Our message in God's word this morning from the Gospel of Matthew continues the teaching of the surrounding context. We do not want to lose that context. As you recall, Christ performed a miracle in the previous passage, a miracle demonstrating to all that the kingdom of God was present in Christ's person and signified the binding of the strong man whom we identified as Satan himself.

Instead of recognising what was so obviously right in front of them, the Pharisees have instead attributed Christ's works to the works of Satan, whom they called Beelzebub, as we recognised. This triggered a response by our Lord Jesus Christ. What we are looking at this morning is perhaps part two of Jesus' response to the Pharisees, as we began last time. We have plenty to get through this morning, so I want to continue under three headings: first of all, no neutrality in Matthew 12:30; no forgiveness in Matthew 12:31-32; and no hiding in Matthew 12:33-37.

No Neutrality

So first of all, no neutrality. Looking especially at Matthew 12:30, where our Lord says, "He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters."

To begin with here, I want you to notice Christ's statement that when it comes to deciding whether to concern oneself with the kingdom of God, Christ gives us no middle ground option. Whilst man always wants a third option, we like that, don't we? We will always want to have as many options as we can choose from. Man will try to create an alternative route, but the reality of Jesus Christ and his gospel is that he says you cannot be neutral. Whether you like it or not, you are either, like the Pharisees, opposed to Christ, or you are working for him. You are sided with him, working for his kingdom and person. You are saved by him. There is no middle ground with the Lord Jesus Christ. He is making that plainly obvious to us.

As J.E. Adams puts it, "it is like going upstream in a boat: you cannot stand still." It is impossible. In this context, Jesus showed through the healing of the demon-possessed man that he has come to establish the kingdom of God. In doing so, he has limited Satan's ability to deceive the nations as was formerly permitted, to keep them in spiritual darkness. Now with the kingdom of Christ, the gospel is going worldwide. There are people from every tongue, tribe, and nation calling upon the Lord's name. As such, Jesus is giving us a view of himself that is all-encompassing. It is all of world and history pivoting around him. He is saying, I am here. I have come. The world will now pivot upon what I have come to do, and you are thus either inside this kingdom or you are outside of it.

You and I, you see, can never be neutral to Christ, though we think we can. By faith, we are either alive to God in Christ through the Spirit, or we are dead in our sins and outside the sphere of divine grace. Either a person gathers with him, meaning that we are either working for God in this kingdom, or we are standing against him and are in fact the hindrance and opposition to him.

But let me illustrate this truth for you in this way. Long before the outbreak of World War One, there was what was called the Treaty of London in 1839. It established Belgium as an independent, perpetual neutral state. In other words, Belgium wanted to not play these games of becoming joined with different world powers and taking sides before any war had broken out. They wanted to remain neutral. They were bound to remain neutral, and the great European powers had guaranteed that neutrality in a treaty. So for decades, Belgium sought to stay out of these rivalries. In 1914, however, neutrality proved no guarantee of safety for Belgium, because Belgium lay directly between Germany and France. Germany's war plan required its armies to pass through Belgium in order to attack France. Germany requested that their armies pass through Belgium. Belgium refused Germany's demand for passage. Germany invaded anyway, and Belgium found itself dragged into the war despite its neutrality.

See, just as neutrality can seem like a land without problems, where the hard decisions need not be made and the grass is always greener, the reality is in fact very different. There is no neutrality, so often when we want there to be. And so it is with the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus' word for us this morning is just this: with me there is no neutrality. You may desire that. You may think it is a viable option for you to neither be against me nor for me, but uncommitted, on the fence, just minding your own business. But Christ gives us a wake-up call, does he not? He says that is not possible. The kingdom has now come. Satan is now bound. My gospel is going forth. You are either for me or you are against me.

Now, some say Christ's words here are something of a false dichotomy, an oversimplification. What do you mean I am opposed to Christ, hostile to Christ? they might say. I remember one of my philosophy classes at university; the lecturer gave this very example as an example of a false dichotomy logical fallacy and quoted the words of Christ. People say, I am not opposed to Christ, hostile to Christ. I have declared no against him. I am just an ordinary man. I am just an ordinary woman getting on with my life. How can I be pigeonholed into this war of kingdoms that you speak of? I declare my neutrality. This is the perspective of man.

No, no, friends, this is impossible. As Douglas Magnum puts it, "Jesus now makes a very forceful statement directed at the Pharisees, but also to the present crowd: two kingdoms are at war and everyone must choose a side." That is what Christ is plainly showing us here. So all I have to say on this point is to take careful notice that you have not fooled yourself into a kind of passive neutrality with Christ. Christ has come to fulfil that old promise that one day God was going to gather a people to himself. Christ has come just to do this. So the question is, have you been gathered? Are you gathering with him? Are you sided with Christ this morning?

The Pharisees were very religious, but they knew nothing of Christ's kingdom. They had not been gathered, and they were not gathering. The same can be true of us today. One might say, well, I am very Presbyterian. I am very Baptist. I am very Brethren. Whatever else, I have this totally outward, spotless life. Yet in reality, there can be very little of Christ in the heart. We must be gathered so that we might be gathering. So be sure of your standing this morning. Where do you stand with the Lord Jesus Christ?

J.C. Ryle put it this way, and I have shortened part of this: "There are many people in every age of the church who need to have this lesson pressed upon them. They endeavour to steer a middle course in religion. They are not so bad as many sinners, but they are still not saints. They are not boldly on Christ's side, and yet they are not openly against him. Our Lord warns all such that they are in a dangerous position. There are only two parties in religious matters. Are we with Christ and working his cause? If not, we are against him." These things are clear in God's word, are they not?

No Forgiveness

I want to bring before you secondly, no forgiveness. Matthew 12:31-32, Our Lord continues, "Therefore I say to you, sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the spirit shall not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the son of man, it shall be forgiven him. But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him either in this age or in the age to come."

These words are among the more difficult of our Lord Jesus Christ, the so-called unforgivable sin. Hence my heading, no forgiveness. We will look at that, but the first detail I want you to see here in these words is that before Jesus speaks about the unforgivable sin, we have this wonderful affirmation about what God will forgive. We want to consider that first, do we not? We should not skip over what God promises to forgive, only to focus on what he will not forgive.

Jesus here speaks of how God is a God who will forgive sin. I hope we do not think we have somehow graduated from this in our thinking. The very reason we gather each Sunday is to remember that our God is a God who forgives sinners. I should perhaps spend all of our time just thinking about that fact. The heart of the gospel is this: the God of the Bible is a God who will forgive sinners who come to him.

Of all the words that comfort me most in scripture, they are those that tell me that God will forgive my sin, and he has sent Jesus to accomplish this work. Because I do not find in the Bible, news of what I must do to make penance for my sin. I learn about a sinless Saviour who took my place and declared "It is finished" on the cross for me. And so Jesus here reminds us that in fact with God there is forgiveness. With God there can be restitution. With God the unholy can be declared as holy. Isn't the grace of God amazing, friends?

In 1739, George Whitefield, the great evangelist, was preaching outdoors to the Kingswood coal miners near Bristol in England. George Whitefield later wrote, "The first discovery of their being affected was to see the white gutters made by their tears which plentifully fell down their black cheeks as they came out of their pits." It represents something of sin, does it not? You can imagine these men with their black faces, with coal dust representing the human heart. What does the gospel do? It washes the sinner clean. It washes away a lifetime of sin, a lifetime of lust, a lifetime of greed, of idolatry, of lies, of anger, of dishonesty. All of these sins, trespasses both against God and man, washed clean in Jesus Christ.

Jesus says that all may be forgiven you, and he says it plainly here in his word this morning. But he says, come and confess. Let your own tears flow in realisation of the debt you owe and yet what love has done. Let your lips be loosed in confession. Hold nothing back from God, for he knows all and sees all of what is in your heart. You see, in the gospel, to come to Christ, God must be told what he already knows. He has promised mercy and pardon in full. He will extend the king's sceptre. As you come into his courts with words of repentance, he will accept, and he will hear. Jesus is the mediator of this mercy of God. Jesus even says, blasphemy against the son will be forgiven. One can one day curse Christ. He can be a blasphemer. The next day he can be a friend of Christ. That is the beauty of the gospel: standing in grace, born again, and completely new. This is what we read of in the Bible, is it not?

Think of David, that adulterer who became a murderer; in God he found a willingness to wash and cleanse him from all guilt of sin, and his prayer is in Psalm 51. Think of Moses, who struck down that Egyptian; Moses, who dishonoured God when he struck the rock before the nation in anger. Moses found the Saviour too. Think of the Apostle Paul, binding Christians, dragging them into prison, persecuting the church of God. Paul found a Saviour in Christ Jesus. Think of the Apostle Peter, who denied the Lord at his greatest need three times: "I do not know this man." Yet we continue reading in the Gospel of John, do we not? We find in John 21 that Christ restores Peter. The gospel works such grace into the hearts of sinners. Mercy for the undeserving. God is gracious to forgive, and there is this grace available from him today. A clean slate, though it must be washed by Christ's blood. Jesus says, "The one who comes to me, I will certainly not cast out." So no matter what you have done this morning, no matter what secrets you have, what is held in your heart, Christ says, come and I will make you new. I will make you clean. That is his message for us today.

And with that said, we come to the next detail here in the text: the unforgivable sin. Christ specifically makes the point that whilst blasphemy against even his person can be forgiven by God, there is a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit which cannot be forgiven. First of all, just a quick reminder here of the question of what is blasphemy exactly. Well, Don Carson calls blasphemy "extreme slander". And it is that, extreme slander directed particularly against God. Although you do find occurrences in the scripture of blasphemy that is against, perhaps, man as well, as far as slander. But primarily, it is to take the Lord's name in vain, and all that that signifies as well.

But here Christ makes a distinction within blasphemy itself. There is a certain kind of blasphemy, he says, which cannot be forgiven man. The question that we all want to know then is, have I committed this sin? Am I somehow cut off from salvation without even knowing it? Have I committed the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit?

Well, let me explain very briefly the three main views here, all of which perhaps have some truth to them as well. The first view of this text is what we call the strict historical view. This view holds that by attributing Jesus' works as miracles of Satan, the Pharisees committed the sin. They blasphemed the Holy Spirit when they said that Christ did his works by the power of Beelzebub. So this view holds that to commit this sin actually requires the personal, physical presence of Christ on earth, and it cannot be committed today. This is actually where I land. This is the view that I hold. It is the most contextually grounded, I believe. Jesus is warning that by attributing his miracles to the power of Satan, they have crossed a border or border on crossing a point of no return. One commentator says here, "No forgiveness is possible for these Pharisees who witnessed miracles firsthand, know the truth of his Satan claims, and still blaspheme the Holy Spirit, because they have already rejected the fullest possible revelation." The fullest possible revelation of God is Jesus Christ standing right before you, and he is still hardening your heart. So they have committed this sin.

However, a second view calls it the malicious rejection. This view sees it as knowingly and deliberately calling the revealed truth of Christ evil, and holds that it is possible today for people to commit, though qualified, that God will always keep his people from committing it by his mercy, by his promise that "he who began a good work in you will complete it."

A third and common view is to see it as a final hardening; a persistent, irreversible rejection of the Spirit's testimony concerning Jesus Christ that is sealed upon one's death. Now this is certainly true, even if perhaps it is not what Christ means here. Once a person dies, their final unbelief means that they have committed an unforgivable sin. They have rejected the son of God.

Now I am of the position here that the first is the correct view; that this is a historically grounded sin. It required Christ's personal presence. However, I do not hesitate to say that the scripture holds out a warning elsewhere along similar lines of apostasy to those whom Christ has been plainly manifested. Think about Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10. We find these words: "It is impossible for those who are once enlightened, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance. If we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for sins, but a fearful looking for of judgement."

This perhaps refers to the sorry condition of those who have been raised in Christian homes, of those who have been raised under gospel preaching in the church Sunday after Sunday, and yet remain unbelieving. This speaks of those people who are in the pews under evangelistic ministry for years and years. And instead of softening the heart and making the heart more receptive to God, it only hardens it more and more. These people are unmoved by the gospel, unmoved to repentance. They tithe to the church. They attend the church. They are a part of the church, yet they do not fly to Christ.

In fact, I just saw on social media the other day a woman telling her testimony of how she sat in church for twelve years hearing the gospel before she finally actually got on her knees and cried out to God for forgiveness and was saved and born again. Ryle says of these people, "The same fire which melts the wax hardens the clay." So do not take hearing the gospel lightly, friend. I do not think the unforgivable sin can be committed today specifically. But what is the difference when there are many in churches with no feeling towards Christ? They will die outside him, still in their sins, and thus be lost forever, and then find that there is no forgiveness.

So my pleading with you this morning is not to concern yourself whether you are guilty of the unforgivable sin, but rather ask, do I know for sure that these sins that I know that I have have been placed upon Christ? Am I comforted by that truth? Have I gone and flown to Christ and asked for mercy? And you will know that this is true of you for sure if even now these words, "It is finished", and the Saviour's cry warm your heart. Do you know that you are in him?

No Hiding

We have a final heading to consider: it is no hiding. Matthew 12:33-37. Read again these final verses with me. "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 evil treasure what is evil."

We understand this, do we not? If you plant a pear tree, you get pears. You plant an apple tree, you will get apples. Jesus makes use of simple metaphors: trees, snakes, and treasures, to make an obvious point. The Pharisees do not believe because their tree, so to speak, is evil. In other words, they are unregenerate. Unregenerate men do what unregenerate men do, which is find the person of Christ and the gospel foolishness. They will not profess Christ. The word of God does not abide in them. So although the Pharisees think themselves stewards of the things of God, they are really just self-deceived. The tree is bad, and so the fruit that comes from that tree is the fruit of unbelief. That is what he is confronting here directly.

The reasoning is very similar actually to what we find in Mark 7. There Jesus makes the point that it is not about what goes into a person that defiles them. He is referencing the different traditions that the Pharisees had around hand washing and so on, to make sure someone was ritually clean before they would eat food. Christ just points out, look, it is not what goes into the body which makes the body defiled, in other words, that makes you a sinner. Rather, it is what comes out of man that defiles him. The defiled heart brings out what it is.

The classical illustration of this is that there is a certain kind of moth that will lay an egg in the buds of an apple. So that after the apple has grown, the worms will then burrow their way out of the apple. That is the nature of the human heart. Sin comes out of us because the heart is polluted, rather than, as some believe, sin goes in and pollutes us. No. We are sinners, and so we sin. We do not learn how to sin; we learn how to sin more.

So Christ contradicts that view here. He says, for there to be good fruit, righteous speech, right understanding of Christ and the gospel, for there to be this good treasure, something must change about the heart. Because until the tree is the right tree, it is always going to produce the kind of fruit that is in accordance with its nature. It must, as the Bible teaches, be a renewed heart, one replaced by God. The seat of our will must be acted upon to regenerate us so that our affections change.

So Christ is not demanding fruit from dead trees. He is not demanding pears from apple trees. He is telling us that the trees will produce that which is consistent with their nature. So for us to produce good fruit, we need a change, and a change from above. He is explaining to us, friends, how a person can be standing right in front of the Messiah and yet remain in unbelief. It's a problem with the tree. He is telling us why, when you are sharing the gospel with your neighbour and then you pray and you pray and nothing happens, no change in their view towards the gospel, and you think, how could they not even want to take this seriously? I am telling them about good news of salvation from sins and they just ignore it.

Can you see how these things help us understand? The good tree will bring forth the good fruit. That is, those of God's people will bring forth the fruits of repentance. They will follow. They will hear the voice of the shepherd and come. But until there has been a change in the nature, they will not come. Bad trees will only produce bad fruit. Jeremiah says that "the heart is desperately wicked; who can understand it?" And it will always show its works by its fruit.

There is a final second detail here. Consider how Jesus says that even every one of man's words will be taken into account at the judgement, and that words shall have this justifying effect. He says finally, "But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they give an accounting for it in the day of judgement. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned."

Last week we saw how the crowd was whispering, assessing Jesus: "Is this the son of David?" They were assessing Christ's words. Here Christ, in a way, turns it on its head, and he is saying, it is we who are being assessed for our words. By our words, we will be judged.

The words in question are clearly still a response to the Pharisees. They attributed with their words to Satan what was the Spirit's working through Christ. Those words are in view. Those words will be used against them in the final judgement and held against them.

But what is the truth that Christ is getting at here for us? Does this passage teach a kind of justification by works? That what we say in our lives will be part of the final decision that the Lord makes as to whether we enter heaven? No. We want to scratch that from our thinking. The sense of Matthew 12:37 "justified" means shown to be righteous by one's words. It is really the same analogy of the trees, the snakes, and treasure. He is not teaching justification in the sense Paul does when he says in Romans 3, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by his grace." That is not what Jesus is talking about here. There is a second sense of the term justified that can be used. It is a vindication sense. Your speech will betray who you are. That is the point. If you are in Christ and you know Christ and you love the gospel, your words will confirm that. They will vindicate what is in your heart. But if you do not know Christ, if you do not know his kingdom, you do not know his person, your words will also vindicate what is in your heart.

You know, when you see those police documentaries on the TV following police around New Zealand. They make an arrest and they say to someone, "Anything that you say can and will be used against you in a court of evidence." That is what human words will be on the last day. Our words will be used, and they will be found to be a vindication that we were in Christ, or they will be found to be a vindication that we never knew him, we slandered his name, we slandered Christ, made little of the cross.

This is what makes evangelism very difficult at times. I have shared the gospel with many people, and you end up just hearing slander against Christ. As you think about what that means, that on the last day they will give an account for those words they spoke against the gospel when they heard it, Don Carson says here, "Jesus is saying that every spoken word reflects the heart's overflow and is known to God."

So one application is that, yes, take care of our words. My heart trembles when I think of every careless word that I have spoken. It is one application, but it is not the primary application here. It is that man's heart always shows itself for what it is in the end in this life. And God will use it against the sinner who is unrepentant towards him. And God will be found to be just as he treats man according to his words.

Friends, if you are in the Lord Jesus, you have nothing to fear here. Every careless word that we have spoken is accounted for in the cross of Christ. He has died for every word that we have said. Let us pray as we close.