Grieving the Holy Spirit

Good morning, welcome to NHCC, please open your Bible to Ephesians 4.

Book Nook tonight. Magician’s Nephew chapter 1 Discussion.

Made New- Not only individually- but also corporately.

Read Ephesians 4:29–32- “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

Pray.

1. Grieving the Holy Spirit.

It is possible for you to grieve the Holy Spirit.

Grieving- Word found elsewhere in the Bible to explain great sadness.

Rich young ruler walks away grieving.

Disciples are grieved when they hear that one will betray Jesus.

Our lives, or the thoughts and behaviors of our lives, are able to cause great sadness in the Holy Spirit.

How do we grieve the Holy Spirit?

Think about the examples given of the rich young ruler and the disciples.

Plans to go one way are thwarted and go the opposite direction.

Young ruler- plans to continue a moral life and to receive life everlasting.

Jesus lets him know that the reality of his life is moving in a different direction.

Disciples pride themselves on their devotion to Jesus.

Jesus lets them know that one of them will betray him and all will desert him.

What the Spirit desires to see accomplished in the Church is going sideways.

Why is it so bad to grieve the Holy Spirit?

Where does Paul draw our attention?

Think of all the Spirit has done on our behalf.

Paul gives one example- It is through the Spirit that we are sealed for the great day of perfected redemption.

Bryan Chapell- “The Holy Spirit, the One who is our Comforter, is himself grieved by our sin. The thought is meant to arrest and correct us. The same Spirit who convicts my heart of sin, generates in me love for God, gives me new birth, provides my apprehension of the beauty of grace in the world, and seals my redemption until the coming of my Lord- this same Spirit who loves me so intimately and perfectly, I can cause to grieve.”

Paul writes this quick little line so that we would think of the implications of our hearts, our minds, and our actions.

How does a life that seeks NOT to grieve the Holy Spirit live? How does such a life think and behave?

As always with Paul, we begin with some negatives before getting to the positives.

2. Do not.

Put away.

Corrupting talk.

Agricultural word that means rotten, putrid.

That which repels a person.

Picking apples off the trees growing up. Biting into them too quickly.

What appears beautiful and is meant for good instead causes sickness in the stomach.

Our words can often have the same effect.

Now we look in v. 31 to see a progression of mindsets and the actions that are born from such mindsets.

Bitterness.

That which wounds people because of how our hearts impact our actions toward them.

Directed at people, but at it’s heart is resentment against God.

Wrath and anger.

From the word that means, ‘to burn.’

Anger that overflows, uncontrolled anger.

Saw last week that anger is not always sinful, but instead that it can be sinful.

Now we move from the heart of wrath and anger to the outward expressions of such a heart.

Clamor.

People whose anger explodes into the abuse of others.

Those who are looking for a fight.

Slander.

Speaking evil of others to others.

Descriptions of those outside of God’s grace- Romans 1, Galatians 5.

How do we speak of others with whom we are in conflict?

Malice.

Wickedly plotting to do harm against others.

Malevolence, the desire to injure others.

3. Do.

Such as is good for building up.

Kind.

Kindness, one of the fruits of the Spirit.

Mirrors the character of God.

Luke 6:35- “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.”

Useful for the good of another.

Augustine wrote of Bishop Ambrose- “I began to like him, at first indeed not as a teacher of the truth, for I had absolutely no confidence in God’s church, but as a human being who was kind to me.”

The kindness of Ambrose broke through a sinful exterior for the good of an unrepentant man.

Tenderhearted.

Compassionate.

Perhaps an opposite of bitterness.

Able to be moved. Able to see others with the value that they possess as God’s children.

Our kids when they have been wronged and are angry at one another. I forgive you. But then they sit and sulk.

They fail to see their sibling as someone to love and enjoy, and instead see their sibling as a monster who has caused much pain.

We can do this, even in the context of the church.

The home seems to be the one place that we should never lose sight of another persons value. And yet we do.

The same is true of the church. It ought to be the one place where we never lose sight of who people are, and never lose our ability to be tenderhearted, or compassionate, toward them.

Ian Hamilton- “Tenderheartedness is an attitude of generosity and sympathy to people who have fallen and failed. The tenderhearted do not treat people as their sins deserve, because God did not treat them as their sins deserved.”

Forgiving.

Talked much about forgiveness lately. And about this very point of forgiveness.

We forgive one another as God has forgiven us.

Lathey running Cross Country.

People spread out in various places to cheer on the runners.

Charles Hodge- “God’s forgiveness of us…is exercised despite the number and enormity of our sins and the long period of time we have sinned our sins.”

Able to forgive sin regardless of the number of times we have been sinned against.

Seventy times seven.

Able to forgive sin regardless of the enormity of the sins against us.

No matter how great the sin, it will never amount to the magnitude of our sin that has been forgiven us by God in Christ.

Able to forgive sin regardless of the length of time we have been sinned against.

Sometimes it’s not the number of sins that brings difficulty, it’s the length of time that it has happened.

What happens if we would get rid of the limitations on our forgiveness?

Get rid of everything that tears down the church, that corrupts and eats away at the life of the church. Replace it with what builds up and nourishes the life of the church.

4. Give grace to those who hear.

What is God doing through all of this? He is spreading His good news through the people that live in this way.

This text is the culmination of what Paul has been writing about what the Church is to be and what the Church is to do.

Ephesians 4:15–16- “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

How is this goal accomplished?

Ephesians 4:29- “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”

That, or so that.

Remember the role of the HS- Point everyone to Jesus constantly. This is what the HS is accomplishing in the life of the local church.

Paul takes things a step further to say that we are the body of Christ, that we carry on the ministry of Jesus.

What did Jesus do? He gave grace. We are to do the same.