Let's open in our Bibles to Mark's Gospel, chapter 3. And today is a very special day as we conclude our look at this very foreboding topic that our Lord brought up of the eternal, unpardonable, unforgivable sin. And all that needs to be known about it truly, in essence, is right here in this text, although we will enlarge upon it and conclude that topic this morning. But look at chapter 3 of Mark's Gospel, verse 28, because there are two things that we must remember about the eternal sin that Christ is speaking about. The first one is in verse 28, and that is that Christians cannot commit the unpardonable sin. Look at verse 28. It says, That's important. In fact, if you want to understand the book of Hebrews, look at the interplay between you and them, us and them, or they. Because always our Lord and the writer of Hebrews give a great distinction between those in the faith and those who apostatize and leave Christ. And look at verse 28. Truly I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men in whatever blasphemies they utter. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin. Now turn back to the book of Hebrews where we were this morning in our meditation. And you can just be parked right there in the second chapter of Hebrews, and we're going to really enjoy some magnificent passages from there. And as you're turning, I want you to remember God forgives sin. And I want to reemphasize that truth that God forgives sin. It's part of His character, it's part of His nature, it's part of the ongoing expression of His deity to us. We saw that by His very nature, He is forgiving. In fact, we were reading from one of the Minor Prophets, a magnificent passage, I'll read to you again in Micah chapter 7, as it said, In verse 18, who is a God like thee who pardons iniquity, who passes over the rebellious acts of the remnant of your possession? He does not retain his anger forever. He delights in unchanging love. He will have compassion on us. He will cast all their iniquity into the depths of the sea. Our God is a God who, by His very nature, is a God who is forgiving. Secondly, we saw last week that God, by His repeated example, is forgiving. In the perfection of His creation, when man fell, God initiated the restoration. God came to man. God made a bridge through the cross of Christ, anticipated through the sacrificial system, through all of the Old Testament revelation. He made a bridge to His salvation and His righteousness. He was very patient and forgiving with the patriarchs. with Moses, with David, in Israel, in the New Testament, with Peter, in his denials, in his rebellion, in his blasphemy, and the apostles, with Paul, in his murder. He was very, very patient and forgiving, and with us today. If you meet a true born-again Christian, that is a person who acknowledges forthrightly that they are a sinner and God is so merciful and forgiving them. When you meet someone that says, well, I'm not sure I'm a sinner, then you should be not sure that they're a Christian. Because a Christian is one who is constantly confessing and agreeing with God that we have sinned against a holy God. But God, by His repeated example, is forgiving. Thirdly, we learned last week that God is infinitely powerful to forgive. And that is really the essence of the 28th verse of Mark's Gospel, the third chapter we just looked at. Because he forgave a murderous Moses and a depressed Elijah. He took a denying Peter and he cleansed him and made him a marvelous leader in the first decade of the church. He took a lustful Samson and he made him to be in God's hall of fame. He made him one who God said was his servant. He forgave him and used him. He took a doubting Thomas and made him an apostle who was willing to stand up for Christ until death. He took a deceptive Jacob and made him the father of the people of God and forever emblazoned his name as Israel, a prince with God. But our Lord has a lot to say about sin and a lot to say about forgiveness. I was interested this week to studied just specifically what our Lord said about sin. I heard one famous television preacher say that if he believed in sin, he'd preach about it. And I thought, how sad that he doesn't believe Christ, because our Lord Jesus Christ named 16 specific sins in his ministry, and he alluded to all the rest, but there are 16 specific sins that Christ lists off as being very, very much a part of our lives that we must repent of. Christ said in Mark 11 that sacrilege is a sin, that's violating those holy consecrated things to God. In Matthew 23 he said hypocrisy is a sin, it's a dreadful sin where a person says one thing and does another. Covetousness in Luke 12. is a sin that Christ often warned about and he said be careful because covetousness is much like idolatry is that which we long for we elevate and worship blasphemy ascribing the miracles of Christ to the power of Satan as in this passage he said is the unforgivable sin transgressions of the law in Matthew 15 he said you can break the law and that's a sin pride he often spoke about Matthew 20 and Luke 7 It's the position of seeking attention or things or all the acclaim for oneself. Being a stumbling block to another, in Matthew 18, he said, beware, doing something that causes another to go into sin is a sin for the one that causes the other person to go into sin. Being disloyal, Putting comforts or even proper duties before loyalty to Christ, in Matthew 8, is always sin. If Christ has called us to something, the Scriptures say that a man of God will swear to his own hurt. In other words, if we have affirmed we will do something for God, even if it's going to cost us time or even money that we didn't expect, we don't back out. We are loyal. to the promises made to Christ. Of course, our Lord spoke much about immorality in Matthew 5. For five verses, he talks about the lusts of human depraved sinfulness, fruitlessness. In fact, our Lord put it this way, it's a sin to not bow to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And someone who persists in that unbowing state demonstrates that they have never been converted Anger, Matthew 5. There are sins of the speech, Matthew 5 and Matthew 12. The Lord warned against perjuring oneself by failing to keep a promise. In fact, in Ecclesiastes it says, let your words be few. Why? Because God is in heaven and He's listening. And He holds us accountable. We'll give an account for every word that we speak. That's why the great man of God in the Old Testament, Samuel, it says that he did not let his words fall to the ground. I always liked that description of him. Because around most people's lives it looks like fall in New England, piles of leaves, because their words just are aimless and falling. The scriptures say a man and woman of God is careful in their speech. Another sin Christ mentioned in Matthew 6 is showing off, parading one's supposed piety, trying to be in the right spot, say the right thing, be in just the position of spirituality. That superficial, fake showing off of piety is sin. Another sin Christ mentioned is a lack of faith. Having anxiety concerning one's needs shows a lack of faith in God's provision. He said, be anxious for nothing. Even if there's something that looks like it's a dreadful turn of events, it says in Romans 8, God himself is actively working everything together. It's too bad the way some translations translate that beautiful, beautiful, powerful Greek sentence. It says, and we know, and the first and most important word is, God works all things together for good. It doesn't say, and we know that all things kind are out there working together for good somehow, some way. It's God is personally, actively orchestrating and working all things together for good. And it's very important for us to have faith in that plan and only take care of avoiding sins personally that his hand be not held back. Irresponsible stewardship is another sin Christ mentioned in Matthew 25 and Luke 19. It says that God has entrusted us with a storehouse of natural, spiritual, as well as physical possessions. We have natural talents, we have spiritual giftedness, and we have physical possessions. And of those, collectively, He holds us accountable as a steward. And if we're irresponsible, then we are in sin. And finally, in Luke 18, Christ said that prayerlessness is a sin. And I think it's very important for us to realize that the more we are in dependence to God, the more we will pray without ceasing. Well, Christ details those 16 sins, and there are many, many more, but what's amazing is that all of them can be forgiven. except for one. And that's what we're looking at this morning. Because there is a sin that can never be forgiven. Even though God is a God of forgiveness, even though God is a God of infinite character, which is characterized by forgiving and covering sin and unchanging eternal love, He still has said there is a sin that He will not forgive and that sin is an active, willful, blaspheming of the Holy Spirit. First of all, this type of sin, this unforgivable sin, is firstly not plain blasphemy, which is defined in the Bible through Scripture as the defiant, irreverent, speaking against and questioning or defaming or mocking a holy God. Peter blasphemed Christ. Paul blasphemed the name of Christ. He said that in 1 Timothy. He said he was a blasphemer. Now that's not normal blasphemy Christ can't forgive. It's blasphemy that's targeted knowingly against the Holy Spirit. We're going to see this as we go through Hebrews. In fact, in 1 Timothy 1, 13 and 14, Paul said his blasphemy of being forgiven shows the forgiving, loving nature of God. In Mark 14, 71, Peter blasphemed and denied Christ, and yet he was willing when he returned to Christ to be restored and he was forgiven, and Christ remembered those sins no more. We're not talking about plain blasphemy. And secondly, this is not something that a born-again Christian can commit. Now, that's where we want to get to the book of Hebrews. And a lot of you, I don't think you know Hebrews, some of you very well, if you're new in the faith. It's one of the magnificent books of the Bible. Let's flip over to chapter 6, and then we'll go back to chapter 2. But Hebrews chapter 6 and verse 19 and these are some important verses that if you are a of the clan of Bible markers that they ought to be part of your marked verses that jump out at you in our circle and start and underline because there are five verses in the book of Hebrews that talk about what our salvation is, how impervious it is to loss, to ruin, how impervious it is to ever being turned away from the power of an eternal God who holds us in His hand. Starting in verse 19, look at the salvation we have as a Christian. Firstly, in Hebrews 6.19, this hope, that's our salvation, we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast, and one which enters within the veil. Wow. We have an anchored hope in Jesus Christ that the anchor is not thrown down in the depths of the sea to hook on some mud down there and hold us through the storms of life. When a Christian is anchored, they don't throw their anchor down, they throw their anchor up. In fact, they didn't have to worry about throwing it, it's already been thrown for them. Within the veil, it's in the holy of all, we are held and kept by the power of God. I like the way D.L. Moody put it. He was once meeting after his crusades in England with a man who was questioning his salvation. And they went out for a walk, and as they went for a walk, they saw a little boy on the Dover Cliffs as he was there flying a kite, and the kite had gotten so high in the clouds, they couldn't see it. With the low clouds coming in off from the ocean, he just had a string going up. And the man came along, talking to Moody, and he says, how do you know that you're saved? He walked up to that boy with the kite, and he said, son, what are you doing? He said, I'm flying a kite. And Moody said, I don't see the kite. The boy says, yeah, but I feel the tug. It's pulling me upward. And Moody said, you know what? Hebrews chapter 6 and verse 19 says that we have an anchor, and contrary to an anchor that ties us down, it's an anchor that tugs us upward into God's presence. And we have, on the basis of this marvelous verse, look at verse 20. Where's the veil? It's where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek. First, this morning, our salvation is so great because we have an eternally anchored salvation in the very presence of a thrice holy God, and He it is that's tugging us ever toward Him eternally. Look at chapter 7 and verse 16. If that one wasn't powerful enough, chapter 7, verse 16 is a magnificent text. I remember once, on this little phrase, preaching for a whole hour to a bunch of college students, just the incredible ramifications of verse 16, the last phrase. I'll read it to you and then stress the end. Who has become such, not on the basis of law, of physical requirement, this is talking about Christ being perfect after the order of Melchizedek, but look at the end of verse 16. but according to the power of an indestructible life." This morning, if you know Jesus Christ, not only do you have an anchor of your soul, sure and steadfast, which enters within the veil, even where Jesus Christ has gone before us, but you are possessing an indestructible life. I think that's important to really consider. How do people like Latimer and Ridley take the flames of being burnt at the stake in England 500 years ago and how could they stick their hands out and say that though the flames consume my body, yet I know that God holds my soul and I'll ever be with Him. How did they have that hope? Verse 16. They knew that they had an indestructible life. How do people make it when they go off into terrible situations where they have to give their life for the cause of Christ? How do they survive? How do you make it at work when people mock you? How do you make it if you're under severe temptation with someone morally or economically or philosophically seeking to bankrupt you? How do you make it? Verse 16, you live after the power of an endless which the King James says, or an indestructible, which the New American Standard says, life. We have the same quality of life as God does. We have the same duration of life as that God does. We have an endless, indestructible, eternal life when we're born into God's family. A Christian has an indestructible life. A Christian has an anchored soul. We won't drift off, we won't crash in the rocks, we won't sink. were anchored. Thirdly, look at chapter 8, verse 12. And these are powerful. In each chapter, for five chapters, it gives these powerful promises about salvation. Chapter 8, verse 12 says, thirdly, that a Christian has their sins forgotten by God. I like that. 8, 12. For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. Does that mean God can't? No, it means He won't. It's not that he can't remember our sins, he's infinite, but he has made a conscious, willful choice to not remember our sins against us anymore. What's really sad is that it's the other Christians that always remember him. It's all the other people that remember him. When God forgives, he forgets. And maybe we as believers should be very similar in our attitudes. as He commands us, that we should also be forgiving even as He is forgiving. So a Christian is one who has an anchored soul, an indestructible life, their sins have been forgotten. Look at chapter 9 and verse 14. Here's another one. A Christian is one who's been cleansed, not by their own efforts, not by the church, not by any human instrument, no matter how great or hallowed that human might be, but they have been cleansed by God Himself. Look at 9.14. How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, this is a triune verse by the way, all the members of the Trinity are involved in salvation. The blood of Jesus Christ, the eternal Holy Spirit, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God." You notice the three parts here. Christ is suffering, the Father is in heaven, and the Holy Spirit is offering the sacrifice and the blood of Christ to God. What a marvelous triune God all involved in our salvation. "...who offered himself without blemish to God. Cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God." What he's saying is, how can the eternal just incredibly powerful blood, the offering of Jesus Christ, how can that not fail to cleanse us from everything? And the answer is, it can't fail. It won't fail. We are cleansed by God. He, through the blood of Christ, mediated by the Eternal Spirit, sees us cleansed that from our consciences we can serve the living God and know that those sins are no more. He's forgotten them. He's cleansed them. He, as Micah 7 told us earlier in the morning, has hidden them. He has put them in the depths of the sea of His forgetfulness. And that should be good for us. And we should go on. Look at chapter 10, verse 22. It's the fifth of the marvelous Pentagon of beautiful truth about our salvation, the five-fold reality. We have an anchored soul. We have an indestructible life. We have sins that are forgotten. Those sins have been cleansed away. Not only has God forgotten them, He's cleansed us of them. And finally, we have an assured salvation. Verse 22, draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith." You know what God said, I don't want you wavering, I don't want you doubting, I don't want you worrying, I don't want you thinking, oh, I've got it today, I'm losing it tomorrow, or I'll never hold on to the end. He said, I want you to come to Me with the awareness that it's Me that's anchored you, Me that has cleansed you, Me that has paid the price for you. And He said, I want you to come to Me, verse 22, with a full assurance of faith. How can we have that full assurance? By having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, our bodies washed with pure water. God wants us closer and closer to Him, cleansed evermore, and so assured of our right standing with Him. Well, as I said, secondly, the eternal unforgivable sin is not something a born-again Christian can commit, because it's eternal and unforgivable, and a Christian is eternally saved and forgiven. Thirdly, the eternal sin is a willful rejection of conviction by God's Holy Spirit. Now turn back to Hebrews 2, and I want to show you what I mean. Hebrews chapter 2, starting in verses 3 and 4, and I want to show you that the eternal unforgivable sin is a willful rejection of conviction by the Holy Spirit about Jesus Christ or about the Holy God that He is. It's a willful turning away from a very cognizance of a conviction by God's Spirit. And when that person is convicted, when they're aware, and when the Holy Spirit has brought them to a point of conviction, they have started to taste of the power of God, and the power of the Word, and the awareness of salvation. They look at that and they say, I want nothing to do with that, and they turn from it. And that turning is unforgivable, and it's also never can it be changed, that turning is irrevocable, that apostatizing. Look at chapter 2 of Hebrews, verse 3. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation after it was at first spoken through the Lord and it was confirmed to us by those who heard, God also bearing witness with them both by signs and wonders and various miracles and by the gifts of the Holy Spirit according to his own will? You see, The people that this book of Hebrews is being written to is the first century group of people known as Jews. And their people, these Jewish folks that the gospel was panoramically played out for them in Jerusalem and in Galilee, those first century believers that scattered around the New Testament world had looked at the gospel, had tasted of it, and had been with eyes open looking at it. And this book of Hebrews is a warning to them that they must not, if they're sitting on the fence and straddling, whether they're gonna go back to all the rituals and mechanics and the works that they had fostered for themselves in Judaism, or if they were gonna go on to true salvation and total trusting in the finished work graciously through Jesus Christ. They were sitting right in the middle. And this book is written to them and it says, how will we escape if we, verse 3, neglect so great a salvation. What's that great salvation? Well, it's a salvation that first was spoken by the Lord. For three and a half years, He preached it. He said, I'm going to be the sacrifice of God. I'm the Lamb of God. I'm the one that's going to pay the price. I'm going to lay down my life for the sheep. I'm going to be raised again the third day. And through believing in me, you have eternal life. It was spoken by the Lord. It was confirmed to us by those who heard. Who are those? The 12 apostles. The 500 witnesses. It was confirmed all over Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the outermost parts of the earth. It was confirmed. Verse 4, God also was bearing witness with them. And that's why in the initial outflow of the Gospel message, not today, in the initial foundational times, God bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles. What were those for? Primarily tongues were for a sign to Israel. And that manifestation of the Holy Spirit was to cause them to see what God had promised for them. And verse 4 says, God was bearing witness in the gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His will. Well, the first century Jews in the apostolic period, in Hebrews 2, it says, don't neglect the salvation that was offered because the Holy Spirit attested it. Look at chapter 3, starting in verse 12, because this is the first time he brings in this terrible concept of turning willfully. In verse 12 it says, take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart in falling away from the living God. And what he's saying is, a believer will not, listen, apostanize. That word apostani means to fall away, to leave, to depart, to step aside from known truth. Now let's look at the portrait of that in chapter 6. This is perhaps one of the more difficult passages in all the scripture. But I think if we go through it carefully, you'll understand the flow of what the writer of Hebrews is saying. Hebrews 6, starting in verse 4. Verse 3 says, this we shall do if God permits. Verse 4, for in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit and have tasted of the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, verse 6, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to salvation. Every time you come to one of these passages in the book of Hebrews that talks about apostasy, the writer of Hebrews always changes from the the first person, I, us, we, to the third person, they and them. And what he does right here is he points out where he said it's impossible to renew them again to repentance. What? Since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to an open shame. What he says here is that it's possible for people to get near the Gospel, to listen, to accept, to have some activity going on in their lives through the Holy Spirit, convicting them, and all of a sudden they start seeing spiritual things, and then they see enough, and they look in full conviction at Jesus Christ, and they say, I don't want that. And it says, they turn, apostenai. They willfully depart, they leave, they turn their back on. They say, I want nothing to do with that. I don't want it. And the scriptures say in Hebrews chapter 6, verses 4 down through verse 8, that those that do that are truly a fulfillment of Christ's parable about the sower and the seeds. Because they've gotten the seed of the Word of God and it comes and it goes into the ground and it starts growing and then the thorns just choke it out. Or the birds, before it even sprouts, eat it up and take it away. Or it grows a little bit and it hits the rocks and it wilts and it dies. Now let me ask you this morning, you don't have to be much of a theologian, if the scriptures say that salvation is an indestructible life, And if some people get the good news of the Gospel and it takes root briefly in their lives and then it's destroyed, it's choked, it wilts, it dies, it's gone. Did they have an indestructible life from God? No. And that has been the theological contention through the ages. Half of Christendom say a Christian gets salvation and lose it. The other half say they never really had it. They only had an appearance of salvation. Whichever way you want to call it, a born-again Christian is one who has the endless indestructible power of God unto eternal life. And they taste the Word of God, they're partakers of the Holy Spirit, they taste the good things to come, and they don't fall away. That's a born-again believer. Those that do, once they look full in the face, in conviction at Jesus Christ, and they turn away, that's an eternal, unforgivable, unpardonable sin. Because they have willfully blasphemed the conviction of the Holy Spirit. You say, wait a minute, sometimes I doubt and I waver, and sometimes I have difficulty and I wonder if God, You're not talking about that. You're talking about a conscious, willful, hard-hearted rejection of the Gospel message. Let's keep going here because in Matthew chapter 12, turn back there, there's another occurrence of this sin, the eternal sin. The first group that the writer of Hebrews is writing about are those first century believers that are being warned not to go back to Judaism and those first century Jews that looked at Christ and rejected him. The second group that commit the unpardonable sin, not only are these people who reject the good news of the gospel in the book of Hebrews, but in Matthew 12, verse 32. And whoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him. Whoever says, Jesus, you don't look like God, you look like a man. Jesus, you don't act like God, you act like a man. He said, if you speak against me while I'm here on earth, he says, that can be forgiven. But whoever, verse 32, will speak against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him either in this age or in the age to come." Unforgivable. Unpardonable. He's saying to that group of believers that were following him and could see those religious leaders who were saying, you are Satan. You're doing that in Satan's power. To those that were following him, he says, you see what they're doing? He said, have come full in the face with an irrefutable truth that I'm who I say I am. I'm supernatural. And they don't want to bow to that. And they're trying to push off their conviction by saying, Christ was speaking that what I'm doing is through Satan's power. He says they have just committed an unforgivable sin. So in its essence, if you wanna purely, purely discuss the unforgivable sin, the first, fullest meaning of it is something that happened in the first century. Really, the elements of this happening again are not possible because Jesus is not walking on the earth. He is not presenting the gospel for the first time. He is not doing so with irrefutable power of the Holy Spirit. He is not God in human flesh and energized by the Holy Spirit with the Father bearing witness, speaking to the world. So in its fullest sense, Matthew 12 and Mark 3 cannot be reproduced. But the rejection of the gospel by anybody in this world after being presented the reality of the truth of Jesus Christ, if they turn from it, if they reject it, if they say no, that is unforgivable. Let me show you another example, and we've got to go look back to Genesis 4. Because I want to tie in the truth that this is eternal sin of rejecting the light of the gospel. Genesis 4 is, of course, the first self-righteous person on Earth. In fact, the beginning of all world religions began in Eden with the firstborn son of Adam and Eve named Cain. And Cain was a father of all those who want to be in God's family, but they want to get their own way. They want to be in God's family, but they don't want to enter God's way. They want to be called by God's name, but they want to do it themselves. That's called self-righteousness. It's called religion. It's called human achievement. And it says in Genesis 4, starting in verse 4, Abel on his part, or excuse me, verse 3. So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. I mean, he brought his gigantic watermelons, his huge squash. I'm sure back then, before the curse was too much and forced on the earth, that stuff must have grown magnificently. And you think you grow big stuff now. You can just imagine he had to bring in a truck you know, for one great big melon. He puts it right on the altar. And Abel, on his part, verse 4, also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering. Now, is that any mystery? It says in the book of Hebrews that Abel offered by faith. You see, God said, this is what I want. He said, I don't want what you can produce. I want you to put a offering that portrays the fact that you are saying, I can't save myself. I'm going to put this in my place. He said, I want you to put a lamb. I want you to put an animal that will be slain and its blood poured out. to show the coming sacrifice of Christ. We'll look at verse 5. But for Cain and his offering, God had no regard. So Cain got mad. Literally. And he got angry. And the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? Why is your countenance falling? If you do well, will your countenance be lifted up? See, God gave him an opportunity. He said, don't offer your fruits and vegetables. Do what I say. Come my way. But if you do not well, sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you, but you must master it." Well, the sin crouched at its door, the door of Cain's heart, the sin of self-righteous turning from the revealed truth of God. And what did he do? The same thing they did to Christ. Abel was such a living, vivid testimony of God's way that Cain couldn't stand it, so he killed him. I mean, that's the way you get rid of the message, right? You get rid of the messenger. Just like to get rid of the good news of the gospel, kill Christ. They thought they could get rid of the message if they got rid of the messenger. Well, turn back now to Jude, verse 11. Go to the very end of your Bible and turn back one book. Because I want you to see Cain is always portrayed in Scripture as the villain, the apostate, Jude. The last book of the Bible is Revelation. The next to the last book is Jude. Back up one. Jude verse 11. And the book of Jude is all about apostatizers, those who have willfully turned from the faith, from the truth. They've committed the unpardonable sin. They've rejected the true gospel. And look at verse 11. Woe to them, for they have gone in the way of Cain. And for pay they have rushed headlong into the air of Balaam, and have perished in the rebellion of Korah. These men are those who are hidden reefs in your love feasts." See, these people were in the church. They feast with you without fear, caring for themselves, clouds without water, carried along by winds, autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted. You keep reading, it's horrible. What are they? They are those who, like Cain, want to come to God their own way, and they get angry if God won't accept their self-righteousness. They're like Balaam. They want to be a man of God without obeying the Word of God. They want to be like Korah. They want to offer up their own self-styled worship with their own little tricks of their own instead of God's way. And God said,