Daily Lesson for January 22, 2019

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Mark chapter 3 verses 19b through 30:

Then he went home; 20and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. 21When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’ 22And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.’ 23And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, ‘How can Satan cast out Satan? 24If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. 27But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.

28 ‘Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; 29but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’— 30for they had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’

This Scripture has at times been gravely misinterpreted to mean there is some sin that God cannot forgive. But at verse 28 what Jesus means is that there is a certain sin which every generation holds onto and so is “an eternal sin” — the sin of all ages. 

And the sin is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. It is calling what the Spirit of God is doing in the world evil when it is really good. This is an ageless sin — a sin committed by every generation which “scorns its Christ and assails his ways”. 

And caught in the middle, is Jesus’ family, knowing he is good and not Beelzebub, yet nonetheless trying with all their might to hold him back.

Yesterday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and many remembered him with quotations. I add one more at length, the first paragraph from Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail — a letter written to a group of moderate white pastors who were trying to restrain Dr. King and his mass efforts in Birmingham:

"First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."

Some called Dr. King Beelzebub, saying that whites and blacks were by God’s intention made to be separate, and that only the demonic would try to put them back together. And others, the moderates, tried to restrain him, saying he was going too far, too fast.

In other words, they committed the eternal sin, the sin every is guilty of: “killing its prophets and stoning those sent to it”, or trying to silence them, for fear of the trouble they’ll bring. 

These are things to reflect deeply on and pray. We pray for vision and we pray for wisdom and we pray for courage, lest we too find ourselves guilty of the same eternal sins in our own generation.