Todd White - Charles Spurgeon - Grieving the Holy Spirit

all right here's what here's what i did i i was reading this morning um i was reading two different scriptures one of them has to do with grieving and one of them has to do with quenching and one of them says in ephesians 4 30 and the new american standard it says do not grieve the holy spirit of god of whom you were sealed for the day of redemption and the translation of that word grieve is lupio is the is the greek word it says to distress reflexively or passively to be sad to make sad to cause grief to grieve in heaviness to make sorrow to make sorrowful so he's saying that you and i have the ability to make the holy spirit sad are you with me i know none of us have the intention of wanting to make him sad like he is joy like the holy spirit is joy i i'd liken him to be like a puppy dog that you let outside like for one minute let him back in they're freaking out so i believe that he wants to greet us every day with that joy he is the joy of the lord are you with me the lord is the spirit where the spirit of the lord is there is liberty but there can also be grieving so i want to be really careful so if i'm going to find out what the deal is with grieving and so i just let me i'm going to read something i read this this morning this was charles spurgeon i was totally rocked like do you guys know who spurgeon is one of the greatest preachers man i mean amazing let me just read this piece that he wrote on grieving oh my gosh the spirit of god is in you and he's bearing with you and it's very very easy indeed to grieve him sin is as easy as it is wicked you may grieve him by impure thoughts he cannot bear sin if you indulge in nasty impressions or if you allow your imagination to code up with nasty acts or sinful acts if your heart goes after covetousness if you set your heart upon anything that is evil the spirit of god will be grieved for thus i'm sorry for thus i hear him speaking of himself i love this man i want to have his whole heart yet he's entertaining these filthy lusts his thoughts instead of running after me and after christ and after the father they're running after temptations that are in this world through lust that's like intense so what he's saying is that anything apart from running after him is running away from him okay i did this the other day i said lord i'm going to think about you all day that lasted for like a couple minutes but my heart kept going back to him but what if you and i could focus on him all day long what if we could focus and set our mind on things above what if we could focus on the father on a continual basis but how can i focus on the father if i'm putting the world in me yeah but i got a job yeah but i got to work yeah but i got to this you don't have to take part in the trash conversations man you don't have to laugh at the filthy jokes you don't have to be a part of it you're supposed to be in the world but not of it it says and then after you're seeking after worldly lust the spirit's grieved he sorrows in his soul because he knows that he knows what sorrow these things must bring our souls we grieve in him we grieve we grieve him yet we more more if we indulge in the outward acts of sin so he's talking about the inward off at the inward act of the thought process but he's saying it it's even worse because now we're outwardly indulging in it and it's not just a thought now it's become an action he is sometimes so grieved that he takes flight for a season for the dove will not dwell in our hearts if we if we take loathsome trash inside of there a cleanly being is the dove and we must not take that place which the dove frequents with filth and mire if we do he'll fly elsewhere we commit sin now now here's the deal as the spirit of god is in us he says behold i'll never leave you but he does take flight in our perception of who god is for a season if we're going to continue in the muck and miracle it's so important he doesn't leave your person but he will leave you being able to hear his voice if we commit sin if we openly bring disgrace upon our our belief system if we tempt others to go into iniquity by our evil example it is not long before the holy spirit will begin to grieve again if we neglect prayer if our closet door is cobwebbed if we forget to read scripture if the leaves of our bible are stuck together by neglect if we never seek to do any good in the world if we live merely for ourselves and not for christ then the holy spirit will be grieved for thus he says they have forsaken me they have left the fountain of waters they have hewn into themselves broken cisterns i think i now see the spirit of god grieving when you are sitting down to read a novel and your bible remains unread sorry this is hard for me perhaps you take down some book some book of travels and you forget that you have a more precious book of travels in the book of acts with the apostles and in the story of your blessed lord master you have no time for prayer but the spirit sees you very active about all the worldly things you have many hours to spare for relaxation and your own personal amusement then he is grieved because he sees that you love worldly things better than you love him his spirit is grieved within him take care that he does not go away from you for it would be a pitiful thing if he left you to yourself again in gratitude and unthankfulness tends to grieve him nothing nothing cut a man to a heart more than having cuts a man to his heart than having done his utmost for someone else he turns around and repays him with ingratitude or insult if we don't want to be thanked at least we do love to know that there is thankfulness in the heart upon which we have conferred and which we have transferred our services to when the holy spirit looks into our soul and sees a little love for christ no gratitude to him for all he has done for us and he has grieved again the holy spirit is exceedingly grieved by our unbelief when we distrust the promise that he both gave us and applaud and has applied when we doubt the power or the affection of our blessed lord jesus then the spirit himself says they doubt my fidelity they distrust my power and they say jesus is not able to save us to the uttermost thus again the spirit is grieved oh i wish the spirit had an advocate here this morning that could speak in better terms than me i have a theme that ever masters me i seem to grieve for him but i cannot make you grieve nor tell about the grief i feel in my soul i keep saying oh this is just what you have done you have grieved him let me make a full and frank confession even before you all i knew that too often i as well as you have grieved i as well have known and you have grieved the holy spirit much more within us he is i'm sorry much within us has made that sacred dove to mourn and my marvel is that he has not taken his flight from us and left us utterly to ourselves now suppose the holy spirit is grieved what is the effect that it produces within us when the spirit is grieved first he bears with us he is grieved again and again and again and again he still bears with it all but at last his grief becomes so excessive that he says i will suspend my operations i will be gone i will leave life behind me but my actual presence i will take away in other words he still stays there but the presence of god is taken away [Music] david says don't don't take your presence from it moses said if you if you don't go with us then don't go we can't afford to be a church where god's present doesn't come with us i can't afford to be a preacher that god's presence doesn't rest on and i have to really really guard my heart and protect my heart in a place of doing actively the things that really grieve him just the way that we speak the way that we communicate the way that we look at others the way that we think about others god wants our whole hearts man i'm overwhelmed i was sitting there this morning just crying god don't let me grieve you holy spirit i'm so sorry if there's any way that i've grieved you please god when i'm on the brink of grieving warn me cut me deep i don't know people that pray that way because we're so much about maybe church on sunday but we're so much not about jesus every day and the holy spirit the presence of god is our best friend and he's all we have and some of us have never tasted and seen that he is good so the world's still tasty in the book of acts the holy spirit was all they had they didn't have the new testament we do and some people value a book that they didn't have more than the holy spirit that they did have and we can't afford to be those people we have to value the word and have that above and beyond anything but the spirit of god is the one that reveals the word and the book is closed without him oh oh he suspends his instructions we read the word but we can't here's what look i'm just going to say it again holy spirit i'll suspend my operations i will be gone but i will leave life behind me in that person but my own actual presence i will take away and when the spirit of god goes away from the soul and suspends all his operations what a miserable state we're in it is a lukewarm church he suspends his instructions we read the word we cannot understand it we go to our commentaries to get stuff but they can't tell us anything we fall on our knees and ask to be taught but we get no answer and we learn nothing he suspends his comfort we used to dance like david before the ark and now we sit like job in an ash pit and scrape our ulcers with a pot shirt there was a time when his candle shone around us brightly but now he is gone and is left and has left us in the blackness and darkness of our own soul because we've wanted the world more than him [Music] now he takes from a spiritual power once we could do all things through christ but now we can do no things because we're doing them through the world we could slay the philistines and lay them in heaps upon heaps but now delilah deceives us and our eyes are put out and we're made to grind in the mill like samson who we go on preaching but there's no pleasure in preaching and no good follows it we go to our track distributing in our sunday school we might almost as well be at home there's no machinery there there's no love and no life there's no intention to do good and perhaps not even that but alas there's no power to accomplish the intention that we have the lord has withdrawn himself his light his joy his comfort is spiritual power they're all gone and then all our graces flag our graces are much like the flower when it has plenty of water it blooms but as soon as the moisture fails the leaf drops down at once and so when the spirit goes away faith shuts up its flowers no perfume is exalted no no perfume is exhaled from that flower the fruit of your love begins to rot and drop from the tree and the sweet buds of our hope become frostbitten and they die oh what a sad thing it is to lose the spirit have you ever my brethren been on your knees and have been so conscious that the spirit of god was not with you in presence what an awful work it has been to groan and to cry and to sigh and yet go away again and no light shine upon the promises not so much as a ray of light through the of the dungeon that's so intense [Music]

Channel: Todd White

Views: 26,917

Rating: 4.8933334 out of 5

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Id: rmOgfECFfDQ

Length: 13min 51sec (831 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 06 2021