FBC Daily Devotional – February 5, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, here we are. We've come to the end of the first week of February on this Friday.

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I hope you've had a good week. Looking forward to a good weekend and coming together in the

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Lord's house on Sunday, if that's possible for you. Meeting at 1030 this

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Sunday, and we're also resuming our adult and children's

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Sunday school classes at 930 and and doing that at 930 and then the morning service at 1030.

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Of course, we'll be live -streaming the morning service. So if you can't make it in person, you can always join us by live stream either on Facebook or YouTube or I just encourage you to go to the church homepage website at faithbaptisterling .com

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and right there on the front page of the homepage is a video setting and you can enlarge that, fill your screen.

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It's one of the easiest ways to access it. But anyway, do have that available this coming

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Lord's Day. I hope you can take advantage of it. Well today we're reading in Matthew chapter 12 for our daily readings and you know, it seems that no matter what evidence is presented, if somebody has a hardened heart toward Christ and toward God, they will not accept the evidence, no matter what that evidence is.

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They'll find some other explanation to dismiss the evidence.

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You see that as this passage opens, as a demon -oppressed person who is both blind and mute comes to Jesus, brought to Jesus, and Jesus casts out the demon and heals the man of his blindness and his inability to speak.

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Right away, you know, some in the crowd are just totally amazed and their conclusion is, is this the

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Messiah? Could this be the Son of David, the one that we've been looking for? They're heading in the right direction.

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They're coming to the right conclusion that Jesus is the Messiah. But then you have these, you have these religious elites, you know, the ones that have all the answers and have all the power and they respond, no, no.

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He's casting out demons by the Prince of Demons himself. So even though there's this great evidence that many have come to see testifies of the

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Messiah and his role when he was to come, the religious elites, those whose hearts are hardened toward Christ, because they don't want to, they don't want to relinquish their power and their authority to him.

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And he has confronted them for their own sin on so many occasions. They can't stand him.

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Well, they're looking at what Jesus just did and they're saying, oh no, no, no, this couldn't, this couldn't be the power of the

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Messiah. This is coming from the devil himself. So no matter what the evidence, it's immediately dismissed.

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And by the way, there's a huge difference between what

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Jesus is saying here and and what these guys are doing and what a legitimate critic of today's modern so -called faith healers are doing.

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There's not a problem at all with calling into question what these professed faith healers are doing, because in reality, they don't give you any evidence.

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There have been plenty of investigations into some of the faith healers asking them to produce the evidence that you have actually healed somebody and show us the evidence and they've always been met, those questions have always been met with silence.

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Well, this isn't the same thing. The evidence is right there in front of them. Here's a man who was demon oppressed.

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He was not able to see and Jesus healed him and he could see. He was not able to speak.

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Jesus healed him and he was able to speak. It was undeniable that the change had occurred.

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The criticism is not that the miracle didn't happen. The criticism is

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Jesus didn't do it in the power of God as Messiah. Jesus did it as a agent of Satan.

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So no matter the evidence presented, the hardened heart will always reject Christ and find some other so -called explanation to dismiss the evidence.

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And then that leads Jesus to make this statement that has caused some concern on the part of some

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Christians, where Jesus says that if anybody speaks against him personally, it can be forgiven.

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But he says if anybody blasphemes the Holy Spirit, speaks against the

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Holy Spirit, then that person cannot be forgiven. That sin will not be forgiven.

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So he puts it this way. He says, I tell you every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the

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Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven.

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But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven either in this age or in the age to come.

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I remember my first pastor when I was a young kid, and there was a dear, dear old couple in the church.

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Charlie and Vi Young, and they were in their early 80s, and I'm in my mid -20s, and I'm at their home.

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They invited us to their home for dinner one evening, and Vi set before me a piece of cherry pie for dessert after dinner, and then she expressed what was troubling her soul.

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She said, I'm just concerned, and she had tears in her eyes. She was almost blind, but and she had tears in her eyes, and she's wiping away their tears.

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She says, pastor, she says, I'm just worried that a long time ago,

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I committed the unpardonable sin, and that I cannot ever be forgiven, and that I'm doomed forever.

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I'm doomed forever. And I said to her, Vi, you know, and this is the truth, the very, very fact that you're afraid that you've done so is evidence that you haven't done so.

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The one who is so hardened against the Spirit of God that he will attribute to Satan, the work of the

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Spirit, is one who will never repent. He will never repent. The ESV study

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Bible has a very helpful comment on this passage. It says this, the sin spoken of here is attributing to Satan what is accomplished by the power of God, and doing this through flagrant, willful, and persistent rejection of God and his commands.

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This sin is committed today only by unbelievers who deliberately and unchangeably reject the ministry of the

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Holy Spirit in calling them to salvation, end quote. So, my friend, if you have come to faith in Jesus, you've repented of your sin, and you're trusting in him as your

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Savior, and you have this fear in your heart that maybe sometime in the past, maybe you can't even pinpoint when, but maybe sometime in the past you committed the unpardonable sin, and you're really not saved.

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Then that's really not anything for you to be concerned with. Jesus isn't talking about you.

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He's talking about the unconverted person that wants nothing to do with him, with Jesus, and is settled in that rejection, one who will never change, never repent.

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You may not know who that person is until the person passes away, but it's certainly not one who has come to faith in Christ.

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So, rest easy in that. Well, let's pray together. Our Father and our God, I pray, continue to give your people pliant, tender, sensitive hearts, sensitive to your work, to praise you for it, to rejoice in it.

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Deliver us from the hard, calloused hearts of the Pharisees, we pray. And we ask this in Jesus' name and for his sake.

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Amen. All right. Well, have a good rest of your Friday and a wonderful weekend.

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And again, if you can make it to the Lord's house on Sunday, I encourage you to do so, gathering together and worshiping our