GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT

Dr. W. A. Criswell

Ephesians 4:30

2-14-71      10:50 a.m.

 

On the radio and on television, you are sharing with us the services of the First Baptist Church in Dallas.  This is the pastor bringing the message entitled Grieving the Holy Spirit.  In our preaching through the Book of Ephesians, we are in the fourth chapter; and the sermon today is not an exposition, it is a textual message.  Ephesians 4:30, “And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” 

While the choir was singing it, I just wondered, does Leroy explain to you the theological context of what you are saying?  “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.”  Do you know what the day of redemption is?  Does Leroy tell you?  Does he explain those things to you?  The day of redemption, of course, is the resurrection of our bodies.  God has not partially proposed to save us.  We shall present through His grace some day the whole purchased possession to the praise of His glory, a redeemed spirit and a redeemed body.  The redeemed spirit is given to us when we are converted, when we are regenerated.  But that is just half; the other half of redemption is when God shall redeem the body from the dust of the ground, from the corruption of sin; then body and soul, like the Lord Himself, perfect, presented to the Lord God in glory.  And that is what the text refers to:  “And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed until that day of redemption.”  And Leroy, I am so grateful that you explained that to the choir when they sing.  This is one of the most moving of all of the texts in the Bible.  And I want you to see it if God will help us this hour.

The fullness of the revelation in the text is found in those words and mostly in the word “grieve”.  Lupe, sorrow, the word for sorrow, for grief is “lupe”.  In the sixteenth chapter of John, the Lord said to His disciples, “Because I have said these things to you,” His coming passion and His going away, “lupe, sorrow hath filled your hearts.”  In the Book of Luke when the Lord agonized in Gethsemane, He came back and saw the disciples asleep “for lupe”, for sorrow.  The verbal form of the substantive is “lupeo”, “to make sorrowful, to grieve”.  When the rich young ruler came to the Lord Jesus and the Master said to him, “To enter into life everlasting, your riches come between you and God, get rid of it and come.” And the young man, “stugnazo, the lowering of the sky,” it was written in his face, the war in his heart; and he lost it, and then the word “lupeo”, “He went away sorrowful, grieved, sad.”  No wonder the Lord loved that young man; the Lord looking upon him, loved him.  He was one of the finest young Jewish men of that day; but he lost that battle. But he didn’t do it flippantly or lightsomely, he did it “lupeo”, grieving, sorrowing.   Another instance of the use of that word is when the Lord said to Simon Peter, “Simon, do you love Me?”  And when the Lord asked him that three times, the third time it says, “And Peter, lupeo, and Peter being grieved, being sorrowful, hurt” because the Lord asked him the third time, “Lovest thou Me?”  Now that’s the word, “Grieve not the Holy Spirit.”  Oh, there is a flood of revelation in just the use of the word.

One, that would show wouldn’t i, that the Holy Spirit is somebody; He is a person.  He can be grieved, He can be hurt.  The Holy Spirit is not a force or a law or a motion; you could not grieve a law or a force or a motion.  To grieve somebody, to hurt, to make sorrowful somebody, it would have to be a person with a heart, with a soul.  And that is the revelation of the Holy Spirit of God:  He is somebody, He is a “He” and not an “it”.  I can understand why people would be sometimes led into the aberration that the Spirit is an “it”.  For example, here in the King James Version out of which I always preach, in the eighth chapter of the Book of Romans, here’s the translation, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.”  Then again, the twenty-sixth verse, “Likewise, the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”  There you have the Spirit referred to as an “it”, here in the Bible.  “Well pastor, what would be wrong then referring to the Spirit as an ‘it’?”  Well this is what is wrong with it:  the Holy Spirit is a person; He is a person, a member of the Godhead, the third of the Trinity.  And to refer to God as an “it” is unthinkable.  “Well then, pastor, why do you have that in the Bible?”  Well the reason for it is this:  in English, in the way we speak, we always use natural gender.  A girl is always a “she”, a boy is always a “he”; something, a desk, this microphone is an “it”, neuter.  Now that’s the way we speak in English, always by natural gender. 

But some of the great languages of the world do not use natural gender.  They use grammatical gender.  The language is built not in a natural gender, referring to the sex of the one referred to, but in a grammatical manner, just however the word might be.   For example, German is one of those languages.  The word for “girl” in German is “neuter”; a girl in German is an “it”, not a “she”, an “it”.  It is not der mädchen, masculine, or de mädchen, feminine; it is das mädchen, neuter.  Now if I were a girl, I’d be insulted by that; she’s an “it” in the German language.  Well, I’m just illustrating to you that there are languages not made like ours; and the Greek has that grammatical gender, just as the German has.  In Greek, “pneuma” is not “ha pneuma”, masculine, or “he pneuma”, feminine; but it is “ta pneuma”, neuter.  So these translators when they took the Bible, the Spirit, “ta pneuma” is neuter.  So they translated it “the Spirit itself”, neuter.  But that is a grievous and egregious mistake.  The Spirit of God is somebody; He is a person.  And you see that in this text:  “Grieve not the Holy Spirit.”

There is a tenderness in the word that is used.  Had Paul written, “Anger not the Spirit,” immediately you’re in another world; for anger breeds anger, it is conducive to retaliation.  When somebody is in a rage, filled volitively of all kinds of bitterness and wrath and clamor and evil, immediately there is in us a reaction just like it.  But he didn’t say that, “Anger the Holy Spirit;” he said, “Grieve not.”  And “grieve” has in it a tenderness, a love.  You can’t grieve somebody you don’t love.  You can’t hurt somebody you don’t love.  You can’t find repercussion in them of hurt and grief unless they love you.  That’s why, whenever you love somebody, you lay yourself open, just as wide as the sky.  When you love somebody, you lay yourself open to sorrow and hurt and grief.  That’s the way you’re made; that’s what it is to be a person with a heart.  A neuter would not be that way; a law, a force would never have a response like that, you couldn’t hurt it, or grieve it, or make it full of sorrow.  But if somebody loves you, you can hurt them and grieve them.  Who are these people that I’m speaking of?  Your mother, your father, your husband, your wife, your child, the relationship is just full of feeling.  And that is the exact relationship between the Holy Spirit and us.  It’s personal, it’s full of heart and tenderness.  There is an apothecary in heaven, and He compounds that feeling.  He puts in it some of myrrh, the bitterness of myrrh; and he places in it something of frankincense, the sweetness of frankincense; and that’s grief, sorrow.  He can be hurt, such as people whom you love can hurt you, and you can hurt them.

Let me name some of the attributes of the Holy Spirit that would lay Him open to grief.  One, I’ve already mentioned:  He loves us.  When you speak of the love of the Father and the love of the Son, you are also speaking of the love of the Spirit.  He broods over us; we’re in His heart, and mind, and care, and keeping, and love all of our lives. When you were a child, He quickened you, He touched your heart; He spoke to your conscience.  When you were a little child, He presented to you the blessed Jesus.  And when you became conscience of sin, and all of us as little children become conscience of sin – not because we’ve done so vilely or evilly but because the sense of unworthiness and lack; sin is not nearly so much doing this and doing that and doing the other as it is our nature, we’re just lost, we’re just imperfect, we are just sinners – and the Holy Spirit quickens that child, he becomes sensitive to right and wrong.   And when he does, the Spirit of God will show to him Jesus our Savior on the cross.  And the Holy Spirit will open the eyes of the child, and he sees.  The Holy Spirit will open the ears of the child, and he hears.  And the Holy Spirit will open the palsied, frozen, impotent hands of the child, and he will receive the blessedness of the preciousness of the love of God.  It’s the work of the Holy Spirit.

Leroy sang a beautiful song this morning.  Here’s another one that I love:  “Open My Eyes”; it’s a prayer to the Holy Spirit.

 

Open my eyes that I may see

Glimpses of truth Thou hast for me

Place in my hands the wonderful key

That shall unclasp and set me free

Silently now I wait for Thee,

Ready my God Thy will to see

Open my eyes, illumine me

 Spirit divine

Open my ears that I may hear

Voices of truth Thou sendeth clear

And while the wave notes fall on my ear

Everything false shall disappear

Silently now I wait for Thee

Ready my God, Thy will to see

Open my ears, illumine me

Spirit divine.

[“Open My Eyes That I Might See”; Clara H. Scott]

 

He loves us and in guardian care guides us to the blessed Jesus.

Another thing, the attributes of the Holy Spirit that would lay Him open to grief:  He helps us in our infirmities.  He’s the Comforter, the parakaleo, the One called alongside, the paraclete.  And He looks down from heaven and binds up our broken hearts.  He is our ever present strength and refuge in our illnesses, and in our infirmities, and in our sicknesses, in our trials, and in our castings down, and in our discouragements; always the Spirit present to encourage us and to help us.  Not only that, but He is the One who says our prayers for us when they are unsayable.  They cannot be verbalized, they are unphraseable, we don’t have the nomenclature, or the vocabulary, or the language; can’t pronounce the word to say it, can’t put the sentence together to lay it before God’s throne of grace.  Have you ever been like that?  It was just too deep for words, the agony of heart by which you came before the Lord.  All you could do was just cry, just weep, just feel.  This, “The Holy Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”  You couldn’t put it in language, so deep the intercession, so, oh so moving and consuming the appeal to God; just couldn’t say it in words, don’t know the language of heaven, just can’t say it in syllables for God to hear us place it in vocal sound.  But the Holy Spirit knows; He feels with us.  When you feel that way, He feels that way; when you’re in agony, He’s in agony.  And when you’re bowed down, He’s bowed down.  He is moved by the feeling of our infirmities.  And when we can’t speak the language of prayer, the language of heaven, the Holy Spirit speaks it for us; He knows God, He’s close to God, He is God.  And He says just the right word for us; “He maketh intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered” [Romans 8:26].

Another thing, these attributes of the Holy Spirit, “He dwells in you,” Paul writing in Romans 8, “He dwells in you, and He shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.”  That’s exactly what happened to the Lord Jesus.  They slew Him, and they buried Him; but the Lord Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit from His birth, and doubly baptized by the Spirit when He was baptized in water, the Holy Spirit came upon Him preparing Him for His public and messianic ministry; He was filled with the Holy Spirit.  And when He died and was buried, it was by the Holy Spirit of God that He was raised from the dead.  And Paul avows the same thing shall happen to us:  “We are the temples, the house in which He lives;” this body, and you don’t bury God.   Put a seal on the tomb, put a guard there to watch it, but the Holy Spirit raised that body from the dead.  And the apostle is saying it shall be the same with us.  “This is the house of God, the temple of the Lord; and when it is buried, the Holy Ghost who dwells in this temple, shall raise it up!”  That’s why in the second Corinthian letter, chapter 5, Paul begins the chapter, “For we have a house not made with hands, eternal in the heaven.”  When you read that, practically all of us have in our minds the idea that he’s talking about that mansion in the sky.  He’s not talking about the mansion; what he’s talking about is the house, this tabernacle, it is made and fashioned without hands by the Holy Spirit of God!  And when the Lord raises it up, it shall be an eternal dwelling place for our souls.  The power of the resurrection lies in the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.

Let us look again at these attributes of the Holy Spirit that could be grieved.  “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, wherein ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.”  A sphragis is a signet ring, a signet ring, a sphragis.  And the king wore his seal on that ring.  And in matters of state, the soft wax, the king sealed it with his own seal.  And in matters of property and estate, these things were sealed.  When Jeremiah bought back the inheritance from the fathers in Anathoth, the home of the priests, and he was a priest, when Jeremiah bought that property from Hanameel, he sealed it two ways.  One, Jeremiah sealed it in an open document where everybody could read it, and the seal down there at the bottom like a document, like an instrument of state.  And the other was sealed and placed in the archives for the future generations to know [Jeremiah 32:1-15]. 

And that same sealing is done by the Holy Spirit with us.  First, He seals us openly and publicly, where all can see.  And you cannot hide that seal.  If you are a child of God and a born again Christian, anywhere you are in this earth, it is very apparent that you are a child of God; it is open.  If you are not a child of God, it is very apparent, you can’t hide it; there’s a worldliness about you, there’s an un-spirituality about you, there is an un-discipleship of God around you that is just apparent, you just see it.  But if you are sealed by the Holy Spirit of God, you can’t hide it; put you anywhere in the world, in any company in the earth and you’re just different, you have the seal of God upon you.  And then that sealed document is up there in the archives of heaven, and your name’s on it.  That’s what the Holy Spirit does for you here publicly and there secretly, up there in glory, your name written.  Now, is that document authentic?  How do you know that they aren’t counterfeits?  How do you know but that scribe from hell itself master presumption and carnal security hasn’t written that document, and it’s a fake, it’s a fraud, it’s a counterfeit?  How do you know that?  Because the seal of the Spirit is on that document.  And as I say, it’s publicly seen in you; and you can’t hide it, and it’s also written up there in the archives of God’s heaven. 

This sealing unto the day of redemption is a sign that God owns us; we are His property!  You do that in this life, something that you make, you put a trademark on it.  Out there in the West where these men have cattle on the ranges, they put their brand on it.  That’s a sign it belongs to the bossman there.  And God has His brand, His trademark, His seal upon us; we belong to Him.

And it also says, “unto the day of redemption,” until the Lord comes again, and the whole complete purchased possession is presented before God.  “Pastor, how do you know you’ll make it?”  Oh, oh, the Satans and the demons and the powers of darkness, to ride and to drive between us and that day…Lord, Lord, how shall we make it?  Don’t you worry, don’t you worry.  That’s the doctrine of predestination, that’s the doctrine of election, that’s the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, and that’s the doctrine in the Bible:  the saints of God are going to make it, they are sealed with the Holy Spirit of God, and the Lord knows them, and their names are written up there in heaven, and the names are seen down here in the earth; the perseverance of God’s children.  We must hasten.

I have a last part of the message.  Who is it that grieves the Holy Spirit?  After the Holy Spirit has loved us, and after He’s helped us and encouraged us and moved by our tears and our infirmities, and after He seals us and is the guardian Guide to present us some day right in the presence of God, well how do you grieve Him?  Who is it that grieves the Lord?  I have three.  One, the back-slidden Christian grieves the Holy Spirit.  He doesn’t pray anymore.  The leaves of his Bible are stuck together.  And his witness is as a man would take a light and hide it under a bushel.  He doesn’t have any joy in his soul, and there’s no gladness in his religion.  He gets to where he’s bored going to church, and he likes to be out there with the crowd in the world.  The worldly Christian grieves the Holy Spirit.  Well how do you know he’s saved?  I tell you exactly how you know he’s saved:  whenever a child of God is out there in the world, you just write it down, on the inside of him, he’s one of the most miserable critters you ever saw in your life.  He’s just down right unhappy, way underneath.  Oh, he may present the finest picture of joy and gladness and happiness as he drinks, and as he says words that aren’t nice, and as he goes around with that bunch, and as he just desecrates the Lord’s Day, and as he uses his money for worldly purposes, and he’s just out there.  And you look at him and you think, “My, my, isn’t he just like one of them, isn’t he having a happy time?  He’s just all over the place.”  Don’t you put it down like that; if he’s a born again child of God, when he goes home, he lies down, and he says, “O Lord, I’m a miserable failure, I’m a wretch, I’m a wretch!”  And you can’t help it.  If you are a born-again Christian and a child of God, when you start living out there in the world, the peace and joy and happiness of your life is gone.  And that unsaved wretch out there, he may like all of that stuff that the world acclaims, but you won’t, you won’t.

You know, I just might as well say the second to that:  if you’re ever a born-again, real honest-to-goodness regenerated Christian, you come back home too.  Now you may be a prodigal out there in the hog pen; but the day will come when you sit on that top rail watching those hogs eat, and the tears will start flowing down your face.  Why, I had it this week.  Somebody came to see me in my study and sat there by my side and just cried like a fountain, like a shower of tears, recounting to me how it was in the days when the Lord was served, and “I want to come back, I want to come back.”  That’s grieving the Holy Spirit:  when the child of God finds no understanding in the Bible, no enlightenment, and there’s no answer to prayer, the heavens turn to brass, and the services of the church are just interminable wearinesses; that grieves the Holy Spirit of God, the backsliding Christian.

What grieves the Holy Spirit of God?  A dead church.  When the Spirit leaves a dead church, the prayer meeting dwindles away, and nobody’s saved.  You can’t have people saved at a dead matrix.  For life to be born, the matrix, the womb has to be warm and bathed in blood, sometimes tears and sometimes labor.  Isn’t that right?  Same way in spiritual life:  there’s no spiritual life in a dead church; the womb is not warm, and there’s no blood to nourish, and there are no tears of labor to come to the birth.  To have life, there must be the presence of the warm Spirit of God.  And a dead church grieves the Lord.  You know, people every once in a while, will say to me, “Pastor, why in the earth are you trying to enlarge the Sunday school?  Why do you try to reach other people?  Don’t you have enough?”  As long as there is one somebody you who is lost, we’re still down on our knees and asking God for help and methods and approaches to reach you.  As long as there’s somebody lost on the mission field, we have a tremendous assignment; we’re still praying, and we’re still hoping, and we’re still interceding, we’re still asking.  And here where we can reach, we’re still knocking at the door.  Why, the task is never finished, never finished.  If we had forty-thousand people registered in Sunday school here every Sunday, and there were still families and children outside the reach of the Word of God, we’d still be at it.  That is a church full of love and intercession that honors Christ; and when we get away from that and get dead in our hearts, we grieve the Holy Spirit.

Who grieves the Holy Spirit? – and I must close – when you turn down the voice of the Lord.  “No, I’ll not take the Lord, I’ll not receive Him.”  When you say, “No,” to the preacher, and, “No,” to the appeal, and, “No,” to the Spirit, and, “No,” to the invitation – I have to take time to say this – isn’t it an astonishing thing that that is the unpardonable sin?  You know, I don’t believe there is a subject that I’ve ever turned over in my mind more seriously and prayerfully than the unpardonable sin.  You can say, “No,” to God the Father, “No, no, no, no, no,” and everything can still be open to you.  And you can say, “No, no, no, no,” to Jesus, and everything would just be open to you.  But when you say, “No, no, no,” to the wooings of the Spirit, there comes a time when it’s “No,” forever.  He doesn’t say, “Come,” anymore; He doesn’t appeal anymore; you’re dead, you’re lost, you’re going to die lost, you’re never going to be saved!  Oh, there are unfathomable depths in that I cannot understand.  “My Spirit,” said God. “shall not always strive with man;” He gave them a hundred twenty years, and He destroyed them from off the face of the earth by the flood.

 

There is a time, I know not when;

A place, I know not where,

That marks the destiny of men

To glory or despair

There is a line by us unseen

That crosses every path

The hidden boundary between

God’s mercy and God’s wrath.

[“The Hidden Line”; Dr. J. Addison Alexander]

 

Grieving the Holy Spirit: that’s why in the Bible always, always, the appeal of the Spirit is, “Today, today, today, if you will hear His voice, harden not your heart.  Behold, now is the accepted time, behold, now is the day of salvation.”  It’s always now, now, there’s no tomorrow in the Spirit of God; it’s now, come now, trust now, believe now, respond now, get up out of that seat now, come down this aisle now, kneel here before God now, open your heart to God now, receive Him as your Savior now; always, the pleading of the Spirit is today, it is now.

We sing our hymn of appeal, and while we sing it, in the balcony round, you, on this lower floor, you, into the aisle and down to the front, “Here I come, pastor.”  Two of you, “Here I am.”  A family you, all of you coming; or just you, in the balcony, there’s time and to spare if you’re seated on that last row, come, come.  On this lower floor, into that aisle and down to the front, “Pastor, here’s my hand, I’m giving my heart to God.”  Make the decision now in your heart, and in a moment when we stand up, stand up coming.  When you stand up, stand up to come down one of those stairways, or into that aisle and down to the front.  Do it now, come now, while all of us stand and sing together.