According to the Scriptures

Guest (Male): Welcome once again, this is According to the Scriptures. We're about to continue Pastor Damian Kyle's series "While We Wait." It's a study in 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. At the tail end of 1st Thessalonians chapter 5, we're told not to quench the Holy Spirit.

So what does that entail? And what do you do if that happens in your life? We'll get some answers next on today's program. Stick around.

Damian Kyle: This morning we continue our series through 1st and 2nd Thessalonians on Sunday morning in a series entitled "While We Wait: Living in Anticipation of Jesus' Return." And if you're not living in anticipation of Jesus' return, I would say you're not paying attention presently.

As we noticed last week, Paul closed his letter here with a series of exhortations that he made not only to the leaders of the church but also to every member of the congregation. These exhortations are intended to affect each of our lives and the quality of our lives as Christians so that it will produce a Christ-likeness in us, but then also be influential for a very healthy, spiritually healthy church environment for whatever church we attend. We all play a part in that and these exhortations help us to be the part that we would like to be.

Having examined the first portion of these exhortations last week, we continue now the final portion this morning in verse 19 where Paul writes: "Do not quench the Spirit." This refers to the Holy Spirit and so Paul tells us, do not quench the Holy Spirit. That's the prohibition that he gives us, but some of us might wonder what in the world does that mean to quench the Holy Spirit?

To quench the Holy Spirit in our lives is to quench or extinguish the power or the influence or the anointing or the work of the Holy Spirit within our lives. I am not talking about salvation here. It's not quenching the Holy Spirit in the sense that we can lose our salvation. He's talking about something that we can do as Christians that's pretty dire, but in writing to Christians, he's talking about quenching the power and the influence and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Stop and think about that to realize the capacity that each of us has individually as Christians. We have the capacity to quench the Holy Spirit in our lives. We have the capacity to quench God Almighty in the person of the Holy Spirit within our lives to extinguish the power and the influence of the Holy Spirit in our lives as Christians.

If that doesn't alarm or mortify us as a Christian, then allow me just to remind us of the extent of what would be affected within our lives as Christians if we choose to quench the Spirit by considering how great a reach the Holy Spirit has into our Christian lives.

The Bible teaches that he comforts and encourages us in our Christian life. He empowers us to live the Christian life. He transforms us into the image of Christ. He sanctifies us and sets us free from sin. He points us to Jesus and he teaches us about Jesus. He leads us, he guides us, and he is the source of divine wisdom.

He produces the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, loving kindness, longsuffering, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control into our lives. He seals us and he helps us in our prayers. He provokes and he inspires the very thing we've just been doing and that is a need to worship God and to then give God praise in our lives.

He teaches us. He gives life and revelation to the Word of God. He guides us into all truth. He protects us from deception. He convicts us of sin. He reassures us of God's forgiveness. He is the source of all spiritual gifts in the Christian life. He intercedes or prays for us. He helps us in our weakness.

To quench the Holy Spirit in our lives is not to quench some portion of these things. It is to effectively quench all of these things within our Christian lives all at once. It's a staggering possibility that Paul warns us against here.

I think to fully understand what Paul is exhorting us here is to understand the Holy Spirit is a person, and some of us might not be aware of that. Everywhere you find the Holy Spirit referred to in the Bible, he is either referred to by title or by name or by personal pronoun. He is never described as an "it" or a thing or a mere essence.

Sometimes people will do that; they'll refer to the Holy Spirit and they'll say "it," and it's a grave misunderstanding of him. They might say something like, "It will come into your life," or "It shows me what direction to go." The Holy Spirit is not an "it." He is not some impersonal force or power in our lives. He is a person, and he is the third person of the Godhead with God the Father and with God the Son.

Throughout the Bible, we're told things about the Holy Spirit that can only be true of a person. Marks of personality are given to us related to him throughout the Bible. Sometimes when we think about a person or we're going to describe a person, we think of them solely in terms of a body. They have arms, they have legs, they have feet, they have eyes, they have ears, and they have a face. By virtue of possessing all of these outward things, they are a person.

But there are other marks of personality that are not physical. Some of the marks of personality of the Holy Spirit are that he has knowledge and intelligence, and he is able to impart that knowledge and that intelligence to us. An impersonal force has no ability to do that.

He has a will, the Bible tells us. He has power and he gives his power, but he never gives it independent of his will. An impersonal force does not have a will. That's a mark of personality. The Holy Spirit has a mind. A mind is attributed to the Holy Spirit. An impersonal force does not have a mind in the way that we think of it.

Love is attributed to the Holy Spirit. He loves us. He has emotions. Impersonal forces do not have emotions. He searches and reveals, the Bible teaches us. He prays, he communicates, and he teaches. He leads and guides. He can be lied to. He can be grieved. Impersonal forces aren't grieved. People are grieved.

All of these things are unique to a person, not to an impersonal force or an essence or a mere power. As Christians, not only in this Christian life do we have a personal relationship with God the Father and with God the Son, but we are also in relationship with the person of the Holy Spirit.

Before we address the quenching of the Holy Spirit, I think it's important to address what typically precedes the quenching of the Holy Spirit in a Christian's life, and that would be the grieving of the Holy Spirit. The reference to that experience is given to us in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 30: "And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption."

The word "grieve" that Paul uses there means to cause pain to, to cause grief to, to distress, to make heavy, or to make sorrowful. How does that happen? How in the world can I grieve or distress or cause pain or bring sorrow to the Holy Spirit?

We remember that the event that occurred within our lives that has made us Christians is to experience a spiritual birth by putting our faith in Jesus Christ, and then the Holy Spirit comes into our lives. From that moment on, the Holy Spirit indwells our lives.

As a result of his indwelling in our lives, he hears everything that we say, he listens to everything that we listen to, he watches everything that we watch, he's a witness to everything that we do, and he is exposed to everything that we expose ourselves to. He is grieved when he is exposed to sin in our lives and through our lives.

It's not by coincidence that typically in the Bible he's not referred to merely as the Spirit but as the Holy Spirit. He is a holy spirit that lives inside of us and thus anything that's unholy or sinful is going to grieve him.

Examples of some of the sins that grieve the Holy Spirit surround that Ephesians chapter 4 verse 30 passage: lying, sinful anger, stealing, corrupt communication, bitterness, wrath, clamor, evil speaking, malice or hatred. Even though we may be able to for a time as Christians keep these kind of things hidden away in our hearts where nobody else knows, it still grieves and ultimately quenches the influence of the Holy Spirit in my life because he indwells me. Nothing can be hidden from him and he experiences all that we experience.

How do we know when we've grieved the Holy Spirit? I don't know that there's an ABC thing to this. All I know is that if we grieve the Holy Spirit, he will be sure to let us know. He does have his ways of doing that. It's nice to think of it in terms of a relationship because it is out of that relationship that he is grieved.

Very often it feels like in our spirit when we have done something or we have said something that has hurt someone that we love—maybe a spouse, a very good friend, or someone who is very dear to us. After whatever has happened, we walk away from that conversation or that event and it dawns on us that we have done damage to this relationship.

What we just did doesn't sit well with us. There is the response of the other person—a distancing that occurs that lets us know that the intimacy of the relationship has now been damaged in some way. Things just aren't the same and they don't feel right.

You ask your husband or your wife, "Is anything wrong? Have I done something to hurt you in any way?" and perhaps they will say, "Yeah, you hurt my feelings when you said this or you did this." If we care about the relationship, then you apologize, I make it right, and then the relationship returns to its former intimacy. The relationship has been restored by virtue of that act.

In the same way, a person can finish watching something on the television or the computer, listening to certain music, going to a particular place, or finishing a conversation with another person and afterwards you just feel something isn't right. Something is out of sorts between me and God.

The intimacy of my relationship with God has been disturbed. The Bible tells us to let the peace of God rule in your heart as Christians. In other words, when we walk obediently with God, our portion is to live in peace with him. The relationship is healthy, strong, close, and open.

When somehow I've done something to damage the relationship, now that peace is gone. There's something just unsettled about it. Whenever that happens in my life, I just stop and start to backtrack. I say, "Lord, I've done something here that's got your attention and has grieved your Holy Spirit. I can sense something has happened here. Now walk me back."

Sometimes we know immediately. It was that argument five minutes ago. But sometimes we don't know. Sometimes we can have made a decision just off of the cuff, not asked God what he wants us to do. We make the decision, the decision is going to end in disaster, and God knows it.

He doesn't allow that decision to sit in my heart. He doesn't let me be peaceful with it until I walk it back and I say, "What's wrong here?" Then he has his way of showing that the decision is wrong. He takes us back and then we take care of business from there.

The Lord has his ways of letting us know that the Holy Spirit has been grieved in some way. Back to quenching the Spirit, typically quenching the Holy Spirit happens one of two ways. The first way is through willful, deliberate, protracted disobedience to his commandments.

First, it appears as grieving the Holy Spirit and then I refuse to heed the message that the Holy Spirit is communicating to me. Ultimately, if that's ignored, then the Holy Spirit is quenched. Paul uses the word "quench" here and it's intended to produce a specific image in our mind of a campfire.

All the way through the Bible repeatedly, the Holy Spirit is referred to or likened to a fire. Here we have a fire and it's being quenched in some way. Campfires are wonderful things, quite apart from s'mores, and they provide light and warmth that we need. The glow of that fire fills the whole camp.

If you've ever watched somebody extinguish a fire by drenching it with water, somebody comes up with a large bucket of water, pours it on the fire, effectively putting the fire out. It's a very effective way to put out a fire.

In the same way, the power and the influence and the work of the Holy Spirit, the full expression of the Holy Spirit in our lives, can be put out by a constant bombardment of deliberate, continual sin. The second way to quench or put out a fire is simply through neglect. To fail to give the fire what it needs to burn is just as effective a way to quench a fire.

Fires always need a continual supply of fuel in order to continue burning. You've always got to be adding those logs to the fire or else it's going to go out. The influence of the Holy Spirit on our lives can begin to dim if we fail to give the Holy Spirit the spiritual fuel that is needed.

Bible reading, Bible study, sowing to the Spirit, prayer, fellowshipping with Christians, and scripture memorization keep that fire burning brightly within our lives. Sometimes a Christian will introduce sin into their life and cease to read and study the Bible, cease praying, and cease fellowshipping at a church.

They conclude that somehow they've outgrown Christianity or the disciplines of Christianity. They believe that walking as an early on-fire Christian was just a phase that they no longer need to have represent their life. They haven't outgrown anything. What has actually happened is that they've just provoked the Holy Spirit to pull back.