minds.
Because they have differences of readings in the
various old manuscripts.
But there is nothing like that here.
This is it.
There is no marginal explanations, no place that
I can discover at any rate.
And I've got, as I said this morning,
I wouldn't know how many translations.
And it's just here, Jesus said it plainly,
that there is an eternal sin.
Which as basic English has it, his sin
will be with him forever.
He never can get released from.
Now that's what Jesus our Lord said.
Now I suppose that there has scarcely been
a doctrine in the New Testament that has
been worse misunderstood than the doctrine of the
unpardonable sin.
And I very much wish that you give
me a hearing tonight.
And that you would not be just passing
it over and waiting it out so you
can get up.
But you'd listen to me.
It may help you and it may be
God's voice to you.
A great many people think they have committed
the unpardonable sin.
And some have gone so far that it
has become a mental weight on them.
A fixed idea.
They believe it and they believe it so
firmly.
And they're so very humble about it and
so very self-effacing and modest.
They feel as if, well, I ought to
perish.
I ought to be damned.
I've done it, I ought to be damned.
And they think they've committed the unpardonable sin.
And then there's a lot of loose preaching
about the unpardonable sin.
It's a trick subject.
It's something you can usually get a lot
of people to come to hear.
A man can be sure at least somebody
will be out if he preaches on the
unpardonable sin.
I had this to deal with tonight.
God knows I didn't choose it.
But first, next rather, I want to talk
about what the unpardonable sin is not.
That there is such a sin has been
declared in Mark and in Matthew fully and
developed and explained by our Lord.
Now, what it is not, and I'm going
only to take these sins which people often
think are the unpardonable sins.
The first one is irreverence toward God.
There are those who believe that if you
curse God, that that's the unpardonable sin.
That irreverence and sacrilegious conduct toward God constitutes
the unpardonable sin.
Well, now, that isn't so.
And there are many reasons why it is
not so.
But let's put it like this.
Do you not know that there are millions
of people who have been irreverent?
Millions of people, or have been millions of
people over the past century, who have been
irreverent, who have cursed and sworn and used
the name of God and Christ, and I've
even heard them curse in the name of
the Virgin Mary, as if it were not
bad enough.
They had to curse the very mother of
Jesus.
I've heard that.
And some of you have heard it in
curse words.
Not that certainly that she's any part of
the Godhead.
But that the blasphemy against Jesus actually went
toward the mother of Jesus.
I've heard that.
And yet there are, no doubt, in heaven
tonight, millions of redeemed people who later on,
like the prodigal in the far country, after
irreverence and cursing and using the name of
Christ in vain and trampling it under their
feet, later they came to themselves and humbly
and meekly came back to the Father's house.
And were received and they were washed from
their pollution and cleansed from their iniquity.
And tonight they're with God, either walking on
earth as good Christians or living there, waiting
for the consummation.
Now, if irreverence and blasphemous talk, if that
was the unpardonable sin, how could it be
then that thousands, if not millions, certainly millions
over the centuries and thousands living today that
had been, as we say, blasphemers, are now
Christians?
And so taking the name of the Lord
in vain is not the unpardonable sin.
There are two thoughts there.
The irreverence toward God and taking the name
of the Lord in vain, and neither one
of those sins is the unpardonable sin.
I suppose that if I were to ask
for testimony tonight, which I don't intend to
do, and I were to say, I'd like
to ask some of you men that used
to use the name of God in profanity
and profane language, and tonight you're a happy
Christian, would you stand?
I'm sure some of you men would get
up and stand.
I can't recall that I ever used the
name of God.
I certainly used language that wouldn't be printed
in the front page of the newspaper when
I was a young fellow.
But I doubt whether I ever did that
or not.
But I have known many people that did,
and later turned to the Lord Jesus and
were completely forgiven and received as though they
had never done it, so that blasphemy, that
is, profanity, is not the blasphemy against the
Holy Ghost.
And then there are those that think that
breaking vows and promises made to God, as
they put it, lying to God, would say,
oh, but I lied to God.
I promised God I would do something and
I didn't do it.
I broke my vow.
I lied to God.
So they try to pin the unpardonable sin
on their poor, undiscouraged souls because they've broken
vows and promises and lied to God.
Well, if I were to ask everybody here
that's a Christian now, a happy, conscious Christian,
that has never broken a vow, but has
kept all your promises to God, never told
God a lie in all your life, I
would ask you to stand.
There wouldn't be one of you that would
have the temerity to stand on your feet
because broken vows and promises and lying to
God and breaking our trust and faith certainly
have been common things, and yet they are
pardonable and cleansable, and the blood that our
sister sang about can sweep over the soul
and destroy all those sins.
And so any sin that a man commits,
such as irreverence toward God, taking the name
of God in vain, breaking vows and lying
to God, and later turns to God and
is forgiven and pardoned and lives a happy
Christian life and has a joyous testimony to
the power of the blood, that can't be
the unpardonable sin.
Then the fourth sin that people say, they're
always for themselves, they never blame it on
others, they're always blaming on themselves, resisting or
quenching or grieving the Spirit.
Bible talks about resisting the Spirit, talks about
quenching the Spirit, and talks about grieving the
Spirit.
And there are those who say, well, but
I resisted the Holy Ghost, I quenched the
Holy Ghost, I grieved Him, and I know
I've committed the unpardonable sin.
Now, to commit any sin is to quench
the Spirit.
To commit any sin is to resist the
Spirit.
To commit any sin is to grieve the
Spirit.
So that you cannot commit any sin.
A man can't get angry, a Christian can't
get angry without grieving the Spirit.
He can't be jealous without grieving the Spirit.
He can't be stingy without grieving the Spirit.
He can't be self-righteous without grieving the
Spirit.
So any sin grieves the Holy Ghost.
Any sin quenches the Holy Ghost.
And you've got to resist the pulsations of
the Holy Ghost to commit any sin.
To say that grieving, quenching, or resisting the
Holy Ghost is the unpardonable sin is to
wipe the slate clean, or rather, write it
full and say that every sin is the
unpardonable sin.
And how many are there here now, happy
in Christ this very night, that have resisted
the Holy Spirit back there?
Suppose I hear the gospel and I resist
for a year.
Have I resisted the Holy Spirit?
I have resisted the Holy Spirit.
And at the end of that year, under
the pressure of God and my friends and
prayers, I break and yield and give myself
to Him and enter into this happy spiritual
life.
And surely resisting the Holy Spirit can't be
the unpardonable sin, because I resisted Him and
I was pardoned.
Surely quenching the Spirit can't be, for a
man who quenched the Spirit have been pardoned,
as well as grieving the Spirit.
All right, suicide, that's fifth.
Some say that suicide is the unpardonable sin.
Now I speak a parable unto you.
Of course, if a man commits suicide, and
he's sane and he's lost, that he's unfaithful,
and he's sane and he kills himself, naturally
he puts himself where he can't repent.
He's out of the picture.
God doesn't forgive out in the next world,
He forgives in this world only.
I suppose in that sense, suicide can't be
forgiven, but that's not what Jesus was talking
about.
And you dare read your own opinion into
what Jesus taught us.
He taught us something else altogether, and it's
not suicide.
Let's put it like this.
Suppose that a man decides that he's been
around here long enough.
He's disgusted with himself and with his wife
and with the government and with income tax
and jobs and dumb clerks and stenographers and
mean policemen and sickness and weariness, and he
just decides, well, I've been around here long
enough.
So he gets himself an old rope and
mounts into the attic.
These modern apartment houses don't furnish any place
for a man to go.
The attic is the approved place, but there's
no attic.
But suppose he margots into the attic and
jumps off of a stool, but he misjudged
the length of the rope, and all it
does is knock him out.
The wife hears a racket and comes up
and hears he's hanging completely unconscious, but still
alive.
She cuts him down and slaps him back
to life again, and he wakes up.
And usually when a suicide has been unsuccessful,
they all want to live again.
A fellow will jump in the water and
then paddle like a dog for the shore.
But he says, well, I've had enough of
this.
I didn't think hanging would be so painful.
So he decides that he won't commit suicide.
A year later, he goes to an evangelistic
meeting to a church, and he hears the
gospel and says, why didn't I hear this
before?
And immediately gives his heart to the Lord
and is converted.
Now, he was unconscious trying to commit suicide,
and if his wife hadn't heard the stool
fall over, he would have committed suicide.
So as far as he was concerned, he
was a suicide, but he didn't die.
So God forgives him, and there's a lot
of people like that that have been forgiven
after they've tried suicide.
Now, suicide isn't the unpardonable sin, yet I
repeat, if you want to use words loosely,
you can say that if a man kills
himself and dies, as they used to say,
untriven, that is, without forgiveness, certainly he's gone,
but he died just as any other sinner
died.
That was not the unpardonable sin of which
Jesus spoke.
And then another one is rejecting Jesus.
And this is the one the preachers are
always talking about.
I don't understand.
I wish their preachers all listened to me.
But why they insist on making these mistakes,
I don't know.
They say rejecting Jesus is the unpardonable sin.
How did they get that way?
Where did they get the idea?
Who told them?
There's only one person in the Bible that
ever talked about the unpardonable sin and explained
it, and he didn't say it was rejecting
Christ.
Now, if a man rejects Christ right down
to the end of his life and dies
rejecting Christ, naturally he won't be forgiven.
But in that case, every sin he committed
was unpardonable because he didn't accept Christ, nor
repent of his sins, he died in his
sin.
But that's not the unpardonable sin.
Let's put it around like this again.
I don't suppose there's a single Christian here
that accepted Jesus the first time and the
Holy Ghost tried to win him.
I don't think so.
Rarely does anybody come to Christ the first
time.
They reject a while, they resist a while,
they say no a few times, and some
say no for years.
And that's rejecting Jesus.
And if rejecting Jesus is the unpardonable sin,
then they never could be pardoned.
But after a week or a month or
a year or two years or five years,
the pressure of their conscience and of the
pleadings of God's people and the prayers of
the saints becomes too much.
And down they go and give their hearts
to the Lord and rise in newness of
life.
Rejecting Jesus was not the unpardonable sin, because
they'd rejected him a long time and still
been pardoned.
Now, it may be you've heard that all
your life, that rejecting Jesus was the unpardonable
sin, and it's hard, of course, to brainwash
anybody that has a wrong notion about the
unpardonable sin.
Now, the next thing is why, or what
it is.
What is the unpardonable sin?
All right, let us go back to Mark
again.
Scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He
hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the
devils casteth he out devils.
Verse 28, Verily I say unto you, all
sin shall be forgiven unto the sons of
men, and blasphemers, wherewithsoever they shall blaspheme.
But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy
Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger
of eternal damnation.
Verse 30, This he said, because they had
said, He hath an unclean spirit.
There's your explanation.
Our Lord has given it.
So, no one dare change that now.
Nobody dares introduce anything.
It's here, the Lord has said it.
He said that it was calling him a
devil, and attributing to the devil the work
he'd been doing by the Holy Ghost.
He said, If I by the finger of
God cast out devils.
He'd been casting out devils in the Spirit
by the Holy Ghost, and they had said
it is by the devil that he cast
out spirits.
But it was by the Spirit that he
was casting out evil spirits.
So they had attributed to the devil the
works of the Holy Ghost, and that is
the unpardonable sin.
And verily I say unto you, that he
that doth this, doeth this, hath no forgiveness,
but his sin will be with him forever.
And though the foulest mouth blaspheme him, and
the resister, and the curser, and the liar,
and the thief, may be forgiven.
When we attribute to the devil, to devils,
to demons, for that's what the word means,
the work of the Holy Ghost, that is
the unpardonable sin.
Now, why can it not be forgiven?
It is a sin.
Why then select that sin and say, Now
that sin marks a man forever, and brands
him with the mark of Cain.
He never can be pardoned.
Well, in Matthew 12, 32, there's quite an
explanation there.
And he tells us that to speak against
the Son is unpardonable.
You can blaspheme the Son of God and
be pardoned.
And many who blasphemed the Son of God
as he hung on the cross were later
pardoned.
And many who have cursed Jesus Christ, many
a Jew who spits when he hears the
name of Jesus, had later been converted, and
now he's ashamed and sorry, but he knows
it's not unpardonable.
He blasphemed the name of Jesus, but God
pardoned him because he knew he was ignorant,
and when he repented, he forgave.
So that to speak against the Son is
pardonable.
But to speak against the Spirit is not,
and why?
You read Matthew 12, 32 and follow me.
Well, the Father or the Son may be
external to a man.
One of the greatest evangelists, for the moment
I can't think of his name, but he
was one of the greatest evangelists of Moody's
time, and a little before.
He had been an atheist and gone around
delivering speeches against God and Christ, and was
converted and went back on the platform as
an evangelist.
Now, reason and the weakness of the flesh
and bad information and fear may influence a
person to speak against God, and it may
also influence a person to speak against Christ.
Many a Jew raised in a Hebrew, rigorous
Hebrew home of Orthodox Jewry, he's been taught
that that's a bad name.
He spits when he mentions that name.
He's been taught wrongly.
He's ignorant.
Reason, he's all messed up.
He's confused.
Tradition and bad doctrine has spoiled him.
That's not the unpardonable sin.
He can spit and curse Christ, and if
he believes and repents later, he'll be converted,
because that's external to the man.
God's external to the man.
Christ's external to the man.
And so the flesh, I say, and fear
and hopes and ignorance and bad instruction can
lead a man to speak against God or
Christ.
But brother, the Holy Ghost is that distilled
essence of the Godhead, and he is not
external.
He goes direct to the human spirit, and
he communicates himself inwardly and intimately.
And there is the profoundly mystical element in
Christianity.
Christianity is not built around, nor does it
rise out of, an external God.
But it is built around and rises out
of that God made internal by the Holy
Ghost.
So God on his throne running his universe,
Christ at his right hand, leading for the
church, maybe external to the man.
But when the Holy Ghost has come, he
will convict the world.
He is here.
And so he communicates himself inwardly, past reason,
past teaching, past everything to the moral perception,
to the conscience, to the spirit of the
man.
And spirit impinges on spirit, and the blessed
life-giving spirit of the universe, the spirit
of God the Father and God the Son,
impinges upon the spirit of man, clear into
the precincts beyond that man's reason, beyond his
teaching, beyond his fears and prejudice, straight through
to the ancient man, and anybody then, under
those circumstances that can call this one a
devil, has morally and spiritually deteriorated to the
point of no return.
I'm going to describe the people that Jesus
described.
They cannot distinguish good from evil.
They cannot distinguish God from Satan.
And yet they are convinced of their own
purity, and wholly unaware of their condition.
And I say all this carried to the
point of no return.
The man who curses God or challenges God
to kill him, that may be up on
the top of his head here.
You need poor little old dark brain cells.
But after the Holy Ghost has penetrated through
past a man's defenses, through to the sacred
sanctum, and there has made himself known, and
then we turn and say, this is the
demon, this is the devil, this is done
by the devil.
And when a man full of the Holy
Ghost stands before that man, and he in
his blind fury says, that's a devil in
you, as they did of Jesus, that's it.
A deterioration, a moral and spiritual deterioration has
taken place here.
There's been a breakdown in the cells of
the spirit.
And that person can no longer distinguish good
from evil.
And the strange and ominous thing is, that
they do usually live good lives.
These people to whom Jesus spoke were good
livers.
They were among the very best livers.
They were Pharisees, they were scribes, they were
rabbis, they were people who lived a moral
life that not even our Lord could find
fault with.
And it was an external righteousness.
They didn't know the mysterious spirit.
They didn't know God at all.
He told them bluntly, you don't know God.
He said, you don't know the Father.
You're the seed of Abraham, but you don't
know God because you don't know the Holy
Ghost.
He's never come to you.
He's never left you.
He can't talk to you.
And yet you're living all right.
You're tithing your mint, and you're coming, and
you're rooting, and you're living all right.
Jesus never told a near-religious sinner that
he'd committed the unpardonable sin.
He only said that those who committed the
unpardonable sin were religious people who were souls
who had deteriorated, and their spirits had rotted
to a point of no return where they
couldn't know good from evil.
Oh, they knew stealing was wrong.
They knew adultery was wrong.
But there was something vastly, infinitely worse inside
of them.
A devil lay within, a spirit of evil
lay within, and they didn't know it.
So they attributed that devil to the Holy
Son of God, who were convinced of their
own purity.
And this was one of the things that
Jesus fought against all the time he was
on earth.
He went about everywhere telling them they were
whited sepulchers, they were serpents, they were false
teachers, they were liars, they were sons of
the devil, because they were fully convinced of
their own purity and wholly unaware of their
condition.
Here came among them the light, the light
that lighted every man.
Here was among them the one who should
rise from the Gentiles and shine to the
uttermost parts of the earth, the very light
of God in whom was no darkness was
shining among them.
They looked it full in the face and
said, it's darkness.
To say anything else would have meant to
repent, would have meant to turn on themselves,
would meant to admit that they were wrong.
I'm going to say something to you here,
but I'll stand back up.
So don't come to me and say, Mr.
Toter, don't you think that is extreme?
No, I wouldn't have said it if I
had.
Here it is.
There are people, and they hang around churches,
too, a lot of them.
They will go to hell before they will
ever admit that they themselves are wrong.
They simply can't think.
They will pray, O Lord, we're no good,
filthy rags, but it never occurs to them
that means me, my ego, myself.
They don't want to lose face.
They don't want to admit it's I, Lord,
it's I.
No, they're right, I've met them.
And there will be lovely, nice people until
you cross them or suggest they were wrong
on something.
And then blind, black fury leaps out of
their hearts.
They will not believe that they're not wrong.
Such persons either have committed or are on
their way to commit the unpardonable sin.
The religious person that will go to the
altar when 25 others go and cover up
his own personal needs, that will testify humbly
as long as others testify, so that he
can hide himself in the group and lives
his life carefully so as to protect his
own ego, but never breaks, never honestly repents,
never.
He may pray and pray and ask for
prayer requests and say, would you pray, and
this man should be prayed for, and I
think we ought to pray.
But just cross him, just let him know
that you think he isn't perfect.
Black fury will leap out, just as it
did here.
These were religious people, that Jesus had come
and healed the sick and then said to
the sick, now here's Rabbi so-and-so,
a wonderful leader, I want you to meet
him.
If he said to some fellow that he'd
cast the devil out of, come over here,
Abraham, I want you to meet Rabbi Ben
-Ammi here, I want you to come and
see him.
He's a wonderful leader in Israel.
If Jesus had rubbed their fur the right
way and scratched their backs and given them
degrees and told them how wonderful they were,
they'd have gone along with Jesus.
But they were wrong and he knew it,
and his way and theirs intersected.
And where they intersected, fire flew, because they
would not believe they could be wrong.
They were on their way to, or had
already committed, the unpardonable sin.
For it's an ingredient in this condition that
we're perfectly sure we're right.
Now, any sin that is repented will be
forgiven.
But there is a sin that can never
be repented, because to commit it, the heart
first has to be beyond repentance.
How can we know that we've not committed?
Well, no one can ever know that he
has.
At least if I take my Bible for
it here, and I've been now, it's been
a long time, I'm not telling you how
long, but brother, it's been longer than some
of you, your father and mother hadn't even
met.
Some of them hadn't even been born.
And I've been reading my Bible and studying
it and praying and thinking and finding out
all I could find out.
And if I have arrived at anything like
truth on this, then I am safe in
saying that no one can ever know that
he has committed the unpardonable sin for the
simple reason is he doesn't believe he could.
And he laughs it off, scornful, for the
reason given above.
He has deteriorated to the point of no
return.
Like the brain cells that are injured, doctors
will say I'm awfully afraid that brain cells
are so badly injured.
They can never be put back.
You can mend a broken arm.
You can graft skin on a burnt face.
You can put a tube in some place,
even in the windpipe.
You can do a lot of things.
But when brain cells break down, there's no
putting them back.
That's deterioration to the point of no return.
And these who committed it didn't know they
had and never can know they had, because
before they could, they had arrived at a
place where they couldn't know they had.
Now, I think I told you this before,
but I want to tell you again.
I told it over there, I think, the
other day.
Several years ago, over at Dula Beach, Ohio,
a young woman wanted to talk with me,
and I said, all right, right after dinner.
We sat right here on the porch.
So after dinner, we sat down there on
the porch together, and she had a friend
with her, some woman older than she.
She'd committed the unpardonable sin this woman had.
And I went and told her she hadn't,
told her why, and dismissed her, and she
went away very joyful and said, oh, thank
you, thank you.
And she believed everything I said.
But I hadn't more than left the beach
till I got a long letter from her.
She had all right, committed the unpardonable sin.
I wrote her a letter back, told her
again that she hadn't, and told her why.
And I think I got an acknowledgment saying,
oh, thank you.
That comforts me very much.
I know I have.
And then I was over in Hawthorne, New
Jersey, Ridgewood, New Jersey, I think to be
exact, where I was staying at the time.
I was preaching in Hawthorne.
Phone rang, and they said, long distance.
And I went to the phone with this
woman in Ohio.
She had, I guess, called my wife and
found out where I was, and called me
there, said, Mr. Stokes is back on me
again.
I know I've committed the unpardonable sin.
Well, I told her again, and she meekly
said, thank you, sir.
Always called me sir so nicely.
All right, thank you, sir.
Thank you, sir.
And I said, well, here it is again.
And I went to finish my meal, and
almost dismissed her from my mind.
And I didn't forget all about the woman
for about a year.
At the end of that time, a letter
came.
Oh, what a letter.
It leaped and danced like the leaves of
the forest.
And I opened it up, and she said,
I have been ashamed to write to you.
Shortly after this, that last time that I
talked with you, God wrought the deliverance in
my life.
And she said, oh, what a joyful life
I'm living now.
And she said, I should have written long
ago to tell you it was okay.
You didn't have to pray for me now.
It was all well.
But she said, I was just ashamed.
She said, wasn't I awful the way I
acted?
Well, she was.
But she was in trouble.
She thought she'd committed the unpardonable sin.
But I don't know who reached her.
I guess maybe a little something, I said,
plus a lot of prayer and help on
other people's part found her.
I think she's from Cleveland, if I remember.
But what a joyful woman she was when
she wrote that last letter.
Well, I wrote and said, thanks very much,
and that was that.
Now, I want to describe the fellow who
hasn't committed the unpardonable sin.
He's uncertain whether he has or not, and
is all badly confused about what the unpardonable
sin is.
You can write his name mighty high, he
hasn't committed it.
If he had, he wouldn't be uncertain at
all.
He would know he hasn't.
And he wouldn't be confused, he would be
as clear as daylight.
That he was one of the saints, and
would be getting a three-way mirror to
look at his head in order that he
might know what side is crowned over.
He'd be perfectly sure of himself.
But the fellow who's uncertain and confused and
downcast and in trouble.
I went to a doctor one time years
ago, this was in Cleveland too.
Went to a doctor, old good many years
ago.
I was having pains.
And he sat me down and talked with
me.
He said, I can tell you fellas want
to see you come through the door.
I said, what is it?
I said, nerves, nerves.
And he gave me a dad and picked
me up and sent me out.
But I didn't like that so well.
I had to look about me like a
dyspeptic.
I didn't know how to look like a
dyspeptic.
And I got over that and didn't have
any trouble anymore.
But I did, and he knew me.
He said, I know you fellas want to
see you come.
I didn't like to think I fell into
a category.
But I know these people who think they've
committed an unpardonable sin.
Phone rings, told her, yes, well this is
so-and-so, never heard of him.
Could I see you next week?
Yes.
Well, what's time convenient for you?
Well, could it be to one o'clock?
I work until noon.
Yeah, all right, one o'clock.
So I hurry through my lunch hour and
come back one o'clock and he comes
in.
I know he's a spiritual dyspeptic.
He is just in one little easy jump
of a happy, joyous Christian life.
But he's a gloomy, dyspeptic.
He thinks he's committed an unpardonable sin.
Always be sure he hasn't.
For if he had, he would make broad
his phylacteries and make big his Bible and
bulge his tracts.
And would come in without a trace of
penitence, without a trace of humility.
He hadn't committed the unpardonable sin.
He'd never think of it.
So the fella who's discouraged and gloomy and
despondent and worried about himself, don't bother your
head about him.
Pray that God will show him the facts.
He hadn't committed the unpardonable sin.
And the fella that goes around asking questions
and writing in the Moody Monthly and King's
Business, Our Hope, someone wanting to know what's
the unpardonable sin, he hasn't committed it.
You never heard of any of those Pharisees
coming to Jesus and saying, oh master, I'm
afraid I've committed the unpardonable sin.
Never one of them.
None of the rabbis ever came to him
and said, oh master, I'm afraid, I'm afraid
I've gone to the point of no return.
Not one of them.
Anybody had come to Jesus like that, and
they might easily have, and probably did, some
of them.
He'd have said, father forgives and pardons all
sins unto the sons of men.
Thou canst believe, thou let him out into
the light.
So anybody who's worried about whether he has
committed the unpardonable sin hasn't.
Anybody who's uncertain and confused hasn't.
Anybody who's distressed to the point where he's
asking questions and asking people to pray for
him, he hasn't.
Anybody who's become so frightened he can't pray
anymore, and I've met some of them.
They think they've committed the unpardonable sin, and
they always go to the Bible and look
up the verses that do them harm.
They always look up the passage that says,
say the tenth of Hebrews and the sixth
of Hebrews, there remaineth therefore no more sacrifice
for sin.
They wag their head and go out.
If that described them, they'd never have come
in.
The self-righteous man never worries that there's
no more sacrifice for sin.
The self-righteous man whose spiritual life has
deteriorated until he's capable of committing the unpardonable
sin, he never worries for fear there's no
hope for him, and he's never frightened.
He can pray, sure he can pray.
He can pray to the Father he knows
as his friend, because he's got the covenant.
But in his deep heart of hearts, he
doesn't know God from the devil.
In his deep heart of hearts, he doesn't
know good from evil.
He only knows external good and external evil,
but he's never become acquainted with the depth
of depravity in his own heart.
And he'd crucify God before he would admit
himself a sinner.
It's all right for you to admit yourself
a generic sinner.
There are many a man who believes in
total depravity that thinks it's touched everybody but
him.
Now, if you ask him, he'd say, oh,
certainly, certainly.
I was born in sin, conceived in iniquity,
and all my righteousness are filthy reds.
But he doesn't believe that.
He's lying to his own soul.
Cross him sometime, challenge him sometime, charge him
with doing something wrong sometime.
See what he'll do.
Blow up, turn red, curse you out.
Well, the inability to feel spiritual distress is
a mark of a terrible condition.
I don't say it's a proof of the
unpardonable sin.
I say it's a proof that we're on
our way to it.
Oh, I can't say too often.
If you can be sorry for sin, thank
God for the ability to be sorry.
Some people can't.
Some religious people can never be sorry.
Their religion lies in texts, forms.
In fact, they were sprinkled, took communion, confirmed.
But there's never been anything inside, and they're
deteriorating fast.
Wouldn't you feel terrible if the doctor would
say to you, I'm awfully sorry to tell
you, I wish you'd bring your wife down?
And you and your wife would sit there,
and the doctor or specialist would say to
you, now, I'm sorry to tell you this,
but your brain is deteriorating.
You've got a strange disease, and the cells
are breaking down one after the other.
And before very long, you won't even be
able to tell your own name.
You won't know your people.
Wouldn't you go home blue?
Wouldn't that be awful?
I'd go home and say to my people,
well, that's what he told me.
Now, expect anything from here on in.
And how much worse to know that by
self-righteousness and self-love and a brassy
unwillingness ever to admit we're wrong, basically wrong,
have deteriorations taking place in many lives, religious
lives.
I don't say saved people.
Saved people can't commit the unpardonable sin.
A saved man cannot commit the unpardonable sin.
These were not saved people.
They were religious people.
There's a vast difference.
But to know that that deterioration takes place,
to know that it's taking place, and little
by little, the spirit is getting obtuse, eyes
are going out, blindness is coming on, deafness
is taking over.
And pretty soon, it'll be confined within its
own skull.
But nobody ever knows that.
Nobody ever knows it because the people it's
happening to would laugh at me for preaching
and scorn and curse Jesus for saying so
and say, ah, you've got the devil.
I'm a Jew.
Look at me, circumcised at the age of
death.
My lineage is in the temple.
I know who I'm born of.
I'm not born of fornication.
What are you talking about?
Didn't I say you were a devil and
were crazy?
He knew who he was.
I'm a Methodist.
I'm a Baptist.
I heard Dr. Simpson preach.
I give two missions.
I prayed all night one night within a
day.
But you'll never believe how bad you are.
I'll tell you a little penitence will go
a long way, a little sorrow for sin.
Ah, two men went up into the temple
to pray.
One stood and thus and prayed with himself,
O God, I thank thee I am not
as other men.
The other man bowed his head on his
chest, beat that same chest and said, God,
have mercy on me, a sinner.
And the Lord smiled and said, ah, that's
what I like to hear him talk.
And he went down to his house justified.
I said to Philip Newell over the phone
the other day, the two classes of men
they tell me in the world, the good
people who think they're bad and the bad
people who think they're good.
And I never met a real Christian in
my life.
Never met a Christian in my life who
was a humble follower of the Lord Jesus
Christ that ever believed the amount of anything.
You always take the humble low place and
admit you're no good.
For the world is filled with people who
think they're good and aren't, and with Saints
who are only too ready to admit they're
no good.
All the righteousness is of God.
I don't want to close on this low,
funereal note.
I want to give you some scripture here.
God gave this to me a few years
ago as certainly as if it had been
given to me by divine inspiration.
Now, it was here several hundred years before
I was ever thought of, or born even.
But God gave this to me.
Did you ever have God give you a
chapter?
Did you?
Ever have God give you a chapter it
was just as real to you as if
nobody else had ever read it?
And for a moment you wondered if they
ever had.
Well, God said to me, Fear thou not,
for thou shalt not be ashamed.
Neither be thou confounded, for thou shalt not
be put to shame.
For thou shalt forget the shame of thy
youth.
Oh, that's not the way it should be
read.
For thou shalt forget the shame of thy
youth.
And shalt not remember the reproach of thy
widowhood any more.
For thy maker is now thine husband, the
Lord of hosts his name.
The Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, the
God of the whole earth shall he be
called.
For a small moment have I forsaken thee,
but with great mercies will I gather thee.
In a little wrath I hid my face
from thee for a moment.
But with everlasting kindness will I have mercy
on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer.
For this is of the waters of Noah
unto me.
For as I have sworn the waters of
Noah should no more go over the earth,
so have I sworn that I would not
be wroth with thee nor rebuke thee.
Now I've taken verse 9 as certainly for
me as if it had never been written
for anybody else in the universe.
God promised he'd never get angry with me
again.
That worries me a little bit.
No, I can get worried about more blessed
things.
So the other day I was telling God
up here in my study, now Father this
sounds awful, this is terrible.
Suppose I do a lot of things I
shouldn't.
He promised he'd never rebuke me nor get
angry with me as long as the world
goes on.
Suppose I do things I shouldn't.
Something said in my heart, I know how
to handle my children.
I'll take care of that.
I'll discipline you.
I'll chastise you.
I'll make you sweat.
I'll bring you around.
I'll see to it you don't get away
with anything.
But I'll never be angry with you.
And I'll never be wroth nor rebuke you
while the world stays.
For the mountains shall depart and the hills
be removed, but my kindness shall not depart
from thee, neither shall my covenant of my
peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath
mercy on me.
Mercy on me.
In righteousness thou shalt be established.
Whose righteousness?
You answer me.
Whose?
His.
Thou shalt be far from oppression, for thou
shalt not fear, and from terror for it
shall not come near thee.
Behold, they shall surely gather together, but not
by me.
You'll have a lot of enemies.
They'll get a lynching bay up for you,
but not by me.
I didn't send them.
Whosoever shall gather against thee shall fall for
thy sake.
Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth
the coals in the fire, and that bringeth
forth an instrument for his work.
And I have created the waters to destroy,
and no weapon that is formed against thee
shall prosper.
And every tongue that shall rise against thee
in judgment thou shalt condemn, for this is
the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
and their righteousness is of me, saith the
Lord.
So I took off the old coat called
tozer and put on the robe called my
righteousness, that is, Christ's righteousness, not worried about
myself, because I know I belong in hell.
And the man who knows he belongs in
hell can't go there, because that's the penitent
man.
The penitent soul can't perish.
You're a penitent soul.
Oh, that we might be penitent, solemnly for
sins, willing to confess and admit and acknowledge.
That kind of soul can never die.
That kind of soul can never commit an
unpardonable sin.
And God has spoken.
Arise, my soul, arise, shake off thy guilty
fears, guilty fears, the bleeding sacrifice on my
behalf appears.
All the self-righteous crowd deteriorating, going to
pieces, breaking down, going to the point of
no return, righteous, moral, living well, going to
church, but never suspecting nor dreaming how bad
they are.
For them there is no repentance.
For them there is no forgiveness.
Their sin will be with them forever.
But the man who beats his breast and
says, God have mercy on me, the sinner,
he can't perish.
He can't.
No, he can't commit the unpardonable sin.
Penitence, my brother.
I plead it.
I ask it.
Learn to repent.
Dr. R.
Brown once said in this pulpit, we have
lost the art of repentance, the holy art
of repentance.
It's that that keeps us healthy.
It's that that keeps us right with God.
So learn to repent.
Learn to be penitential.
Every day tell God about yourself.
And then every day say, arise my soul,
arise.
I was a guilty sinner, but Jesus died
for me.
These two things must be held in suspension
in the human mind.
How bad I was, how good God is.
How evil I was, how powerful the blood
is.
How certainly I'm bad and how wonderful the
grace of God is to save the bad
man.
These two things must always be before us.
Maybe way out there in the consummation when
we see him and his name is on
our forehead, maybe we'll forget our record.
But until we do, let's keep two things
before us.
How bad we were, and how wonderfully powerful
the dying lamb is, or was and is
now that he's at the right hand of
the Father.
Keep those two things before you and you
have nothing to worry about.
So any of you gloomy people, you spiritually
skeptics that are going around lashing yourself like
a flagellante, making fun of our Roman Catholic
friends, and you're doing penance every day, hating
yourself, wishing you were dead and hadn't been
born, calling yourself names, thinking you've committed the
unpardonable sin.
No, no, you're just not looking in the
right direction, you're looking inside.
I beg of you, look unto Jesus, the
author and finisher of your faith, and you'll
forget about yourself for a little while.