It’s not easy being the Savior of the world.
I tell ya – you don’t get no respect!
But seriously – the misunderstandings about who Jesus is and
what He came to do are starting to flare up in a big way now
Even His family – and the Greek word used here indicates it
was Jesus’s immediate family – not His friends – who thought
He was mentally unstable – or at the least, thought He was
working too hard for His own good – and staged what we
would now call, “an intervention.”
They planned to “take charge of Him” –
Physically take Him –
and appointing themselves as His guardian
They were well-meaning –
but they didn’t understand, did they?
Then – to make matters worse – the Pharisees came by and
started making wild and false accusations:
“He’s possessed!
He’s doing this by the power of Bee-el-zee-bub!”
(One of the names of the Devil – meaning
“Lord of the Flies”)
So Jesus challenges them face-to-face
And overwhelms them with His logic;
“How can Satan cast out Satan?”
He follows that up with his famous “house divided” quote -
which was NOT original with Abraham Lincoln.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
In other words – Satan cannot turn on his own demons
Besides – it would make no sense for Satan to cast out the
demons he had sent to torment people.
He wants them to be tormented. He wants them to suffer.
He wants them to curse God and die – and then join him–
in Hell. You could say Satan is afraid of being alone in Hell.
He wants lots of company.
Jesus adds that a robber cannot rob a strong man’s house
without first tying up the strong man – but what does that have
to do with Jesus?
Well, Jesus came to rescue people from Satan’s power –
And He has to restrain Satan first to do that.
Obviously, Satan is not going to tie himself up and rob himself.
But Jesus is tying up Satan and freeing people from bondage
to Satan’s power –
and Jesus is doing it by the power of the Holy Spirit.
I almost hate to bring this up – because it’s complicated and
doesn’t fit within the confines of my sermon outline –
But it is part of the story – so I must touch on it.
Jesus goes on to say that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit
is the only eternal sin.
A lot of translations say unforgivable or unpardonable sin –
but the most reliable manuscripts say eternal sin. It is a sin
that will not be forgiven. Its effects will last forever.
Does this indicate that saying something nasty or irreverent
about the Holy Spirit means you can never be forgiven?
No. It does not.
So you don’t have to worry about that little joke about the Holy
Spirit that you laughed at – or you tend to think so much about
God the Father and Jesus the Son, that you don’t think enough
about the Holy Spirit.
Jesus said this because the Pharisees were trying to divert the
credit for the Holy Spirit’s work to Satan. That was the
blasphemy of which they were guilty: they attributed an act
of God’s grace to the Enemy who wants to destroy people
created in God’s image.
Jesus was calling attention to the state of their unrepentant
hearts – He was saying that people who reject the Holy Spirit’s
ability to lead them out of bondage to Satan will forever be
bound to sin.
In other words – only people who refuse to use the obvious fire
escape right in front of them. That is the only unpardonable sin.
Anyone else can be set free and forgiven – for anything.
So Jesus dismisses His enemies quickly and easily.
And so it can be for us –
The enemies of Christ are easy to deal with –
Just ignore their attacks or crush them with logic –
Or overwhelm them with love.
And when we really think about it –
Who can do us the most harm?
It’s not the outspoken enemies of our faith –
The agnostic, the atheist, the scoffer, or the skeptic.
Rather, it’s friends and family – people we care about
Because their intentions are good –
Even though they are mistaken.
They’ll tell us things like,
“You work too hard”
“Slow down”
“It won’t hurt if you miss one service”
“Let somebody else do it for a change”
“It’ll get done without you”
“What if cannibals capture you?”
They are looking out for you – in their own misguided way –
And the temptation is great to let them do that.
Sadly, they are like crabs in a bucket.
If you have ever collected crabs at the seashore -
You ‘ll know it’s not that hard –
because every time one of the crabs manages
to scramble over the others to get to the rim of
the bucket, the other crabs – also wanting to escape –
grab it and wind up pulling it back into the bucket.
So none of them escapes.
And the same can happen to us when family or friends think
they know what’s best for us.
Really – they should be encouraging us in the right direction –
and they should have enough respect for us to accept our
decision to answer the call of Jesus. Or at least a healthy bit
of fear of offending God.
In whom will we place our faith?
To whom will we entrust our well-being?
For whom will we give up the relationships and
material goods and other idols that would hold us
back from following Jesus with our whole hearts?
May our answer be, “No one and nothing.”
It is the only way to show Jesus the respect He has earned.