WESTSIDE BAPTIST CHURCH
PASTOR: TERRY VAUGHAN
SERMON TITLE: GRIEVE NOT THE HOLY SPIRIT
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved. He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
A lot of 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 don’t receive it as the word of man but as it is in truth the word of God.
So what you hear me say tonight, I don’t want you to think for a minute that’s it’s me. I want you to know, understand and realize that it is the preached word. A lot of people will hear the preached word and let it go in one ear and out the other. That isn’t doing you any good. I’ve had people come to me after church and tell me that I got on their toes. 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 preach it or someone else does. This is what we’re here to preach and to proclaim and it is the only thing that will change peoples lives and help people to come to know Christ better and to help us live better as Christians. We need to recognize the preached word of God as being the most special and the most sacred thing this side of heaven. I’m thankful tonight that God saw fit to call this old country boy part of the ministry. I’m thankful to be able to be just a mouth piece for him.
TEXT VERSE: Ephesians 4:30-32 “And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye 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 and He sent His only begotten Son into the world to die for your sins and mine. See we couldn’t pay for our own sin debt. We fell and come short of the Glory of God. 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. There’s no way anybody could work their way into heaven. 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 sin debt. When we accept Christ into our heart as our personal savior, then we’re 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 we have as Christians 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.
Mark 3:29 “But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.”
Now that verse is talking about those men and women that are lost in this world and when the Holy Spirit speaks to their heart and starts to deal with them and they start denying that it’s God, start denying the Holy Spirit; Mark 3:29 says they have blasphemed against the Holy Ghost. If they die in that condition; lost, there’ll never be another opportunity to get forgiveness but they’ll be in danger of eternal damnation.
Then in Acts 5:3 You’ll read a story about Ananias and his wife Sapphira and the Bible said they lied to the Holy Ghost. Now I believe they were church goers and they were supposed to have taken the of the first fruits of their life; their offerings and their tithes and their time and their service and through the Holy Spirit, offered these things to help the church grow. Help the body of Christ. But Ananias and Sapphira kept back part and the Bible says they lied to the Holy Ghost and let me tell you what happened. Peter found out and he said “ Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?” The Bible says that Ananias fell down dead and then his wife came in and he began to talk to her. She was a part of it. She was right there with her wretched old husband and he lied to the Holy Ghost and she lied to the Holy Ghost and then she fell down dead.
When we’re dealing with the Holy Spirit of God we better know what we’re doing. God is not about playing. God is about preaching and sharing the word.
Then in fist Thessalonians 5:9 we find the Bible says “Quench not the Spirit.” When the Spirit says go, we’re 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 tonight we want to concentrate on what Paul said. “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.” I want to give you an illustration. I don’t normally use illustrations but I want to make one up to help you get a better picture of what it’s doing to the Holy Spirit when we grieve. I believe most of here tonight 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 an exampled life in front of them and try to tell them how they need to grow up 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 another way and it hurts. Now, that’s what happens when we grieve the Holy Spirit of God. It hurts God. Now we’ve shared in verse 31 to let all bitterness and wrath, anger, clamour and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice. We looked up the word bitterness. 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. Jesus said if you’ve done it unto one of the least my brethren, you’ve done it unto me. But he said if you give one of them a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, you have your reward. 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. But we’re living in a world where the Christians are causing more problems than the ungodly people that are living out in the world. Christians always going at one another. Always fighting with one another. Always trying to get at one another. You know what that’s called? Grieving the Holy Spirit of God. See the Holy Spirit of God wants us to get along with one another. The Holy Spirit says their 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 what is being preached tonight. Don’t you proclaim to be like Christ if you can’t love your brothers and sisters in Christ. Don’t stand up and tell somebody you’re close to God because you’re not. If you’re close to God, you’ll be close to your brothers and sisters in Christ according to what I read in the Bible.
Number one theirs bitterness in our life. That word bitterness means harsh. You’re ready to snap their head off even if they do something good or bad, you’re ready to get them.
Number two The word wrath means violent. Jesus said once place in the Bible to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. But yet when we start to grieve the Holy Spirit of God we start to become violent toward one another. They could write some soap operas about some Christians and churches. Theirs a lot of people that would love to watch all the things that go on in the house of God and it isn’t right.
Number three theirs anger. That’s being hostile towards somebody. You could bring somebody a plot of flowers if they were sick and they’d get mad at you. It’s just hard to please some people. But if you’re close to the Lord tonight, you’ll not be hostile with them. And if they’re close to the Lord, they’ll not be hostile towards you.
Number four is that word clamour. That means to protest. Some Christians try to protest every thing you do. We’ve gotten letters to this church for things we’ve done outside that people didn’t like in the neighborhood and they’ve written us. They’ll write you a letter and tell you something they think you’re doing wrong but they’ll never recognize what you’re doing right. That’s the way a lot of Baptist folks are. Every time you try to do something good all they ever do is look at the bad stuff. Some of them sit around and try to find things bad in what the preacher says. They do. That preacher misquoted one word. He left out the word (as). It’s going to happen. We’re just flesh. Overlook one another’s faults. Quit protesting all the bad and start looking at all the good. If God’s in it, there will be some good come out of it.
Number five is the word evil speaking. I take that to mean judgment. James said in the Bible that our tongue is a world of fire. A world of iniquity. Then Proverbs talks about the tongue and it says that we can either give life or death with our tongue. It’s like a two edged sword. It hurts either hurts people or it helps people. Christians seem to always want to hurt these days instead of help. They always want to bring them down instead of bringing them up. They always want to say something bad instead of saying something good. When we do that we’re grieving the Holy Spirit of God. If you want to have a rough life and start having some trouble in your life; just start grieving the Holy Spirit of God. You’ll not be satisfied with anything. I don’t care what kind of house you live in, how much silver and gold you have or what church you go to....if you start grieving the Holy Spirit of God, you’ll be miserable with every thing you’ve got. The Bible says the ways of a transgressor is hard. Paul said not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.
Number Six He said to put away all malice. You know what that word malice means? It means to bring pain or to cause another one to suffer. When we do that and we start enjoying it we’re grieving the Holy Spirit of God. Hebrews says to be careful who you entertain for some have entertained Angels unaware. Abraham back in the book of Genesis was there when his wife Sarah who was about 98 years old and the Bible says she was barren and couldn’t have any children and the angel of the Lord came by and told Abraham that he was going to have a seed. A child. Abraham didn’t believe it. He was grieving the Holy Spirit of God. But he didn’t know the very one he was talking to was an angel sent right down out of heaven and what the angel said to him was true. he did have a seed. He had his son Isaac. When we start not believing what God can do, we start grieving the Holy Spirit of God. So we don’t need to bring pain or cause someone else to suffer because we don’t believe or because we don’t think it’s good. If God’s in it, let Him be in control. Don’t worry about how other people live their lives. Worry about how you live your life. I have a hard enough time keeping myself straight. I have to get down every day and ask God to forgive me. You say, you’re a preacher and preachers shouldn’t sin. What kind of a sin can a preacher have? The Bible says we’ve all sin and come short of the glory of God. You may not see the sins that I do but God does.
Now turn to 1 Corinthians 6:6-8 Now here‘s the state we‘re in with Christians today. Now I‘m not just talking with Westside Baptist. I‘m talking about Christians as a whole. Here‘s where they‘ve come by grieving the Holy Spirit of God. “But brother goeth to law (their going against each other) with brother, and that before the unbelievers. (The unbelievers are seeing the brothers going against each other) Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. (There is a fault among them and they are in that state where they think they never do anything wrong. You’ve heard them. I don’t know why they are so mad at me. I never say anything about anybody) (Now listen to what he says our remedy is) Why do ye not rather take wrong? (why don’t you just take the wrong) Why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren.”
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 speaketh. What you have on the inside is going to come out on the outside. If you start thinking it and it comes out, somebody is going to hear it. If you let it boil too long, it won’t sound too good when it comes out. If you think you can be justified by standing up and saying you’ve got a problem with certain brothers and sisters, you’re wrong.
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 speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law, thou are not a doer of the law but a judge.” He said you can’t even speak evil of your brother. If you can’t say something good about somebody, just don’t say anything at all. Can you imagine how that hurts. Often times people get hurt by hearing something that’s been said about them that’s not even true to begin with. First they wonder why they are saying that and then who told them that and then why are they saying it to you. It hurts and we’re grieving the Holy Spirit of God.
NUMBER THREE: Micah 7:2 “The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net.”
Now this is back in the old testament and he said you can’t hardly find any good men and women. Isn’t that about the state we’re living in today. It’s hard to find people you can count as trust worthy. People that will love you no matter what you do. People that will do that sounds like good Christian mothers. Mom never stopped loving me even when I was bad. That’s the way God does. We should never grieve the Holy Spirit of God. People are always trying to find fault and pick out the bad. Then when they find out what it is, they want to share it with somebody. That’s the way Christians are. You know the number one reason why we can’t get along with our brothers and sisters in Christ? Because somebody in the church is not where they ought to be with Christ. They aren’t close to the Lord. 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. 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 you throw a stumbling block. I know. It hurts. I’ve had it happen to me before. When you’re heading down the right path and some Christian brother or sister throws a stumbling block and causes you to trip and fall, it will set you way back.
NUMBER FIVE: Proverbs 18:19 “A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle.” We’re not supposed to offend our brothers and sisters in Christ. We should rather defend our brothers and sisters in Christ. If you hear somebody talking about your brothers and sisters in Christ, you’re supposed to automatically take their side and start defending them. You’re supposed to say they are a child of God and you should pray about this. Don’t be spreading no rumors. That shows God that you are a true child of God and that you’re ready to stand the test when you start taking up for your brothers and sisters in Christ. Even if you’re brother is in the wrong, you better defend them and tell that person to stop talking about them and to just pray for them. A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city.
Joyce and I went through something one time at a church and we were offended. It made a drastic change in our lives for three years. It took three years. Now the Lord still loved us and we still worked for Him but it took three years to get over the offense. It’s a tragic sin when we can’t get along with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We’re grieving the Holy Spirit of God.
Now let me share these three things. Here’s the remedy. The result. Paul said to be ye kind one to another. I looked up that word kind and it means: showing sympathy. Let me use my daughter Erica as an example. I got mad at her one time. I lost my temper. She was telling me (no) and back talking me and I came towards her with a belt and I was going to let her have it and that’s unusual for me as my wife and I don’t like to use the belt. My wife once told me that she couldn’t see Jesus’ mother coming at Jesus with a belt but she could see her coming down to his level as a child and talking to him about what he was doing. So we’ve don’t like to use a belt. But nevertheless I came toward her with a belt and before I could lay it across she broke into tears. It automatically stopped me. She didn’t do it on purpose. I knew at that point and time in her life that she was sincere. She was sorry and just the tears stopped me. I had sympathy on her. 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. Maybe they are lost. But be kind and have sympathy on them.
Then he said to be tender hearted. That words means easily moved by others distresses. When you see somebody in distress, you’ll run to their safety. We have to help them, love them and pray for them. Be tender hearted. All these things still sound like a good Christian mother. No wonder God put his son in a woman. They have a lot of sympathy and kindness. The Bible says that we are all members of the same body. When one member suffers, all the members suffer. When one member be honored, all the members rejoice.
Then there is forgiving one another. The word forgive means to excuse for a fault or an offense. If they do something wrong, the Bible says you’re supposed to forgive them. One time Peter came to Jesus and said, Lord how many times can my brother sin against me and how many times should I forgive him? 7 times? Jesus said 70 times 7. That’s 490 in one day. What Jesus was saying was it don’t matter how many times you’re brother sins against you, forgive him.
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. You know how we’re supposed to treat other people? For Christ’s sake. If you can’t find it yourself to treat people right at least do it for Christ’s sake.
How we treat one another is how we feel about the Lord. I believe that with all my heart. A lot of Christians leave a church because they can’t fellowship with certain Christians. If you’re a child of God you should be able too. You should only leave a church because God tells you to leave. It doesn’t matter if they are black or white, Baptist or Methodist. As long as they stay in the doctrines of this Bible you should be able to get along with them. For Christ’s sake. We’re new creatures. We ought to learn to get over these things and go on.
It’s very important for us to be kind. I appreciate your prayers tonight. May God Bless You.
