Q&A: Unpardonable Sin, Tattoos, Author of Mark, Paul & Barnabas Split

ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church

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So, I want to explain a little bit why we're doing this. I listened to a conference or something with John MacArthur.

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So I listened to a conference with John MacArthur and I know we don't really agree with MacArthur but he made some good points as to why his church does question and answers as well.

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And it's because, you know, pastors spend a lot of time preaching what we think you need to know but it's also important to give people the opportunity to ask questions that they need answers to.

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So, it's important to do both, I think. And Jesus' ministry was a lot like that.

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The apostles' ministry, Jesus would, you know, it's called a protected pulpit. When you just sort of preach a sermon and you sort of guard it from interaction.

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But Jesus, a lot of times, when he taught and when he preached, he would engage the audience. People would ask questions and he would answer.

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So there was interactive stuff going on in their ministry. So, it is very important to do those things, to provide those things for you all and also help to build up our apologetics so that we can also engage with unbelievers and know how to defend the faith and to give them an answer for the hope that lies within us, right?

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And so, I don't wanna make this too drawn out. We can just keep it at like 20, 30, no more than 20, 30 minutes.

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But I wanna do this somewhat regularly, maybe on the Sundays when we don't do the Lord's Supper. And that way we give you all an opportunity to ask questions about really anything, anything that you're thinking about or a book you're reading or in the

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Bible or some teaching you heard or some sermon you heard, anything like that, we can discuss, you can ask about it and just really wanna give you all the opportunity to ask those questions and to have everybody benefit from the discussion, okay?

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So, ask away, what are your questions? Yes, yeah.

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No, no, no, good question. No, so the question was, who was

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John Mark who deserted Paul and Barnabas when they were doing ministry and that they had the dispute in Acts chapter 15, in verse 36, why

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Paul did not wanna bring him along because he had abandoned them earlier. So, I think John Mark, I believe, well, now that you mentioned it, it might be the

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Mark of the gospel, but I'm not sure. That's a good, I'll need to look into that, but it might be the one who wrote the gospel, but I'm not sure.

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Because in the end, Paul, John Mark basically proved himself in the end and Paul did say, hey, bring him along because he is useful to me for ministry.

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So, later on, he did kind of redeem himself, right? Quote, unquote, but yeah, that's a good question. We'll need to look into that.

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Any other questions? Yes, sister. Excuse me, what catechism?

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It should be the Baptist catechism. It's not, no, that's the

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Orthodox catechism. That one is based on the Heidelberg catechism, which is more.

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So, the London Baptist Confession, that's different, right? The catechism is a question and answer.

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So, the Baptist catechism, or it's also called Keech's catechism. And question 40, that's the one from, because the one in the booklets, the one from Chapel Library, that's actually not the original

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Baptist catechism. They kind of mislabeled that one because that's the one from the, it's an

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American version, the Charleston Association or something like that. So, it might be in that one, but it might be a different question number.

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Yeah. It's not in that one. Yeah, it might have a different question, a different number, but yes, yeah, good question.

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Anything else? Yes. When the

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Bible talks about the blood, is it that in the, like connecting it to his death or literally his blood?

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Good question. So, in the Bible, okay, the question was, is it literally the blood that washes us from our sins or is it the fact that he died that pays the price for our sin?

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And biblically speaking in the Old Testament, Leviticus 17, 11, right?

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It says, without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. So, that's a biblical principle throughout the

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Old Testament and in the New Testament, it carries over with Christ's shedding of blood. So, it's,

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I think in one sense, it's both. It's the fact that Christ's perfect life and his perfect obedience earned that righteousness like we talked about and then his sacrificial death on the cross.

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So, when he was bruised and it says in Isaiah 53, right?

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That he was bruised for our iniquities, right? And that blood that he shed was all part of the sacrifice.

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It's all part of it. And so, the shedding of his blood, that's why the

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Bible says we have redemption through his blood because that blood was part of his death. So, it's really both and.

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It's not either or, it's both and. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yes. What's that?

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Whether the, was it the blood that forgives our sins or was it the death that forgives our sins?

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Yeah. And so, it's both and, right? It's both and, yeah. Any other questions?

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Follow -ups are okay too. You can have seconds if you want. Yeah. Revelation, right?

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Right, yeah. So, when Christians are not visible, it's also representative of the opposite and of like the mark of the beast.

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Is anyone who is not a Christian? Yes, right. Okay. Yeah, so, the question is about the marks because in the

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Revelation, it talks about how believers, I believe, will be marked on their forehead, I think, with the mark of God, whereas the mark of the beast, which has a lot of different views and controversy because of dispensationalism and different views of the end times.

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And really, the mark of the beast, the mark of Antichrist, has a lot to do with your allegiance.

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It's a thing about conviction and allegiance. Are you allied with God or are you allied with the devil?

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And because Jesus said, he who is not with me is against me, right? So, when it talks about the mark of the beast, it's those who have embraced the world.

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They've embraced the world, they've embraced the flesh, they've embraced the devil. And those who have the mark of God have been saved by believing the gospel, right?

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So, that is why really it's about allegiance. It's not so much about some barcode or some physical mark.

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It may be some aspect of that, but it's really not what the Bible is emphasizing.

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The Bible emphasizes, what do you believe? Where is your allegiance? Where does your allegiance lie, right?

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And so, that's primarily what it's dealing with. And some people, some very milk -knowledge

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Christians, they like to defend the use of tattoos for believers because in the revelation, it says that Christ himself has a mark on his leg or something like that and on his forehead and that he'll mark us on the forehead.

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Now again, of course, if God wants to mark us, that's his prerogative, right?

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The Bible says very clearly in Leviticus, do not print any mark on your bodies, right?

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Because why? Because that's a pagan heathen practice. And in the New Testament, it's even more hardcore.

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It says, do not have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. That's why it's called holiness, right?

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Don't do what the pagans do because that's a mark of the beast. So doing things that pagans do for their false gods and their false religions, we don't do.

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We don't mark ourselves up. We don't tattoo ourselves with big crosses and all that stuff because that's also worldly.

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It attracts attention to your body, not to your character, right? So we just, you know, be careful with people that say that, because I came from a church where, you know, there's guys tattooed up and stuff.

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It's like, what are you doing? What are you doing, you know? So we have to have a good understanding.

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That's part of what having a good understanding is about. And also marks, these marks are signs of demonic possession.

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Sororities and fraternities, they'll mark you and that mark, a lot of times when you mark yourself, you're marking a certain period in your life where you were in sin and it's like a bookmark.

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So we need to be careful because demons can attach themselves to these sinful acts and those things need to be renounced, right?

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So good question. Any other questions? Other questions?

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Don't be shy. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

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Yeah. Good stuff, yeah.

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So other David, he did confirm that the John Mark that deserted Paul and Barnabas appears to be the gospel writer.

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And he was also saying that much of Mark's gospel came from Peter. So Peter, they were closely in a fellowship.

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And so much of Peter's testimony became Mark's gospel. And that's one of the tests of canonicity, which is how we know that a book is authentically the words of God is, does it have a, is it written by an apostle or was there a direct relationship to an apostle?

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And that's Mark's gospel is one of those. So yeah, good to know.

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That's good to know. Any other questions about anything else? Yeah. So the question is about what is the unpardonable sin?

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And because Jesus at certain points said, any sin will be forgiven you, but the unpardonable sin, blasphemy against the

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Holy Spirit will not be forgiven you. And so there's different, there's been different answers given about that sin.

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Really what that's about is it's a sign of your reprobation. So if you are a reprobate, if you are an unbeliever who has been, who has not been chosen by God to be saved, you are basically falling into that category.

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So those who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit are people essentially who know, they know the truth and they reject the truth.

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So they know it like the Pharisees, right? The Pharisees, they knew, it's a lot like the devil.

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The devil knows that he's gonna lose, but he doesn't care. And the Pharisees, they saw who

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Christ was and yet they still wanted to kill him. So that's essentially blasphemy against the

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Holy Spirit or attributing in another passage, it says that when you attribute the work of God to the devil that's another form of that blasphemy because you're rejecting what

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Christ has done and what God has done for us and you're perverting it.

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You're saying that it's the devil or that it's not, that you know the truth and you reject it.

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And so, because it's the spirit of God that regenerates us, right? And causes us to believe and convicts us of sin.

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So yeah, now obviously believers, they cannot and they will not commit that sin because once we're saved we will persevere into the end because God will preserve those who he has called.

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So Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith. We cannot lose our salvation, right?

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If you do fall away, it's because you never had it in the first place, right? So yeah, good question.

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Does that help? Yes. Oh yeah, right, yeah.

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Is that something that we should think of it like that or we should say, oh, is this not a being of sin?

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So the question was, what if we have blasphemous thoughts? Or what if we like say something that's blasphemous and because we are in sin or we stumble or whatever and what do we do there?

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Does that mean we're not saved anymore? And the way you really know is repentance.

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So if there's repentance, if there is sorrow and remorse and recognition that, hey, well,

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I shouldn't have said that or I shouldn't have expressed that sinful thought, Lord, forgive me, forgive me, that's not right, that's sin.

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So when there's a recognition that it's wrong and that we don't wanna do it, that's a sign that we are believers, we're in Christ and that we recognize it as sin.

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These folks, on the other hand, they didn't care. They didn't have repentance. They didn't think it was wrong and they were falsely accusing

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Christ and slandering him of blasphemy when they were the ones guilty. So that's the key difference is being sensitive to sin and repenting, right, having repentance.

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That's what we must do. Always, always repent of our sin, right? Even if it is something blasphemous like that, you know, there could be some demonic attack or some demonic influence that we need to take out of our lives or that we need to seek deliverance over, but yeah, that's the difference is that there should be repentance always, right?

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Does that help? Does it make sense? Yeah, so good questions, yeah. Yes, and attributing to God, to the devil, what is

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God's work? Yeah, Beelzebub, yeah.

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Yes, yes, they said that what Christ was doing was the work of Beelzebub, who is the devil.

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Yeah, the Lord of the things that fly. Yes, Satan is not divided against himself, right?

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I think that's when he responded. A house divided against itself cannot stand. So Satan is not divided against himself.

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Yes, right. Yes, exactly, exactly.

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Yeah, so what's a good example? What's a good example? What is a really good example in the

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Bible of somebody who blaspheme basically in the

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Bible that was basically a believer? What's a good example of that? Well, he wasn't a believer though, right?

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Somebody who was a believer. Think Old Testament, curse God and Job's wife, right?

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Why don't you curse God and die? Right, that's kind of blasphemy, you know, that's really offensive to God, right?

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And she may have been a believer. You know, they were a believing household from what the

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Bible suggests and she was thinking emotionally, right? She had an emotional reaction and so we have to be careful with our flesh.

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But that's an example where something like that can happen and we just, we need to be aware and repent, right?

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So good question. Any other, yes. Yeah, yeah, well, she was killed, right?

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Was she killed? I think, did the devil take her? I mean, did the God, did she stay alive?

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Yeah, I don't remember if she was killed. I guess not, no, but the Bible suggests that, yeah, I think the Bible suggests that she.

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God restored Joe, he had more kids. Right, but I thought God took everybody, including his wife.

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Okay, yeah, then yeah, I think scripture suggests that she came around.

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Joe maybe needed to set her aside and rebuke her a little bit, but you know, but yeah, good question.

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Any other questions? Sure. That kind of reaction of someone who is never, did not say they see, they were literally seeing

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Jesus Christ in front of their eyes and seeing his work done by the

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Holy Spirit and still they were saying that it was done by the devil. So that caused the hardness of heart and therefore that, it might be noted, like, okay, it's not like, oh, that's a blasphemous thought in my mind about the

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Holy Spirit or something like that. Now I'm not saying it's not like that. It's if you put it in context with what scripture says to us, it's like, they were literally seeing

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Jesus doing the works of God and they still rejected him. Therefore, that's the blasphemy of the

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Holy Spirit, see? Exactly. Exactly. He's in his physical form right now and it's like, it's not the same.

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So kind of like Ben Shapiro. I mean, because he doesn't like Christ.

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Yeah, he, yeah, that's, that isn't, you know, one thing is sometimes it can be hard to know for sure whether they're reprobate, so we don't really know if maybe he'll get saved later.

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He, yeah, that's an interesting, the question is about whether Ben Shapiro is reprobate or if he's guilty of this blasphemy.

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He does reject Christ as a Messiah. He has a certain respect for him, so he doesn't completely mock him in that sense.

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He doesn't believe, it's more of a, he just doesn't believe, but, and part of this is because he's a, you know, the

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Jews, they, you know, like the Bible says, a partial hardening has come upon Israel, and so, you know,

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I would say maybe later on, he might become a believer, so it's good to pray for his salvation.

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I do believe that maybe in the future he can get saved, but, you know, to add to the brother's point here, what happened with Job, they were obviously viciously attacked by the devil because God said, yeah, go ahead, and so the wife was basically responding out of despair, out of like this overwhelming sense of persecution and attack from the enemy, and it caused her to react sinfully, right?

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So as opposed to these people who were literally seeing miracles from Christ as a messianic figure and saying, that's the devil.

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So it is a different context that you have to account for, right? Good, good points, good questions and good points.

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Any other questions? Yes. Awesome.

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Yeah, hopefully this is useful, and we'll keep doing it consistently.

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Any other questions? And I'll record them, too, so we can also put them up and you can review them.

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And I, you know, if I say something off, I might need to correct myself in the next one. So, well, but I think we're okay so far.

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Anything else? No more questions? Oh, yes, yeah.

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I'll get those, I'll get the sermon notes out. Oh, oh, I also have some books. I have,

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I've got a couple books here, too, if anybody's interested in them. This one is about a survey of every book of the

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Bible. It gives you a brief explanation of who wrote it, the setting, why it was written. It's a pretty good book onto just getting a big picture view of the

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Bible. It's pretty useful. And then this is,

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More Than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell. This has some pretty good stuff about just kind of the gospels and the authenticity of the gospels and the evidence for the gospels.

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And stuff like that. So there's some useful stuff in here if y 'all wanna take these with you, okay?

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All right, thank you all. Let's go ahead and close in prayer. Thank you for listening to the sermons of Thorne Crown Covenant Baptist Church, where the

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Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety is applied to all of faith and life. We strive to be biblical, reformed, historic, confessional, loving, discerning

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Christians who evangelize, stand firm in, and earnestly contend for the Christian faith.

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If you're looking for a church in the El Paso, Texas area, or for more information about our church, sermons, and ministries, such as Semper Reformanda Radio and Thorne Crown Network Podcast, please contact us at thornecrownministries .com.