Matthew 12 31, wherefore I say unto you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men.
He's saying there are all kinds, all types of sins that are forgiven, right?
I mean, God forgives murder, adultery, he forgives stealing and blasphemy.
He says, but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.
You see that?
And whosoever speaketh the word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him.
But whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him,
neither in this world, neither in the world to come.
Hey, it can get to a point where it's too late for people.
And he's talking to the Pharisees here.
They had blasphemed the Holy Ghost. Go to Mark 3, Mark chapter 3.
And you say, well, what does it mean to blaspheme the Holy Ghost?
Well, it tells us in Mark 3 what that means.
It says in verse number 28, Mark 3, 28,
Barely I say unto you, all sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men and blasphemies,
wherewithsoever they shall blaspheme.
But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness,
but is in danger of eternal damnation, because they said he hath an unclean spirit.
This is where the Pharisees said unto Jesus,
He casts out devils by Beelzebub the prince of the devils.
They called Jesus Beelzebub and said that Jesus Christ was casting out devils by the spirit of devils himself.
And Jesus told them, you know what, you're done.
Go to John 12.
He said, you have no forgiveness in this world, neither in the world to come.
You are in danger of eternal damnation.
You will never be forgiven for what you've done or you've crossed the line.
Now, a lot of people try to use this to say, well, you can lose your salvation
if you blaspheme the Holy Ghost. No.
The Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 12.3 that I would have you to know, brethren,
that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus Christ a curse,
and that no man can confess that Jesus is Lord by the Holy Ghost.
And so what we see here is that a saved person is not going to say that Jesus is filled with Satan
and the Holy Ghost is the spirit of Satan or whatever.
So we're not talking about saved people.
We're talking about unsaved people losing their opportunity to ever get saved.
The Pharisees were the actual people in question, the scribes and Pharisees.
Look at John 12 and we'll see this further emphasized.
It says in verse 37,
But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him,
that the saying of his eyes the prophet might be fulfilled which he spake,
Lord, who hath believed our report, and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?
Now look at verse 39. This is the key.
Because you say, wait a minute, somebody can believe on Jesus and not be saved because it's too late?
Oh no.
Whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Here's the problem in verse 39.
Therefore they could not believe. Do you see that?
These are the same people, the Pharisees, who had earlier been told by Jesus,
you have no forgiveness. You blaspheme the Holy Ghost.
You've gone too far. It's too late for you.
He tells these same people, you know, they could not believe.
Because that Isaiah said again, he had blinded their eyes. Who's the he? God.
He had blinded their eyes and hardened their heart that they should not see with their eyes,
nor understand with their heart and be converted and I should heal them.
Now it's not that God didn't want them to get saved.
Jesus Christ earlier in the book of John is begging them to get saved.
He showed them all kinds of miracles. He preached the word of God to them.
They begged them to be saved and they rejected him and they rejected him.
They rejected him and finally God just blinded their eyes and hardened their heart and they could not believe.
It was too late for them.
Same thing happened with Pharaoh back in the Old Testament.
Moses comes to Pharaoh and says, Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let my people go.
And Pharaoh says, Who is the Lord? I will not let your people go.
And we see that Pharaoh, the Bible says, hardened his heart.
It says Pharaoh hardened his heart.
That was his own choice.
Moses preached to him. Moses preached to him again.
Moses preached to him a third time. Moses preached to him a fourth time.
And you'll notice a change in Exodus where it starts saying, God hardened Pharaoh's heart.
Because it got to a point, my friend, where there were so many plagues on Egypt,
there was so much carnage and destruction that God was putting upon Egypt,
that even Pharaoh's advisors were telling him, What are you doing? Let these people go.
Knowest thou not that all Egypt is destroyed? Let them go, for crying out loud.
And you read the story sometimes and you're like, Is Pharaoh just insane?
Why is Pharaoh just not letting them go?
But the reason why is because God actually hardened his heart.
Because God wanted to, it says in Romans 9, God wanted to destroy him.
Because he rejected him too many times, God became angry with that and hardened his heart.
See, Pharaoh had the chance the first time to say yes, to obey the truth. He did it.
The second time he had his hand.
And eventually it just got to a point where God said, That's it. I'm sick of it.
And Pharaoh lost his chance.
It's not that God foreordained people to go to hell.
The Bible says God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
And what does repentance mean there? Changing your mind.
He says, I wish every atheist would change their mind about that and believe on Christ.
I wish every agnostic would believe on Christ.
He doesn't want people to reject Jesus Christ and go to hell.
Why did he even die for him? He died for the sins of the whole world.
He wants everybody to be saved.
But there comes a time when someone just gets so hardened or they commit one of these unpardonable sins
and they just reject him and reject him and finally says, You reject me, I'll reject you.
You want to harden your heart? Let me harden it for you so hard that you'll never believe no matter what you see.
No matter how many plagues I sent on Egypt, you'll never let those people go and you'll be destroyed.
That's exactly what happened to Pharaoh.
It's a chilling message today and I'll tell you something.
This is a message that has been forgotten today and people don't believe in it
because they'd rather go with a little Hallmark slogan from a greeting card that says,
Hey, it's never too late for anybody.
You've always got another chance and as long as you're breathing air, there's still hope.
No, there isn't.
You better realize that it becomes too late for people.
And you know, that's why I want to give people the Gospel today.
That's why my unsaved loved one, I'd rather give them the Gospel now.
I'd rather give them the Gospel right away than to say, Oh, I'll wait, I'll wait, I'll wait.
First of all, you don't know when your unsaved loved one will pass on and be gone
and die without the Lord Jesus Christ.
You don't know.
But not only that, you don't know when your loved one could follow a chain of events
where they could become hardened to the Gospel where they'll never get saved.
That's why it's important that we reach the lost now.
We go out and preach the Gospel, we knock doors.
We run into people sometimes, it's just too late for them.
We don't know who they are, right?
We can't have a spiritual glasses to always know who it is.
Now, sometimes it's obvious.
You know, with the Pharisees and the Sadducees here, it was clear.
And Jesus just pointing it out to everybody, it's too late for these people.
And there are a lot of other ways that we can identify that it's too late for people.
But the bottom line is, when we're out soloing, we don't know.
You know, we preach the Gospel to every creature, we don't know who it's too late for.
But a lot of people in this space, it's just too late for them, unfortunately.
But you know what?
That's why we should have went to that door before it was too late.
You know, and that's the failure of the previous generation, maybe, to reach that person with the Gospel.
And plus, you know, sometimes people haven't been reached with the Gospel, but they just rejected it and rejected it.
It's their own choice and there's nothing you can do for them.
But let me tell you something, this is a powerful message from the Bible here.
And we need to preach this, and we as Baptists need to get back to the Word on this and not twist the Word here.
It says that it could be too late like it was for the Pharisees, where they couldn't believe.