Grieve Not the Holy Spirit

 

Grieve Not the Holy Spirit

Many people don’t really understand what the preached word is. Paul said this in the Bible: I don’t preach with the wisdom of mans words but I preach in demonstration to the Holy Spirit of God.  He said, not to receive it as the word of man but as it is in truth the word of God.

So what you hear me say today, I don’t want you to think for a minute that’s it’s me. I want you to know - - to understand and realize that it is the preached word of God. The anointed word preached or taught by our ministers is God speaking to us through them.  We must respect our teachers and preachers as if they were Jesus himself preaching and teaching. Think about it. How would we act of Jesus was there teaching or preaching?

I don’t want to get on your toes. I want the word of God to get implanted in your hearts and in your soul and in your minds. This is the true word of God whether I teach it or someone else does. This is what we are here to teach and to proclaim and it is only the Word of God that will change peoples lives and help people to come to know Christ better. We need to recognize the word of God, preached and taught as being the most special and the most sacred thing this side of heaven. I’m thankful to be able to be just a messenger for our Lord.

Ephesians 4:30-32 “And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, - - even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”

Paul said for us not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God.  Now first of all you might say, “What is the Holy Spirit?” The Holy Spirit is the third part of the God head trinity. Even though God is one, he comes in three parts. God the Father. God the Son. God the Holy Spirit. Now it started in heaven as God the Father sent His only begotten Son into the world to die for your sins and mine. Understand that we couldn’t pay for our own sin debt. There’s no way any of us could work our way into heaven. No matter what we do or no matter how good we are or how many times we go to the house of God. We fall and come short of the Glory of God.

Thank God it takes the blood of Jesus Christ. God sent his son to shed his blood on the cross of Calvary for you and I to pay our sins. When we accept Christ into our heart as our personal savior, then we are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. Jesus said if I go away, I’ll send you another comforter and that comforter is the Holy Spirit. And so as Christians we have the Holy Spirit of God within us. And Paul said to not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. I want to share this with you these few verses.

In first  Thessalonians 5:9  we find the Bible says “Quench not the Spirit.”

When the Spirit says go, we are supposed to go. When the Spirit says to praise God, we’re supposed to praise God. When the Spirit says it’s time to pray, we need to pray. The Bible says Blessed are they that are led by the Spirit of God for they are the sons of God.

But today we want to concentrate on what Paul said. “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.” I want to give you an illustration, to help you get a better picture of what it’s doing to the Holy Spirit when we grieve Him.

I believe most of us are parents or we have a brother or a sister. We want our children to do good. We want them to have the very best. We want to teach them the very best way that we can and we want them to do good in life. We want them to stay out of trouble.

Often times we’ll talk to our children and they’ll agree with us on what we want from them. Sometimes all we can do is live as an example in front of them. We try to tell them how they need to follow Jesus, and often times they’ll acknowledge that.

But when they get older and start to make their own choices and decisions, it really starts to hurt down on the inside and often times we wonder what we’ve done wrong. You live a good life in front of them and try to bring them up in the way they should go and then they go their own way; it hurts deep inside.

Now, that’s what happens when we grieve the Holy Spirit of God. It hurts God. Now we’ve shared in Ephesians 4: 31 to let all bitterness and wrath, anger, clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice and spite

You know how you can tell when you’re grieving the Holy Spirit of God? By how you get along with your brothers and sisters in Christ. The Bible says that each and every one of us are made in His image and in the likeness of an Almighty God.

How we treat our brother and sister in Christ is a picture of how we treat our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our relationship with one another is such a close relationship with God that Jesus said this: If you don’t forgive men their trespasses, neither will the Heavenly Father forgive you your trespass. So you see if our relationship with God is going to be right, then our relationship with one another has to be right.

The Holy Spirit says there has to be love, fellowship, unity and forgiveness. And some Christians today are setting aside the commandments of God and living in self. And you know what? They don’t like to hear that some changes need to be made in them - - they want the change to be - - in the other guy.

I remember my grandmother always told me, “Hazel, we need to get rid of “SELF.” As a young girl I did not understand and wondered how can I get rid of me.  Grandma was saying we need to get rid of our self-controlled old nature and turn our spirit, our mind and our thoughts over in surrender to Jesus. We need to nail our “old man nature” on the cross with Jesus and listen when the Holy Spirit speaks to us to stop, wait, listen, learn, - - and when you have truly heard His voice, then you may do as He asks.

Until you know it is truly God motivating you to do or say something, it is time to stop, look and listen. When you are led of the Holy Spirit, there will be a lot of things you were used to doing on your own, that He will tell you it is time to; Stop, Look and Listen. Otherwise when we launch out into deep using our own will, and that is when we grieve the Holy Spirit.

Now I want to share five things that we should not do to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Because if we do, we’re grieving the Holy Spirit of God.

NUMBER ONE: I found it in Zechariah 7:10 “let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart.” You say, how would you know if I was imagining evil or not in my heart?

The Bible says that a man looks on the outward appearance but God looks on the heart. He not only sees and knows what we do....He sees and knows what we imagine to do. Jesus said in Matthew that the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. What you have on the inside is going to come out on the outside.

NUMBER TWO: James 4:11 “Speak not evil one of another, brethren.” That would put a lot of Christians right there on the grieving spot. “He that speaks evil of his brother, and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law, and judges the law:

But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.” He said you can’t even speak evil of your brother.  Can you imagine how judging our brothers and sisters hurts and grieves the Holy Spirit of God.

My mother always told me;  If you can’t say something good about somebody, just don’t say anything at all. 

Number Three; Don't be a tale bearer. It’s hard to find people you can count as trust worthy to keep certain things to themselves. My mother never stopped loving me even when I was bad. And when I was bad, she did not share my faults with others. That’s the way God does. He keeps it to himself as we ought to do. Defending our rights and sharing the wrongs of others will definitely grieve the Holy Spirit of God. Let us get closer to Jesus. The closer you get to the Lord, the more you’ll be like Him.

NUMBER FOUR: Romans 14:13 “Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.”

Don’t you throw something out to hinder your brother or your sister. They may not be doing things to satisfy you. But if they are doing things to satisfy God, that’s all that matters. We have to encourage them and pray for them. They may not always be perfect but don’t be guilty to throw a stumbling block.

NUMBER FIVE: Watch out for the spirit of offense; We’re not supposed to offend our brothers and sisters in Christ. We should rather defend our brothers and sisters in Christ. Don’t be spreading any rumors but rather just pray for them. When your brothers and sisters do wrong, show sympathy. Realize that they are growing Christians just like we are. When they make a mistake realize that you’ve made mistakes before too. Maybe they are having troubles in their life. The Bible tells us to be kind, tender hearted and forgiving - no matter what.

You know why God forgave us? He didn’t do it because we were pretty. He didn’t do it because of how we looked. We were sinners. God forgave us for Christ’s sake.

Many of our citizens are grieving the Holy Spirit by not listening to the still small voice that is saying come onto me, and I will give you rest. Jesus is the rest for the weary souls in our nation. He is the answer to bring us peace in our soul and eternal life in our spirit. If you have not received Jesus into your life you can do so today by simply telling him that you believe He is the Son of God, you believe he died on the cross for your sins, you believe he rose from the dead. Invite Jesus to come into your life and do it today. Do not hesitate, because waiting and waiting, will grieve the Holy Spirit of God. Today is the accepted time.

Recognition is given to Pastor Terry Vaughan for some thoughts gleaned from a post by him