Either make the tree good and its fruit good or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his treasure what is evil.  Matthew 12:33-35 NASB

Today, we continue our blog from yesterday about unforgivable sin. Yesterday we looked at Matthew 12 where the Pharisees plotted to destroy Jesus and accused Him of driving out demons under Satan’s power. Jesus warned them against the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit which He said could never be forgiven. In today’s scripture passage, Jesus lays it out for them in what is hopefully simple enough terms for these self-proclaimed geniuses to understand.

A dead tree does not produce fruit. It’s just that simple. A good, healthy tree produces good fruit. A fig tree will never give you apples and vice versa. We are judged by our fruit. The Pharisees were all about obeying the law. But Paul explained it to the Galatians in 5:16-26 in this way. If we are led by the Spirit, we are not under the law. We obey God’s commands which keep us law abiding, but we do it because we live under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Not just because we are rule followers, but we love God so we want to do what He calls us to do which is love Him with our whole heart and love others as we love ourselves. When we do this, we obey the laws. When we are led by the Spirit we show it in our fruit. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness gentleness and self-control. No law against this, right? If we belong to Christ, we have His Holy Spirit dwelling on the inside of us and we have crucified the desires of the flesh. We want to please God, it’s just that simple. Paul tells us if we walk by the Spirit we will not carry out the desires of the flesh.

Now it’s the Holy Spirit that gives us that gentle nudge when we do or say something that we have no business doing or saying. When we accept Christ as our savior and confess our sins and repent, God sends His Holy Spirit to dwell within us. Now we can accept this or we can reject this. If we reject the Holy Spirit, then we are rejecting being held accountable. We are rejecting the fruits of the Spirit in order to continue to satisfy our fleshly desires. This is dangerous territory, my friend. Often times we see someone make a public profession of faith and be baptized. We may even see some changes for a while, but then we see them behaving as they always had, doing the things of the flesh that they had always done. Now this is where the argument of being once saved always saved comes in. If we are truly saved we no longer want to live the way we did before. So then you must question if they were truly saved. The other thing that can happen is that someone can turn to Christ and maybe even feel called to God for salvation and go so far as to make it public and be baptized, but then they reject the Holy Spirit because they don’t want to give up their old ways of the flesh. The role of the Holy Spirit is to gently nudge us an get us on the right track. It’s what gives us a conscience and causes our heart to hurt when we do wrong. It’s what convicts us of sin.

Just because someone adorns a church pew every Sunday, serves on a committee and perhaps is even in a position of leadership does not mean that they can’t be attacked by the devil. On the contrary, these are the ones Satan loves to destroy. In Matthew 7 Jesus is speaking of judging trees by their fruit and tells them in verses 21-23 that not everyone who professes He is Lord will enter heaven. Many who served Him and did great works will be hypocrites that also are enslaved to sin that they refuse to give up. These will be rejected.

Jesus didn’t tip toe around what the Pharisees were doing. He let them have it with both barrels calling them a brood of vipers. Ouch! They had accused Him of driving out demons through the power of Satan. How ridiculous is that? But then again people under the influence of Satan often times don’t make good sense. He fires this verbal shot at them to try to make them understand that this accusation was blaspheming the Holy Spirit. We hear people take God’s name in vain and we know this is dangerous territory but when we do this to the Holy Spirit, we are in effect rejecting Him.

When we reject the Holy Spirit, we open ourselves up to the devil. We create a gateway for the devil to enter our lives and gain control. This puts us in danger of reaching a point of no return.

We will discuss this in tomorrow’s blog.

Have a great day!