The Benefits of Fearing God, Part 4 | Fearless in Fearing God

Luke 12:10-12

So now that we know what the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is not and is, now that we have clarity on that, we have a couple more questions to ask. Is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit a sin that can be committed today? Can this sin be committed today? I believe that it is a sin that can be committed today.

But I’ll just say that because of the widespread plague of spiritual ignorance in our day, I think it is not a common sin committed today. There are some apostates, they’ve, having identified themselves as Christians for a time, they walk away from the truth. When they walk away, they walk away at full knowledge, consciences seared. They walk away, in the walking away, they lie about Jesus Christ.

They blaspheme what they’ve learned, they, what they learn and what they once knew to be true. So this doesn’t surprise us because Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:1 and 2, “The Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared.”

But we’re seeing the start of the Spirit’s ministry in what Jesus has told his disciples right here in Luke 12:10. Can the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit be committed today? I think so, but it takes knowledge and understanding and then a willful rejection of that, and blaspheming Jesus’ true ministry and the Spirit’s true ministry in the process on the way out. The average pagan that I meet, they don’t meet the criteria for understanding. Most of them, just ignorant of what the Bible says, and that is why our teaching ministry is so important in evangelism to help them understand the truth.

So, one more question, an important one. Can a true, born-again Christian commit this sin? Can a true Christian commit the unpardonable sin, the unforgivable sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, even if he does it inadvertently? No, most emphatically, no! A true, born-again Christian may not, cannot, will not do this. I hope that’s clear in everything we’ve learned so far.

Now, can a professing, apparent Christian commit the sin of blasphemy? Yes, absolutely. A professing, but not true Christian, someone who appears to be a Christian on the outside, maybe who has been with the church a long, long time, but never been born-again within their heart, born-again internally, can that person commit this? Yeah, absolutely. We’re not talking about that.

We’re talking about true, born-again Christians. They’ve had something happen to them from outside of them. The Spirit has caused them to be born again, which means that all their sin, past, present, future, sins of omission and commission, sins of thought, word and deed, everything, every way they didn’t love God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength, every way they didn’t love their neighbor as themselves, and everything summing up the law and prophets, whatever sin they’ve committed, for a true Christian, that has been put on Jesus Christ. He has been crucified for their sin. So, no. There is no sin for a Christian that is unpardonable or unforgivable. No. It’s all been pardoned already.

Also, since the sin of the blasphemy of the Spirit is a sin of willfulness, no Christian can commit this sin inadvertently. It’s not something you stumble into. It’s not something that you commit without knowledge or without premeditation. Someone who has committed this blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, an unpardonable and unforgivable sin, they’re like, yeah? And what of it? That person is hard-hearted and unconcerned.

Some of these new atheists they’ve been bold, bold in blaspheming God. They say, look, I, I understand all this, and I’m going to agree with the scribes and the Pharisees. So with a seared conscience, that person is far from salvation because they’ve counted themselves out of the only means of salvation. It’s the Holy Spirit’s testimony to Christ. According to this verse, they are in an unredeemable, unpardonable condition, but for a true, born-again Christians to commit the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, it is impossible by definition to do this.

And here’s where we’re going to transition to our second question. Now that we’ve understood what this sin is, and we’ve defined it here, we’re going to transition to the second question. The fact that the Christian cannot commit this sin, it becomes a huge source of confidence for us. So second question, number two, what is our confidence? Here’s where we’re going to dig into the verses a little bit more. Luke 12:10 to 12, so we can see how this section lists further benefits for those who fear God.

We’re going to see how Jesus points us to the confidence that comes by the Spirit’s teaching ministry in three things: in believing, in preaching, and in testifying to the truth. So confidence in believing. This is what we are to see from the Spirit’s teaching ministry. If we springboard from what we just learned, since it’s impossible for a true born-again Christian to commit the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, by confessing Jesus, Luke 12:8, our believing and confessing gives us great confidence that we belong to him. Just by believing it, we have confidence.

By confessing Jesus, we have great confidence we belong to him, and we know that we will because of that go on believing and go on belonging. 1 Corinthians 12:3 says, “no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says, ‘Jesus is accursed!’ and no one can say.” It’s a word that talks about ability. “No one is able to say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.” In other words, the Holy Spirit will always and only give a true testimony about Jesus.

So when you confess Jesus is Lord, when you confess him for who he really is, you need to realize that testimony didn’t come from you. You are a channel, a vessel of the Spirit’s voice. It does not come from you on your own, in your own intellect, in your own power, by your own wisdom, in no other influence, just you and your own thoughts. You didn’t intuit this. You didn’t study so hard and come up with this great doctrine.

You can only confess Jesus is Lord by the Holy Spirit. “By this you know the Spirit of God,” 1 John 4:2, “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.” “The Spirit is the one who testifies,” 1 John 5:6, “because the Spirit is the truth.” To confess, first means we say the same thing about Jesus that God says about Jesus. We’re not talking about just a superficial speaking about it. We’re talking about truly embracing it, speaking of what we know. We say, think, speak about Jesus the same thing that God does.

Second, confess means to confess loyalty, to profess loyalty or allegiance to him as Lord. So what do we have? We have intellectual understanding, we have affections embracing, and we have will obeying. That’s what it is to confess Jesus as Lord. It is not a superficial, I believe in Jesus. It’s not a superficial, Jesus died for my sins. It’s not a superficial, I walked an aisle. I was baptized. I signed a card. I raised my hand. It’s not a superficial, I prayed a prayer one time. This is your whole life. That confession does not come from you. The good confession comes from the God who gave you the Holy Spirit.

The same thing Peter learned Matthew 16:17. After he made the good confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” what did Jesus tell him? “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven.” Jesus is not rebuking or correcting Peter for his confession. He’s not trying to put him in his place lest Peter start to think highly of himself, which Peter did.

But Jesus is there not correcting or rebuking; he’s strengthening Peter. He is strengthening his faith. He is trying to give him confidence in believing that this isn’t dependent on him. It’s God that did this in him. Peter’s believing confession is evidence of the supernatural work of God in his life. It’s evidence of the Spirit’s ministry. It’s supernatural.

It’s the same thing for you and me, beloved, who are in Christ. Same thing for us. When you make the good confession when you are living a life of loyalty in allegiance to Jesus Christ. And I know that not any of us are perfect, but is there a trajectory in your life where you can see a before and after? Are there affections of righteousness in your heart, where you love truth and righteousness and hate all that offends God just simply because it offends God? Is your life filled with an increasing desire to obey, and you see actual obedience in your life?

Great confidence in believing. You’ll never be guilty of this sin. When you make this good confession, when you live out this good confession, that is evidence, proof positive that you are a believer, that God has granted you the Holy Spirit. And you find great confidence in believing because it’s only by the Spirit that we believe and confess because he is your teacher.

He gives such strength and such confidence here in the immediate context to Jesus’ Apostles, to Jesus’ disciples, because it’s all going to be put on the line for them. As they preach the Gospel, as they testify before impenitent blasphemers, they themselves will be protected by the faith that they have received from God by the Holy Spirit. They have no cause for fear, no cause of falling into this same sin of blasphemy whatsoever because their faith is not up to them. Ultimately, it’s a gift of God, and the Spirit holds them fast.

We can have the same confidence in believing. What do we do about this as a practical point of application? We can start by giving thanks and then never stop. I mean, isn’t this awesome that we have come to understand what you can only understand by God’s power and by God’s working? I mean, why are we so privileged? Give thanks and never stop giving thanks. Have a spirit of gratitude all of your life. We believe when others don’t. We believe when they scoff. We praise when others mock; we sing when others groan; we give thanks when other people grumble and complain. We need to thank God he’s chosen to save us, to give us eyes of faith, and he set us free. That is one thing we can do because of this doctrine, because we’ve believed.

Secondly, we can also double down on fearing God, like Jesus is saying in this text. We can take God at his Word; believe everything he’s revealed in his written Word, give others a cheerful example of our obedience so we trust this. That’s the true freedom of the children of God, to obey what God has revealed. So confidence in believing that leads to giving thanks, becoming more resolute in fearing God. In fact, the fear of God drives us deeper in his Word. Deeper in his Word.

And that brings us to another point, confidence in preaching, confidence in preaching. The Spirit gives us confidence in our preaching, our proclamation, our evangelism, our discipleship, our teaching because we ourselves are taught by the Spirit. It’s a promise of the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31:34, “No longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.” All will know. How does everyone know from the least to the greatest? How do they know the Lord? How do they know Yahweh?

Another New Covenant promise in Ezekiel 36:26 and 27, “I will give you,” God says, “a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.” What’s he talking about there? Regeneration, being born again, John Chapter 3, Titus Chapter 3. “I’ll remove the heart of stone from your flesh and,” I’ll, “give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you,” it’s the indwelling ministry of the Holy Spirit, our resident truth teacher. “I’ll give you my Spirit, I’ll put him within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”

So those who know God, being taught by the Spirit of God, they have great, great boldness in preaching. They know the truth. They apprehend and understand it with the intellect, a redeemed intellect, a born-again intellect. Then they wholly embrace it with born-again affections, what they love and what they hate has been completely reversed from what they were as unbelievers. And then they practice it with the will. What they could not do by the law, they now have spirit-empowered obedience. So they go from what’s written in the text to walking righteously before God. And they rejoice. And what they speak, what they know in the mind, the affections and the wisdom that comes from practiced, lived-out experience. That gives them confidence in their teaching. It’s all from the Spirit.

Jesus tells them, Luke 12:11, “And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities,” when that happens, “do not worry about” it. That’s the command there. One command: Don’t worry. Don’t worry about it. What is the occasion of the Apostles being dragged before the authorities? When did that happen? It was on the day of Pentecost, right? Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, it says over here in Acts Chapter 2, verses 22 and 23, “Men of Israel, Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know, this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.”

Down in verse 36, he says, “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, who this Jesus whom you crucified.” Bold stuff, isn’t it? I mean he’s staring them down. He’s looking them directly in the eye, pointing the finger at those who killed the Messiah and saying, you did this. You crucified, killed Jesus, the one whom God made both Lord and Christ. You killed him. These are regenerate men, and they are teaching and preaching truth that they own because the Spirit taught them. This truth they received by revelation from the Spirit of God.

Turn just quickly to John’s Gospel. I just want you to see this for yourself. These are some misapplied texts that I want you to be clear about. John’s Gospel, starting in John 14:26. These men listening to Jesus in Luke 12, they’re, some of them the Apostles, Jesus is going to tell them in the Upper Room on the night of his betrayal, John 14:26, he’s going to give them a promise. And this promise is for Jesus’ Apostles. It’s a promise to instill confidence in their preaching.

He says, “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” Later on that night, turn over to John 16 verse 7, Jesus gives the Apostles further assurance. He instills even more confidence in them to preach the truth boldly and fearlessly. He says, “I tell you the truth,” John 16:7, “it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I don’t go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.”

Skip down to verses 13 to 15. When the Spirit of truth comes, what’s he going to do? “He’s gonna guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the father has is mine; and therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

 1 Corinthians chapter 2, in 1 Corinthians chapter 2:7 and following. This is where we see this applied. Again, it’s not applied to us in our personal devotions directly, but indirectly. What God revealed to the Apostles through the Holy Spirit. These things have been recorded by the same Spirit in Scripture. It says in 1 Corinthians 2:7, “We impart a secret, hidden wisdom of God, what God decreed before the ages for our glory.” verse 9 “‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him’” verse 10, “these things God has revealed to us.” Who is the us? Paul and the other Apostles. Paul, the other acquaintances of the Apostles, the early evangelists who built the church, founded the church. “These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.” “We have received,” verse 12, “not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who’s from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.”

That is what we impart, is what God has given to the Apostles by the Spirit. We teach those things, it says in verse 13, “Not in words taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, we interpret spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.” Interesting verb that is used there. It’s taking things that are spiritual and combining or joining them to those who are spiritual. Spiritual things from God joined together with believers. That’s what he is saying. So what God revealed to the Apostles through the Spirit, these things are recorded by the same Spirit on the pages of Scripture. And that is why Paul says down at the end of verse 16, “We have the mind of Christ.” Where do we have it? Written right here. Written right here.

How do we apply this to ourselves? It’s not by believing John 16 is a promise to us as individuals, that we should expect some private revelation from the Holy Spirit. No, we apply this by reading and studying and meditating upon and obeying what is written in the Word of God. And guess what happens? We grow in confidence in our preaching. Just like the Apostles had confidence in their preaching, we, too, have confidence in our preaching because it’s what we know. It’s what we believe. It’s what we love. It’s what we obey and practice and live. And that strengthens our witness.

News of the Apostles preaching reached the ears of the Jewish leadership this led to a more formal inquiry. This is where the Apostles’ resolve is put on display. Brings us to a final sub-point, the rest of what Jesus said in Luke 12:11 and 12. We gain confidence in testifying by the Spirit’s work. Once more, the Holy Spirit teaches God-fearing believers so that we can have great, great confidence when it comes time for us to testify to the truth. Jesus said verse 11 and 12, “When they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers, the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought,” or what is necessary for you, “to say.”

Synagogue refers to local authority. Synagogues, like their local church where they have to confess before hometown family, friends, people who know them. There is a price to pay locally for going against a prevalent opinion against Christ. There’s a community censure applied through the synagogue, even through excommunication. The rulers, that represent the Jewish higher courts, Sanhedrin, formal judgment, strictures applied by priests in the temple and rulers in synagogue.

Authorities, broad comprehensive reference to power and authority like the Gentile courts, Herod the King, Roman Pontiffs, even Caesar’s Court. ESV’s pretty mild in translating the word, “when they bring you before the courts.” Rather, read that, “When they drag you, when they drag you like prisoners before the court and cast you before them.” That’s the occasion. Jesus says to them, “Don’t be anxious.”

Almost synonymous with what he said back in verse 4, “Do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing they can do to you.” Verse 7, “Fear not; you are of more value,” to God, “than many sparrows.” Same here, Don’t be anxious, don’t be afraid. What’s the temptation for anxiety on this occasion? Being dragged before the courts? How you should defend yourself, what you should say? In the original, there are three causes for concern. NAS translate this well, it says, “Do not become anxious about how or what you should speak in your defense.” That word for defense is apologeomai. It’s to make a defense. Apolo, apologetics, we get the word from there.

Do not be anxious about how you make your defense or what you say as you make your defense or what you should say more generally, more broadly in that hour. Don’t worry about the manner of your defense. Don’t worry about the content of your defense. Don’t worry about anything else you say, positively, negatively in that hour because you have confidence in believing you know that you will by no means say anything to blaspheme the Holy Spirit because you’re a believer.

You can have confidence in your preaching because God has given you that same Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him that the Apostles had. The same Holy Spirit he has gave to his Apostles, he’s given to you as well. The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead you have as well. So read, study, obey what the Spirit revealed through the Apostles in the Word of God.

You’re going to grow in the same Spirit and proclaiming the truth and then, you can have confidence in your testifying. Should you or I ever come to a moment, when we’re tied up, when the wood is around us, laid around us and the match is lit, when our confidence is put to the greatest test, testifying will, may cost us our lives, Jesus says, “Do not fear, don’t be anxious by what or how you defend yourself or what you should say, for the Spirit will teach you in that very hour.” He will strengthen you in that very moment. This isn’t something you plan for. It is not something you prepare for; it is something he gives you in the moment. He’ll give you what you need to say.

You’re never on your own as a Christian. Jesus himself said Matthew 28:20, “Behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.” Hebrews 13:15, he said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” How is he always with us? How does he never leave us or forsake us? By the Spirit he gave to abide with us and in us. It’s the Spirit who enables us to make that good confession, to stand firm, to speak boldly for him.

Isn’t that a great encouragement as we read through the rest of the Book of Acts and see the power and the strength and the authority of the Apostles? They were known as untrained men, and yet they were besting all the scholars in Israel. God will give us that same strength, beloved. Same is true of us. Because of the Spirit’s teaching ministry, we all have confidence in believing, and preaching, and testifying to the truth. May God count us faithful when our moment comes. Let’s pray.

Our Father, we’re so grateful for the encouragement that you give us, and you gave it to us specifically, most evidently, in our champion, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. We are grateful beyond words. The depth of our gratitude it’s just, is endless as we think about what we owe to you. Gratitude is the least, we can give, and yet it is exactly what you command. So help us to be grateful, cheerful, joyful Christians, who wake up every day pinching ourselves, wondering how it is that we can be counted among the elect of God, that you would cause us to be born again to this living hope, that we, too, could join the witness of the Apostles and the prophets, all those men and women of church history who have stood firm when the time of testing came. They were bold evangelists when there was no test. They made hay while the sun was shining, and while there was no sun at all.

So we pray, Father, that you would give us the same strength, the same boldness. Help us to be of the same Spirit, to be wholeheartedly devoted to Jesus Christ, whose saving Gospel to this Reformation truth of these five solas that we love and proclaim today. We thank you for the witnesses that have gone before us, and we pray you would give us the strength to stand with them in our own time. In Jesus’ name we pray, for your glory and by your abiding and indwelling Holy Spirit. Amen.