Grieve Not The Holy Spirit, Produce Life Instead

Ezekiel’s River of Life and the Tree for Healing

Today's Old Testament reading will be in Ezekiel 47, 1 -12, that's page 734 in your pew Bible. Please stand for the reading of God's word. When he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east, for the temple faced east.

The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. Then he brought me out by the way of the north gate, and led me around on the outside of the outer gate that faces toward the east, and behold, the water was trickling out on the south side.

Going on eastward with a measuring line in his hand, the man measured a thousand cubits, and then led me through the water, and it was ankle deep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was knee deep.

Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was waist deep. Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen. It was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through.

And he said to me, Son of man, have you seen this? Then he led me back to the bank of the river. As I went back, I saw on the bank of the river many trees on the one side and on the other, and he said to me, This water flows toward the eastern region that goes down to the Ereba, and enters the sea.

When the water flows into the sea, the water will become fresh, and wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be many fish, for this water goes there, and the waters of the sea may become fresh, so everything will live where the river goes.

Fishermen will stand beside the sea, from Enjeti to Eniglum. It will be a place for the spreading of nets. Its fish will be of very many kinds, like the fish of the great sea, but its swamps and marshes will not become fresh.

They will be left for salt, and on the banks on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary.

Their fruit will be good for food, their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.

Revelation’s River of the Water of Life

New Testament reading is from Revelation 22, verses 1 -5, that's page 1041. Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb through the middle of the streets of the city.

Also on either side of the river, the tree of life and its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His servants will worship Him.

They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads, and night will be no more. They will need no lamp, no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

Please remain standing.

The Land of the Imperatives in Ephesians 4

Good morning. Open your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 4. Ephesians chapter 4. After a little break, we're back in Ephesians 4. Hopefully the Lord is willing to finish it today. As we have looked at it so far in Ephesians 4, we're in the blessed good land of the imperatives, just as Israel was being brought through the wanderings and to the good land of Canaan.

So Jesus has brought us to the land of imperatives. That is His commandments for us to do and to find our life. And we saw, if you remember, in chapter 4, we saw at the beginning of it, we saw the unity in the land of the imperatives that we can have with one another as we all grow together after the image of Christ, who is the one who gives these blessed commands.

And we saw, starting in verse 17 to 24, the life of the new man and the death of the old in Jesus Christ. That's the old man of ours, the one that we are born with, the one that is after the image of sin, is being done away with.

And we, through Christ, in the land of the imperatives, get to enjoy the new man. No longer after the desires of the flesh, but rather being renewed in the spirit of the mind, we get to obey Jesus Christ from the heart.

And then, the last sermon we had here, if you remember, in verses 25 to 27, if you remember, we kind of put both of those two themes together, of the unity in Christ that we have as a body, and also the putting away of the old man and the new man coming forth.

And we brought them together, and how we see each other, that we are to help one another, ditch the old man, and grow after the new man. If you remember, we talked about putting away falsehood and speaking truth to each other.

And we said that's not just simply telling lies or telling truth, that's talking new man to one another. New man-ish is our new language, that we speak to one another. And our anger is used when we see other people in sin, when we see other people not enjoying the good land of the imperatives, but rather the old man, we have an action or reaction to it, and love for them, to get that out.

And we saw in this way, there will be no opportunity for Satan. And so now we find ourselves continuing on in this paragraph, in Ephesians 4, 28, of how we can live in unity with one another, helping each other get rid of the old man and enjoying the new.

And so we see in verse 28, in the ESV it comes pretty cleanly, we have three lets, and that's the negative followed by the positive. If you look at verse 28, I'll read and then I'll pray. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, be put away from you along with all malice. Rather, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you. Oh, Father in heaven, help us please with this text.

Help us, Lord, to look at your word, your perfect word that makes no mistakes, and let us apply it to our heart, to who we are as people who are prone to mistakes. And we're prone, Lord, to want our own selfish desires, rather than what you have for us in Jesus Christ.

But you have all things for us in Christ, and you have enabled by your Spirit for us to help one another out, look more like the new man, and forsake the old. Oh, God in heaven, so let us receive this instruction by grace.

Lord, let us do these things motivated by the mercies that are found in our Lord and the gift of the Spirit he has given. God in heaven, thank you that we can treat one another in ways that produce life and not in ways that produce curses and death.

Thank you that we can look like Jesus and no longer like Satan. So let us look to this word, let us look to Christ, and let us behold the land of the imperatives and enjoy its sweet fruit and eat and enjoy and produce in its season.

In Jesus' name, amen. I love the imagery of Genesis chapter 1, the first couple of verses there. I love the text reads,. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And so before there was ever any kind of life, there's just this big blob of creation.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And so you just imagine this huge mass of something that has no particular life associated with it. All the necessary elements of life is found in there, but it hasn't quite had the moving around and separating that is needed in order for life to start happening.

And what's fascinating is then in verse 2, that Moses says,. And the imagery there of the Spirit hovering over this mass of chaos, no life at all, just kind of big blob-ness, the Hebrew there that's used that the Spirit was hovering over there is a good picture of mind to consider a hen that's brooding over her eggs that have no life in it yet, because it needs a hen to brood over it for a while before life starts to form.

But nevertheless, the hen is brooding over those eggs and there's life capable there, it just hasn't happened yet. And it's the same kind of language that we see here that the Holy Spirit is brooding over creation, anticipating when the Word, the Logos, would command, let there be light, and then everything else in the week that provided the life, and the Holy Spirit is brooding over that whole situation, waiting for it so that life would come forth.

And then you have the whole week of life, as the Spirit is brooding over the earth, the whole week of life then happens. And it's very, you know, again, imagine seeing all that take place, it would be awesome in its truest form.

It would be great to witness life just happening throughout that first week of creation, coming from the Spirit with the command of Christ Jesus our Lord. But it pales in comparison to the fact that the Holy Spirit was brooding over your spirit at one point, that at one point you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked, and you had no life in you at all because of your rebellion, yet the Holy Spirit was brooding over your lifeless chaos-ness, as He awaited the command of the Logos, of the Son of God, to say, let there be light in your souls.

And so I love the imagery and I love the shadowy forms of the fact that as the Holy Spirit brooded over creation at the first as life produced, so He broods over you at first when life is produced. And then in your own life now as a believer in Jesus, you have this sweet week of creation in which new life is forming in you as the Holy Spirit doesn't say, okay, my work is done at the first, but He then makes His abode in you.

He's in you so that you would then start producing life throughout the whole week as we anticipate the great Sabbath day rest in which all life is completed, and we get to enjoy that life completed when He returns, when Jesus returns.

I like the imagery of life here, and the Holy Spirit in the Scripture is always like the cornerstone of that production of life, that means of life that is producing in us in this week of life that we have as we anticipate when Jesus returns.

And I think that little doctrine set there, that imagery there, keep that in your mind as we are looking at these verses here in Ephesians 4, and the hinge that these let not do this instead, let not do this instead, let not do this instead, the hinge that these commands from Paul are on are found in chapter 4, verse 30, when he says, And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

For that Sabbath day rest in which all is redeemed, life complete as we just live the life that He has been working in us. But notice Paul says, Do not grieve the work of the Spirit as He works this lifeness in you in this week of creation in your life.

Do not grieve Him, or do not stop, or attempt to stop His progress. Now, before we get to the three lets, and we look at these, I think it's important for us to see this verse 30, to see how this do not grieve the Spirit as He's working this life in you, we've got to understand this is an anthropomorphism, it's a big word, I know, it's anthropomorphism, that is that Paul is putting an attribute of humanness on God for us to understand something about God.

You see what I mean? The Spirit doesn't enter into a state of grief. It's not like I can come in today and say, Hey guys, I've been grieving the Holy Spirit with my sin, I've been working against the life that He's trying to produce in me, and so guess what?

The Holy Spirit is in a state of grief right now, I'm sorry to say it, but He is just straight up grieving. I can't say that, because the Spirit doesn't enter into any other state than what He's already in.

So the next person could come in and be like, I've been acting really righteously and full of life, the Spirit is actually full of happiness, that's His state right now. So we can't say that the Spirit literally joins or goes into another state of being, but Paul, that doesn't mean that what he's saying here in verse 30 isn't true.

There is something about when we are sinning against God and the life that He's producing in us that we are grieving the Holy Spirit. Now we can't say it's completely understandable what that looks like because He is God and we are not, but there is something true about the fact that we are grieving Him, we are making Him sad, as we counter work against that life that He's producing in us during this week of our life, so to speak, as we await the final end.

And so I think the three, let not or don't do that, do this instead, hinges on this verse in which it says, do not stop or impede or grieve the Spirit as He's working life in you today, right now. The life that He's brooding over you, the true that you had at first as He called you into life, and the one that He's producing in you now as you live righteously, do not impede that, do not grieve Him as He's working in that to make you look like that final day of redemption when you have it all.

Do not grieve Him. So what are those three things that we can do to grieve Him in that process, that life that He's given to us? What are the three ways we can impede life in our life, so to speak, the way we live our life?

And we'll see that in verse 28, verse 29, and verse 31. 28 is our work, or the way if we steal, we need a labor instead, right? We need to be producers of life in the way that we work instead of taking away from life in the way that we steal.

In verse 29, we'll see in the way that we talk, and we've already kind of talked about this before, in the way that we talk, it'll either be producing life or it'll be corruption and taking away life, grieving the Spirit.

And we'll see in verse 31 and 32, the way we respond to those who have sinned against us, we can either respond in a way that will produce life that the Spirit is doing in us, or we can grieve the Spirit in the way that we respond when people sin against us.

And so let us look at the first one. Let us look at the first thing Paul brings up, the way that we can either grieve the Spirit or produce life as the Spirit is working in us, anticipating that last day of full life.

He says in verse 28 of chapter 4, let the thief no longer steal. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands. So that's kind of easy for us to put in our brain, right?

If you want to talk about corruption and death and non-life, consider stealing, right? Because that's literally what you're doing. I didn't labor. I didn't produce. I didn't work. I'm going to take someone else who labored and produce and take it as my own and literally corrupt or take away from life that was produced, right?

I'm going to steal and not produce myself. So we can see how that hinge of verse 30 works here, right? If you want to grieve the Holy Spirit, if you want to work against the life that He's producing in you actively now, then steal and don't work hard and labor hard with your own hands.

That's what you should do. And it's very fascinating in pagan culture, and what I mean by that is culture that is not influenced by Christian doctrine and teaching, stealing is very, very prominent. Stealing is a very active thing in pagan culture.

In fact, the Greek, the way that this is written in verse 28, let the thief no longer steal, you could translate it, those of you who are still stealing, stop it. You can basically translate it that way.

He's assuming that there's people, new converts in the Ephesus area who is still living out that common pagan practice of stealing, and he says those of you who are still doing that, you need to stop, right?

That is not life-giving. That's not what the Spirit is doing in you. You are grieving the Spirit. By doing that, you need to stop stealing. And we see in our own culture, don't we? We see in our own culture, as our culture does this fascinating slide away from dominant Christian principles to a pagan culture, we see the rise of what?

Stealing. We see it on the news all the time, don't we? And we see wicked magistrates have no laws to try to curb it. Instead, they support it with the way that they govern their land. And so we see that there is something very prominent in pagan cultures that without the doctrine of Christ, without the truth of the Scriptures, stealing is all too often a common practice that we do in our old man self.

We don't produce. Instead, we take away.

We steal.

A question I want to ask, I want to just spend a few moments on, is why? Why is that the case? Why is stealing so prominent in the old man and the old way of living? Why is that such a common practice?

Well, if you look at verse 23 or 22 of chapter 4, you remember. Paul says, put off your old self, that is the self that we're born with, the one that is without Christ.

He says,.

Which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires. Enough can't be said about the desires of the flesh. There could be a huge book written about how sin operates based off of deceitful desires.

That is a worthy study to behold that is very helpful for you to understand where your own sin comes forth from. But notice Paul here says in verse 22 that the old self is corrupt through deceitful desires and the reason why stealing is so prominent in the world without Christ is because stealing is considered as how can I have all the enjoyments of life, how can I have all the entertainments of life, all the play of life, without having to do that pesky thing called work?

How can I have these desires of the flesh, these deceitful desires of the flesh that has come so easily with entertainments, come so easy with eating and drinking, right? With all these things that are just easily you can have fun doing, how can I do those things without having to do that pesky thing called work?

And it really is, it's a dominant mind, right? Whenever you are motivated and that becomes your idol, I just want to have good feelings, I just want to feel good in every way, I don't like anything that impedes that, it makes sense why the end result would be to steal because I don't want to do that thing called labor, I don't want to do that thing called work that gets in the way of these deceitful desires that I want so bad.

And so we can see why when we have a culture filled with old man-ness and philosophy that just comes forth from it, stealing would be the nth degree, would be the final end because it's simply just wanting to appease your deceitful desires without doing anything that has to get in the way of that.

We see that in our own culture, don't we? And in fact, I grew up as a millennial, you know, I was raised by baby boomers and baby boomers, they had like an understanding, work hard, right? And don't steal, work hard, right?

And that's what they would say and then millennials like me would say,.

Well, why?

It doesn't feel good to work hard, it feels really good to play, so why would I want to work hard? Why would I want to do that? And so what you see is a very terrible work ethic in our own day and then you see the nth degree of that is a lot of stealing.

You see how it kind of works that way. But you see the scriptures, they don't have work and play separated and that work is some kind of necessary evil to do in order to get our desires to play. The scriptures don't have it separated that way.

The scriptures put work and play right here. They're two different things, no doubt, right? If you're working, you're not like, oh, I'm having the greatest time of my life watching this movie or doing whatever the entertainment is.

It's different things, but they're very much right here together. They're not over here like that to where you've got to throw one out in order to just grab the other. The scriptures have them right here next to each other.

To look at that, hear me as I read or you can go there, Ecclesiastes. Look what Solomon says in chapter 2, verse 24. He says, There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.

This is also I saw is from the hand of God. For apart from him, who can eat or who can have an enjoyment? And so look at, notice how those things are nestled together. There is nothing better than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.

That's something that the world cannot understand today. In fact, in Ecclesiastes, look at chapter 3. He says something similar. When he says in verse 12, I perceive that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live.

Also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil. This is God's gift to man. So notice there is this play aspect, eat and drink, play, entertainment, enjoyment in that way. But there's also a take an enjoyment and toil and work and labor that both come together.

Your entertainment,.

Your enjoyments,.

All that,.

It has meaning because of your hard work that you do. Your hard labor actually makes you enjoy the things of enjoyment and entertainment more. And they both kind of come together like this. And so when you take the work out and you just have an idol of just entertaining yourself, then what happens is that becomes everything.

You lose all the enjoyment that God has given you for entertainment and everything. It becomes everything to you and you end up doing things like stealing. And so Paul, what he's saying here, is he's saying that instead of stealing, you need to work with your hands.

And again, those two things are not opposed to one another. A play of entertainment, they're not opposed to each other. They're up here next to one another. He says, instead of having your God be play, let your God be the true God and work hard.

This is production of life. This is how you produce. In verse 28, let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor and let him do honest work with his own hands. So we see this is the answer. This is the answer to someone who wants to steal.

The answer is that your full enjoyment in entertainment and play is not found in letting it be your God, but rather it is found in proper work and working hard. Those things come together in that way.

Let him labor and do honest work with his own hands. But notice he doesn't stop there. The production that Paul says that we need to do isn't just simply work hard and stop stealing, but it is with the working hard, the wealth that you put on, you then need to share that with others.

So notice how he kind of ups the ante of production. Not only are you to produce hard with your hard work, but you also are to then be eager to give to others. Look what he says in verse 28.

He says,.

So that he might have something to share with anyone in need. Now, again, if your whole God, if your whole idol is I just want to have a good time and be entertained with my wealth, you're not going to be thinking I want to use my wealth in a way that's going to help others, are you?

And again, notice the culture that we're in that's obsessed with entertainment and play. They are not thinking of how can I contribute to others. We notice that giving to charities and everything is on an all-time low when just simply entertaining and play becomes on an all-time high.

And so notice that the life of the spirit provides the new man is that you don't have a life just geared on I just want to play, entertainment, but rather I want to work hard, enjoy my entertainment in light of working hard.

And so much is entertainment, not my idol, that I'm willing to give of the extra that I have to others. This, as a Christian, this as a person who is a new man with his neighbor, this is one who is producing life.

I'm not going to steal, I'm going to work, and with my labor, with the produce I get, I'm going to be happy to share with others. Notice the contrast of that old man of stealing and that new man of giving there.

And it only happens when you have a grounded understanding of work and play. That the Bible provides. So again, he says, let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, do an honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

This is the answer that our culture is crying out for as we see the response of falling into paganism. In verse 29, he continues with the next one of the work that the spirit does in us that we can grieve him with if we are not following and step with him when he talks about our talk, the way we communicate.

Look at verse 29, if you want to grieve the spirit, or if you don't want to grieve the spirit, then let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up. So again, let no corrupt talk come out of your mouth, but only such as is good for building up.

So we see corruption there. We see that if you want to tear down, if you want to not produce, if you want to not build up, then you will have corrupting talk come out of your mouth to your neighbor. You'll have talk of corruption.

Now what does that mean? And what does it mean, again, that the flip side of that is to have talk that is building up to one another? Well, we just went from the physical, stealing and giving, that's deeply physical, to now the talk of corruption talk and building up talk is deeply spiritual.

Corrupting talk, if you, again, if we look at what he said previously, look what he says in verse 22 once more. We already looked at that, but it's worth looking at it again for this context. He says, to put off, in verse 22, chapter 4 of Ephesians, he says, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires.

So that's what he's talking about there. Corruption is decay and death, right? And that old man death is living unrighteously sinfully, right? In a way that is not beneficial to God at all. Instead, it's just simply death living, right?

And so what he's saying is, going back to our verse right now, he says, don't let your talk to one another be of one of corruption to one another. In other words, the things that you say do not influence the person you're talking to to be built up in Christ.

Rather, it only influences them to be built, or not built down, but to be corrupted down not being built up in Christ. There is a way that we talk to one another that we've kind of talked about in the last few weeks in which we can either be corrupting someone with our talk or we can be building them up into Christ with our talk.

And the desire in the imperative land, as we are unified together to look like Christ, is that every word that I say to my neighbor in Christ would be used for Christ to build them up in his image and not to tear down, not to corrupt, not to bring them away from Christ.

And look at the strategic-ness of this. He says, as, in verse 29 in the middle there, as fits the occasion. So he says, don't let any corrupt talk, right? Don't grieve the Spirit by talking corruptly.

Things that will tear down, bring people away from Christ with your words. Only talk what is good for building up. That is the way that you won't grieve the Spirit. And notice he says, as fits the occasion.

And that's worth meditating on for quite a while. Because what he's referring to is our talk needs to be very strategic, right? We need to consider what would fit the occasion best here. As we're going to fellowship with the saints, as we're going to talk with the saints, talk with others, we need to be strategic to say, what does this occasion require for my words to build them up in Christ?

How easy it is for us to talk like the Gentiles do with no strategic or no plans to how we talk. We just simply, whatever feels good in the moment, that's what we'll say. But the Christian is very mindful of his words.

The Christian is very mindful and strategic with the words he uses, because he wants every occasion to be met with a proper word for Christ to be showcased so that person can be raised up in him. So we are strategic in the way we talk.

We don't just gab at the mouth. We don't just say whatever feels good in the moment. But we always want to meet the occasion with a proper word that will help someone be built up. Proverbs 15 .23, to make an apt or appropriate answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, and a proper occasion, a good word, how good is it?

How good it is to have a word, a proper word, in the occasion to meet the occasion. Colossians 4 .6, Paul says in Colossians 4 .6, let your speech, let your words, always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

So again, it's the same kind of thing. There's a strategic, I want to answer, I want to speak well, I want to make sure that each, whatever occasion it is, I'm meeting it with the best word I can to build people up in Christ.

1 Thessalonians 5 .14, when it comes to being strategic and meeting the need, Paul says, and we urge you brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.

Notice the distinction there, he says, and I urge you brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the faint hearted. What if you admonish the faint hearted, and let me make sure I get this right, what if you admonish the faint hearted and encourage, oh, I'm out of time with this.

What if you, yeah, admonish the faint hearted and encourage the idle? You get what I'm saying? What if you were to admonish the faint hearted and encourage the idle? That wouldn't be a good thing. It wouldn't be a good word in season, right?

The idle needs to be admonished. They need to be corrected, right? The faint hearted, they need to be encouraged as they are faint hearted. And so you need to have a proper word for each season. We are strategic in the way we talk to one another to make sure we are building each other up in Christ.

We are strategic in that way. We are mindful of what we say because we are trying to point people to Christ. Imagine, if you will, there's someone who has a major project that he is working on. Let's say he's building a house.

He has a major project that he's working on, and imagine he has no strategy as he's involved with it. Imagine he's just saying, yeah, I want to build this big house and I'm just going to kind of just go willy nilly at it.

I might make a door first, maybe work on the walls after that and start working on the upstairs after that. Maybe I'll get to the foundation after that. We'll see what I want to do. You know, you wouldn't expect that house to look like a house a year from now at all.

The labor would probably stop because he'd be so frustrated. The point is, if he has such a large project, a house to be built, there needs to be plans. There needs to be strategy. There needs to be plans of how to make sure it gets done well.

And if he has none, then we know that that job is not going to be done. And we have a project as Christians, don't we? It's a major project. It's a big one. It is that we would help each other look more like Christ, that we would be in the land of imperatives and enjoy the land of imperatives and help each other enjoy that land of imperatives.

And if we have no plan in the way that we communicate with one another, if we have no plan of how we show each other Christ in each season of life, whatever they're in, then we can't expect at all for that project to get done the way we want it to get done.

And so the point is that if we are loving Christ, if we want to look like him so much, if we don't want to grieve the Spirit, we'll only be producing life for one another. And Paul says our speech matters.

We need to be actively strategically thinking, how can I speak life in this situation with my neighbor? I think far too often we can be like Gentiles, me included, in which we just simply say whatever feels good to us the most or whatever we think might be funniest.

So the one I struggle with a lot is sarcasm, is simply just being sarcastic constantly. Sarcasm is very easy. It's a very lazy way to communicate with one another. There's a time where it can be helpful and funny, and you can enjoy that.

But sarcasm, a little bit goes a long way, and I personally find myself, I can look at a conversation I had with a brother or sister and see that I did not give good words at all. That was good for his upbuilding.