August 14, 2001:
A surge of electricity to western New York and Canada touched off a series of power failures and enforced blackouts...that left parts of at least eight states in the Northeast and the Midwest without electricity. The widespread failures provoked the evacuation of office buildings, stranded thousands of commuters and flooded some hospitals with patients suffering in the stifling heat.
In an instant that one utility official called "a blink-of-the-eye..." shortly after 4 p.m., the grid that distributes electricity to the eastern United States became overloaded. As circuit breakers tripped at generating stations from New York to Michigan and into Canada, millions of people were instantly caught up in the largest blackout in American history...
...Officials said that the cause of the blackout was under investigation but that terrorism did not appear to have played a role.
...The office of the Canadian prime minister...initially said the power problems were caused by lightning in New York State but later retracted that. Canadian officials later expressed uncertainty about the exact cause but continued to insist the problem began on the United States side of the border.
...Phillip G. Harris, who is in charge of the consortium that oversees power distribution from New Jersey to the District of Columbia...said that his system had recorded a "massive outflow" of power to northern New York or Canada shortly after 4 p.m. He said that the surge overloaded power lines that took themselves out of service.
...New York State officials later said the event may have begun with a power surge at the Perry nuclear power plant near Cleveland. (from two NY Times articles saved in Evernote)
This story reminds me of what happens when Christians sin. What may appear as a minor infraction to some has cascading effects on the rest of the spiritual power grid of their lives. Failures begin to manifest themselves in one area after another leaving vast regions of their lives in relative darkness.
Consider some of the effects when you wilfully sin against God and refuse to repent.
1. There is a loss of fellowship.
As clouds hide the sun for days, sin comes between the soul and the Savior. Every year I struggle with the winter blues due to the overcast skies, bitter cold temperatures, and early darkness. Just to see the sunshine for a few brief moments on a winter day does much to cheer my mood. When we have sinned against God and have failed to confess to Him our failures, our lives begin to feel the coldness of His distance like a gray and bitter winter day.
Every husband knows what it’s like to be in a relationship with your wife, but to be out of fellowship with her. Thankfully, we can never lose our relationship with God when we sin, but we do lose our fellowship with Him.
After King David had committed adultery with Bathsheba he tried to hide his sin. For nearly a year he lived with the guilt of all he had done and he chronicled what his experience was like in Psalm 32:3-4.
For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was turned into the drought of summer... (Psalm 32:4)
Hymn Chorus:
Nothing between my soul and the Savior,
So that His blessed face may be seen;
Nothing preventing the least of His favor,
Keep the way clear! Let nothing between.
Our prayer every day ought to be: Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxieties; And see if there is any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24)
2. There is a loss of joy.
Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, And uphold me by Your generous Spirit. (Psalm 51:12)
Your heart feels empty and the desire for spiritual things begins to wane. Your Christianity begins to feel like a drudgery instead of a delight. You can find a thousand things to do instead of gathering with the people of God to celebrate Him and learn His ways on Sundays. There’s a disappearing sense of boldness for telling others about your faith. The Bible seems like a closed book when you read it and your prayers feel hollow. Your personal relationships become increasingly characterized by conflict as your own personality becomes more dour. When you sin against God you lose the joy of being His child and following His will.
3. There is a loss of comfort.
The longer you remain in unconfessed sin the more difficult your life becomes and the less you sense His peace or comfort. Your life becomes increasingly characterized by unexplained turmoil (though turmoil can also be part of a trial to mature you...not always caused by wilful sin) that reflects God’s discipline (“chastisement”) to bring you to repentance.
Thayer’s Lexicon defines chastisement in this way:a. to chastise or castigate with words, to correct: of those who are moulding the character of others by reproof and admonition, 2 Tim. 2:25.
b. in biblical...use employed of God, to chasten by the infliction of evils and calamities: 1 Co. 11:32; 2 Co. 6:9; Heb. 12:6; Rev. 3:19, (Prov. 19:18; 29:17).
c. to chastise with blows, to scourge: of a father punishing a son, Heb. 12:7, [10]; of a judge ordering one to be scourged, Lk. 23:16, 22, [(Deut. 22:18)].
For whom the Lord loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives.” If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? (Hebrews 12:6-7)
Then I will punish their transgression with the rod, And their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless My lovingkindness I will not utterly take from him, Nor allow My faithfulness to fail. (Psalm 89:32-33)
4. There is a loss of reward.
Out of fellowship means out of service – out of service means that one is failing to lay up treasures in heaven. You are building with “wood, hay, and stubble” (1 Corinthians 3:12-15) that will not endure the test of the judgment day.
5. There is a loss of power.
The fullness of God’s power that makes us “fruitful” is only available to those who yield themselves to the Holy Spirit. Consequently, failing to yield means diminished power and even spiritual “blackouts.”
...As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. (John 15:4)
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. (Ephesians 4:30)
How do we grieve the Holy Spirit? By...
A. Ignoring His presence.
Acting as if He isn’t there and living as if He doesn’t matter. At conversion we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit to enable us to follow the Lord and serve Him. As a parent would be grieved if his child took for granted a precious gift that was given him, so the Father is grieved when we ignore the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
As a wife is grieved when her husband fails to acknowledge her in their home, so the Holy Spirit is grieved whenever the believer fails to acknowledge His indwelling presence.
We grieve Him by...
B. Neglecting His power.
We are not only promised the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we are promised the power of the Holy Spirit, as well. That power is realized as we yield ourselves to Him on a daily basis...moment by moment. Most of us don’t take this seriously enough and try to operate our lives in the energy of the flesh...further complicating our spiritual problems.
We will only know the liberating power of the Holy Spirit as we come under the Lordship of His indwelling presence.
Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. (2 Corinthians 3:17)
We grieve Him by...
C. Polluting His temple (unconfessed sin).
Hymn writer, W.M. Bunting wrote:
Holy Spirit! pity me,
Pierced with grief for grieving Thee;
Present, though I mourn apart,
Listen to a wailing heart.
Worldly cares at worship time,
Groveling aims in work sublime,
Pride, when God is passing by,
Sloth, when souls in darkness die;
Chilled devotions, changed desires,
Quenched corruptions earlier fires--
Sins like these my heart deceive,
Thee, who only know’st them grieve!
We grieve Him by...
D. Shunning HIs Word.
Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies. Test all things; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. (1 Thessalonians 5:19-22)
“In its primary NT sense, to prophesy meant to speak the word of God. The inspired utterances of the prophets are preserved for us in the Bible. In a secondary sense, to prophesy means to declare the mind of God as it has been revealed in the Bible.” (Believers Bible Commentary)
“The Holy Spirit’s working can be opposed by believers. It is this that Paul warned against...There may have been a tendency in the early church, and perhaps in the Thessalonian church in particular, to underrate the value of prophetic utterances. The gift of prophecy was the ability to receive and communicate direct revelations from God before the New Testament was completed (1 Cor. 13:8)....By way of application, Christians should not disparage any revelation that has come to the church and has been recognized as authoritative and preserved by the Holy Spirit in Scripture. The temptation to put the ideas of men on an equal footing with the Word of God is still present.” (The Bible Knowledge Commentary)
“Do not look down upon Bible study as something that is beneath you. Do not be indifferent to the Word of God. We have a lot of folks who are in Christian service, but they are ignorant of the Bible and they look down on Bible study...We had a Bible study downtown in Los Angeles, averaging fifteen hundred people every Thursday night over a period of twenty-one years—what a thrill that was! What a privilege that was! But sometimes folks would make a remark like, ‘You need to get out and do something, not just go to sit and listen to the Bible.’ The interesting thing is that those people who came to sit and listen to the Bible did go out and do something. There are several hundred of those people who are out on the mission field; there are several hundred who are witnessing for God; and there are several hundred in the ministry. I notice that the boys who do not study the Word of God run down like an eight-day clock. Their ministries don’t last too long...” (J. Vernon McGhee)
We grieve Him by...
E. Harming His church.
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. (Ephesians 4:30)
This command does not necessarily speak of a direct attack on the Spirit, but to the subtle things found in the preceding and following verses (specifically dealing with our speech) that tends to damage relationships within the body and thus mar the work of the Spirit in God’s church. God’s Spirit is grieved over any sin that divides and destroys the unity of the body.
The OT background of this verse is found in Isaiah 63:7-14. Isaiah rehearses God’s love and deliverance of His people and explains why there were times that He disciplined them.
“The links between the two biblical passages are so significant as to suggest a typological correspondence between the two events in the history of God’s covenant people. In Isaiah 63, which looks back to the exodus, Yahweh is presented as the Saviour of Israel, who redeemed his people from Egypt, brought them into a covenant relationship with himself, led them by his own personal presence (i.e., his Holy Spirit) through the wilderness, and gave them rest. For its part, Israel the covenant people had rebelled against its Lord ‘and grieved his Holy Spirit’ (v. 10). In Ephesians Paul addresses the new covenant community, ‘the one new man’ (2:15) comprising Jews and Gentiles who have been redeemed (1:7) and reconciled to God through the cross of Christ (2:14–18). They have become a holy temple in the Lord, the place where God himself dwells by his Spirit (2:21, 22). Using the language of Isaiah 63:10, Paul issues a warning to this new community not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God, ‘as Israel had done’ in the wilderness (cf. 1 Cor. 10:1–11), the more so since they have been sealed by that same Holy Spirit until the day of redemption (4:30). The change from the indicative (‘they [Israel] grieved his Holy Spirit’) to the imperative (‘do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God’) is deliberate and makes eminent sense in this exhortatory context.” (Peter T. O’Brien)
Closing:
If you want to know the fullness of God’s spirit in your life, you have to deal with your sins. You cannot walk in the Spirit and willfully walk in sin. Sin grieves and quenches the Spirit of God in your life! But, forgiveness and restoration are only a confession away (1 John 1:9).
