(Audio/Video/Text)
Title: Put On/Put Off Part Five: Grieving the Spirit
Intro:
How many of you have ever heard your parents say “I’m not mad, I’m disappointed?” How many of you (as parents) have said that to your kids?
Why is this such an effective way to draw someone to repentance?
(read/pray)
Notable English Translations Differences:
All the major English translations are practically identical:
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
(any of your translations different?)
Although I don’t personally care for the NLT/YLT translations, (they paraphrase way too much) I will share them here because they do help workout the verse a bit:
And do not bring sorrow to God’s Holy Spirit by the way you live. Remember, he has identified you as his own, guaranteeing that you will be saved on the day of redemption.
This is a pretty straight-forward concept, and the key to more fully understanding this verse lies in the examination of one key Greek word, anyone care to guess which word we need to examine closely?
What Can We Learn From The Original Language?
“Grieve”
Greek: lypeo (loo-peh-o)
This word appears 26 times in the NT and here are the various uses:
be sorrowful (6x), grieve (6x), make sorry (6x), be sorry (3x), sorrow (3x), cause grief (1x), be in heaviness (1x).
Defined as:
to make sorrowful
to affect with sadness, cause grief, to throw into sorrow
to grieve, offend
to make one uneasy, cause him a scruple
For our discussion today, I’d like to suggest the best understanding is that Paul is telling us “Do not offend the Holy Spirit of God…”
So what does it mean (in practical everyday terms) to offend the Holy Spirit?
(A penny for your thoughts first?)
Three Reflections:
There are many ways to grieve the Holy Spirit. We can neglect holiness and grieve the Holy Spirit. We can think in purely materialistic terms and grieve the Holy Spirit. The Spirit exalts Jesus (John 15:26); when we fail to do the same, we grieve the Spirit.
-Dave Guzik
I think I now see the Spirit of God grieving, when you are sitting down to read a novel and there is your Bible unread…. You have no time for prayer, but the Spirit sees you very active about worldly things, and having many hours to spare for relaxation and amusement. And then he is grieved because he sees that you love worldly things better than you love him.”
-Charles Spurgeon
The Holy Spirit’s grief is not of a petty, oversensitive nature. “He is grieved with us mainly for our own sakes, for he knows what misery sin will cost us; he reads our sorrows in our sins… He grieves over us because he sees how much chastisement we incur, and how much communion we lose.”
-Charles Spurgeon
Close:
And WHY should we not offend the Holy Spirit?
There are a thousand ways to explain this, but in looking at the second part of verse 30, I’ll say it this way this morning:
We shouldn’t offend or cause grief to the Spirit because it is that Spirit who has sealed us, assured us, preserves us, and strengthens us from the moment of our salvation until we die and go to be with Jesus.
(Story of death from Tim Keller about shadow of truck passing over pastor’s family on the way to his wife’s funeral.)
Pray/Q&A