Sermon Tone Analysis

*No Middle Ground*

/Ephesians 4:30-31/

 

On our journey through Ephesians 4, we’ve explored such things as gossip, telling falsehood, unresolved anger, stealing, and unwholesome talk.

And we’ve learned that the Scripture tells us that we are to “put off” those kinds of things the way we would take off filthy rags.

We’ve seen that those things are inconsistent with the life that Christ has given us.

At the same time, we learned that the life Christ has given us is a transforming power that comes in and changes us from the inside out.

Instead of falsehood, we now tell the truth.

Instead of unresolved anger, there is love.

Instead of taking, there is sharing with others who are in need.

Instead of trash talking, there is speech that is edifying and useful for building others up.

But then we come to a very interesting verse, one that sticks out from the rest of them.

It’s verse thirty: /“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”/

What does that mean, to “grieve” the Holy Spirit of God? How can we know if we are doing that, and how can we avoid it?

Let’s pause for a few minutes and think about that word “grieve.”

The meaning of grieving is something you and I also know within ourselves: emotional pain, distress, anguish, sorrow, or heartbreak.

Every one of us has known grief.

We know what it is, how it feels, and the damage it can do to us.

Each one of us has tasted grief in one form or another, and we know how bitter it is.

Some have experienced grief in devastating ways, while others of us have gone through only brief periods of grief and hurt.

The word “grieve” was used outside Scripture to refer to a husband or wife who discovered that his or her mate had been unfaithful.

That betrayal naturally would cause the offended person to be shocked, devastated and hurt.

But it came to describe anything that would cause such intense hurt and devastation that the pain cannot be hidden from others.

The heartache and sorrow can cause us physical and well as emotional problems.

When Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery, then reported to their father that he had been killed by a wild animal, he was inconsolable.

Genesis 31 describes his grief: /“Then Jacob tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days.

All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted.

‘No,’ he said, ‘in mourning will I go down to the grave to my son.’

So his father wept for him.”

/Jacob experienced such intense grief over the apparent loss of his son Joseph that he simply could not be consoled by anyone.

How much more grief would he have felt had he known what his other sons had really done to Joseph, and how they had lied to their father?

The conduct of a rebellious, wayward child can also cause much grief in a parent.

Proverbs 17:25 bears this out -- /"A foolish son brings grief to his father and bitterness to the one who bore him.”/

My purpose in sharing these two illustrations of human grief is to help you to understand the grief that we can cause the Holy Spirit of God when we sin.

What distresses or breaks the heart of God?

The human race had not been long on the earth until we were causing Him great pain.

Start with Adam and Eve disobeying God in the Garden.

Continue with Cain brutally killing his brother Abel.

By the time we get to chapter 6, we find these heartrending words: /“The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.

The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain”/ (vv.

5-6).

Isaiah 63:10 reads, /“They rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit.

So he turned and became their enemy and he himself fought against them.”/

From those two verses we learn that our wickedness and our rebellion cause grief and heartache for God’s Holy Spirit.

We can also see that grieving the Holy Spirit is not a concept that Paul introduced for the first time in Ephesians 4. It’s been going on for a long, long time.

The original language in Ephesians 4:30 literally reads, “Stop grieving the Spirit, the Holy One of God.” Once again, Paul tells us to stop doing something we are currently engaged in.

“The things you’ve been doing have been grieving the Holy Spirit of God—stop it!”

But there is a beautiful truth implied in this harsh command.

The very fact that God’s Holy Spirit could be grieved at all tells us that He loves us and has a vested interest in us and our well-being.

About 150 years ago, one preacher (Charles Spurgeon) made these points:

 

THERE IS SOMETHING very touching in this admonition, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God."

It does not say, "Do not make him angry."

A more delicate and tender term is used—"Grieve him not” … for grief is a sweet combination of anger and of love.

It is anger, but all the gall is taken from it.

Love sweetens the anger, and turns the edge of it, not against the person, but against the offense.

“Instead of wishing me ill as the punishment of my sin, he looks upon my sin itself as being the ill.

He grieves to think that I am already injured, from the fact that I have sinned.

I say this is a heavenly compound, more precious than all the ointment of the merchants.

There may be the bitterness of myrrh, but there is all the sweetness of frankincense in this sweet term ‘to grieve.’

“Although the word ‘grieve’ is a painful one, yet there is honey in the rock; for it is an inexpressibly delightful thought, that he who rules heaven and earth, and is the creator of all things, and the infinite and ever blessed God, condescends to enter into such infinite relationships with his people that his divine mind may be affected by their actions.

What a marvel that Deity should be said to grieve over the faults of beings so utterly insignificant as we are!”

So as sinful and broken as we are, it should encourage us a great deal that God loves us enough that He can be grieved when we disobey Him in any way.

Only a person who loves can be grieved.

Here is a very good example of that:

 

Valerie Bertinelli once starred on the television program /One Day at a Time./

She was married for several years to rock star Eddie Van Halen.

She has now written a book entitled /Losing It: And Gaining My Life Back One Pound at a Time./

Of course, she is talking about her weight loss through the Jenny Craig program, but she opened up about a lot more than that.

She has been all over the place talking about the book, from the /Today /show on NBC, to the newspaper /USAToday,/ to /Larry King Live/ on CNN.

In her book she told about cocaine use and her failed marriage, but also about the affair she had with Steven Spielberg, while she was still married to Van Halen.

Now, when I heard a snippet of one of her interviews, I was saddened, of course, that those things should have happened at all.

But the sadness I felt was nothing compared to what I would feel had */I /*been married to her when she was doing those things.

You see the difference?

As one human being feeling compassion for another, I am sorry she’s done those things.

But I have no relationship with Valerie Bertinelli, no vested interest—and I do not grieve the experiences of her life in the same way.

The fact that the things I have done have grieved the Holy Spirit—have broken His heart, as one paraphrase of the Scriptures puts it—tells me that He loves me in an intimate, caring, close, personal, cherished way.

The Holy Spirit is grieved, saddened and anguished whenever we commit sin because of His great love for us—the same love that sent Jesus to the Cross to die for our sins.

He has a definite vested interest in us and in the level of holiness in our lives: /God loved the world so much that He gave His one and only Son./

What a price to have paid for our sin, when we are all too satisfied to continue doing the same old things that sent Christ to the cross in the first place!

Oh, that we would be broken by our sin!

As I was writing this sermon, each letter I typed on the keyboard of my computer was a reminder of the things I have done that have caused the Holy Spirit to grieve over me.

The things I have done—and done deliberately—have broken His heart.

Oh, that my heart would be broken, that my tears would fall, that my spirit would be more in tune with His Spirit, that I might feel the same sorrow and grief over my own sin that He feels!

Oh, that we all might receive a fresh understanding of how our sins—even the “little” sins that we don’t think too much of—have broken His heart!

It grieves Him to see the believer’s spiritual progress interrupted by sin.

It grieves Him to know that our relationship with our Heavenly Father has been broken or marred.

The work of the Holy Spirit shifts from glorifying Christ in our lives and changing us into His likeness (2 Cor.

3:18), to the work of leading us to repentance and confession of sin.

We’ve said before that every word of God’s Word is important, that each one of them is inspired and placed where they are by divine inspiration.

Such is the case with the very first word in verse 30.

It may vary depending on the translation you happen to be using, but in the original text, the first word in this sentence is the word translated “and.”

This is a connective word, and it ties together the thought in verse 29 with that in verse 30.

/“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths…and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.”/

That is certainly the basic context here, but it is also true that verse 30 could look forward to verse 31.

/“Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God…get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, etc.”/

But are these the only ways we might grieve the Holy Spirit?

To help us to understand this expression "grieving the Spirit of God" please turn with me to Mark 3:1-5—/“Another time he went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there.

Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath.

Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, ‘Stand up in front of everyone.’

Then Jesus asked them, ‘Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?’

But they remained silent.

He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed /*[grieved]/ /*/at their stubborn /*[hardness]* /hearts, said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’