What Does it Mean to Grieve The Holy Spirit?

The point: Clarify to all who care to listen exactly what we are committed to.

Martin recounts the founding of Trinity Baptist Church 25 years prior, emphasizing its humble beginnings and the foundational principles that have guided it, setting the stage for the manifesto.

Now in the month of January, in what to many of you would be considered borderline ancient history, January of 1960, seven, twenty-five years ago this very month, approximately seventy to seventy-five people comprised of men, women, boys and girls, toddlers and a few infants, met in the building owned by the Women's Club of Caldwell, New Jersey, a building on Westville Avenue, approximately some five miles from where you are seated in this building, this morning. And that group gathered on that Lord's Day in January of 1967 in order to worship, to praise the living God and to receive the minis...

1:29 - 2:45 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin expounds Ephesians 4:30, examining its setting within Paul's exhortations against specific sins. He highlights two assumptions: the Holy Spirit is a divine person capable…

Martin quotes B. B. Warfield's summary of the context of Ephesians 4:30, explaining how Paul moves from general exhortations to specific sins before issuing the command not to grieve the Spirit.

As we take the explicit command note with me first of all the setting of this command. When the Apostle wrote, and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption. of redemption, he wrote those words in a particular universe of discourse, or more simply, in a particular context or setting. There was a flow of thought, and none of the commentators has captured it more simply and briefly that I have read than does B. B. Warfield in his book, Faith in Life, in his excellent treatment of the doctrine of the sealing of the Spirit. And Warfield writes, as to the s...

10:30 - 11:41 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin expounds Ephesians 4:30, examining its setting within Paul's exhortations against specific sins. He highlights two assumptions: the Holy Spirit is a divine person capable…

The story of the rich young ruler turning away sorrowing is used to illustrate the meaning of 'grieve' (lupao) as inward pain and regret over not wanting Christ on His terms.

There is the negative, and it's in the imperative form. You are not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God. Now, the word Paul uses for grieve is the standard word in the New Testament, lupao, used some approximately two dozen times, often rendered to be sorry, to be sorrowful, or to be grieved. Now, most of us are familiar with the account of the rich young ruler, the man that came to Jesus desiring eternal life.

15:39 - 16:15 Read in full sermon

Driving home: We are to do nothing that will cause Him that internal wounding and hurt. And pain that is akin to the grief that Peter felt when the Lord kept pressing his question.

Jesus' sorrow in Gethsemane is used to further illustrate the depth of 'grieve' (lupao), connecting it to the felt pangs of separation and dereliction He would experience.

He went away with that kind of grief, that kind of inward pain. That's the word that is used. It's used of our Lord Jesus later on in the chapter, we read from this morning in verse 37. When he goes into Gethsemane, he says, by Matthew's account, he began to be, here's our word, sorrowful.

17:02 - 17:20 Read in full sermon

Driving home: We are to do nothing that will cause Him that internal wounding and hurt. And pain that is akin to the grief that Peter felt when the Lord kept pressing his question.

Peter's grief when Jesus asked him 'Do you love me?' three times is used to illustrate 'grieve' as vexation and inward pain over his past denial and perceived perversity.

Sorrow. It's the word used in the familiar incident when the Lord Jesus meets with Peter by the seashore and is going to restore him after Peter's denied him, and he asks him three times, do you love me? Do you love me? And it says in John 21 and verse 17, and Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, do you love me?

17:40 - 18:02 Read in full sermon

Driving home: We are to do nothing that will cause Him that internal wounding and hurt. And pain that is akin to the grief that Peter felt when the Lord kept pressing his question.

The Corinthians' godly sorrow unto repentance is used to illustrate 'grieve' as the pain and holy remorse felt when seeing sin as offensive to a holy God.

Peter felt a vexation and a grief. Lord, I've already told it twice. Am I so perverse and wretched that I've got to say, that's the word that's used, the feeling of grief that Peter felt, and it's used most frequently in a concentrated section of the New Testament, in 2 Corinthians 7, in that whole section on the repentance of the Corinthians. You sorrowed, there's our word, with a godly sorrow unto repentance not to be repented of, that's the word used, you sorrowed.

18:03 - 18:33 Read in full sermon

Driving home: We are to do nothing that will cause Him that internal wounding and hurt. And pain that is akin to the grief that Peter felt when the Lord kept pressing his question.

The analogy of 'Holy Spirit' being treated like a first and last name (e.g., Pastor A.N. Martin) is used to clarify that 'Holy' describes His nature, not just part of His name.

We are so accustomed to using the two words, the Holy Spirit, as though they were like the first and last name of a person. The way we distinguish the various Pastor Martins around here, we speak of Pastor Lamar Martin, Pastor A.N. Martin, that's the names.

21:31 - 21:48 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Faith may swim where reason may only wade. But Paul seeks to motivate these believers by saying, don't grieve one who is deity himself.

The sealing of a document with a king's signet ring is used to explain the concepts of authentication, security, ownership, and pledge associated with the Holy Spirit's sealing of believers.

spiritual experience on the threshold for every true Christian. He hears, he believes, he is sealed. And as Warfield has, I believe, so accurately stated, the sealing binds together two inseparable concepts. One is the seal of the Holy Spirit, and the other is the seal of the Holy Spirit. And the seal of the Holy Spirit is the seal of the Holy Spirit. And the seal of the Holy Spirit is the seal of the Holy Spirit. And the seal of the Holy Spirit, that symbolizes the seal of the Holy Spirit, but it is not! It is way clear, the seal of them that bind me! Moving the rest to maturity into the last...

26:23 - 26:44 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin turns to Isaiah 63:10 as the Old Testament parallel to Ephesians 4:30, explaining that 'vexed' implies grief carried to the point of righteous anger and indignation. He…

The analogy of a visible tie (explicit) versus a handkerchief in a pocket (implicit) is used to explain the difference between explicit commands and implicit concerns in Scripture.

Now, what's the difference between explicit and implicit? Well, something that's explicit, explicit is out there for all to see. Something implicit, it's there, but you've got to dig down and lay it bare before you'll see it. My tie is explicit.

30:07 - 30:22 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin turns to Isaiah 63:10 as the Old Testament parallel to Ephesians 4:30, explaining that 'vexed' implies grief carried to the point of righteous anger and indignation. He…

Martin quotes John Owen's commentary on Isaiah 63:10, explaining that 'vexed' signifies grief heightened to provocation, anger, and indignation, especially in the context of Israel's rebellion.

Now, the word here for grieve is stronger than the Greek word found in Ephesians 4 and verse 30. And this is why some of your translations have as the translation vexed the Holy Spirit. John Owen commenting on this word says, the expression of Ephesians 4.30 seems, seems to be borrowed from Isaiah 63.10 where mention is made of the sin and the evil here prohibited. They rebelled and vexed His Holy Spirit. And then giving the Hebrew word is to trouble and to grieve and is to be used when it is done unto a great degree. The Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, the Septuagint, when you ...

35:23 - 36:31 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Illustrating with the image of Lenin's preserved body, Martin explains that when the Holy Spirit departs, a church loses all life, power, and reality in its corporate worship…

The image of Lenin's preserved body, a shell without life, is used to illustrate what happens to a church when the Holy Spirit is grieved to the point of withdrawal: it becomes a mere organization without spiritual life.

In trying to illustrate this I thought of how many pictures we've seen in recent days. The tearing down of the statues of Lenin that were all over. The USSR when it existed as the USSR and people would make their pilgrimages to see the body of Lenin laid out under glass and unusually preserved and when you look at Lenin you'll see all the form of the man who initiated that whole mess the shape of his nose his temple his eyes the length of his body but he was just a shell. No living animate life. The moment he breathed his last it was gone and that's exactly what happens to churches who grieve ...

42:53 - 44:14 Read in full sermon

The point: Have an intensified corporate determination not to grieve the Holy Spirit.

The metaphor of 'stored bottles of ecclesiastical perfume' is used to convey that a church cannot artificially mask the 'stink of death' that arises when the Holy Spirit's presence is gone.

The pressure of a carnally run, man-centered church program increasingly exerts its pressure and more and more we will be like an island in a sea of man-made, man-gelical religion. When we are determined that we have no backup system, either God the Holy Ghost is present or the stink of death will go out from us in a very short time. We've got no stored bottles of ecclesiastical perfume somewhere in the basement of this church to sprinkle on these pews when God the Holy Ghost goes and the smell of death begins to make people sick.

54:24 - 55:08 Read in full sermon

The point: Meditate upon what we've considered.

Martin quotes a friend's compliment about his preaching style ('he doesn't exhort till he's planted his guns in exegesis') to emphasize the importance of grounding exhortation in biblical exposition.

But I thank God that with all my failures, a dear preacher friend who's a very critical listener of preachers says one thing I appreciate with Pastor Martin, he doesn't exhort till he's planted his guns in exegesis. And we've got to start there, folks. I have to convince your conscience from the Word of God. Now meditate upon what we've considered.

56:03 - 56:24 Read in full sermon