Christ Church Washington D.C.

Jesus teaches in several other places on mercy as well. When the Pharisees asked him why he sat with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus pointed them to a quotation from Hosea. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. And again, when he rebukes the Pharisees at the end of Matthew, he says,
In both of these situations, Jesus describes a religious formalism that is pitted against a heart of mercy that actually delights God. You can bring your sacrifices to worship God in the temple with all the Levitical regulations perfectly fulfilled, but God would have rather seen you come with empty hands and a heart full of mercy. Or you can pay your tithes with CPA,
like scrupulousness, but in doing so you have majored on the insignificant things. It might be surprising to realize that our temptation is to replace mercy with legalism. After all, doesn’t it seem like legalism takes a lot of effort? Wouldn’t we be more inclined to the easier option? But we need to see that mercy is actually a weightier thing of the law. Legalism is giving things. Mercy is giving yourself. Legalism is giving a tenth of your
legalism is giving Sunday morning to church. Mercy is giving the whole week to God. Legalism carefully carves out what it thinks is owed to religion and then carefully guards what is left over. But mercy sees the sacrifice that God made for us and realizes that our lives are not our own. Our text this morning is from Mark chapter 3. And he entered the synagogue again and a man was there who had a withered hand. So they watched him closely whether he would heal him on the Sabbath so they might accuse him.
Then he said to them is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil to save life or to kill? But they kept silent. And when he looked around at them with anger being grieved by the hardness of their hearts he said to the man stretch out your hand. And he stretched out and his hand was restored as whole as the other. Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against him how they might destroy him. But Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea and a great multitude from Galilee followed him and from Judea.
And those from Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they heard how many things he was doing, came to him. So he told his disciples that a small boat should be kept ready for him because of the multitude lest they should crush him. For he healed many so that as many as had afflictions pressed about him to touch him. And the unclean spirits, whenever they saw him, fell down before him and cried out, saying, You are the Son of God. But he sternly warned them that they should not make him known.
And then he appointed twelve, that they might be with him, that he might send them out to preach and have power to heal sicknesses and to cast out demons. Simon, to whom he gave the name Peter. James, the son of Zebedee. And John, the brother of James, to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, sons of thunder. Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, the son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus, Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him.
And the multitude came together again so that they could not so much as eat bread. But when his own people heard about this, they went out to lay hold of him, for they said, He’s out of his mind. Then the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, He has Beelzebub, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons. So he called them to himself and said to them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.
And if a kingdom is divided against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but has an end. No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house. Assuredly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they may utter. But he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation, because they said he has an unclean spirit.
Let’s pray.
And Father, we know that our chief joy is all wrapped up in this, that when we truly glorify you, we will find our greatest joy. We pray that we will learn to seek that supreme joy right here in seeking your face and understanding your word. We praise things in the name of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and amen. Please be seated.
It’s a pleasure to be back here and to join you in the middle of this series. And so here we are with Mark 3. And in the text here, Jesus says he enters the synagogue again. Again, I believe he’s referring to back in chapter 1, he was in the synagogue at Capernaum. And so he’s back in that same synagogue again in Capernaum. Now remember that chapter 2, we ended with him defending his disciples,
who had been harvesting on the Sabbath. That is just grabbing grain and eating a little bit as they walked. And that was technically called harvesting by the Pharisees. And so he had been defending them, and that’s why I think his enemies now know to confront him on the subject of the Sabbath. They’re coming to hunt him on the Sabbath to see him break that law so they can catch him in something. Look at verse 2.
It’s really interesting. They’re watching healing so that they might accuse him. They’re watching closely because they knew it’s a place where he was likely to err. Now, when I say err, obviously I mean according to their first century customs and not according to the actual law of God. But that’s it. They’re there to try to catch him out. Now, you have to think about that for a moment. If you had the chance, imagine yourself in a situation where you have the chance to witness an actual healing.
If you had the chance to actually see a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit where a withered hand becomes before your eyes whole again, where you’re going to witness something that is supernatural, you’re about to see that. If I told you you were about to see with your very own eyes this miraculous, undeniably supernatural healing, what kinds of thoughts would be going through your head in anticipation of that moment? Think of the privilege you have of witnessing something like that, the awe that you would be struck by.
And yet, here they come with the goal of witnessing a miracle with the main purpose being to find prosecutable evidence against Jesus. Now, we like to think that we’re all highly objective people, that our determinations, that our conclusions we come to are simply the result of our independent logical minds processing facts and coming to natural logical conclusions. We like to think that that’s the way we all operate.
The state of our hearts is profoundly influential to the processes of our minds. Where your heart is determines what you’re able to see, comprehend, understand. Where your heart is determines whether you’re able to come to logical conclusions and see what’s right in front of you. Your heart determines what conclusions your mind is allowed to come to. Spurgeon, the great preacher, once said,
hardens clay. You can have the same sun shining on something, and the recipient of that sunlight, some will grow hard, brittle, some will grow soft and liquid in front of it. It’s the same one, but in one instance the result is a rock, and in another instance the result is a puddle. And when Jesus performs this miracle, it’s like that sun shining down, and the result of that sunlight is determined
by what kind of substance that light is shining on. Is it shining on wax, or is it shining on clay? He performs this miracle. Some hearts see that miracle and are hardened even further, while other hearts saw that miracle and melted before the Savior. What kind of heart you bring to this determines your ability to see what’s actually going on. And the ministry of Jesus, as you read through the Gospels, does this again and again.
It gives a clear and consistent testimony. And then that testimony creates repentance and worship in some. And in some others, it creates bitterness and envy. And it’s interesting, I think, this particular scene because it’s profoundly revealing where the wickedness of the human heart is put on such a clear display. The kinds of things that we’re capable of. Because here you have a man who has been impaired with this wither hand for his entire life.
So imagine somebody. He’s got a withered hand his whole life. Imagine all the hardship and difficulties that he’s faced as a result of this handicap. And here he is about to have all that taken away, miraculously cured. And a group of men have gathered around simply so that in this moment they can find something prosecutable against Jesus. Because of the hatred that they have in their heart.
These scribes are uncommonly evil. This is an uncommon level of wickedness that we’re seeing here. But I think you ought to realize and think about for a moment how utterly common and mundane this is. This is something that all of us do frequently. Where you become a little grievance farmer. What I mean by that is we like to think that hatred is a bad thing. That it’s something that is abhorrent to our heart.
If you dive into your own heart very much, you’ll notice how much you’re actually very attracted to hatred. You’re attracted to anger. And there’s something kind of almost a little bit sickeningly delightful about getting angry. Your flesh wants you to be like these Pharisees. It wants to go and find places to be upset. It finds like a twisted delight in this kind of thing.
We will make an effort to hunt for things, hunt for offenses that we can be angry about. Think about this in your own marriage. Do you not ever, as a wife, do you ever secretly kind of want him to forget your anniversary so that you can be mad at him? I want to be mad at him, but I need an offense in order. Men, is there something that you’re hoping she forgot the laundry? You’re hoping whatever.
It’s not like a conscious thing you’re doing, but if you looked at yourself for a moment, you would find yourself secretly desiring someone to misstep so that you can be mad at them. It’s funny because a lot of times we want to think that our anger is the result of this logical, well, they’ve committed all these wrongs, and that is why all these things have added up, and that’s why I bother with them, or that’s why I’m angry with them. But frequently, we have people in our lives that we just don’t like, and so then we hunt for offenses to explain why we don’t like them,
and give us more occasion to dislike them. The flesh hunts for offenses. The flesh is this little offense anger farmer, constantly trying to manufacture occasions for us to be mad, because there’s something sickeningly sweet about that kind of thing. We hunt for offenses. Why else do you doom scroll on X? You’re just scrolling through looking for things that offend you, because there’s this sickening pleasure that we take,
and being offended like that. The sin of the Pharisees and the scribes here is not that far off from all of our hearts. We do the same thing. But we know this is a particularly powerful display of wickedness, because look at verse 5. And when he had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, he said to the man, stretch out your hand. And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored as whole as the other.
There’s something really unique about this verse, something that only happens in this verse and nowhere else in the Bible. And that is, this is the only text that we have in all of Scripture where Jesus becomes angry. Or at least where it explicitly says Jesus was angry. You might be able to infer when he goes and flips the tables to cleanse the temple that there was anger there or something, but it doesn’t ever say that. It doesn’t ever call him angry.
Jesus is angry is right here when he sees this desire for the Pharisees to find some offense, find him healing on the Sabbath so that they can prosecute him, this evilness in their heart. Now, just as an aside, we can see from this then, we should note then that anger is not in and of itself a sin. The fact that if Jesus can get angry, then there is such a thing as a righteous anger.
Paul tells us that in Ephesians 4, he says, be angry and do not sin. There is a kind of anger that is a righteous anger. It’s occasional, it’s not frequent, but we don’t see Jesus do it often, but we do clearly see him do it here. He is angry and he is sinlessly angry. So it’s not wrong for us to be angry with a righteous anger when we see a great evil. So how do you know what’s the difference between a righteous and an unrighteous anger? Well, first of all,
look at what happens when Jesus gets angry. What does he do about it? What’s the result of his anger? Well, it says here, he said to the man, stretch out your hand. He stretched it out and his hand was restored as whole as the other. What’s the result of Jesus’ anger? It’s that he heals a man who’s had a withered hand for life. It’s this remarkably constructive expression of anger. When Jesus gets angry, it moves him to do good. It moves him,
to heal, to restore. Righteous anger, when you’re overcome by a righteous anger, it moves you to do righteous things. It moves you to do something beautiful, something godly. When Jesus gets angry, it moves him to do good, to heal, to restore. And that’s what righteous anger does. Second, the other thing we should notice about righteous anger, Paul said, he said, be angry, do not sin. And then he says, do not let the sun go down on your wrath. Do not let the sun go down
on your wrath. Paul is teaching us that anger is like manna. You can’t hold on to it overnight. Remember manna that you hold on, held on to it through the night. In the next morning, it was stinking and filled with worms. Anger is, godly anger is something that you have for a moment, and then it’s something that you’re capable of setting down. Ungodly anger, you can’t set down because it’s not you holding it, it’s it holding you.
Anger gets a hold of you, and you are a puppet on its strings. It controls you. Godly anger is something that you’re actually the Lord of. You’re the master of it, and you can set it down. Righteous anger moves you to swift righteous action, and then you move on. Unrighteous anger becomes a little hookworm in your heart that sits there fueling bitterness and resentment. That’s what unrighteous anger is like.
More things to be upset about, more things to be grieved by, more things to be offended by. So when you discover anger in your heart, you can ask yourself, first, what am I going to do with this? I’m angry, so what are you going to do? If you’ve got nothing to do, then drop the anger. It’s not fruitful. If you’re angry, you have to ask yourself, what godly thing am I being prompted to do? And then second of all, you have to ask yourself, can I put this to bed when I go to bed? Am I capable of setting this down and moving on?
Or does it have a hold on me? Is it controlling me and steering me? Can you set it down? So with Jesus, this anger drives him to heal a man. What does anger do to those that are opposed to Jesus? Look at verse 6. Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him. You have to remember, to understand this for a moment, remember who the Pharisees are.
They were strict and scrupulous Jews. But who were the Herodians? Well, just as a Christian was a follower of Christ, a Herodian is a follower of the line of Herod, beginning with Herod the Great. You actually have a line there of descendants, and there’s a group that believes this line ought to be installed as the new king, restored to the throne of Israel. At the moment, at this current moment,
the Herod that would probably be the contender would be Herod Antipas, who we’re going to see Jesus’ encounters later on. Herod Antipas. So they want to see this line of Herodians restored to the throne, and that this will be the new Israelite nation. It’s a political movement that, in any other scenario, would have been the arch nemesis of the Pharisees. And that’s the thing that’s really interesting, is the Herodians and the Pharisees would have been antagonistic and opposed to one another.
In any other situation. But according to the logic of that ancient proverb, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, their mutual detestation of Jesus drives them together in this unlikely alliance. They have a mutual detestation that becomes the foundation for this camaraderie, this friendship. This is what we call the fellowship of the grievance. It’s a fellowship that is a friendship built on a mutual grievance. The fellowship of the grievance.
A friendship built on a mutual hatred, a mutual grievance. And you’ve seen this happen before. It’s what happens when a mutually shared hatred becomes the bond of commonality between completely unlikely parties. And they’re driven together. The Pharisees and the Herodians, in any other scenario, would have been deathly opposed to one another. But their mutual desire to see Jesus go down becomes the foundation of a very temporary, a very mercenary friendship.
A friendship that’s built on a mutual hatred rather than a mutual love. And I think if you just look around you, you can see many instances of that kind of all around us. Where unlikely parties that you would hate each other in any other situation, but because they have a shared enemy, they come and they join together. Think of later when Jesus goes on trial before Pontius Pilate. And then he goes from Pontius Pilate, he’s sent from Pontius Pilate to Herod, Herod Antipas.
And he’s tried by both of them. And Herod and Pilate are sending him back and forth to each other with messages to one another. And it says, it’s just a very interesting line in Luke 23, that very day Pilate and Herod became friends with each other. For previously they had been at enmity with each other. These two guys that had hated each other in every situation. Suddenly when Jesus comes along and they have this mutual hatred of him and it drives them together. Mutual hatred becomes a bond of friendship
grievance. I was at a conference yesterday when someone was lamenting how unified the left seems to be in their attacks on the right. While they were lamenting the conservative right is very disjointed but the left seems to be completely unified. But this is just the reality that when they all hate the same thing it forms a temporary unity. A fellowship of the grievance. We see this all around. Two people who are ideologically totally opposed to one another yet they’re drawn together by a common hatred. Now in the
next several verses we see that Jesus also unites a broad body of people. Look at verse 7. But Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea and a great multitude from Galilee followed him and from Judea and Jerusalem and Idumea and beyond the Jordan those from Tyre and Sidon. It goes on. He’s listing all these different places that they’re coming from. It’s a great multitude that’s following him and it’s interesting that just as the Pharisees and the
Herodians and all these people are coming together on one side, Jesus is also bringing together a disparate group of people. They come from Galilee and from Judea. That would be from the northern and the southern regions of Israel, meaning from all over Israel. But not just that, we find out that they’re coming from Jerusalem but also from Edom. So these are non-Israelites, Edomites. They come from Edom, from beyond the Jordan, from Tyre and Sidon.
So many are coming that in verse 9 he has to ready a boat to be ready for him to escape because they press in on him so intensely. So we have the fellowship of the grievance and then we have this fellowship of the sun. This gathering that’s coming together to the sun. And as this group gathers together there’s a moment where he pulls a select few aside and they go up a mountain. It’s always interesting these moments when they go up the mountain.
He chooses out his 12 disciples. Sometimes if you ever notice sometimes we refer to them as disciples and sometimes we refer to them as apostles. Disciple essentially just is a word that refers to someone who’s the student of someone else’s learning. Someone who’s learning from somebody else. So we tend to think of them as disciples during the gospels while the disciples are sitting at the feet of Jesus and learning from him. And then the word apostle specifically refers to someone who has been sent out on some sort of mission.
And so we tend to think of them more as apostles when we hit like the book of Acts when after the great commission and they’ve been sent out. So we tend to think of them as disciples now and apostles in the book of Acts. But those words are interchangeable. We’ll see them used in scriptures not super tidy about that and uses both words in either place.
Remember that if we’re to think of the church as a building, Jesus will be that cornerstone of the building and the disciples will eventually become the rest of the foundation of that building. These men, these twelve, these men will be charged first with watching and learning from Jesus who he is and what he is saying. And then after his ascension into heaven, they’re going to be charged with communicating that truth to the world.
As they convey his message, it’s in that sense that they become the foundation of the church. We are all built on their testimony. What they have shared with us, we are building on that. We’re given a list of twelve men, and I’m just going to go through each of them briefly. We’re given a list of twelve men. Simon, who will be renamed by Jesus to be Peter, which means rock. James and John, who are two brothers.
Three, Peter, James, and John make up Jesus’ tightest circle of friends. And though Peter will become the most prominent, John will become the closest to Jesus. Now, there are two James in the New Testament. We said it’s Peter and then John and James, so these two are brothers. There’s two different James in the New Testament, and you want to get them straight. The James that’s named here, that is the brother of John and is in this circle of three,
his closest friends. That James is known as James the Greater, I think primarily because he was in such close proximity with Jesus. He’s James the Greater. He’s the brother of John. He’s also the first disciple to be martyred, which is interesting because you have these two brothers, James and John, and James is the first to be martyred, and John is the only disciple that dies of old age, that isn’t martyred. So you have those two brothers.
Philip, Bartholomew, and Matthew. This is the Matthew that’s going to write the book of Matthew. He was a tax collector, and sometimes goes by Levi. In some of the Gospels, you’ll hear him named Levi, but he goes by Matthew when he writes the Gospels, so that’s how we think of him. Then you have Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus. So this is the second James. I mentioned there’s two James. James the greater, who was John’s brother. This is James the son of Alphaeus. He’s James the lesser.
This James is also the younger brother of Jesus, and he’s the author of the book of James. He’s the younger brother of Jesus and the author of the book of James. Then we have Thaddeus. Thaddeus is sometimes called Jude. He is another little brother of Jesus, just like James the lesser, and he’s the author of the epistle of Jude. So this James and this Jude, that’s the author of James and the author of Jude. Then we have Simon the Canaanite, also sometimes called Simon the zealot.
And last, we have Judas Iscariot, the one who will eventually betray Jesus. And these are the 12 disciples. After choosing the disciples, the crowd gathers once more, and everyone is overwhelmed by what a sensation Jesus is causing. His own family and friends are beginning to worry for Jesus. In verse 21, they start getting worried for him. But the scribes of Jerusalem attempt to start a rumor that the reason Jesus is gaining so much attention is that he’s been
actually possessed by Beelzebub, the prince of, it’s a Philistine pagan god, but known as the prince of all the demons. And that they say that he’s using demonic powers to cast out demons. I think the scribes of Jerusalem are basically the Candace Owens of the first century. He’s possessed by Beelzebub, and that’s how he’s doing all this. Jesus uses this accusation to explain something about the way that the spiritual world works.
Verse 24 and 25. Opposition forces can be fractured. The fellowship of the grievance, it works when you are uniting to topple some ruling power.
But a ruling power can’t be divided. A ruling power has to be unified. If Satan is working against Satan, then Satan cannot stand. The one true king, when he rules, will do so from a unified position. When Christ rules, he will not do so from a throne that he shares with competing powers. Listen to verse 27.
That’s why Revelation 20 promises that Satan will be bound at the beginning of Christ’s kingdom. Satan will be bound at the beginning of Christ’s kingdom. It’s not a kingdom that Christ will establish in cooperation with competing forces. And I think this is really interesting because in this passage we learn something important about the spiritual battle that we’re in. Our enemy’s army can be large.
And it can be made up of a wide variety of factions. They can appear very united. But it’s a unity that is created by a shared hatred. The fellowship of the grievance, right? That’s what the enemy’s forces look like. They’re brought together by this fellowship of the grievance. However, this unity can only hold when they are attacking their mutual enemy. But as Jesus says, this is a force that is divided against itself. Ultimately, it’s divided against itself and it cannot stand. It will always crumble.
It rises up to the top for a time, but it will always be a temporary ascendancy because it is actually fractured at the foundation. So it cannot stand. But as Jesus says, this is a force that is divided against itself. It cannot stand. Whenever they come into power, they will always devour their own because their union is always temporary and conditional. But the kingdom of Christ is made up of incredibly diverse groups. We had men from Jerusalem mixed with men from Edom, Tyre, and Sidon.
So this is a coalition that is brought together as well. They’re incredibly diverse. It unites things like tax collectors like Matthew teaming up with zealots like Simon. Just in the 12 disciples, we see this variety of people that would normally be at odds with one another. They’re diverse. And yet they’re united not by a mutual hatred, but by a mutual love. The love of the Lord Jesus Christ and a faith in his life, death, and resurrection.
That brings about a completely united foundation. That is something that actually holds together. So the enemy’s unity is temporary and illusory. It is a unity of convenience made possible by a shared hatred. But the unity of God’s people is deep and abiding because in Christ we have found a cause that transcends all of our petty grievances. That’s the thing that you need to see, that in Christ we see something, we’ve found something,
all of our petty grievances. Because when you’re an enemy of Christ, when you’re outside of faith, when you’re outside of the gospel, when you’re outside of God, when you’re outside of all of that, the only thing that you are really for is ultimately yourself. In the end, the only thing you’re ultimately for is yourself. So every ally that you can find is a temporary ally of convenience, but not an ultimate actual ally in the end
is a competition for that thing that you love most yourself. So every ally is a temporary ally of convenience, a useful stepping stone to help you to get where you want to go. But in the end, they’re all still competition. They’re all still adversaries. But when you were in Christ, united to his death, burial, and resurrection by a living faith, well, then your ultimate end is Christ himself. That is the thing that everything is about. Your ultimate end is Christ himself.
It’s an ultimate end that is capable of being shared by all of your brothers and sisters, and in the glory of God, it’s a thing that we can share, and it’s not diminished by the sharing. The fact that you have Christ, and then a neighbor comes and has Christ, doesn’t mean now you only get half of Christ. You don’t continue to chop him up. Because of his infinite nature, he is capable of being all of that for each of us. And so we have this thing that draws us all together,
nothing that we need to compete with one another over. We have this unity that we have in Christ, and it’s far more profound or real than any other alliance that the world has to offer. That’s why these worlds are so completely different. This unity that we have in Christ is real, and it transcends all other divisions. It’s why in the next few verses, when Mary and his brothers try to call him outside, verse 32,
They try to call him outside, but Jesus says, No, no, I’m not going, because if you’re here with me, you are my closest family member. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and my sister and my mother. You can’t get closer to Jesus than what you are with him in the gospel.
Of course, we know that two of those brothers, James and Jude, were in with Jesus at this time. But it would appear that the rest of the family, including Mary, was concerned that Jesus was going too far. Yet Jesus makes this radical assertion that true Christians form a family, true Christians form a family that is more real and more profoundly unified than their blood connections.
28 through 30, which covered Jesus’ comments about a sin that is unforgivable. Let me just backtrack and hit that really quick. Verses 28 and 29.
Jesus says that all sins are forgivable, including blasphemy. Blasphemy is a forgivable sin. But when someone sees the immediate miraculous work of the Holy Spirit and attributes that work to Satan,
rather than acknowledges what is obvious, that this is the work of the Holy Spirit, then they betray a hardness of heart that is terminal. To sit and see that kind of revelation and to say, I believe that is Satan, that betrays a hardness of heart that is terminal. Miraculous signs carried with them a great authority. That was the purpose of a miraculous sign. Miraculous signs were used to confirm the testimony of the apostles and authorize, basically give us,
confidence that the New Testament was divinely inspired. Miracles and miraculous acts carried this special weight to them. They were used to confirm the identity and authority both of Jesus and the apostles. Our New Testament exists because the testimony of the apostles was profoundly demonstrated by the miracles that accompanied and confirmed their teaching. But those miraculous signs also carried a greater weight for those that rejected them. They were incredibly powerful in that they gave this special authority.
And to reject that came at a great cost. To stand there while Jesus himself healed the sick and raised the dead, and to say, nah, that’s Satan’s power. To do that, that kind of hard-heartedness carried with it a greater consequence. And with that said, I don’t think, and this is now I’m going to do what I said every pastor does, where I’m going to tell you, I don’t think you’ve committed this. And you have to do that because there is a certain kind of conscience, and not all Christians have it. Some Christians have, like the super,
you just have to hit them on the head with a hammer again and again to get them to feel guilty for anything. And then some people kind of run around and feel guilty for sins committed by somebody hundreds of miles away, but they think somehow maybe it got on them. Their conscience is just like super, super sensitive. And so you have to say something about this because there are some people who read that text, and then they go away constantly asking themselves, have I committed the unpardonable sin? Let me just say, I don’t think this is a circumstance that most of us find ourselves in.
People who get worried that they are possibly guilty of the unforgivable sin are suffering from spiritual hypochondria, and they just need to be told to knock it off. If you’re worried that you’re guilty of committing the unforgivable sin, just please stop. There’s a host of reasons that I don’t think it’s possible, but the biggest reason is this. People who have committed the unforgivable sin are not worried about it.
They’ve committed the sin because they don’t care. They really don’t care. It’s a hardened conscience that is in that situation. And so if your conscience is tender and you’re constantly worried, did I do this? That’s testimony to you that no, you didn’t. You’re not that kind of person. If you worry that you committed the unforgivable sin, then stop. Say that you’re sorry to God for momentarily doubting Him and His grace and just go back to being a believing Christian.
I’ll conclude by going back to that division between the fellowship of the grievance and the fellowship of the Son. And I just want to clarify one point a little bit more. I’ve described the fellowship of the grievance as those that are brought together by a mutual hatred of a mutual enemy. And then I’ve contrasted them with those that are brought together by the love of the Son. Fellowship of the grievance, fellowship of the Son. Fellowship brought together by mutual shared hatred. Fellowship brought together by a mutual shared love.
And once you start to do that, it starts to become simply love versus hatred that is contrasted. And while I think that it’s partly true, there’s something to that. I don’t like saying it that way because in our current age, we’ve come up with this bad habit of maximizing the verb.
And minimizing the object of the verb. What I mean is we make a big deal out of love. Love is good. Love is everything. God is love. So love is love. And we make a big deal of the verb. And then we act as if the object, the direct object of that verb, is something that can swap in and out. It doesn’t matter what you love. It just matters that you love. As if love by itself is this spectacular virtue.
You need is love. Love wins. Love is love. But when we tend to minimize the object of the love, then it no longer matters who or what you love as long as you just love. And that’s a game that our culture is playing right now. And that’s not how scripture speaks of love. When we think biblically, we discover that actually it does matter the object of your love. The direct object of the verb determines whether love is a virtue.
Do you love life or do you love death? Do you love wisdom or do you love foolishness?
Do you love evil? Do you love your wife or do you love someone else’s wife? It turns out it’s not enough just to love. You have to love the right thing. Most of all, what is the greatest commandment? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. The direct object matters. Love is good when it’s godly love, when it’s informed love.
When it’s loving like God loves, when it loves the things that God loves. It’s also not true that those who love God are only united by our loves. We’re also united by the things that we hate. We share a hatred of evil. We saw in our text today our Lord Jesus Christ consumed by anger. We saw that there are things that God hates and it’s right for us to share that hatred. So we’re not just pitting love versus hatred. It’s a biblically informed love and a biblically informed
hatred and it’s those that pervert those categories that become our enemies. All those that were united by a love of the one true God should have gotten angry with Jesus when they saw what he saw. We love and we also hate. We are not defined simply by love. We’re defined by the object of our love, the Lord Jesus Christ who loved us and gave himself for us.