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Evening Fellowship Service
Good evening and welcome back. Hope you had a good supper. Appreciated that good supper provided for us tonight for Ed and Eric boiling some corn. And a whole bunch of people shucked it, I saw. So we had some good corn shuckers out there tonight.
And I think there's some left.
Is there?
There's still like...
Oh, there was. There is some left, my wife has taken it. But if some, she would be glad to share. I'll speak for my wife, she would be glad to share. So anyway, and there's a lot of dessert leftovers.
So if you'd like to, you know, eat some dessert afterwards, you're welcome to do that. Well, let's turn to number 411. 411, I'm gonna abbreviate service a little bit tonight for the sake of those who have kids that need to get home and get to bed.
411, the solid rock. You just sat down, so we'll let you stay seated, all right? My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. Built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness I dare not trust the sweetest frame But wholly lean on Jesus' name On Christ the solid rock I stand All other ground is sinking sand All other ground is sinking sand When darkness fails His lovely face I rest on His unchanging grace In every high and stormy gale My anchor holds within the veil On Christ the solid rock I stand All other ground is sinking sand All other ground is sinking sand So his covenant, His blood support me in the whelming flood When all around my soul gives way He then is all my hope and stay On Christ the solid rock I stand All other ground is sinking sand, is sinking sand When He shall come with trumpet sound Oh, may I then in Him be found Dressed in His righteousness alone To stand before the throne On Christ the solid rock I stand All other ground is sinking sand All other ground is sinking sand
Good, let's have a word of prayer. Let's see, Kevin, Kevin, there you are. Would you lead us in prayer tonight? I wanna read the passage, this text for our message tonight. It is in Mark chapter three, verses 22 to 30, and then I'll give you an opportunity for a word of testimony or two.
Let's not take a long time for that, so if you wanna share something this evening, just speak right up here in a moment, and then we'll sing one more song. So Mark chapter three, verse 22, says that the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, speaking of Jesus, he has Beelzebub, and by the ruler of the demons, he casts out demons.
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 into a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house.
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.
May the Lord add his blessing to reading of his word. All right, I wonder, anybody have a word of testimony, a word of praise to the Lord? I want to say thanks to those who helped the Bellows this afternoon.
They said, were things expedited nicely? And he says, yeah, it took about 10 minutes, and we had it all loaded up. So whoever helped with that, that's a great blessing. I know it was a blessing to them.
Pray regarding that. They were telling me before the supper tonight that they're closing tomorrow, they're closing on their house, and they're closing on the house that they're buying. But the lady that owns the house they're buying is supposed to be out, of course, at closing, right?
So they can move in. But that lady's, the moving truck that's supposed to move all her stuff out of state broke down, and not sure if they're gonna be able to get her vacated in time for them to move in.
So just pray that that doesn't get delayed too long for them. All right, word of testimony tonight. Anybody, anything very quickly?
Yes, Kevin, that is a blessing.
Somebody else? Yes, Brandon?
Sorry.
Hope for those answers to prayer. Anybody else? Yes, Lynn? This is a good series for us. So much misunderstanding regarding the whole subject of holiness, and I really appreciate the book that we're using as a basis for that series.
What a radical, comprehensive call to holiness is the title of that book. So this morning's lesson in Sunday school was, I got through about half of that lesson, so we'll pick that up next Sunday morning and review what we did this morning, and then finish it up.
So I encourage you to be back for that. Anybody else? Yes, congratulations. Congratulations. It's supposed to change somewhere along the way, isn't it?
Oh, okay, congratulations, 48 years,.
And you say this is a birthday. That's a double,.
Same digit.
It's 48 years and 55 years of age. That's amazing.
How you did that?
That's awesome.
All right, well, before we look at the word tonight, let's turn in our supplement book. I hope you picked one of those up on the way in. Number 27. Number 27, He Will Hold Me Fast.
I fear my faith will, Christ will hold me fast
When the tempter would prevail He will hold me fast I could never keep my hold through life's fearful path For my love is often cold, He must hold me fast He will hold, for my Savior loves me so He will hold me fast Those He saves are His delight, Christ will hold me fast Precious in His holy sight, He will hold me fast My soul be lost, His promises shall last Bought by Him at such a cost, He will hold me fast He will hold me fast, for my Savior loves me so He will hold me fast, for my life He bled and died, Christ will hold me fast Justice has been satisfied, He will hold me fast Endless life, He will hold me fast Till our faith is turned to sight, when He comes at last He will hold me fast, He will hold me fast For my Savior loves me so, He will hold me fast
Thank you ladies for playing tonight. So what will happen to you, assuming you're not in an Islamic controlled Sharia law country, if you reject Muhammad? I mean, he's a so-called prophet who's long dead.
I mean, I guess I should ask it this way. What's Muhammad gonna do to you if you reject Muhammad? Or what about Buddha? What if you see that, you know, fat little guy sitting cross-legged on the floor and you see him and you kind of chuckle at him and say, you're a goof and you just walk on, you just reject Buddha.
What's gonna happen to you, right? What's gonna happen to you if you reject the multiplicity of gods of Hinduism? Nothing, nothing. If you reject Confucius, well, likewise, the consequences are nil. But what if you reject Jesus Christ?
What if you reject him? Is it possible for a person to be flippant about Jesus, just flippantly pass him off and there be no effects? Well, he may not seemingly experience any effects initially, but in Mark chapter three, there are some people who seem to be intent on reject, no, they don't seem to be, they just are.
They are intent on rejecting Jesus. And though the Lord shows the folly of their rejection, what's especially poignant and powerful is the warning of the outcome of that rejection. So I want us to look at that and realize tonight that you cannot reject Jesus Christ without facing some serious, serious consequences.
Now look at verse 22 and realize that the people who are doing the rejection, the rejecters, they are real people. They are people that are actually looked up to and highly respected in the community.
These are the scribes who came down from Jerusalem. These are people that really should know better than what they're doing, the scribes, because after all, the scribes had been taught the prophecies.
Is there anybody that's supposed to know the Old Testament? It would be the scribes. So they knew the prophecies that begin all the way in Genesis three. And all through the prophecies of the Messianic Psalms, they knew all the Psalms.
They knew the prophecies of Isaiah. They knew the prophecies. And for their whole life, ever since their training in childhood probably for this position of a scribe, they have been surrounded by the religion of Judaism.
They've been surrounded by it. So they ought to know better than what they're doing. They also had great opportunity in their upbringing. These individuals would usually have been in the best of homes, because not anybody could be, anybody in the average household could become a scribe.
They had to have some education. They had to receive some education. That didn't come easily for the average Jewish household. Normally, especially a boy growing up in a Jewish household would get apprenticed into some kind of trade so they could help support the family and so forth.
So the homes and their upbringing, they usually came from the best of homes. And in their education, they were schooled in the Old Testaments. They had great opportunities, great opportunities. But they also had misplaced priorities.
A position like the scribe had can easily go to a person's head. You know it all. You know it all. Everybody looks to you for answers. And when a person gets to the place where he thinks he knows it all, and everybody's looking to him for all the answers, he can very easily get the big head.
This is a, the scribe, as I mentioned earlier, the scribe had enjoyed a unique status in the society and was well looked up to. But the problem with these scribes is that as they come to Jesus, they desired a superiority over Christ.
They would not submit to him. I contrast them with the leper back in chapter one, verse 40, where it says a leper came to him, imploring him, kneeling down to him, and saying to him. This leper's whole attitude toward Jesus is radically different from the scribe's.
And who was the leper? The leper was an outcast. He was rejected by society. He was unclean. Nobody was supposed to have anything to do with him. But when he came to Jesus, what was his attitude? It was one of absolute submission, bowing down before him, kneeling before him.
Contrast that with the scribe. He comes to Jesus, and the scribes come to Jesus, and they're putting themselves over him as if they're superior to him. Their priorities are totally messed up. Why are they here anyway, these scribes?
They came down from Jerusalem. That means anytime you read that you came down from Jerusalem or you go up to Jerusalem, it's referencing the fact that Jerusalem was at a higher elevation than almost anywhere else in inhabited places in Israel.
And to leave Jerusalem, you were going downhill. To go to Jerusalem, you're going uphill. So that's the way it's commonly referred to. So why in the world did these scribes come down from Jerusalem? Simply to make trouble.
That's it.
They came simply to make trouble. They came from Jerusalem to investigate Jesus. They'd heard about him. They didn't like what was happening with him, that he was drawing people to him. People were attracted to what he was teaching.
There were people who were actually becoming followers of this Jesus, and they were looking askance at some of the scribes and the leading Pharisees of the place. They didn't appreciate that. So they made this special trip down from Jerusalem to investigate him, and you notice what they say is particularly egregious, but the whole purpose of it was to discredit him.
And it wasn't like these guys come to where Jesus is and they see him and they say, hey, you know what? That guy, he's really from Beelzebub. And another one says, I'll tell you what. I think he's casting out devils by the devil himself.
And then move on. No, the tense of the verb there in verse 22 when it says they came down from Jerusalem and said is literally they kept saying. They kept saying this. Like every opportunity they had, they kept saying, they kept telling everybody, hey, listen, you don't want to listen to that guy.
You don't want to listen to him. He has Beelzebub. You don't want to listen to that guy. He's one who by the ruler of demons casts out demons. You don't want to listen. They wanted to discredit him. And why did they want to discredit him?
Discredit him to protect their own position. To follow Christ. Anybody who was serious about following Christ and listening to what Christ had to say would come to the conclusion, I need to stop listening to these scribes.
They're leading us astray. They're blind guides who are leading us into blindness. But these are real people, these rejecters are. And these rejecters, as we mentioned in verse 22, attack Christ when they make these two statements that he has Beelzebub and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.
And what they're communicating here is two things. One of them is they're saying that he, Jesus, is not who he claims to be. He's not who he claims to be. He is not from God. This is their message. He is not from God.
He is not a purveyor of truth. If he's got Beelzebub, he is not a purveyor of truth. If he has Beelzebub, he is not worthy of following. You don't want to follow somebody who has Beelzebub. Now, to kind of get that into a contemporary understanding, it'd be like saying, that person is demon-possessed.
You don't want to follow a demon-possessed individual. No, he's not worthy of following. And if he has Beelzebub, he is not really a forgiver of sins. He can't forgive people's sins. He is not a helper of sinners.
He's one who's going to keep sinners trapped in their sinfulness because, after all, he has Beelzebub. And you think about some of the things he's already said. Back at the end of chapter two, Jesus said, the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath.
If he has Beelzebub, he is not the Lord of the Sabbath. In fact, instead of being the Lord of the Sabbath, these scribes would, they would declare, he is a violator of the Sabbath. He is, therefore, a breaker of the law.
He is certainly not who he claims to be. The other accusation is that his work, his work is not what he claims it to be. Their second statement, by the ruler of the demons, he casts out demons. Now, let's do a quick review of Jesus' miracles up to this point.
Back in chapter one, verses 25 and 26, he cast out some demons. He did the same thing in verse 34. He did not allow the demons to speak. In chapter three, verse 11, unclean spirits, when they saw him, they fell down before him, cried out saying, you are the Son of God.
And he warned them that they should not make him known. He had control over the demonic. In chapter one, verse 31, he healed Peter's mother-in-law. In verse 34, again, he healed many who were sick. Many who were sick with various diseases, he healed.
In verse 41, he healed the leper. The leper said, if you're willing, you can make me clean. And Jesus moved with compassion, stretched out his hand and touched that leper and said to him, I will be clean.
He cleansed the leper. In chapter two, verses 11 and 12, he healed the person who was struck with palsy. He told him, take up your bed. Arise, take up your bed and go to your house. And immediately, he took up his bed and went in the presence of all.
Everybody was amazed at this. And in chapter three, verse five, this man who had the withered hand, he told him to stretch it out and his hand was restored whole. He healed the man with a withered hand.
This is a numerous list, a catalog of miracles and a variety of miracles that Jesus has performed to date to this point. And Jesus' claim regarding his work is that it is good. It is good. And we know that because in chapter three, back in chapter three and verse four, Jesus asked the question.
He has this man with the withered hand step forward. And this is on the Sabbath day. And he says to the Pharisees that are wanting to just kind of find fault with him. He said to them, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil?
To save life or to kill? They didn't say anything. And that's when he had the guy stretch out his hand and heal his hand. In other words, what Jesus was saying is that what I'm about to do here in healing this man with a withered hand is a good work.
It's a good thing. Now, if what he did was done through demonic power, then it would not be good. Jesus' claim also, not only that it is good, his claim also is that the work is God's. It is God's work.
So back in chapter two, verse five, Jesus saw their faith. This is the faith of those who let the paralytic down through the roof and the paralytic himself. Jesus saw their faith. He said to the paralytic, son, your sins are forgiven you.
Who can do that? Who can do that? Only God. And this is pointed out in verses nine and 10 when Jesus says, which is easier? Is it easier to say to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven you? Or to say, arise, take up your bed and walk?
They had already declared only God can forgive sins. Yeah, Jesus is agreeing with that. Only God can forgive sins. Then he says in verse 10 that you may know that the son of man has power on earth to forgive sins.
In other words, that the son of man is God and the work that I'm about to do is the work of God. He said to the paralytic, take up your bed and go to your house. So in this whole list, this catalog of miracles that Jesus has performed, Jesus declares, his claim is that those works are good works.
And he's declaring those works are the works of God. They're God's works. But what are these scribes saying? What are they saying? It is by the ruler of the demons, he casts out demons. Their charge is that the work of Jesus is satanic.
And if it is satanic, it's not good, it's evil. And it is therefore, the work that he is doing as well as the one doing the work, he is to be rejected. That's what they're trying to get people to do, to reject him.
Well, Jesus doesn't just accept this and say, oh, well, you know, okay, no. These rejecters need to be attacked. And in verses 23 through 27, he attacks these proud, arrogant, know-it-all rejecters of Jesus.
And one of the things he does when he goes on the offensive here is he basically says to them in verses 23 through 26, is your rejection is foolish. To reject Jesus is foolish. So for example, he says in verse 23, look, your conclusion is absurd.
How can Satan cast out Satan? How can he do that? And your logic, that you come to that conclusion, your logic is inconsistent in verses 24 through 26. It's inconsistent with physical reality. He brings up kingdoms.
If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. This was the fact, the truth, this statement of Jesus was in Abraham Lincoln's mind.
Remember, he talked about a house divided during the Civil War? If this house remains divided, it's not gonna stand, speaking of the nation. It can't. And he understood that well. And it is really only by the grace of God that that Civil War ended when it did and the way it did and all the rest of it, and there was a long period of time.
It took before healing came, but nevertheless, it finally did, and the house remained standing. Some who were in both, well, primarily in the South, they wanted to keep that war going. And had they been successful, we would not have the nation that we've had for the last 150 years.
No, Jesus' point is well understood. A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. You can think about that in terms of the Roman Empire itself. I mean, this was a long-lasting empire, the Roman Empire, but when it divided, it crumbled.
I mean, you could say the division already was a sign of the crumbling, but it didn't last another thousand years after that division. A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. A house divided against itself cannot stand.
And that's evident even in our own country and contemporary society with the epidemic of divorces and all of those are simply the final straw, if you will, the final evidence of a house that's been divided against itself.
The house could not stand. So the logic of these scribes is inconsistent with reality and what you can just see with common sense looking at the world around us, but it's also inconsistent with spiritual reality as he brings out in verse 26.
If Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but he has an end. He's gonna commit suicide, if you will. He's gonna kill himself. Satan, though, is alive and well and active to this day.
So Jesus goes on the offensive. He says your conclusion, your rejection is really foolish. It's folly. Secondly, he goes on the offensive and charges them in verse 27, saying your rejection ignores the work of God.
It ignores the work of God. And he uses this illustration in verse 27 to describe the work of God. He says 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 and he will plunder his house.
And what Jesus is saying is that by the work of God, my casting out of the demons, I have entered Satan's realm. I've entered Satan's realm. Jesus has entered Satan's realm in a sense when he came into this world.
And in a very real way, God has given a measure of ability or freedom, if you will, to work in this world. The prince of the power of the air, he's called. And Jesus, in his incarnation, God becoming flesh and dwelling among us, he entered Satan's realm.
And he's still here, right? He's still doing the work in Satan's realm. God is working in the world today and working in ways that we may not even see and we may not understand, but he is. So he's entered Satan's realm and then he says he's got to first bind the strong man.
And Satan's power is not omnipotent. And he does not have total freedom to do whatever he wants to do whenever he wants to do it. We know that from the book of Job. We have that little glimpse of insight into what's going on in the spirit world when Satan has to get permission from God to do various things.
But of course, the whole context here is that he is casting out demons and supposedly by the power of demons. And Jesus is saying, no, I'm casting out demons by binding Satan's power. Satan has thought that he has unlimited, unrestrained control of these people.
I'm demonstrating that he does not. And in so doing, in binding Satan, he is then freeing the one who has been possessed. Jesus says he will plunder his house. And people's lives were radically changed and still are by the work of Christ as he binds the strong man and then takes that strong man's possessions away from him.
One of the stellar examples of that, of course, is Mary Magdalene, right? Had that he out of whom he cast seven devils and she was an avid follower of Jesus through the crucifixion to the tomb and on resurrection Sunday and thereafter.
Jesus plundered the strong man. So what Jesus is communicating here is that in your rejection that is foolish is a rejection that is rejecting the work of God. And that rejection, verses 28 to 30, causes you to face a significant, significant danger.
And the danger is due to the rejection itself. He says in verse 28, "'Assuredly, I say to you, "'all the sins will be forgiven the sons of men, "'whatever blasphemies they utter, "'but," verse 29, "'he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit "'never has forgiveness.'".
I think I've shared this before. I don't remember if it was in a message or one of those devotional things. That's the problem now. You start doing those things every day. You can't remember what you say, where you say it.
I can't remember that anyway, but nevertheless. First pastor, almost 40 years ago now, there was a dear old couple in the church. They were in their 80s. Charlie and, what was it? Violet, yeah, Vi. Charlie and Vi Young.
Sweet old couple. They were just gems. And they had us over for dinner one night and she baked a couple of cherry pies and wanted to bake a special pie for the pastor. She didn't know that I don't like cherry pie.
If you've made a cherry pie for the thing tonight, don't be offended by that, okay? I'm just weird, I'll admit that. But she served me my piece of pie and she was very troubled. And she had a quiver in her voice and she sat down and she said, pastor, she says, I'm afraid I'm not saved.
I said, well, why do you think you're not saved? I think I've committed the unpardonable sin. I said, why do you think you've forgiven? Why do you think you've committed the unpardonable sin? I'm afraid I might have blasphemed against the Holy Spirit and I can't have forgiveness.
I'm just doomed to hell. So my short answer to that was the fact that you're concerned about it tells me you don't have a thing in the world to worry about. Because the one that blasphemes against the Holy Spirit and never has forgiveness, they could care less about anything of the spiritual nature other than having to do with Christ other than being hostile toward it.
No, the meaning here is a, of this blaspheming against the Holy Spirit is a willful persistence in impenitence and unbelief. A willful persistence in impenitence and unbelief. It's a defiant rejection of the saving power of God.
Like these scribes are doing, they are defiantly declaring that Jesus not only isn't who he claims to be, but he's worse. He's an instrument of Satan. And to the, I mean, anybody who thinks such a thing absolutely has no way of being converted.
You have just cast away the only way of salvation. And it is a persisted in position. And the person who is like this is one who prefers the darkness of the lie of the wicked one to the truth to which they've been exposed.
The writer of Hebrews talks about this, by the way, in Hebrews chapter six. I'll just refer to this very quickly. There's a couple of passages in the book of Hebrews that almost, they seem to indicate that a person can lose his salvation.
That's not what it's teaching, of course. But in Hebrews six, it's one of those passages. Verses four and following, it says it is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted the heavenly gift and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come.
If they fall away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance since they crucify again for themselves the son of God, put him to an open shame. The idea here is that they were never really converted.
They just sat in the pews where all the light was and so forth, and they just came to a place of finality in their rejection of the gospel. The result, of course, is no forgiveness. What a dangerous position to find oneself in where there can be no forgiveness.
And being in that position has eternal consequences. Jesus puts it this way. He is subject to eternal condemnation, to eternal condemnation. Before one comes to such a settled position, there is a present solution.
Verse 28, surely, Jesus says, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men and whatever blasphemies they may utter. There is the possibility of forgiveness. Sin can be forgiven. Blasphemy, even blasphemy can be forgiven.
But the ultimate final rejection of Jesus cannot be forgiven. Well, I trust there's no one here tonight who has been rejecting Christ, who's known for years the gospel sat under the light the light of the gospel has been proclaimed, you've heard it, you know it, and as far as anybody else in this room would know, you've received it, you've accepted it, everybody thinks you have, but you know, you know you haven't.
If that's the case, listen, reject no longer. Reject no longer. Because there will come a time where there is a finality in that rejection, where you just say, forget it, I'm done with it, I don't want to hear about it anymore, I'm out of here.
And that is a very, very dangerous position to be in, especially if you go so far as to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit like these scribes and say, I do not believe for a minute that this Jesus is the Savior.
Never, never get to that point. Our Father in heaven, thank you for this sobering passage, but it's also a blessed passage, because it encourages those of us who have received Christ that there is no eternal condemnation to those who have received him, but there is instead, there is instead forgiveness.
We thank you, Father, for that forgiveness of sin that is available to us who put our trust in him. So bless these thoughts to our hearts tonight, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, let's close tonight with, there's a song in our hymnal we haven't sung in quite a while, Just As I Am.
I'm not gonna sing 13 verses of this to try to pull a decision out of anybody, but it is a hymn I wanna close with because it's a hymn of acceptance, and it is in direct contrast to the position of rejection that we see in the scribes.
And maybe if there is one here tonight who has been quietly rejecting Jesus for years, then tonight, stop, reject no longer. Just as you are, receive him tonight. Let's stand, shall we, as we sing. 319 in our hymnals, 319.
Just as I am without one plea But that thy blood was shed for me And that thou bidst me come to thee O Lamb of God, I come, I come On the fourth, the fourth stands and then the sixth.
Just as I am poor, wretched, blind Sight rich is healing of the mind Yea, all I need to find, O Lamb of God, I come O Lamb of God, I come, I come Just as I am thy love unknown Hath broken every barrier down Now to be thine, yea, thine alone O Lamb of God, I come, I come
All right, trust the Lord to give you a good week as you endeavor to live for Him and walk with Him each day of the week. And don't forget as you go tonight, be sure to get your...