OUR FATHER WHOSE SON WAS THE CHIEF CORNERSTONE THAT THE BUILDERS TURNED AWAY

The Lord Jesus spoke to the Pharisees about their blasphemy of the Holy Spirit and how their words would condemn them on the day of judgement and in response to the unbraiding they received, the discomfitted pharisees then felt that the hearsay stories of Jesus' miracles were not enough for them and so they wanted to see a miracle with their own eyes so that they could judge whether Jesus was worthy to school them the way He was.

38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.”

39 But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 

41 The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.

42 The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and indeed a greater than Solomon is here.

The answer Jesus gave to their request for a supernatural sign was an epic revelation of the momentous grandeur of the mission of salvation that He, the Messiah, had come to fulfill.

The pharisees' request for a sign was denied but they were alerted that there would be one pivotal sign that was available to them and that was the sign that the story of the prophet Jonah foreshadowed.

Just as Jonah went down into the depths of the sea in the belly of a great fish for three days and three nights before rising again, the Son of Man would descend into the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.

This sign, that was the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, was the only sign that would be given to the evil and adulturous generation.

Unbeknownst to the pharisees, they were going to play a part in the events that the Lord Jesus was describing and the fact that that they missed the day of their visitation was going to be the basis for a historical condemnation against them.

Jonah went to Nineveh with no signs and yet upon his preaching, the whole city repented in ashes. In contrast, One far greater than Jonah had come to them with healing in His wings and that generation did not repent but instead demanded signs be performed before them.

The queen of Sheba is also going to condemn that generation because she arduosly travelled a great distance to come hear the wisdom  of Solomon and even though One greater than Solomon was among them teaching wisdom,  instead of troubling themselves to learn from Him, they demanded a sign.

All the figures of history who hungered and yearned for God on the basis of faint traces of the workings of the Spirit of God will rise up to condemn the generation that had the Son of God, powered by the Spirit of God, moving around in their midst.

Have mercy on us O God.

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OUR FATHER TO WHOM JESUS WILL INTRODUCES US IF WE CONFESS JESUS BEFORE MEN

Matthew chapter 12 verses 33 - 37 records the continuation of the sharp reprimand that Jesus directed at the pharisees who were denegrating the work of God amoung the people. 

They had declared to the people that Jesus' ability to cast out demons stemmed from His cooperation with the kingdom of darkness.

Jesus immediately showed them that their claim was illogical and informed them of the terrible price they would pay for blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

In our passage, Jesus continued with the castigation of the Pharisees as follows;

33 “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit. 34 Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 35 A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. 36 But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. 37 For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

Trees in the scriptures are frequently used a metaphors for kingdoms or administrative juridictions and here, Jesus tells the pharisees that their administrative jurisdiction is yielding bad fruit because they had made a bad tree.

In this case, the corruption of the tree the pharisees had made manifested itself as the bad fruit of illogical accusations against people.

Calling the pharisees a 'brood of vipers', Jesus was alluding to the poisonous threat that the pharisees and their illogical postures represented.

He told them that because they had cultivated evil things in their hearts, there was no surprise that evil things came out of their mouths because of the principle described by the Lord Jesus where good things automatically  come out of the heart of s good man while evil things flow out of the hearts of evil men.

The Lord also took away the possible excuse that the pharisees' words were just passing observation and opinions because he said that in the day of judgement, all men would accountable for every idle word they spoke during their lifetimes.

All the words a man spoke would be the basis upon which he was justified or he was condemned.

If a man used words to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, those words would apear in the transcript against him in the court of final judgement and it is these words that would seal his eternal state.

This principle also applies to the use of words to declare belief and trust in the Lord Jesus before other people for these words, appearing in the transcript of ones' life, are the basis for the introduction that Jesus will make between one of those who trusted Him and God the Father.

“Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven.

Amen.

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OUR FATHER WHOSE SPIRIT MUST NOT BE BLASPHEMED

The Lord Jesus, having just previously told the pharisees that those who were not with Him were against Him and those who were not gathering with Him were scattering, said this stern warning to them;

31 “Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. 32 Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.

The pharisees found Jesus to be a potent rival for the hearts and minds of the people in the land of Israel and some of them began to plot how to get rid of Him so that they could hold onto their religious monopoly over the territory.

He was challenging the status quo in their understanding of the scripture and the kingdom of God was attesting to the validity of His ministry with astounding supernatural power and authority.

Jesus, in this passage, said that if the visceral reactions against Him out of envy or defensiveness caused the religious and political guard to speak against Him, these offences would be forgivable but, if they ventured beyond challenging Him and blashphemed the Holy Spirit who was the facilitator of the supernatural attestations of Jesus, they would have no pathway to forgiveness either in that time or in the time that was to come.

The pharisees, having attributed Jesus' ability to deliver people from demonic oppresion to the Beelzebub, had blasphemed the Holy Spirit who was the One who had powered the removal of the demons and the healing of the blind and mute.

The damning of the supernatural ministry of the Holy Spirit  is particularly aggrigeous because it undercuts the outreach that God Himself provides to stir up people's faith and by undermining this outreach, other people can be prevented from attaining a place of trust in God.

Even though there were some factions within the pharisaic order that began to take Jesus seriously like the one to which Nicodemus belonged to, the efforts of the particular pharisees who blasphemed the Holy Spirit, caused them to be excluded from ever reaching saving faith and for them, they were without remedy and in their unforgivable state, ended up pursuing the destruction of Jesus until they succeeded in having Him crucified.

Have mercy on us O God.

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