Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Daily Lesson for February 23, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Mark chapter 3 verses 22 through 30:

22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.” 23 And he called them to him and said to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. 27 But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house.
28 “Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”30 for they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”

In today's lesson it's like Jesus is saying, "Now look, I know you're a bunch of fishermen and grew up the sons of fishermen and are bound to take the LORD's name in vain every once in a while, and you need to know that's not right. GD is just not okay -- even if you've been fishing all day and haven't caught a thing. But let me tell you boys that that is going to be forgiven. God's just bigger than that.  God's bigger than you saying GD.  Don't let that keep you from thinking you can't be with God. God's going to forgive your foul and blasphemous mouth and a whole lot more. 

"But let me tell what the real blasphemy is -- the blasphemy which won't be forgiven. And that's when God is up to something, something surprising and good and people call it evil. It's when somebody is doing the LORD's work -- reaching out, crossing the tracks, including, healing, restoring, and casting out demons of all sorts -- demons people didn't even know they had -- and it's called the work of the devil. That's the real blasphemy -- calling the work of the LORD the work of Satan.  And it will never be forgiven because the people who do it don't know to ask for forgiveness. They don't even think it's a sin. Imagine that, they think it's God's Word they're speaking and it turns out it's a sin. It's the eternal sin, the sin of every age -- saying the work of the Holy Spirit is the work of evil."

That's my interpretation anyway.

No comments:

Post a Comment