Don't Grieve the Holy Spirit - Brandon Scalf

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Ephesians 4:30

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Alright everyone, grab your Bibles and turn with me to Ephesians chapter 4.
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Ephesians chapter 4, and we will be continuing on in our series through Paul's letter to the church or churches in Ephesus.
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Ephesians chapter 4, and today we will primarily be looking at verse 30.
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And the title of today's message is Don't Grieve the
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Holy Spirit. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit. And if I were to give it a secondary title it might be something like One Possibility and One Impossibility.
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Ephesians chapter 4 verse 30, and if you would please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy, infallible, inerrant, and all -sufficient
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Word. And I will begin reading in verse 17 for the sake of context. Ephesians chapter 4 beginning in verse 17 with a particular eye towards verse 30.
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This is the Word of God. Therefore this I say and testify in the
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Lord that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their mind, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart.
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And they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.
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But you did not learn Christ in this way if indeed you heard him and were taught in him just as truth is in Jesus.
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To lay aside in reference to your former conduct, the old man, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and to be renewed in the spirit of your mind.
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And to put on the new man, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.
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Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth, each one of you, with his neighbor.
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For we are members of one another. Be angry, and yet do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity.
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He who steals must steal no longer, but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands, what is good.
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So that he will have something to share with one who has need. Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for building up what is needed.
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So that it will give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the
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Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
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Let all bitterness and anger and wrath and shouting and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.
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Instead, be kind to one another, tender -hearted, graciously forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has graciously forgiven you.
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The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever. Amen? Amen.
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Go ahead and have a seat and find the verse 30.
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Get your eyes on the text. As we think about our
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Christian lives or the lives of many other professing Christians, especially ones that we might see in the newspapers and or on social media, we are confronted with the reality that holiness is trivialized.
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And God's Spirit is treated in very dishonoring ways.
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This is prevalent specifically in the context in which we exist, Tulsa, Oklahoma, where prosperity, gospel, and crazy charismania is replete.
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It is everywhere. It is on every street corner. And the
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Spirit is dishonored in many ways in these places. But one of the ways that the
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Holy Spirit is dishonored in these places is that he is treated as a force or an influence or simply a genie in a bottle, so to speak, that if we do this thing, that he will do this thing.
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Well, what this text is going to teach us today is that the Holy Spirit's not a genie. He's not an impersonal force.
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He's not this thing that causes gold glitter to fall from the ceilings and for us to fall on the ground, barking like dogs, experiencing some other worldly thing.
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No. He's a person. He's a person and he can be grieved.
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He can be resisted. He can be quenched. But he can also be honored and loved and respected and respect him and love him.
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We must. And so as we look at this text, it's going to be a fun one.
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It's going to be in some ways a hard one, but it's going to be a beautiful one.
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We've seen what the Spirit has done in eternity past in chapter 1 that he is working in us and applying that salvation that the
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Son has purchased for us. That he has regenerated us if we are in Christ.
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That is, he has converted us. He has caused us to be born again. Though we were sinners,
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God stepped in and by the finished work of Christ, applied by the Spirit, that very work.
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And so today Paul is going to tell us as he is working through chapter 4 not to grieve the
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Holy Spirit. Not to grieve the Holy Spirit. And what you need to understand is this is not just a simple suggestion or a plea, though it's wrapped up in love.
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It is a command. It is not a passive observation.
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It is a solemn reality to which you must adhere.
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To grieve the Spirit is to offend, to hurt, to harm.
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And for those of you who are confessional, hold on a moment. I'm going to explain some of these words.
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But to offend the infinite holiness of God himself and to act in ways that pierce his very heart of love.
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So as we begin, I want you to understand some things.
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I want you to firstly understand the person of the
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Spirit. And that is my first point. The person of the Spirit.
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That is who he is. Who he is.
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Now, as we work through this text, we are going to see these possibilities and these impossibilities that I spoke of in the title.
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And those two possibilities or impossibilities are this. It is possible to grieve God and it is impossible for you to lose your salvation.
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But in order for us to wrap our mind around that, we have to first look at this reality. What's behind that?
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And the Spirit is behind that. So who is the person of the Spirit? Well, he's a person.
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Look with me at 430. Chapter 4, verse 30. It says, And do not grieve the
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Holy Spirit of God. So here we see, yes, a command put forth in the negative, much like he's been doing in the last couple verses, by showing us what it looks like to guard the unity of the
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Spirit in the bond of peace. To walk worthy, to function as Christians in the context of the local church.
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And here he's continuing on. But hidden in this command not to do something is the very presence of the
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Holy Spirit's divine nature. We're not just seeing anymore what this
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God has done, or rather, what the second member of the Trinity has done.
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We're seeing who he, in some ways, is. As I said, he's not an impersonal force.
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He is a person. Right? And why do I say that? I say that because only a person can be grieved.
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A robot cannot be grieved. I just had a fun conversation about AI in the back before we got started.
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AI cannot grieve. Although apparently it can be fearful and try to save its own life, as I read an article that it tried to do that.
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But that's neither here nor there. But only persons with personhood can grieve. So this must mean that the
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Holy Spirit is, in fact, a person. Of course, this data is littered throughout the
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New Testament. But here I want to focus primarily on what it's being talked about.
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It is true that God loves, he rejoices, but also his spirit can be quenched.
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I get this from 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 19, which is, do not quench the Spirit. And what that means here is to extinguish or suppress.
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The Greek word is used oftentimes in the context of putting out a fire. And the imagery suggests that the
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Spirit's work within believers can be, I guess you could say, resisted or stifled.
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Now, of course, that exists in its proper context, but one we don't have time to get into.
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But he grieves as well. He can, in fact, be grieved. This is all over the
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Bible. In the Old Testament, we see in Genesis chapter 6 verse 5 and 6, it says, Then Yahweh saw that the evil of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thought of his heart was only evil continually.
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And Yahweh regretted that he had made man on the earth, and he was grieved to his heart.
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In Exodus chapter 32 verses 9 and 10, it says, And Yahweh said to Moses, I have seen this people, and behold, they are stiff -necked people.
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Now let me alone, that my anger may burn against them, and that I may consume them, and I will make your great, make you a great nation.
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There it says that he is anger. There's a similar word in the Septuagint translated from sorrow even.
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Psalm 7840, how often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved him in the wasteland.
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In Psalm 9510, it says, For forty years I loathed the generation, and said they are a people who wander in their heart, and they do not know my ways.
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So he loathed that generation. Similar word in the Septuagint. Isaiah 6310, but they rebelled and grieved his
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Holy Spirit. Therefore he turned himself to become their enemy, and they fought against them.
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So the Old Testament is replete with many, many verses that present the idea that God can be grieved, that he can be grieved to the point of becoming angry and loathed.
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Also in the New Testament, this doesn't go away. It's not as if many, as many theologians or Christians say or think that God was one way in the
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Old Testament. In the New Testament, he's a completely different way. No, he is immutable. He's unchanging from beginning to end, although God has no beginning or end.
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In Mark 3 5, it says, And after looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart,
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Jesus said to the man, Stretch out your hand, and he stretched it out, and his hand was restored. Ephesians 4 30 says,
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And do not grieve the Holy Spirit, which is what we're looking at, right, of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. In Hebrews chapter 3 10, which is actually quoting
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Psalm 95, it says, Therefore I was angry with this generation and said, They always go astray in their heart, and they did not know my ways.
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And if you remember Psalm 95 10, using a similar word in the Septuagint, said that they loathed that generation.
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It's much like grief. So God the
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Holy Spirit is a person, and as a person, he can be grieved. Now, before we even start digging into what all of that means, because we will ask the question,
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What does it mean to grieve the Holy Spirit? How do we do that? How do we rectify that? And so on and so forth. It must be stated on the front end that this is huge.
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And what I mean by that is, this is what separates, for example, our morality from everyone else's.
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And what I mean by that is, there is always systems and structures and laws put in place for any given culture, any given community, and any given household, even within the church.
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There's a set of rules, spoken or unspoken, that if you transgress against it, you have broken the law.
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And if you broke the law, the law will make you pay. Or I will make you pay.
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Or we will make you pay, whoever has set up these rules, unspoken or spoken. Christianity has a morality and an ethic, just like every unbeliever has a quote -unquote morality or an ethic, whether they say they do or not.
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Even the quote -unquote atheist who says morality is relative, if you smack him in the face, steal his wallet, and steal his girlfriend, he will have issue with you.
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And as Christians, if we are not thinking like Christians, we will erect our own laws. And if you transgress against that, woe be it to you, even if it's not rooted in the text of Scripture.
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So morality and ethics are not original to Christianity.
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But you know what is? Grieving the God who gave you that morality.
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Loving the God who gave you the morality. And caring about the law that he has given you, because it brings gladness to his heart, and it grieves him when we forsake him and his law, because to forsake his law is to forsake him.
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It's to forsake him. Martin Louis Jones says it like this, he says, when a
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Christian sins, what he should be most conscious of is not so much that he has done that which is wrong.
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How many of us need to hear this today? When a Christian sins, what he should be most conscious of is not so much that he has done that which is wrong, or even that he has broken
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God's law. Now I'm not getting anti -Nomian here, right? Care about God's law.
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But this is not the primary thing that you should be concerned about. Martin Louis Jones goes on and says, what they should really be troubled by is this, is that he has offended against love.
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So though this text is teaching us not to grieve the Holy Spirit, it's also telling us and showing us that we ought to live grateful, that we ought to be thankful, because he has been spending the last three chapters telling us what the
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Holy Spirit has done, and how he has created this unity, that we are to guard and to live contrary to the way that Paul is saying that we are commanded to live, is to disregard, to have disdain for, and to spit in the
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Holy Spirit's face, which ultimately grieves him.
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Children, would you look at me for just a second? I want to remind you of something that you probably already know, but that when you sin, when you don't do what the
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Bible says that you are to do, when you treat your brother, and really this is the context of the sermon, right? The way that we are to treat one another, when we use words that we shouldn't use, when we speak lies, we're not just breaking rules, but we're actually making
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God sad. We're actually breaking his heart, right?
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That's something that we need to consider and to think about as we think about this text.
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So God is, in fact, a person. He can be grieved, and this grievousness is not a passive grief.
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It is one that is, and this grief underscores his intimate involvement with each and every person that he calls his.
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Stephen Charnock says it like this, A believer's sins are the nails that pierce the Spirit's heart.
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So lest you were thinking that what I was saying didn't seem confessional enough, Stephen Charnock is reminding you you're wrong.
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You're wrong. He said that far more pointedly than me. The reality is it pierces his heart.
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Now, this presents somewhat of a problem, and I wouldn't normally bring this up except for the fact that the last time that the men met in Shepherd's Institute, we went over something called the doctrine of impassibility, and so I know that there's at least half the men sitting in this room going, how do we solve this problem?
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Because just last Monday, you told us that not only is God immutable, that is that he cannot change, he's not going to move, as it were, from one thing to the other, but he is also impassable.
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And that means, I almost want to ask the question, but I won't, it means that he is not given over to passions.
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Our confession, the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, in chapter 2, verse 1, says
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God is a most pure spirit. He is invisible, he is without body, parts, or passions.
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He is spirit, so he is a person, but he's not a person like you and I.
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He's invisible, he's without body, without parts, this is pointing to divine simplicity, and he is without passions.
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And what we said in the Shepherds Institute was that this means that he is impassable, he's not given over to having things act upon him within himself or externally, especially by way of emotions.
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In other words, God does not have emotions like you and I have emotions, and yet he does have affections.
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And what I mean by that is God is not pushed to and fro based on what he experiences or what he quote -unquote feels.
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Let me put skin on this for a moment. Say you're in a really good mood, husbands, and you walk home from your job or from your car because it took you a while to get home, and you're in a really good mood, and you're thinking, man, what a great day at work.
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I got a bonus, you know, people recognize the job that I did and how well
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I did it, you know, and there's promise of a future in this company for me. Talk about promotion, so on and so forth, and I'm just really excited about just kind of the prospect of life right now.
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I'm married, I have beautiful children, and you know, God is good all the time, and all the time
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God is good. Amen? This is your heart disposition. And you walk through the door and all of a sudden, all of these problems hit you.
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Boom! Problems you were not expecting. Maybe your wife has more of an attitude than you'd like to deal with.
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Your kids are vying for your attention, and you're just trying to get and to explain how great your day has been, right?
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Maybe one of them just, you know, body slammed the other one and decided to have a WWE fight, and there's blood all over the floor.
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Now you've got to figure out how to deal with that. And all of a sudden, all of that excitement that was in you, all of that joy that was in you, has now turned to frustration.
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Now you are completely angered, and you are distraught, and you are annoyed, and now you start acting in that way.
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You start acting frustrated instead of joyous. You start acting angry instead of happy.
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Why? Because you were acted upon by an outside force that caused your disposition, your emotions, to change.
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And this is a common human experience. God does not do that. God is impassable.
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He's immovable. So there is nothing in Him or outside of Him that's going to cause
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Him to be emotionally pushed around, as it were. No one's putting His back up against the wall. No one is causing
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Him to act any different than He would act at any given moment. This is what is called the doctrine of impassibility.
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But there's something that I need you to understand. Though it is true that God is impassable, that does not mean that He's apathetic.
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It does not mean that He is this stoic figure in the sky who is completely void of personhood.
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He has joy. He grieves. And yet, it's not how we do it.
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So how does He do it, Pastor? I'm glad that you asked, because now
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I get to teach you a very important truth, and that is this. Sometimes, as good theologians, as good
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Christians, we bump up against realities that we have to go, I don't know. I have no idea how that works.
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And this is one of those, right? The Bible uses things called anthropomorphisms, which is, it likens
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God to a person, right? It says with His outstretched arm,
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He does things in the Old Testament, right? When it talks about His anger in the Old Testament, the
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Hebrew is actually, He is what? You've heard me say this before, long of nose. Jesus, in Matthew 23 and 24, when
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He's rebuking the scribes and the Pharisees and taking the kingdom of them and from them and telling that He's going to give it to a people, bear the fruit of it, namely the
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Gentiles, He quotes the Old Testament and says, you know, it's kind of like,
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I was a mother hen gathering her chicks, but you didn't want to be held. That's not so much an anthropomorphism, except for like an animal -promorphism.
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I don't know how to say that, but you see what I'm saying? He likens Himself. So He is communicating to us that He does in fact have affections, though not emotions because emotions can be changed and messed up.
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And we don't fully know how that works because He's God and we're not. He's infinite and we're finite. And so we have to be able to take these truths and hold them somewhat in tension.
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We have to say this is 100 % true. And as Thomas Goodwin has said, the Spirit's grief is not one of weakness but of love offended, which proves what
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I said earlier, but then also shows us this concept as well. When we think about His impassibility and we think about His grievance, it's not one of weakness.
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So it's not like our emotion. It transcends our emotions and it's more like an affection and it's rooted in something different than our grief is, right?
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Our grief is rooted in the fact that we can't change anything about what happened, right? When a loved one dies or is harmed or whatever the case may be, we are grieved.
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But we're grieved in a different way than God because we are sad that it's happening. It's gonna happen to us. We're gonna miss that person.
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We don't have the ability to change it. None of that is true with God. So His grieving is not one that is based in any sort of weakness, nor is it one that is pushed around.
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So the question becomes, well, what in the world is He grieved by? What is
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He grieved by? Well, He is grieved by sin.
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He is grieved by sin. But He is grieved in such a way that it is rooted in, and this is really kind of bound up in this idea here, of His holiness, right?
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In this verse. And do not grieve the, what? Holy Spirit of God. It's not just God.
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It's the Spirit of God. And it's not just the Spirit of God. It's the Holy Spirit of God. And so when we do not live as we ought, especially in context, the way in which
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He has told us to live in the context of a local church, He's grieved because it pushes up against His holiness.
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He sees that it harms you, and it de -gods
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Him of His godness in many ways, at least in your mind. The Spirit is co -equal with the
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Father and the Son. He shares their divine attributes. He is omniscient, He is omnipotent, and He is omnipresent.
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And He is, if we aren't careful, grieved. So what grieves
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God? That's my second point. Let's think about that. What grieves God? Now comes my second point.
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The problem of sin. So we have seen the personhood of God, or the personhood of the
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Spirit. Now I want you to see the problem of sin. The problem of sin.
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Now, as I just said, one of the things that clues us into what grieves
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Him is the fact that He's also given this descriptor, holy, or hagios in the
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Greek. And if you remember what I said, this means it means to literally be set apart.
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It means to literally be one of a kind.
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In fact, many Christians are called holy ones, or agios, or saints. That means that they are set aside for a specific purpose.
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When it's speaking of God, and even of our walk with God, oftentimes it refers to our righteous perfection, or lack thereof.
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Mainly our lack thereof, but our holiness that we pursue.
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It's something that we have because God has said we are holy. It is something that we are being made day by day as the
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Spirit works in us, and it is something that we are continually growing into.
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But before we move on, I want you to think about it this way. When we grieve the Holy Spirit, understanding
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His holy character, and how when we do not live as we ought, we grieve
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Him. It's like a parent -child relationship, although it transcends it and everything breaks down when it comes to an analogy, right?
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When my mother thought about what I did as a teenager, she was more sad than she was angry, and that sadness or that grief legitimately, legitimately hurt her.
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The word grieve literally speaks of personal sorrow. It is the
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Greek word that means to be in heaviness, or to be made sorry, to be inflicted of heart, to be in distress, or caused pain.
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So Paul's exhortation here implies that Christians can inflict this kind of pain upon the
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Holy Spirit, and they do so by sinning. This is why
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Thomas Watson, another great confessional Puritan, says, sin is the grieving of the Spirit who is the life and sweetness of the soul.
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Specifically, what type of sin? Well, in context, if you remember, if you look with me back at verses 25 through 29, it is what?
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Speaking falsehood and not speaking the truth, right? Not being angry enough at your unrighteous anger, not being angry enough at your sin, and being angry in a way that dishonors
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God and others. Stealing and not making much of your own work, letting unwholesome words proceed from your mouth, and not speaking grace into people's lives.
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And as we continue on, and we're gonna get into the tongue more as the weeks go by, because apparently God thought it was important enough to continue to go on over and over and over about, because after verse 30 and 31 and 32, here are some more ways that the
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Holy Spirit is grieved. Let all bitterness and anger and wrath and shouting and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.
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Instead, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, graciously forgiving each other, just as God and Christ also graciously has forgiven you.
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So another way we grieve the Holy Spirit is by being bitter, by being wrathful and vengeful, by slandering others, by having malice and showing malice, by being unkind to one another, by being hard -hearted and cold -hearted to one another, and by being ungracious and not forgiving one another.
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Which actually, I say this, but in passing it is literally kind of a debate within commentaries.
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Namely, who, what is he speaking about? Is he just dropping this in there out of nowhere? Is he just saying, hey, by the way, don't grieve the
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Holy Spirit. On to the next thing. Or is he culminating what he said already? Or is he just using it as kind of a all -encompassing statement about what came before and what goes ahead?
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I love Martin Lloyd -Jones's answer. He says, which one is it? Yes. It's all of them, because all of them can be proven from Scripture.
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It's most certainly a culmination of what has been said so far, but it's also kick -starting. And he says, you know, the
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Greek word chi there that's translated and is kind of showing us that, but also it's just sinning in general, right?
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We are not to have sinful speech, that much is sure. In the immediate context, we are not to gossip, we're not to slander, we're not to be bitter, but we're not also to live selfishly.
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Sinful attitudes like these, grieve the Spirit because they make much of us and not much of Him.
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They disrupt the unity in the body of Christ, which the
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Spirit has already given us. If you go back to chapter 4 verse 1, it says, therefore
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I, Paul speaking here, the prisoner of the Lord, exhort you to walk worthy of the calling with which you've been called, with all humility, with gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, verse 3, being diligent to keep the unity of the
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Spirit in the bond of peace. You remember what we said, we can't create unity that's given to us by the
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Spirit by virtue of the finished work of Christ, right? Which means we can't obliterate it, but we can spit in its face, we can disfigure it, we can mar it.
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And when we do that, we grieve the Holy Spirit because He gave it to us and He's working in us to keep that preserved.
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And when we do not do that, it grieves Him because it's an affront to His holiness and it's an affront to His work in person.
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We also grieve when we engage in what is called often spiritual apathy, when we neglect the things that we ought to be doing.
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In this context of the local church, for example, we ought not neglect one another, we ought not neglect speaking to one another in love, we ought not neglect prayer or Scripture or, as the author of Hebrews says, meeting together as is the habit of some.
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What we do here is infinitely important because not only has the Holy Spirit created the unity and the church itself,
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He's created the church itself both corporately and individually by creating Christians.
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And not only has He created Christians, but He, when we're together, works through the liturgy and through the preached word to grow you, to sanctify you, to bring you to more confirmation, or not confirmation, but to bring you in to more conformity with His Son, Jesus Christ the
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Righteous. So why would you want to grieve the Spirit? That's the question you should be asking at this point.
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We need to get past this idea of picking apart how in the world can an impassable God be grieved, right?
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There's a time and a place to think about that, but what Paul is trying to get you to think through is not a theological explanation of theology proper, but rather you should not want to grieve this
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God. Do you not see what this
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God has done for you and yet you want to sin? You want to sin in your speech? You want to live selfishly?
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You want to act like you are the end -all be -all? That you are the one who controls all things?
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That you are the one that all things point to and you are the pinnacle of? And that without you the world would fall apart?
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No! Recognize the Spirit. Trust the Spirit.
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Love the Spirit. Be grateful to the Spirit and do not grieve him by doing everything that I just said not to do.
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Or that I'm gonna go on, Paul says, and say not to do. Because when you do that, you tear down the unity of the
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Spirit, you spit in the face of God, and you grieve the Holy Spirit.
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You do him some harm in the proper theological sense.
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And yet it's a harm that is not everlasting. It is not one that pushes him to and fro.
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Martin Lloyd -Jones says, and I don't love this, but I love Martin Lloyd -Jones and I hate when we have to agree.
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But it's usually around the person of the Holy Spirit. But he seems to think, and like I said
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I think he's wrong, but that this grieving of the Holy Spirit is just something given in the economy of redemption.
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Namely, that he has allowed himself to be grieved for a time in and around redemption.
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No. It's rooted in his being. It's ontological. He can be grieved.
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He can be grieved. Now we must think about that for real.
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And that has a relational impact. That's why it says in the Bible in 1st Thessalonians that he can be quenched.
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But you grieve the Spirit, you're going to quench the Spirit, and then you're not going to walk in the Spirit. And if you walk in the
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Spirit, there is life and peace. Think about it this way.
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Actually, we're not going to use that. I had an illustration that I wanted to give you children, but it came across like the
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Trinity is like ice thing, and the Spirit helped me in this moment. But it causes us this reality that he is grieved to understand the root of our disobedience.
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When we are disobedient, it grieves God. But more than that, it contradicts his work of sanctification.
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Let me ask you this, Heritage. What are you harboring in your life that causes the
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Spirit grief? What are you okay with? What do you give a pass? Are you given to sinful speech, gossip, slander, fits of rage and anger, bitterness?
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The only way to deal with that problem is to bring it to God, to repent, and to trust in his goodness and what he is trying to do.
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The third thing that I want you to see is the promise and prospect of the
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Spirit's sealing. So we've seen the personhood of the
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Spirit, we've seen the problem of sin against the Spirit, and now
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I want you to see the promise and prospect of the Spirit's sealing.
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Now the first part of this sermon, you can almost cut it in half, kind of like you can cut the book of Ephesians in half, right?
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It's all about how it's possible to grieve the Holy Spirit.
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But if you are in Christ, if you have learned Christ in the way that Paul spoke about in times past, which we've been over, and you can go back and listen to those sermons, if you are walking worthy and guarding the unity of the
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Spirit of the bond of peace, it is impossible, it is impossible for God not to finish his perfect work in you.
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It is, in other words, impossible to lose your salvation.
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So though we can grieve God, even if we are in Christ, that is not going to change his mind about you.
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We have to put that in its correct box because I'm not advocating for live however you want and God's okay with that.
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No, no, no. Right? Paul has been making the case this entire time that you need to be because of what the
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Spirit has done and because the Spirit lives in you, because the blood of Jesus has covered you and brought you into this body, that you are to walk worthy, that you are to be holy, as our
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Heavenly Father is holy. He's telling us that we are, in fact, if we are in Christ, if we have learned him, right?
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Verse 20, but you did not learn Christ in this way. There is a way that we have learned Christ that enables us to live the way he has for us to live.
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While at the same time, as Romans chapter 3 says, we are all sinners and we all fall short of the glory of God and we will not always not grieve the
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Holy Spirit. But don't grieve the Holy Spirit! And how you think about that reveals whether or not you are in Christ.
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If you see your salvation as something, for instance, that gives you a license to sin, then this is not, then you're not who he's talking to.
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He's got a different message for you. But for those of you who are in Christ, there is a promise and a prospect involved in your sealing.
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That is your security. Look with me at verse 30 again. He says, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed.
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Now, Paul has used this language already and we've talked about it, and this sealing is something that happens to every single believer.
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The Greek word that's used for sealed here refers to a mark of ownership and authenticity.
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That is that we are given this seal, this marking, right?
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In ancient times, if you remember me saying this, a seal would be placed on a letter or something that is paper in nature, the wax that they put on there and they would have their logo or their family emblem and they would stamp it upon this letter.
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And this royal document, now that it has the stamp, would carry with it the authority and the weight of the one who put it there.
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And it marked the ownership of that truth. This is the truth found in the
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Bible about believers. Believers are marked as God's possession by the Holy Spirit as if we were a piece of paper and the
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Holy Spirit is like wax. Don't take that too far, right? But the things that he gives us are the things that he does are not that seal.
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He himself is that seal and he lives in us, which is why he is grieved when we personally, not just corporately, sin against him and others, especially in the context of the local church.
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Because he's a seal, he is saying that he owns us, right?
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We've been purchased by Christ and that purchasedness, if you will, has been applied to us by the work of the
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Holy Spirit. 2 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 22,
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Paul says this, we were also sealed. We were given the
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Spirit as a pledge. He says like this, who also sealed us and gave the pledge of the Spirit in our hearts.
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And this Spirit's seal is unbreakable and it's unbreakable because it's
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God's seal. It's God's seal. That's why Thomas Watson said, the
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Spirit's seal is unbreakable for it is God's work and not man's. Richard Sibbes says it like this, to be sealed by the
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Spirit is to be marked as God's redeemed. So I want you to, I want you to pay attention to what's going on here.
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Verse 30, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, do not inflict upon him distress because of your sin, in other words, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
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Why would you grieve the Holy Spirit when he has in fact sealed you for the day of redemption?
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You know, when you see this word here, were, you were sealed. It's not you will be, you were.
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It's a statement of fact. If you are a Christian, if you love the Lord Jesus, if his blood covers you, you have a seal and that seal is the person of the
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Holy Spirit and he's not going anywhere. He is not going anywhere.
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You see, though he is saddened and distressed and afflicted, he does not move.
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He is immutable. He's impassable. He's not passed or cast to and fro.
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Here's what I'm trying to get at and I want you to pay attention to me. You cannot and will not out sin the cross of Christ and you will not grieve
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God to the point of him turning his back on you. Now this might be hard for some of you to understand, maybe not intellectually, but in your heart.
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Think about it. People in your life you have harmed or have harmed you.
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They saw something they didn't like and they betrayed you or they left or they betrayed you and they left.
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Maybe you've made horrible mistakes and sinned against people and they literally did nothing but walk away and if they did something else other than that they were just spreading hatred about you.
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That's not our God. Our God is always working in the mess.
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If you haven't been shown that since we've been looking at the book of Ephesians, I don't know how
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I could make it any more clear, but he will not leave you or forsake you.
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He will stay there and stay there and stay there and stay there.
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Do you want to know how I know that? Because he forsake the
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Lord Jesus Christ on the cross so that you would never be forsaken. That's the point of Ephesians.
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He died by the predetermined plan of God to make
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Christians and do you think for a second that even if you grieve this Holy Spirit he's going to change his mind about the work that he began before you were ever a twinkle in your mother's eye?
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Absolutely not! Your God is with you. Your God is for you. This God loves you and he will not walk away.
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He is in fact grieved but he is great and he is so great that he will not leave.
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He owns you. You've been bought with a price which means he is there to protect you. This seal ensures that no power can snatch you from the hand of Almighty God.
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See not only was a seal in the ancient world a document that that came from someone who was of importance but someone who could finish what he began.
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Someone who could do what he said he was going to do. And here's what he says he's going to do in John chapter 10 verse 28 and 29.
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And I give eternal life to them, Jesus says, and they will never perish ever and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
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My Father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the
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Father's hand. Why can you not be snatched out of the Father's hand, friends, if you are in Christ?
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Why? Why? Because the Father planned it,
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Ephesians chapter 1. He planned your salvation. And according to Romans, or not
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Romans, Ephesians chapter 1, God, Jesus died to redeem you. Look with me, chapter 1 verse 4.
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Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we'd be holy and blame us before him in love by predestining us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will to the praise of the glory of his grace which he graciously bestowed on us in the beloved in him.
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Speaking of Jesus, we have redemption through what? Your good behavior, your ability to not grieve the
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Spirit of God. No. No. Through his blood, the forgiveness of our transgressions according to the riches of his grace.
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Our salvation is kept by the sovereign will of God because of the finished work of Christ and the application and preservation of the
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Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has promised to be with you, to grow you, to sanctify you, and to do so until the day of redemption.
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Thomas Brooks says, the Spirit's seal is unbreakable for it is God's work and not man's.
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Do you rest in that, that you could not invalidate your salvation?
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And does that cause you to run to God or do you run away from God?
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Children, would you look at me for just a second. There's nothing, if you love
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Jesus, that you can do that would close God's open arms to you.
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If you sin, which you shouldn't, but if you do, you can always run to God.
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Always. Because he has given you a spirit to walk with you as you grow in your sanctification, that being made holy.
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And we know that because if you're in Christ, you have the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit does not leave us alone.
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God will never leave you alone and he will always protect you and he will always persevere you.
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This is why Romans says, for those whom he loved he predestined.
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And then he goes all the way through that golden chain of redemption and ends in glorification.
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He doesn't stop till the job is done. Which is why
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Philippians chapter 1 tells us that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.
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This means that your salvation is sure. And if your salvation is sure and you love the
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Spirit, then what? Live your life not grieving him! Right?
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Numbers chapter 23 verse 19 says, God is not a man that he should lie nor a son of man that he should repent.
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Has he said and will he not do it? Or has he spoken and will he not establish it?
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Our God is a God of his word.
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Now the fourth and final thing that I want you to see is the prize and purpose of redemption.
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The reason that the Holy Spirit is grieved when we sin against him, especially in the ways that exist within the context of what
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Paul is talking about in the local church, especially with our tongues and our lying and so on and so forth, is not just because God's law says somewhere that we should not do it.
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It's because he's leading us to something. He's leading us to something.
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When the Lord Jesus purchased your life on that cross, he did so with the end in mind.
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Not just now, but the end. Look with me at 430.
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It says, And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
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You were sealed for what purpose? So that you would know that you are assured by the Spirit? Well, that's certainly one reason, but it's also you were sealed with the
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Spirit for a certain day. A certain day.
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This word redemption here refers to the final deliverance from sin and its effects.
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So when you are saved here and now, when you've been but Godded and you've been regenerated and you're living this life, walking to and fro, trying to walk worthy, you are saved from the power of sin, but yet not the presence of it.
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The presence still weighs heavily upon us.
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We feel its consequences. The old man still clings. This is why
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Romans chapter 8 verse 23, Paul says, And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the firstfruits of the
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Spirit, even we ourselves grown within ourselves, eagerly waiting for our adoption as a son of the redemption of our body.
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So the redemption being spoken about here, yes, is bound up in the work of Christ, but it's also eschatological.
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It's pointing to a future day, a day of redemption, or as it's often called, the day of the
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Lord. One commentator I was reading this week said something that I thought was amazing.
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He said, Paul only thought about life as having two days.
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Two day and that day. He always had one eye on that day.
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The day when we would stand before Jesus and all would be made right. Where every tear would be wiped from our eye.
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When all of our infirmities and all of our iniquitous behavior and all of everyone else's iniquitous behavior that we come into contact with and all of the ailments that we have and others have, all of that will be done away with on the day of the
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Lord Jesus. The day of redemption, of final redemption. Now this might be confusing to some of you, but remember that the
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Bible says that we have been saved. We are being saved and we will be saved. We were saved objectively, forensically, as we stand in the sight of God.
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And yet we are being saved. That is, we are being made holy so that we might stand before the Lord and we will be saved because there's coming a day where we will reap the benefits that Christ has purchased with us forever.
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And our bodies will be made new. And all sin will be dealt with. And not only will its power be done away with, the presence of it will be completely gone.
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So be like Paul. Think about today and that day. Don't think about next week.
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Think about next time you see Jesus. You see him in the preached word and in the text.
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You will see him then in bodily form. And on that day, everything changes.
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That's one of the downsides to much of the popular theology that's flooding the
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Twittersphere, as it's got all its eyes right here, right now, as if God is not coming back.
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Be Pauline. Yes, today. Wake up in the morning. Honor God. Do what you can to affect the world around you and yet be looking towards that day.
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There's today and then there is that day. That day is where our eschatological hope is in.
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Not in how more Christian we can make this world. Now, should we engage the political sphere?
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Should we press the crown rights of King Jesus on the earth? Should we do? Yes and amen. Don't hear what I'm not saying.
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But if your hope is in that, your hope is in the wrong place and that the bottom will fall out of that basket.
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It's in the glorification of every believer as they are fully conformed to the image of Christ.
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That's what the spirit is up to. That's what he wants you to do. In essence, all Paul is trying to communicate in the book of Ephesians is this is how
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God made Christians and this is how he's made the church. This is how he's taken the people of God and made them the church.
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And this is how you act in the church. And when you don't act like this in the church, you grieve the Holy Spirit because look at what
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God has done. You have to love him and live gratefully towards that reality.
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And you need to understand that when I tell you to do something, God says through the apostle Paul, it's not just so that you could look really awesome to everyone else.
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It's so that you could be conformed to the image of Christ. So on that day, you can stand and not be disintegrated because you are standing in front of his holiness, but that you could bask in his glory and dwell in his house forever.
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The end in mind is the day of redemption and the spirit's work is to prepare us for that day.
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That's why he gets grieved. He's preparing us for that moment. When I was in the military,
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I hated all of the physical activity that we had to do. I hated having to learn how to use weapon systems all of the time.
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I know that's going to sound crazy to Chris from an emotional standpoint, but he knows me very well.
01:02:26
So he's not that surprised that I said that. Just nothing. I wake up in the morning and I'm having to like learn how to put weapon systems together in my sleep.
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And I'm like, I really don't care about this all that much. I know when a bad guy pops up, I will have to deal with that. I'll deal with that then.
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If I have to run later, I'll run later. Nobody's chasing me. If I had been a
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Christian there, I would have recited that proverb that's like, yeah, only the wicked run when nobody's chasing them.
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Like what's going on here? It was painful.
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It hurt. It was not fun. And it seemed pointless to me. But what
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I didn't understand then, which is what I learned to come to understand while I was in the military and understand even better now, is that on those days, they were preparing me for that day.
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Not the day that Paul's talking about, but the day of war. The day when I won't be able to think.
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The day when I will just have to act out of instinct. The day when trouble finds me.
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And it's then when you're thankful for all of the work that you put in and that you can put those weapon systems together in your sleep.
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Friends, the Spirit is doing that same thing day in and day out. He is preparing us for a different day.
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He is preparing us in war so that when we can stand before God, we will not have to be at war, but that we will what?
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Glory in his presence. We will glory in his presence.
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And he will not fail in his mission. Therefore, do not grieve him. Do you see what
01:04:20
I'm saying? Philippians 1 .6, I've already said it, but I want you to hear it again.
01:04:28
For I am confident, Paul says. Confident. It's not a guess. I'm confident of this very thing.
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There's some other things I'm not so confident about, but here's what I am confident about. It's this. That he who began a good work in you will perfect it or bring it to completion until the day.
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There's a reason why I love the fact that the Legacy Standard Bible, for instance, says in Ephesians chapter one, that he says in verse 11, in him, that is
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Christ, we also have been made in inheritance. We were being made something.
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It's like this. Children, look at me for a second. What I'm trying to get you to understand is that we as Christians being prepared for that day, the day of redemption, the day of the
01:05:21
Lord, we're like a piece of clay or a piece of Play -Doh that you might play with. And he is chiseling us and molding us.
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And he's, you know how you make little figures or little people or you make stars with the things, like that's what he's doing.
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We're pieces of clay. This is from Romans, right? Chapter eight. We're pieces of clay and he's molding us like a molder, like a potter, like an artist who uses clay.
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And he's doing that so that when we come to Jesus on the day of redemption, we will be able to stand and we will be loved.
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And so in essence, what Paul is doing here is he's pausing to say in the midst of all of this, hey, hey,
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I've got a little more theology for you, right? Remember I said the book of Ephesians is split in half.
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First half is doctrine. The last half is duty. Three chapters of doctrine, you know, three chapters of duty.
01:06:27
And yet Paul cannot get very far without reminding you, oh, hey, by the way, I know
01:06:34
I'm telling you to do a lot of stuff right now and to act a certain way, but you never need to divorce it from the person and work of God in Christ applied by the
01:06:44
Holy Spirit, because that's how you do it. Do you want to not grieve the
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Holy Spirit and know that he has sealed you and he will bring you to glory?
01:06:55
He will bring you to the day of redemption. And so friends, as you know, the redemption is certain.
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You can now live with eternity in view. That's what he's getting at. This isn't about just how you treat one another, because next week you're going to have to be at church with them.
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You're going to live with them forever. Every Christian is a mortal.
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And the people sitting next to you right now are the people that you're going to spend eternity with. So act godly to them.
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That's what Paul is saying. Let me ask you this,
01:07:42
Heritage. Are you living just to get to tomorrow? Are you living to get to the other side of that confession or repentance?
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Or are you living preparing for that day, for the day of redemption?
01:08:02
And if you aren't, let the promise of glorification fuel your pursuit of holiness as you seek not to grieve the
01:08:15
Holy Spirit of our Holy God. So as we end today, please pause and consider the weight of what
01:08:33
I've said. Even if I've said it imperfectly, feel it.
01:08:41
The very spirit who indwells us, remember Ephesians at the end of chapter one, verses 17, 18, right?
01:08:51
The same spirit that rose Jesus from the dead is toward those who believe.
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And he dwells in us. He's not some distant deity as the open theists would claim.
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He is actively and personally involved in your sanctification.
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He's not an impersonal force. He's not interested in making you bark like a dog, but he is interested in making you look like Jesus.
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And when you do not think or act like Jesus, it grieves him.
01:09:37
But that grief is not going to cause him to turn his gaze from you.
01:09:43
In fact, as you wrestle in your sanctification, it's proof that he is working on you.
01:09:54
Do you not see the immense love of the spirit? As a matter of fact,
01:10:03
I didn't go this route, but Martin Lloyd -Jones' entire section on this book of Ephesians is essentially making this argument that when you grieve the
01:10:11
Holy Spirit, you don't understand love.
01:10:21
And you don't understand the love of God. And you sin against the love of God.
01:10:27
I think these things are true. It's something to be contemplated about.
01:10:37
The one who drew you to Christ, who regenerated your dead, nasty heart that was unable to respond to spiritual stimuli, is the one who now unceasingly works to bring you to God.
01:10:55
Perfect on that day. Now, will you be perfect before you see
01:11:00
Christ? No. No, no way. No, no how. But you'll be working toward that end.
01:11:12
And if you're not working toward that end, you do not know Christ, or as Paul would say, Christ does not know you.
01:11:23
Every step you take in the Christian life is either one that is grateful unto the work of the
01:11:28
Lord through the power of the Spirit or one that grieves the Spirit. Praise be to God that He has covered your grievous behaviors.
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And praise be to God that He has given you the Spirit to cause you not to want to do those grievous behaviors and walk in ungrievous ways.
01:11:56
As we close, reflect upon your price of redemption.
01:12:06
The Spirit seals you for the day, for that day, because it was bought with the blood of Christ.
01:12:18
And also reflect that this was God's predetermined plan as seen in Ephesians chapter 1. And that will cause you to walk worthy, to guard the unity of the
01:12:30
Spirit and the bond of peace. And if it doesn't, hear me on this, if it doesn't, nothing will.
01:12:37
Nothing will. Because that's the greatest news of the world, that He has taken you a dead sinner and caused you to love
01:12:48
Christ and to be saved. And that you would be chiseled and into the image of Christ until you see
01:12:54
Christ on the day of Christ. What love.
01:13:05
And if you do not know Christ, you just live and die and then you suffer in hell forever.
01:13:20
So repent of your self -made religion, your self -made crowns, if that is you this day.
01:13:26
Trust in the Lord Jesus and His finished work for you, that the
01:13:32
Spirit might chisel and mold you. Because on that day, you will either receive a smile or a scowl.
01:13:40
You will either see everlasting love or God's wrath. You will either be perfected by the
01:13:49
Spirit or you'll be pummeled by the
01:13:56
Lord Jesus Christ. Today you must make the decision on whom you will follow.
01:14:04
It is my job to tell you the truth and it's your job to make a Spirit -empowered and fueled decision.