22/09/2019
This is part 2 of a short series on ‘Stifling the Spirit’.
Last week, we looked firstly at Resisting the Spirit, and we saw how there are different levels of resistance, from non-Christians who are completely closed to hearing the gospel all the way down to Christians who accept the Bible, but don’t do what it says.
Secondly, we looked at Grieving the Spirit and how this arises when we allow sinful things from our old life, to persist in our new life.
So, after that catch up, we’re ready to move on to number 3: Quenching the Spirit and our key verse is 1 Thessalonians 5:19 which in the King James version says: “Quench not the Spirit”. The old 1984 version of the NIV says: “Do not put out the Spirit's fire.” And the Amplified Version of the Bible says: “Do not subdue or be unresponsive to the working and guidance of the Holy Spirit”. Either way, the idea is stifling or restricting the Spirit.
It’s difficult to place this verse in an exact context because it comes in the middle of a whole list of instructions at the end of Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. Just before this verse, Paul gives them “4 always”. You might have heard of the “4 Alls” of Methodism, well here we have “4 always”. In verses 15-18, he says: always be kind, always be joyful, always pray and always give thanks. Then he says: “Quench not the Spirit”. In trying to pick up his train of thought, a verse from Romans 12 comes to mind which says: “Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervour.” And it’s also in the context of being kind and joyful and prayerful.
And so it seems that Paul is describing a Spirit filled life where a person is so “on fire for God” that they are really experiencing the blessings of a Spirit filled and Spirit directed life. Where the Spirit has free reign with no blockages, you get continual joy, continual prayer, continual thanksgiving and for Paul, this is how things are supposed to be and if you accept anything less, then you are quenching the Spirit.
How sad it is that we tend to regard Christians who are always joyful and always praising God as “a bit strange”, or “a bit gushy”, a bit “over the top”, taking God “a bit too seriously”. In actual fact, we could well be the ones who are quenching the Spirit while they are busy doing God’s will and living an abundant life.” When we accept mediocrity in our spiritual life and don’t pursue all that God has in store for us, then we are quenching the Holy Spirit.
Now we move to the more serious stuff! The next one is insulting the Spirit. You might think to yourself, well at least I haven’t done this one! Let’s find out, shall we? The context is Hebrews chapter 10. We don’t know who wrote the book of Hebrews. It may have been Paul but was can’t be sure. Anyway, in chapter 10, the writer compares the Old Testament animal sacrifices with Christ’s “once for all” sacrifice on the cross for our sins. He makes the point that the animal sacrifices only dealt with the sins committed up to the time of the sacrifice and so the next time you sinned, you had to have another sacrifice and it went on and on. On the other hand, Jesus’ sacrifice was far superior, in that it was for all your sins – past, present and future. At the time of writing, the Christians to whom this book was addressed were going through a tough time of persecution and so there’s a whole section from verse 19 to 39 entitled “a call to persevere”. In the middle of this section on perseverance, we have verses 26 - 31 which are pretty scary! They make for uncomfortable reading, but read them we will. We can’t just accept all the nice verses in the Bible and ignore the challenging ones.
Hebrews 10:26-31
If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," and again, "The Lord will judge his people." It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Now the book of Hebrews was written to Christians, not unbelievers. It’s written to those who have received the knowledge of the truth. It says: “The Lord will judge his people”. We really don’t what to let things get to the stage where we insult the Spirit - this is definitely one to avoid! The crux of it all is verse 26: “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment…”
It sounds ominous, because we know we’re all sinners – nobody’s perfect. All Christians sin every day (even the Apostle Paul admitted his own struggles with sin) and we believe that Jesus’ death on the cross paid for our sins and makes us right with God. We are under grace, not law. But there’s more to it than that. Jesus’ death on the cross also broke the power of sin over us. We are no longer enslaved by it – we’ve been set free (redeemed) and so now we have a choice. We can choose not to sin, and the Holy Spirit will give us the power that we need to resist temptation. We won’t succeed every time, but we should see more victory than defeat and what’s most important is not whether we sin or not, but what our attitude to it is. Do we hate sin, or do we tolerate it, or do we even embrace it?
If we make a profession of faith but then ignore the Spirit’s promptings and deliberately, wilfully and persistently indulge in our favourite sins, then we make a mockery of the whole thing. It calls into question the sincerity of our commitment to Christ and ultimately it will lead to insulting the Spirit and all that goes with it.
But at least there’s still forgiveness for insulting the Spirit – we may have gone astray, but there’s a way back through repentance and rededication to Christ. Unlike our final point - the whole concept of blaspheming the Spirit.
This is so serious that it is referred to as “the unforgivable sin”. The context is Jesus being accused by the Pharisees of various things and in particular, casting our demons by the power of Beelzebub who was the prince of all demons. So, the Pharisees did not recognise the power of the Holy Spirit at work in Jesus ministry, instead they attributed his power to demonic forces. And in Matthew 12:31-32, Jesus said to them:
“And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”
The very idea of doing something that will never be forgiven is so scary that many Christians actually live in fear of blaspheming the Spirit by accident and thereby condemning themselves to eternal damnation. Well I’ve got some good news here. Most Bible teachers would say that if you’re worried about whether you’ve committed this sin...then you haven’t!
The blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is a deliberate and continual rejection of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A person who commits this sin has so hardened their heart to God that they don’t care in the least whether they have offended Him. God always responds to repentance, and so this is for people who will never repent. It is an extreme case and so if you are worried about it, it shows that you are repentant and so you’ve nothing to fear.
To summarise, if we look at all five ways of stifling the Spirit, we’re probably all guilty of at least the first three to some extent or another, so what can we do about it? Let me suggest a few steps:
1. Be honest with God and acknowledge that you can’t do this Christian thing without His help.
2. Get the handout and work through the passages in your own time. Read around them, look at the context and ask the Holy Spirit to point out the areas in your life where you are stifling His work. Write them down.
3. Recommit your life to God sincerely, repenting of the sins and failures that the Holy Spirit has revealed to you.
4. Thank God for what He is doing in your life and trust Him for the future.
Let’s pray:
Heavenly Father, we thank you for all that you have done for us in Christ. We thank you for the promise and the reality of the Holy Spirit living inside us. We pray that you would reveal to us the various ways in which we hinder the work of the Spirit in us. We confess our failures, asking that we would become more sensitive to your Spirit and more obedient to your Word. All this we ask in the name of Jesus and for His sake. Amen.
