SPEAKER_00: You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: But men and women, this is why we see suicide.
SPEAKER_01: You know why?
SPEAKER_01: It's because they have a divided kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: Their heart and their mind is duplicious.
SPEAKER_01: It's been broken.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Satan does.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is giving us insight into the ways of Satan.
SPEAKER_01: He's coming in and he's breaking that power in a person's life.
SPEAKER_01: It's when we're divided, when we're duplicious in our heart, when that happens in our life, often leading us to drugs and addictions because of a divisive heart.
SPEAKER_00: At The Road, our mission is to empower people to change the world.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on The Road, visit theroad.org.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you are encouraged by today's message from pastor teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: So turning your Bibles to Matthew chapter 12, we are a chapter by chapter, verse-by-verse church, and we are going through the Gospel of Matthew.
SPEAKER_01: And we looked at Matthew 12 last week, where Jesus was confronting fear, and he was confronting the religious hypocrisy of the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_01: And he now retreats away, gets away, and he begins to change the subject here, and he moves toward this topic of justice.
SPEAKER_01: So if you have your Bibles, Matthew chapter 12, starting at verse 14.
SPEAKER_01: Then the Pharisees went out and plotted against him how they might destroy him.
SPEAKER_01: But when Jesus knew it, he withdrew from there, and great multitudes followed him, and he healed them all.
SPEAKER_01: Yet he warned them not to make him known, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, Behold my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased, I will put my spirit upon him, and he will declare justice to the Gentiles, he will not quarrel nor cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets, a bruised reed he will not break, a smoking flax he will not quench, till he sends forth justice to victory, and in his name the Gentiles will trust.
SPEAKER_01: Let me open with a word of prayer.
SPEAKER_01: So, Father God, in the name of the blood of Jesus, would you anoint your word?
SPEAKER_01: God, as we go through verse by verse, through this powerful pericopey, through this powerful passage, I pray, God, that it would come alive in our hearts.
SPEAKER_01: In your name we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Interesting, I just find this super interesting that Jesus, even as the Son of God, had to withdraw himself because of what was happening among the Pharisees and their desire to kill him.
SPEAKER_01: I think what that says to us is there's these physical laws that Jesus didn't break.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, when Jesus came, he came as fully a man, though he was divine.
SPEAKER_01: And so, in that sense, he had to actually withdraw himself because he did not want to put himself under the power and control of these religious leaders.
SPEAKER_01: And then Matthew, in his understanding of what Jesus is doing here, actually quotes from Isaiah.
SPEAKER_01: And he's quoting from one of four songs about the servant of the Lord, which up to that time had always been associated with Israel.
SPEAKER_01: But in this case, Matthew is associating the servant, capital M, my servant, capital S, as being the Messiah Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And he's speaking of justice.
SPEAKER_01: And the first thing he says is the Spirit of God's upon him.
SPEAKER_01: So Matthew is articulating the King of Kings, this kingdom of God revolution through Jesus Christ, is that the Spirit of God is upon Jesus to declare justice to the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is revolutionary stuff.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying Jesus has come to declare justice to the whole world, not just to Israel.
SPEAKER_01: And then he describes how Jesus is going to bring about justice upon the earth.
SPEAKER_01: And he says he will not quarrel, he will not cry out, a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoking flax he will not quench.
SPEAKER_01: What Matthew is saying to us here is that Jesus is going to come with a justice very different than the way we think of justice.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we we smash the bruised person.
SPEAKER_01: We smash the person who doesn't fit into our systems.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is saying, I'm coming with humility, I'm coming with compassion, and I'm coming with mercy.
SPEAKER_01: That that bruised reed, I'm not going to break.
SPEAKER_01: That smoking flash, you know what a smoking flash is?
SPEAKER_01: When I have a fire out here in my backyard in our pit, if the fire's not burning well, it smokes.
SPEAKER_01: It smokes.
SPEAKER_01: And you have to add wood.
SPEAKER_01: You get that that smoke is coming from the lack of fuel.
SPEAKER_01: And he's saying here that where you see people, and that's what he's talking about here.
SPEAKER_01: When you see people who are floundering, people who are faltering, people who are struggling, Jesus is going to come with a victory of love.
SPEAKER_01: A victory of the justice, of compassion for the low person, compassion for the person who's broken.
SPEAKER_01: That's so very, very different from our world.
SPEAKER_01: Well, the Pharisees are put on their heels.
SPEAKER_01: They are really upset.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 22.
SPEAKER_01: Then one was brought to him who is demon-possessed, blind and mute, and he healed him, so that the blind and the mute man both spoke and saw, and all the multitudes were amazed and said, Could this be the son of David?
SPEAKER_01: Now when the Pharisees heard this, they said, This fellow does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons.
SPEAKER_01: Now, how would you like that?
SPEAKER_01: So how would you like, I mean, we're not bringing to Jesus like a guy who's got a headache.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: This is like the worst.
SPEAKER_01: He's demon-possessed, he's blind, and he's mute.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't say it directly here, but it's total setup by the Pharisees against Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus just heals him.
SPEAKER_01: He just flat heals him.
SPEAKER_01: He casts out his demon, his blindness is gone, he can speak, and it's a supernatural work of the spirit, and they don't know what to do.
SPEAKER_01: And so the Pharisees are just dumbfounded.
SPEAKER_01: So they've got to come up with a reason.
SPEAKER_01: They either either this is God's power or it's another power, and they blame it on a Philistine deity.
SPEAKER_01: That's who Beelzebub.
SPEAKER_01: He's the lead God, small g of the deities of the Philistines.
SPEAKER_01: So they're going way back in time to cast this upon Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus is showing us what justice is.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is showing us what mercy is and love.
SPEAKER_01: Let me give you a definition, a definition of justice.
SPEAKER_01: Justice is the quality of being just, impartial, or fair.
SPEAKER_01: Conformity to truth, fact, or reason.
SPEAKER_01: Let me read it again.
SPEAKER_01: Justice is the quality of being just, impartial, or fair, or conformity to truth, fact or reason.
SPEAKER_01: One of the things that we've enjoyed during this quarantine time is some movies that we've watched.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to encourage a couple movies that talk about justice.
SPEAKER_01: It's a movie we saw, the true story of Mark Rafalo, an attorney.
SPEAKER_01: It's called Dark Waters, in which he encounters a chemical company that's poisoning a West Virginia town.
SPEAKER_01: True story.
SPEAKER_01: Took him like 20 years to bring about justice.
SPEAKER_01: Another great movie is the movie Just Mercy, which is the true story of Walter Milligan, who is helped by the attorney Brian Stevenson.
SPEAKER_01: He's on death row for a crime he didn't commit.
SPEAKER_01: And then many of you know To Kill a Mockingbird, uh, where Atticus Finch is defending a black man in the, I think it's the 1930s, is to Kill a Maulkingbird, but powerful movie about justice.
SPEAKER_01: And then this may sound a little odd, but it's a beautiful movie, and I think it is about the kind of Christ-like justice that we're speaking of here.
SPEAKER_01: And it's called It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood about Mr.
SPEAKER_01: Rogers.
SPEAKER_01: And I won't give it away, but there is a plot in the movie about forgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what Jesus is speaking of here when he speaks about not breaking the reed, the bruised reed, that we extend forgiveness, learning the power of forgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: And that's a part of justice here.
SPEAKER_01: Well, Jesus, now if you have a if you have one of these Bibles like I have where it's red letter, he's now been confronted again and again by the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_01: But now he begins to come out and he begins to speak about what they've said about him, casting out demons by the spirit of Beelzebub.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what he says.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 25.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 25.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus knew their thoughts.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, he knew their motives.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.
SPEAKER_01: If Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself.
SPEAKER_01: How then will this kingdom even be able to stand?
SPEAKER_01: And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, so this arch god of all the gods in the demon world of the Philistines, by whom do your sons cast them out, therefore they cat they shall be your judges.
SPEAKER_01: So here's what he's saying.
SPEAKER_01: First thing he's saying is no kingdom can stand against itself if it's already divided.
SPEAKER_01: Now that would you think that's probably good news to the Pharisees, because that must mean that Jesus' kingdom is not gonna stand because it's divided within itself.
SPEAKER_01: But men and women, this is why, this is why we see suicides.
SPEAKER_01: This is why we see drug addiction.
SPEAKER_01: This is why on Sunday, when we were up in Denver, we drove up to Denver and we were around the Capitol, that here were all these homeless people.
SPEAKER_01: And among the homeless people, there were just people laying on cardboard that were out of their mind.
SPEAKER_01: You could just tell they had just lost their minds to drugs, they had lost their minds to marijuana, they had lost their minds to so many different things.
SPEAKER_01: You know why?
SPEAKER_01: It's because they have a divided kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: Their heart and their mind is duplicitous, it's been broken.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Satan does.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is giving us insight into the ways of Satan.
SPEAKER_01: He's coming in and he's breaking that power in a person's life.
SPEAKER_01: And so when we're divided, when we're duplicitious in our heart, when that happens in our life, often leading us to drugs and addiction, it's because of a divisive heart.
SPEAKER_01: Trials come.
SPEAKER_01: We're in trials right now.
SPEAKER_01: Many of us are in trials with our job, we're in trials with the quarantine that's going on, all the stuff that's happening.
SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a pretty big temptation and trial in our life.
SPEAKER_01: And here's what James says about trials and the importance of being unified in our heart.
SPEAKER_01: My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.
SPEAKER_01: But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
SPEAKER_01: If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to him liberally without reproach, and it will be given to him.
SPEAKER_01: But listen to this.
SPEAKER_01: But let him ask in faith with no doubting.
SPEAKER_01: That's a divided kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: For he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.
SPEAKER_01: For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: He is a double-minded man, and he's going to be unstable in all his ways.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus is saying, if you're unstable in your ways, if you have a divisive spirit, you can't stand.
SPEAKER_01: You won't be able to stand under the pressure that comes your way.
SPEAKER_01: And some of us are really being tested right now.
SPEAKER_01: And God is wanting to unify your spirit through intimacy with him.
SPEAKER_01: He goes on, verse 28.
SPEAKER_01: But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.
SPEAKER_01: Or how can one enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds a strong man, then he will plunder his house.
SPEAKER_01: He who is not with me is against me, he who does not gather with me scatters abroad.
SPEAKER_01: So he's saying here that the kingdom of God is plundering Satan's house.
SPEAKER_01: So he has come to plunder Satan.
SPEAKER_01: And men and women, God uses kingdom people to plunder the enemy, to plunder his house.
SPEAKER_01: And this world is under the power of Satan.
SPEAKER_01: And that this world that we live in, there's going to be greed, there's selfishness, there's hatred, and there's unforgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: But when we come in the power of the Spirit, we plunder, we're stronger.
SPEAKER_01: The kingdom of God, Jesus Christ, is stronger than any work of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: And it drives the spirit back.
SPEAKER_01: So men and women, we make those baskets that we're taking to Memorial Hospital North and giving to the doctors and the nurses, that's uh that's plundering the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: When we make that phone call to a struggling friend, when we go shopping for an elderly couple to help them out, that's God's way of justice.
SPEAKER_01: That's God's way of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: We're plundering Satan's kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men.
SPEAKER_01: But the blasphemy against the spirit will not be forgiven men.
SPEAKER_01: Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven.
SPEAKER_01: But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.
SPEAKER_01: A willful rejection of the work of the Spirit in our lives is unpardonable.
SPEAKER_01: Let me read this because so much has been misunderstood about the idea of the unpardonable sin.
SPEAKER_01: Let me give you what I believe is a good definition of the unpardonable sin.
SPEAKER_01: The unpardonable sin is not so much an act, but a continual, willful rejection of Christ and his truth.
SPEAKER_01: The scribes and religious leaders in Israel had ample evidence for the identity of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: They had seen the miracles, they had heard his teaching, and they knew the prophecies, and they willfully rejected Jesus as their Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what's interesting.
SPEAKER_01: People are always talking about wanting to go to heaven or saying that they're a believer.
SPEAKER_01: And they and they have opportunities, especially in the United States of America.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we have radio, we have the internet, we have YouTube, we have churches everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: There's a church on every corner.
SPEAKER_01: It's just all over the place.
SPEAKER_01: And yet, constant rejection of the work of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is saying here that that willful rejection of what God's doing is unpardonable.
SPEAKER_01: It's not going to be forgiven.
SPEAKER_01: And so it's interesting to me how much in our lives we have given to this idea of church and Christianity and people saying, well, I don't, you know, I'm into Jesus, but I'm not into church and all those kind of things.
SPEAKER_01: And I love, I've read a book uh during this quarantine time, The Church of Cowards by Matt Walsh.
SPEAKER_01: And I love this part where he writes this.
SPEAKER_01: We cannot expect to find happiness in heaven if we detest going to church, praying, and reading the Bible now.
SPEAKER_01: If we find religion to be a crashing bore and are stimulated only by what is selfish and secular, how do we think we'll fare in a place, heaven, where the only things we really love are obliterated, and the one thing we always avoid must now be the center of our existence forever?
SPEAKER_01: If all things that are purely about God in this life are dull and uninteresting to us, and all we do is bite our time until we can get back to the TV, then heaven would be a torture.
SPEAKER_01: There would be no leaving God to get back to the TV.
SPEAKER_01: It would be only God always.
SPEAKER_01: If we find little appeal in spending time, even a few minutes with God now, how can we expect that we'll find any appeal in finding affinity with Him?
SPEAKER_01: So men and women, the closest thing, I like what John Henry Newman said once, the closest thing to heaven is church.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's at church that we worship.
SPEAKER_01: It's when we come together at church we pray.
SPEAKER_01: It's at church where we don't talk about our business dealings.
SPEAKER_01: It's at church where we're not making a deal.
SPEAKER_01: It's at church where we hear God's word.
SPEAKER_01: So if you don't like church, you're probably not going to enjoy heaven.
SPEAKER_01: The unpardonable sin is the rejection of God in your life.
SPEAKER_01: It's the rejection of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: It's the rejection of the work of the Spirit wooing and prodding and encouraging you toward an intimate relationship with Him.
SPEAKER_01: Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad.
SPEAKER_01: For a tree is known by its fruit.
SPEAKER_01: Brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things?
SPEAKER_01: For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: But I say to you, that every idle word men ask and men may speak, they will give an account of it in the day of judgment.
SPEAKER_01: For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.
SPEAKER_01: So, church, be good fruit inspectors.
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people with a lot of talk, um, but very little do.
SPEAKER_01: And so it is the works of our life, it's the fruit of our life, Jesus is saying, that you know.
SPEAKER_01: You know those that are mine, you know those that are that are part of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: It's by the works, not just the words that they give, but by the life that they live.
SPEAKER_01: And so be a be a good fruit inspector of others.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to challenge you here this morning on this beautiful Sunday morning, that you would just grab hold of the hand of the person next to you, give people in your family a hug, get out there and call someone.
SPEAKER_01: Um if you're on a walk and you have a chance to and you see a police officer or you see someone who's a first responder in any role, that you would thank them for what they're doing and and even ask to pray for them from a distance, like six feet away.
SPEAKER_01: Put your hand up and pray for them, but to bless them.
SPEAKER_01: Because that's how people know kingdom justice.
SPEAKER_01: They know kingdom justice through the lives that we live, not just by the words that we have.
SPEAKER_01: Talk, talk, talk, talk.
SPEAKER_01: Um, we we need to talk, believe me, we do.
SPEAKER_01: We need to proclaim the gospel, but it's also do-do-do.
SPEAKER_01: It's also a demonstration of the kingdom through our lives.
SPEAKER_01: And so I pray that this morning you would go forth and bring forth the love and the power and the joy of Jesus to those around you.
SPEAKER_01: And if you're listening here this morning and you're and you've lived a life of rejection of Christ, there hasn't been a personal relationship with Him, then I would challenge you, give your heart to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Give it to Jesus today.
SPEAKER_01: Say, Lord, I want you in my life.
SPEAKER_01: I want to learn how to love you.
SPEAKER_01: I want the fruit of the kingdom of God in my life.
SPEAKER_01: Well, let's bow our heads right now and pray.
SPEAKER_01: And if you've never given your heart to Christ, I want to pray for you.
SPEAKER_01: And then I want to make it also a dual prayer for those of you that you know you need to recommit your heart to Christ, that things of the Spirit have become dull, that worship has become boring.
SPEAKER_01: Prayer doesn't have the vitality and the dynamism that it had before, that the word's not as exciting as it once was.
SPEAKER_01: Well, let's come back to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Let's give it all back to Him because you can change.
SPEAKER_01: Men and women, we can grow.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's the message of scripture, is that we're always able to change and repent and start growing again.
SPEAKER_01: And I know for me, and I know for my family, and I know from all these years of walking with God that you just go through, you go through valleys, you go through difficult times in your life where it's really a struggle.
SPEAKER_01: And it's up to us to stir up the fire within again.
SPEAKER_01: To stir up that fire.
SPEAKER_01: I want to encourage you to stir up that fire and say, God, would you stir me up?
SPEAKER_01: And then open God's word, say, Lord, speak to me.
SPEAKER_01: God, I'm going to spend time with you and start dedicating that time again to spending time with the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: So let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: So, Father God, right now on this beautiful Sunday morning, we love you.
SPEAKER_01: We bless you.
SPEAKER_01: We thank you.
SPEAKER_01: Father God, we pray right now for those that have never given their heart to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: If that's you out there, would you just close your eyes and pray with me?
SPEAKER_01: Pray a prayer like this.
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, I need you.
SPEAKER_01: Come into my life.
SPEAKER_01: Forgive my sins.
SPEAKER_01: Give me a passion for the kingdom and a passion for you.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, come in and forgive me of my sins and fill me with your Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And for you men and women that you know the Lord, you have a relationship with Him, but it's become dull, it's become boring, it's become old.
SPEAKER_01: Pray with me.
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, I don't want to have a boring Christian life.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, I want to know you.
SPEAKER_01: I want to go after you with all my heart.
SPEAKER_01: I want that proclamation that we gave at the beginning of the sermon to be true in my life.
SPEAKER_01: I want to love you with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength.
SPEAKER_01: I want to love people the way you love people.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, I want to come alive in the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: I want to be rooted in the Word of God.
SPEAKER_01: I want my faith to be strengthened.
SPEAKER_01: And I really want to believe that all things are possible through you.
SPEAKER_01: So, God, we give you our hearts, we give you our lives today, and we bless you and we love you.
SPEAKER_01: In your name we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you have been blessed by today's message.
SPEAKER_00: To connect with us further, visit theroad.org.
SPEAKER_00: If you are walking through a difficult time, we want to pray for you.
SPEAKER_00: Go to the road.org, click on the ministries tab, and go to our prayer page to send us your prayer request.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks again for tuning in today and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.