Honest to God | Sunday Message

Hey there. Thanks for listening to the Greg Laurie Podcast, a ministry supported by Harvest Partners. I'm Greg Laurie, encouraging you.

If you want to find out more about Harvest Ministries and learn more about how to become a Harvest Partner, just go to harvest.org. Why don't we pray? Father, we ask your blessing now as we open your Word.

Speak to us from it. We know it is true. And we thank you for it. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. We're in the book of Acts together. We're going through a brand new series that we're calling The Upside Down Life.

And the title of my message for you at this time is Honest to God. And we'll be looking at Acts chapter five. Well, Halloween is almost upon us. And is it just me or does it seem like people are making a bigger deal out of Halloween every year? In some cases, a bigger deal about Halloween than Christmas.

I read the other day that Americans spend ten billion dollars a year. This year alone, ten billion dollars will be spent on costumes and candy and all the other things that go with Halloween. I was at a mall the other day and people are already dressing up for Halloween. Or maybe that girl always dresses like a vampire.

I'm not sure, but it is here. And that means that some of us are thinking about who we're going to be for Halloween. In other words, what costume are we going to wear? I always deliberate and end up being a cowboy just because I have a cowboy hat. But here's some options out there if you're looking for Halloween costume ideas.

Frankly, all of them are really weird. So here's one. You can dress up like this guy riding around on an ostrich. Here's another one. You can be that fish. You know that little plaque on the wall with the fish that moves?

You can be that actual fish just like this guy. Here's another. I'm not sure what this is.

Sort of a swamp thing weird creature. Actually, I kind of like this one. I might consider this myself. Let's see what else we have here. Oh, hamburger. Hey, just be a hamburger.

I have to say I relate to this because I love hamburgers, but there's no way you could look cool wearing that hamburger hat on your head. Or you could be Spam. You know, just I am Spam and wear that little outfit around. And here's another one.

A guy's afoot. I don't even get this. Why would you want to come dressed as a foot? But that's an option for Halloween, I suppose. And here's some others that are more oriented toward babies. You can wrap your baby up like a Subway sandwich.

I think your baby, when it gets older, is going to be upset with you that you did this and took this photo of them, but this is an option. And if you don't want a Subway sandwich, you can make them sriracha sauce. Actually, I think this one is very cute. This is one I would probably do for my wife if she would agree to it.

No, not really. And finally, you can have a baby burrito. Look how cute with the little tomatoes. Just some ideas for you for Halloween. But what is Halloween, really?

It's dressing up in a costume, an outfit, and maybe you put on a mask, and you're pretending to be someone that you are not. And that is a technical definition of what a hypocrite is, because the root word of hypocrite, as used in the Bible, is an actor, a person who is playing a part. And of course, we've all heard it said by nonbelievers, the reason I'm not a Christian is because there are so many hypocrites in the church. And that's hard to refute, of course, because there actually are hypocrites in the church. And I've heard people say, when I find the perfect church that is hypocrite-free, I'll join it.

My response is, please don't, because you'll ruin it. The church is made up of flawed people, and we'll all have moments of hypocrisy, not to excuse it, but to simply explain it. But I was at a Harley store a while ago, and I was talking to some guy about the Lord, and he said, well, you say Jesus Christ is the only way to God, but there's all these other religions out there, and what about that?

How can one be true and the others not be true? And at that very moment, as he asked that question, a very loud Harley rode by. I said, you hear that? That is the sound of a Harley. You recognize the sound of the pipes of a Harley.

There are imitations. There's other bikes out there, but there's only one Harley Davidson. Of course, he agreed with that, being a Harley guy. By the way, when you're riding down the road on a Harley, and there's a biker coming the other direction, first you determine what kind of bike he is riding. If he is riding a Harley, you do this thing. This is the thing. You just kind of put your hand up like you acknowledge them, and they acknowledge you.

It's not like this. It's just like, oh, hey, you ride a Harley, I ride a Harley, we're cool, or at least we think we're cool, but if someone comes on a moped, you don't wave at them. You don't acknowledge them.

If they come on a different brand bike, you don't acknowledge them either. It's kind of an elitist thing, frankly, but the idea is there's only one genuine Harley Davidson, and there's a lot of imitations, and there's only one genuine Jesus Christ who is the only way to the Father, and then there are the imitations. So Satan has effectively flooded the market with cheap substitutes to confuse people, but I think if a person is truly seeking God, they will find their way to Jesus Christ. But hypocrites, what is a hypocrite? Sometimes we misunderstand it, like a Christian may say one thing and then contradict it. A Christian may lose their temper. A Christian may not treat their spouse the way they ought to.

A Christian may do something that, well, frankly, a Christian should not do, and there might be a non-believer standing by that will point that out very quickly. You hypocrite! Well, hold on now, just for a moment, buckaroo, what is a hypocrite? A hypocrite is a pretender. A hypocrite is an actor. A hypocrite is someone who wants you to believe that you're deeply spiritual when, in fact, you are not at all. A hypocrite is not a person who believes and then messes up.

We all do that. Listen, we're imperfect people trying to serve a perfect God, and we're gonna have moments where we blow it. Every believer falls short. Even the apostle Paul struggled with this sinful nature. He wrote in Romans chapter seven in verse 15, I don't understand myself at all. I really wanna do what is right, and I don't do it. And instead I do the very thing I hate.

Sound familiar? I know perfectly well what I'm doing is wrong, writes Paul, and my bad conscience shows me, and I agree that the law is good, but I can't help myself because it's sin inside me that makes me do these evil things. Now, Paul is not excusing sin. He's just saying, I have a struggle. I fall short.

I miss the mark. That was not necessarily Paul's everyday experience, but it is a candid admission on his part, don't you think? But having said that, it does not mean that as Christians we should be content with the state we're in. We should prayerfully and hopefully become more and more like Jesus each and every day because Paul also wrote in Philippians chapter three, my dear friends, I am still not all that I should be, but I'm focusing my energies on one thing, forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead. Listen to this. The further we go in the Christian life, the further we realize we need to go.

Let me say that again. The further we go in the Christian life, the further we realize we need to go. There's so much to learn, so much change that still needs to happen in our life.

No, we are not what we could be, but thankfully we are not what we were. Right? Okay, so that's a struggling Christian. That's a functioning Christian. Every Christian has their moments of hypocrisy.

They have their lapses. They do or say things they should not have done or said. Again, a hypocrite is different. A hypocrite is a man or a woman, as I said, that wears a mask. A hypocrite is someone who deliberately deceives others pretending to be something that they are not. And ironically, hypocrites are often the most critical of all people.

The hypocrite will be quick to jump down the throat of someone else or point out an inadequacy or point out a sin, when in reality they might be personally dealing with something far worse. Well, before us here in Acts 5 is a story of two classic hypocrites who found out the hard way you can't pull the wool over God's eyes. What I love about this story is it's very honest. It's a little alarming, quite frankly, to see what happened to these two people. But it shows the honesty of the author of the book of Acts.

That's Dr. Luke. It shows the honesty of the Bible in general that this story would be recorded for us to read and to learn from. This story shows that the early church was not all about romance and righteousness. They had imposters. They had fakers and posers and phonies, just like we have today. They had people who claimed to be Christians and contradicted it by the way that they were living.

They were messed up people doing messed up things just like today. But quite frankly, as we will read the story in a moment, we see that God dealt with them very harshly. Because of all sins that God hates, the sin of hypocrisy would be at the top of the list. It's worth noting that when Jesus, God in human form, walked this earth, he saved his most scathing words, his most critical words, not for what I might describe as garden variety sinners, just basic nonbelievers. No, Jesus saved his most critical words for the self-righteous hypocrites of the day, personified in the Pharisees. Now, Pharisees weren't bad in and of themselves. They were deeply religious men who committed themselves to the memorization of the scripture. There were even some good Pharisees out there, but many of them were actors. Many of them put on a great religious show, but they contradicted it by the way that they lived. But Jesus was very critical of them, calling them whitewashed tombs, meaning they looked good on the outside, but they were dead on the inside. But he did not have those same critical words for sinners. In fact, Jesus was actually called the friend of sinners. We see him with a woman actually caught in the act of adultery, and she was thrown at his feet, and the self-righteous hypocritical Pharisee said, the law says she should be stoned.

What do you say? They were trying to trap Jesus. They didn't care about this woman. Jesus looked around, rode on the sand, stood up, rode on the sand again. Then he said, let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone, and we read they left from the oldest to the youngest. Then Jesus looked at this woman who was immoral, a woman who was a sinner, and he said, woman, where are your accusers? It's even interesting to note the word he used for woman. It's a term of respect, almost as though you would say ma'am or lady. I don't think she had been called that in a long time. Ma'am, lady, where are your accusers?

She looked around. She says, I have none. Jesus says, neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. We see him taking time for sinful people, but I mean very critical words for the hypocrites. Listen, better to be an honest sinner than a lying saint. Better yet, be an honest saint and not a hypocrite. Bottom line, hypocrisy has probably kept more people from the Christian faith than any other sin out there, and it's probably driven a lot of kids away from the Lord who are raised in Christian homes.

I do this. This means quote, right? Because maybe they were raised in a home of hypocrisy. Chuck Swindoll, who in my estimation is one of the greatest preachers alive today, wrote these words in his book, The Grace Awakening. He says this, you want to mess up the minds of your children?

Here's how, guaranteed. Rear them in a legalistic, tight context of external religion where performance is more important than reality. Fake your faith, sneak around and pretend you're spiritual and train your children to do the same. Swindoll goes on to say, embrace a long list of dos and don'ts that you say publicly but you don't do privately and never own up to the fact that it's all hypocrisy.

Act one way and live another, and then he concludes, you can count on it. Emotional and spiritual damage will occur, end quote. That's so true. Because your kids are watching you. If you're a Christian parent, you're raising your children up in the way of the Lord, you don't just tell them what to do. You have to show them what to do.

You have to model it for them. And listen, they see it when you mess up. And it's not the worst thing for a parent to say to a child, I'm sorry that I said that or I'm sorry that I did that. I wasn't living up to what I should be living up to as a follower of Jesus. You think, I can't say that to my kid. They'll lose respect for me. They'll probably gain respect for you.

And while you're apologizing, you ought to probably apologize to your husband or your wife or your parents too because there's someone that we've offended, someone that we've been a bad example to, but at all costs, we want to avoid the hypocritical life. We want to seek to walk closely with the Lord and yes, practice what we preach. Now before we read our text here in Acts chapter five, let's get the backdrop of what is happening. Of course, we're in the book of Acts. We've already read about how God's Holy Spirit was poured out powerfully on the day of Pentecost and the believers were filled with the Holy Spirit and Peter preached a dynamic sermon and 3,000 people believed and the early church was formed. They continued, said fastly in the apostles' doctrine and the breaking of bread and of prayers and of worship and we read the Lord added to the church daily those that were being saved.

Then we see Peter going to the gate beautiful and there's a man who has been crippled from his birth there and the Lord directs Peter to raise the man to his feet, which he does, and this man who has not been able to walk is now walking and leaping and praising God and Peter preaches another sermon and this time 5,000 people come to faith in Jesus. Well, the devil is not happy, so he attacks. He attacks through persecution. The authorities clamp down on Peter and John and the church and they say stop preaching in the name of Jesus. What do the believers do? They pray. They pray for more boldness to preach in the name of Jesus and the Holy Spirit comes upon them and the room shakes where they were praying. So first Satan sort of comes in like a lion trying to destroy but now he realizes that is not working.

In fact, the church is getting stronger, not weaker, so he changes his strategy and as we come to Acts chapter five, we see Lucifer slithering in like a snake. Remember back in the Garden of Eden, the serpent came to Adam and Eve and deceived them and when I was a little kid, I used to collect snakes. In fact, I wanted to become a herpetologist one day.

A herpetologist is someone who studies reptiles. I was obsessed with all kinds of reptiles, lizards and snakes and I had every kind of snake you can imagine. I was bitten by every kind of snake as well but I just love snakes. I remember one time I talked my mom into buying me a snake at a pet store and so we put it in the trunk of our car and by the time we got home, somehow the snake had gotten out of his little cage and he was somewhere in that car and my mom said, I'm never driving that car again. Well, a week later, she had to drive it and so she pulled into an intersection and she was waiting at a red light and suddenly she felt a cold coil drop on her ankle. She opened up the door, put her foot up, jumped out and ran into the intersection screaming and there was a police officer there and he said, ma'am, what's wrong? She said, there's a snake in my car. So the officer goes back and looks and it wasn't a snake, it was a loose coil that had dropped on her ankle but she never drove the car after that. She gave it to me so that worked out but the funny thing about a snake is there was just a little opening in that cage and they got through and that's the devil. You know, you give him an inch, he'll take a mile. You open up one little area of your life and he'll move in.

You invite him in for a cup of tea and next thing you know, you're having a 12-course meal with him and he'll be setting up shop. That's why the Bible says don't give place to the devil and so here the serpent comes very deceptively sort of infiltrating the church through this couple that are identified as Ananias and Sapphira. Before we read what happened to them, understand what was happening in the church. So everyone was helping each other out because they were persecuted because some of them had lost their employment because of their faith.

The Christians were sort of pooling their resources. It was voluntarily done and one of the believers in the church named Barnabas had a piece of property on the island of Cyprus so he sold it and he gave the money to the church. He said just invest this in the ministry and you know, it's funny, Barnabas is referred to in the book of Acts as the son of encouragement and whenever you read a Barnabas, he was encouraging someone. Are you a Barnabas?

That's a great calling to have to be an encourager because there's plenty of discouragers out there, aren't there? So Barnabas gave this piece of property over, turned the resources over to the church. No one pressured him to do this. He didn't have to do this.

He did it voluntarily because he wanted to do it. So Ananias and Sapphira are watching this and they're seeing how wonderful this is and they decide they're gonna do their own version of it and here's what happens in Acts chapter five, starting in verse one. There was a man named Ananias who with his wife Sapphira sold some property. He brought part of the money to the apostles but he claimed it was the full amount. His wife agreed to this deception. So notice it was a deception.

Verse three, then Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart? You lied to the Holy Spirit. It kept some of the money for yourself.

This property was yours to sell or not sell as you wished or not and after selling it, that money was yours to give away. Why would you do a thing like this? You were not lying to us but to God. Check out verse five, as soon as Ananias heard these words, he fell to the floor and died. Everyone who heard this was terrified and some young men wrapped him up in a sheet and took him out and buried him.

About three hours later, his wife came in not knowing what had happened. Peter asked her, what was the price that you and your husband received for your land? She replied, yeah, that was the price and Peter says, how could the two of you even think of doing a thing like this, conspiring together to test the Spirit of the Lord?

You might underline that, so they were deceiving. They were lying to God. They were testing the Spirit of the Lord and just outside the door, the young men who buried your husband, they'll carry you out too. Instantly, she fell to the floor and died and when the young men came in and saw that she was dead, they carried her out and buried her beside her husband and great fear gripped the entire church and all others who heard what happened.

We'll stop there. Okay, heavy duty story, kind of a little scary. You know, sometimes people say, I wish we could see more miracles today like we saw back in the days of the book of Acts.

Oh, really? Do you wish God was doing this today because if this was happening in the church today, well, every church would have to have a full-time undertaker on staff and a morgue in the basement. People would be dropping like flies. Reminds me of a story I heard of a preacher who was moonlighting as a lifeguard to make a little extra money and as it turned out, people were dying near his lifeguard. Sounds like every day, people were drowning. They thought, what is the problem with this preacher lifeguard? He has been trained properly, so they went to observe him and someone was out in the ocean drowning and the preacher looked at him and said, God bless you, I see that hand. God bless you, I see that hand.

Get it? You know, preachers do that sometimes. But anyway, here's the point is let's be thankful to God this does not happen to people in the church today. This is severe, admittedly, but let's understand what the real sin was. Again, I wanna emphasize no one forced Ananias and Sapphira to give anything over to the church.

They could've kept their land. But they wanted to appear virtuous and they were willing to do it in a deceptive way and lie to God and test the Holy Spirit. Look at what Peter says, verse four. You have not lied to men but to God. The specific sin they committed was they lied to the Holy Spirit according to Acts five, verse three, which of course is identified as lying to God.

So we learned something there. The Holy Spirit is God. And secondly, the Holy Spirit has a personality. You can't lie to an object or a force. Some people think the Holy Spirit is just some power out there. No, the Holy Spirit, part of the trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and he can be lied to.

In fact, the Bible points out a number of sins that can be specifically committed against the Holy Spirit. We've already pointed out you can lie to him. By the way, you can insult him. You can grieve him. You can quench him. You can resist him.

And finally, you can blaspheme him. So in this case, they were lying to the Spirit and they were testing the Spirit. Again, they were pretending to be something that they were not.

But before we condemn them, let's think about ourselves. Have you ever tried to appear more spiritual than you really are? You know, sometimes in a prayer. We're not praying to God. We're praying to impress, using a lot of flowery language, or going really, really long, thinking that will make people think we're maybe more spiritual than we really are, or we'll brag about our accomplishments. You know, today, as I was praying for two hours and that was, of course, after I read Scripture for four hours. But anyway, the Lord spoke to me.

Why are you saying that? Do you want us to think you're more spiritual than you are? Or you might say, well, as I was out sharing the gospel with people and 20 people came to Jesus today and that was before breakfast. You know, be careful that you don't put on some kind of performance. Coming back to the Pharisees, Jesus made this statement about them in the Sermon on the Mount.

This is from a modern translation. He says, be especially careful when you're trying to be good so you don't make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won't be applauding when you do something for someone else.

You know, sometimes we may do something for the theater of it. In worship, we'll lift our hands higher and sing louder than anybody and that's fine if it's genuine worship, but don't do it to impress people or try to make them think you're more spiritual than you are. Sometimes people will play the spiritual card if it works to their advantage. There might be a Christian girl and she meets some guy and he asks her out, hey, would you go out on a date with me tonight?

Let me take you to dinner. She says, well, I'm a Christian and I would only go out with a Christian. Are you a Christian?

And they'll say, uh, yeah. Praise God. Absolutely, I'm a Christian.

Doesn't the Bible say something about greeting one another with a holy kiss? Wait, is that guy really a Christian? He might say he's a Christian, but is he really a Christian? You don't wanna get involved romantically with someone who is not a believer or sometimes when you're buying something. Maybe it's a car.

Maybe it's something else. And the salesman says, so, they ask you some questions and you mention, well, I'm a Christian. Oh, I'm a Christian too, they'll say. Oh, praise God, hallelujah. I remember I was talking to one salesman a while ago when I was looking at some truck and he was cursing up a blue storm, all kinds of words, and then the moment he found out I was a pastor, all of a sudden it's hallelujah and praise the Lord.

Come on, man. That's hypocrisy. You're pretending to be something you are not.

You are not. We see this with politicians too where they're running for office and they wanna get the evangelical vote so all of a sudden they show up at church for a little photo op and they're tying in some religious rhetoric into their speeches to win us over. That's hypocrisy.

That's not honesty. Or maybe you get pulled over. You're going over the speed limit and then the cop is citing you and you say, oh, but officer, would you just forgive me? Just let me off the hook here and maybe, are you a Christian, officer?

Maybe you would be forgiving. I did hear about a pastor that was making a hospital call and there were no parking spaces so he thought, I'm gonna have to double park so he double parked his car and he wrote a little note on a piece of paper that had his name, Pastor Smith, and he wrote, dear officer, I've circled this block 10 times and I can't find a parking space but I have someone I need to visit and then he wrote down the words, forgive us our trespasses. So the pastor came back about an hour later and he saw that he'd been cited by an officer. He pulled up the ticket.

He was a little shocked after the note he had written and the officer wrote these words, dear pastor, I've circled this block for 10 years. If I don't give you a ticket, I lose my job and then the officer wrote a scripture, lead us not into temptation. You know, we can throw verses around to impress people or to get out of things but that's acting. That's hypocrisy. Better to be a sinner and admit it than try to pretend to be something you really are not. Now we can condemn Ananias and Sapphira for their dishonesty but we've all had our moments of hypocrisy.

We've all had our moments of dishonesty and if God killed religious deceivers today, how many in our ranks would actually stand? The hypocrite extraordinaire to me is Judas Iscariot and I don't know why this is but whenever I type in Iscariot in a document, a Word document and then I run spell check, it wants to change his last name to Escargot, Judas Escargot. Maybe that was his French brother, I'm not sure but Judas Iscariot, the hypocrite extraordinaire because this guy fooled everyone but Jesus. We often think of Judas as so obviously the deceiver when you watch a movie about the disciples. Well, there's Judas.

Everyone had a white robe. He wore a black leather robe. How could they not know he was the bad guy? No, he was such a good guy. I'll put that in quotes because on one occasion, there was a sacrificial thing done by a woman who brought very expensive perfumed and anointed Jesus' feet with it and the fragrance filled the room and Judas Iscariot said this should have been sold and the money given to the poor. What a waste and everyone probably thought, oh man, Judas, he's such a righteous dude. We should all be more like Judas but of course, there's a little commentary there in the gospel that says this he said not because he cared for the poor but because he was stealing the money, right?

That's a hypocrite and he was such a good hypocrite. He was such a good actor that when Jesus revealed in the upper room, one of you is going to betray me, each one of them said, is it me? If Judas was as obvious as we may think he was, everyone would have pointed in unison and said, it's him. It's the guy in the black robe. We always knew it.

No, no one knew it and then here's what made matters even worse. Judas said to the religious authorities, I will identify Jesus for you. Isn't it interesting that Judas had to identify Jesus? Because whenever you see religious art, it's always clear who Jesus is. Everyone has muted colors and dusty robes and Jesus' robe is very white and he has the blue sash. Where did the blue sash come from?

It's not in the Bible. So he's got that blue sash, a little bit of a glow coming off of him. You can pick him out in a crowd.

Well, not in real life. Judas had to tell them which one was Jesus. He says, I'll identify him by kissing him, kissing him. How about just pointing to him? There's Jesus. Now, I'll identify him with a kiss. So here's Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane praying with the disciples and here comes the temple guard with their torches and their shields and their spears and their swords and here comes Judas leading the charge and he goes to Jesus to kiss him but Christ says to Judas, friend, why have you come? Friend? Jesus called Judas friend. He should have said, fiend, why have you come? I know why you're here but unbeknownst to Judas or perhaps unnoticed by Judas Escargot, Judas Iscariot, Jesus was offering this traitor, this hypocrite, one last chance to repent and Judas kissed him but in the original language, it means he kissed him repeatedly so it wasn't a peck on the cheek. He kissed him and kissed him and kissed him again. Why, why not just point to Jesus as I said earlier because Judas wanted to appear to be really spiritual. That's the hypocrite.

They want you to think they're spiritual when they aren't but sooner or later, you're gonna have to face the music. Now some of you may remember this but not all of you will but back in the 90s, there was a duo known as Milli Vanilli and Milli Vanilli had a big hit song. It sold 30 million copies until it was determined that they actually didn't sing on their own CD so they would appear in live performances and on TV shows and they would basically lip sync the song which ironically was titled Girl You Know It's True but it wasn't true and then it was finally discovered that they had not sung and they had to give their award back but this expression face the music is said to have originated in Japan. There was a man that was in the Imperial Orchestra who could not play a single note but he was very wealthy and he wanted to have the prestige of playing in this orchestra especially for the emperor so the conductor agreed to this and gave the man a flute and this man would pull the flute up to his lips. He would move his fingers but not play a single note and this deception went on for months but then a new conductor took over the orchestra and he said everybody is going to have to audition. I want to see what your skills are and this guy was under a lot of stress because he knew he really was not a flautist but his moment came and there he stood before the real conductor and he couldn't play and had to admit he had been a fraud, he'd been a phony, he'd been a hypocrite so he had to face the music.

One day you and I will have to face the music. Maybe you fooled other people but you haven't fooled God. Listen to this, you can fool some of the people all of the time. You can fool all of the people some of the time but you can't fool God any of the time. We need to be honest to God. You're not gonna pull the wool over God's eyes.

He sees and knows all things. I mentioned earlier that there are specific sins you can commit against the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's purpose according to Jesus is to convince us of sin, righteousness and the judgment to come. In other words, the Holy Spirit comes to the non-believer and he basically makes them aware of their sinful condition not to condemn them but to bring them to Jesus. The work and ministry and role of the Holy Spirit is to bring us to Jesus so when we read we resist the Spirit, this means that we say no to it. So right now there might be someone watching me who senses a tugging deep in their heart saying this is true, I need to get right with God. I've been a hypocrite or I've been playing some religious game but then you say no, no, no, I don't wanna do that. Now you're resisting the Spirit. That's a specific sin identified in the Bible. Then the Bible talks about insulting the Spirit.

What does that mean? That's the person who takes the great truth of the gospel and completely dismisses it. I don't care that Jesus died on the cross for me they would say.

I don't care that he laid his life down for me. I reject all of it. That's an insult. So you're resisting him, now you're insulting him but here's the big one. The blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said all kinds of sin will be forgiven except the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Why is that the unforgivable sin?

Well it's really the completion of those other sins. You start by resisting, then you're insulting and ultimately you're blaspheming. To blaspheme the Spirit means you reject his work altogether so let me simplify. To blaspheme the Holy Spirit means that you say I don't care if Jesus is the way to the Father. I don't care that he died on the cross and I don't want him in my life. And the Bible says how can we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? Listen to this. God has dropped one lifeline from heaven for us to come into a relationship with him.

It's not multiple choice. It's only Jesus. Only Jesus the Son of God was uniquely qualified to bridge the gap between a holy God that we've all offended and sinful humanity. He died there on the cross in our place and it was Jesus who said I am the way, the truth and the life and no man comes to the Father but by me. And it was Peter who said here in the book of Acts there is salvation in no other name. There is no other name given under heaven whereby a man or a woman can be saved.

It's Jesus folks. Don't resist the Spirit. Don't insult the Spirit. Don't blaspheme the Holy Spirit. Respond to the prompting of the Holy Spirit.

Revelation 22 verse 17 says the Spirit and the bride say come. Let anyone who hears this say come. Let anyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who desires let them drink freely from the water of life.

Listen. You have a spiritual thirst deep down inside of you and we try to fill that thirst with a lot of things. Sometimes we try to fill it with possessions.

Sometimes we try to fill it with religion and ritual. Sometimes we try to fill it with other things, substances, drugs, alcohol or even relationships but listen that thirst you have is a thirst for God himself. Only Christ will quench that deep spiritual thirst in you. You can have all of your sin forgiven.

Right here, right now. You can come into a relationship with the Lord. Have you been playing the part of a Christian but you really don't know Christ?

Have you actually asked Jesus to come into your life? Well Greg, I was raised in a home of hypocrisy. That's cute but that won't hold water on judgment day. I know there's hypocrites in the church. I'm not justifying it. I'm simply saying Jesus did not say follow my people.

He said follow me. Jesus will never be a hypocrite to you. Let's be honest. That whole hypocrite thing is an excuse that you're using to not believe in Jesus. Yes, there are hypocrites in the church but that just reminds you that there's a genuine article there because there are so many cheap imitations.

The genuine article, if you will, is Christ himself who will come into your life and forgive you of all of your sin. So listen, as I close now, if you want your sin forgiven, if you wanna know that when you die you will go to heaven, if you would like to have your spiritual thirst satisfied, if you would like to find the meaning and purpose of life, I'm gonna pray a simple prayer and I'm gonna ask that as I pray this prayer, you would pray this prayer after me. You can pray it out loud if you like. You can pray it quietly in your heart.

Maybe you're in a room with some other people or maybe you're all alone just watching this on your phone or your tablet or a computer or maybe your TV set, wherever you are. Jesus Christ is there with you and he stands at the door of your life and he knocks and he says if you'll hear his voice and open the door, he will come in. Would you like him to come into your life?

Would you like to have a relationship with God? If so, pray this prayer with me right now. Just pray these words. Lord Jesus, I know that I'm a sinner but I know that you're the savior who died on the cross for my sin and rose again from the dead. I turn from my sin now and I choose to follow you from this moment forward. I repent of my sin. Thank you for hearing this prayer. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Hey everybody, thanks for listening to this podcast. To learn more about Harvest Ministries, follow this show and consider supporting it. Just go to harvest.org and to find out how to know God personally, go to harvest.org and click on Know God.