What Does it Mean to Grieve The Holy Spirit?

The point: Clarify to all who care to listen exactly what we are committed to, and call the congregation in its present complexion to a fresh commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Martin recounts the founding of Trinity Baptist Church 25 years prior with 70-75 people, illustrating the historical context for the 'Manifesto' series and the church's enduring commitments.

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: The sermon turns to Ephesians 4:30 as the crucial text. Martin examines the setting of the command, noting that it follows specific exhortations against sins like falsehood…

Martin quotes B.B. Warfield's 'Faith in Life' to explain the immediate context of Ephesians 4:30, showing how Paul broadens from specific sins to the general command not to grieve the Spirit, based on their sealing.

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 the Apostle. So, I'm going to take a moment to think about this. Then does B.B. Warfield, in his book, Faith in Life, in his excellent treatment of the doctrine of the sealing of the Spirit.

10:55 - 11:14 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin highlights two assumptions: the Holy Spirit is a divine person capable of grief, and believers should know how to avoid grieving Him. He then defines 'grieve' by examining…

The account of the rich young ruler turning away 'sorrowing' is used to illustrate the meaning of the word 'grieve' as inward pain and regret.

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, used some approximately two dozen times, often rendered to be, 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, and when the Lord was finished dealing with him, he turned away, it says, sorrowing. That's the word that was there.

15:39 - 16:22 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The point is that removing all that is sinfully motivated and selfishly defiled or carnally expressed in human grief, the idea of grief, that emotion of internal wounding and hurt, is not foreign to the infinite God-Him.

Jesus' sorrow in Gethsemane is used to illustrate the profound internal pain associated with the word 'grieve'.

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, sorrowful. He began to be grieved.

17:06 - 17:24 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The point is that removing all that is sinfully motivated and selfishly defiled or carnally expressed in human grief, the idea of grief, that emotion of internal wounding and hurt, is not foreign to the infinite God-Him.

Peter's grief when Jesus asked him 'Do you love me?' three times is used to illustrate the feeling of internal wounding and pain.

It's the word used in the familiar incident when the Lord Jesus meets with Peter by the seashore. He's 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? And he's going to restore him into salvation in a grief.

17:42 - 18:08 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The point is that removing all that is sinfully motivated and selfishly defiled or carnally expressed in human grief, the idea of grief, that emotion of internal wounding and hurt, is not foreign to the infinite God-Him.

The Corinthians' godly sorrow unto repentance (2 Corinthians 7) is used to illustrate the pain and holy remorse felt when seeing sin as offensive to God.

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.

18:08 - 18:28 Read in full sermon

Driving home: But Paul seeks to motivate these believers by saying, don't grieve one who is deity himself. Don't grieve the Spirit, the Holy One, the Holy One of God, the Spirit who himself is God.

The common misconception of 'Holy Spirit' as a first and last name (like 'Pastor Lamar Martin' vs. 'Pastor A.N. Martin') is used to clarify that 'Holy One' emphasizes His divine nature and holiness as a motivation not to grieve Him.

The motivation for compliance with this command is twofold. First of all, who the Holy Spirit is. And here He is designated as the Spirit, literally, the Holy One. We are so accustomed to using the two words, the Holy Spirit, as though they were like the first in life, the last name of a person.

21:16 - 21:38 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Once God put his spirit with in you, and put his stamp of ownership upon you, he committed the entire Godhead to preserve you to the final consummate blessings of redemption that will come at the last day.

The sealing of a letter with a king's signet ring is used to explain the two inseparable concepts of the Spirit's sealing: authentication and security.

And as Warfield has, I believe, so accurately stated, the sealing binds together two inseparable concepts, authentication and security. When something was sealed with the signet ring of the king, it authenticated if it were a letter that indeed it came from the king, and it would be kept secure and inviolate by the power of the king and his army, authentication and security. Or we might say ownership and pledge. If you were making a document that was assuring that a full payment were to come on a piece of property, and that document were sealed, there was both the seal of ownership and the ple...

26:32 - 27:54 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Once God put his spirit with in you, and put his stamp of ownership upon you, he committed the entire Godhead to preserve you to the final consummate blessings of redemption that will come at the last day.

A sealed document assuring full payment on property is used to explain the sealing of the Spirit as both a seal of ownership and a pledge of full payment (inheritance).

And as Warfield has, I believe, so accurately stated, the sealing binds together two inseparable concepts, authentication and security. When something was sealed with the signet ring of the king, it authenticated if it were a letter that indeed it came from the king, and it would be kept secure and inviolate by the power of the king and his army, authentication and security. Or we might say ownership and pledge. If you were making a document that was assuring that a full payment were to come on a piece of property, and that document were sealed, there was both the seal of ownership and the ple...

26:32 - 27:54 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin introduces the 'implicit concern' by turning to Isaiah 63:10, the only direct parallel passage, where Israel 'rebelled and grieved (or vexed) His Holy Spirit.' He explains…

The visible tie (explicit) versus the handkerchief in the pocket (implicit) is used to distinguish between explicit commands and implicit concerns in the text.

My tie is explicit. My handkerchief right now is implicit in my pocket, right there. Once I take it out, then you see it, all right? Now, there's something not only explicit in the command, grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, but there is an implicit concern that throbs and bristles in that command. Why would the Apostle Paul say that? Why would the Apostle Paul say that? Why would the Apostle Paul say that? Why would the Apostle Paul say that? Why would the Apostle Paul say that? Why would the Apostle Paul say that? Why would the Apostle Paul say that? Why would the Apostle issue such a clear ...

30:20 - 31:16 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin introduces the 'implicit concern' by turning to Isaiah 63:10, the only direct parallel passage, where Israel 'rebelled and grieved (or vexed) His Holy Spirit.' He explains…

Martin quotes John Owen's commentary on the Hebrew word for 'vexed' in Isaiah 63:10, explaining that it signifies grief heightened to provocation, anger, and indignation.

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 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 Apsahv 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 see a Roman numeral in the ...

35:24 - 36:51 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The Scripture does make plain that a congregation can so grieve the Spirit that the Spirit will depart. A congregation will be as though it were never a living temple indwelt by the living God.

The tearing down of Lenin statues and the preserved body of Lenin are used to illustrate that a church can retain the 'form' of a living organism but be a mere shell, devoid of life, if the Holy Spirit has departed.

And we are nothing but an organization and a religious club. In trying to illustrate this, I thought of how many pictures we've seen in recent days of 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.

42:46 - 43:25 Read in full sermon