Rejecting the Holy Spirit

- By Wayne Weaver

The government spends a lot of tax dollars to help abused children. You will find that most people in prison have been abused at one time or another. Once abuse takes place, it is hard to bring healing; the abused finds it hard to break out of the cycle and often becomes an abuser himself.

Our hearts often go out to abused children, but we scarcely notice a friend who has suffered more rejection than anyone in the world. And we are the abusers!

John 14 tells us about this friend. You may be thinking about Jesus Christ, the Son of God who suffered so much abuse while on earth--and it's true that through our sin we contributed to that abuse. But the one we reject day in and day out is the one Christ sent after himself--the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. He is the rejected friend I want to talk about.

John 14:16-17: "And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seethe him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you."

What a gift God has given us! But what do we do with it? Ephesians 4:30 gives solemn warning about our treatment of the Spirit of God: "And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption."

Jesus is not here this evening. He is sitting with the Father in heaven. But he sent his Holy Spirit to live within us and work within us, to go everywhere we go and hear all we speak. I marvel how people who call themselves God's children can reject the Holy Spirit-- but look where they take him and what they say about his presence!

When we reject the heavenly dove that God has placed within us, we bring impurity before the one who leads us into all purity. When he speaks to us about sins in our life, we slap him in the face and tell him to be quiet. When he instructs us to walk a certain way, like Jonah we turn and walk the opposite way. When he, the Truth, leads us into all truth, we don't follow.

We say that if Jesus were here today, we would not abuse him. We would be one of those few who followed him all the way to the cross. Yet we deceive ourselves, for we have the Holy Ghost living and available among us day after day and we reject him. Instead of following him we take him into our infrastructures and try to make him fit.

We would rather sit down and look at filthy videos out of a video store. Or sit and listen to sports on the radio or other garbage he has no interest in. When the Holy Spirit is not precious to us, we try to fill our lives with the things of the world. We close our eyes while we sit in front of the TV screen or sneak into a bar. We try to scheme around him.

Then in time of need, we get on our knees and cry out, "Oh Spirit of the Living God, help me. Melt me and mold me." And yet we don't take our videotapes back. We forget to turn off the radio. We forget to throw away our magazines.

What would you think, friend, if you were to walk Jesus into some of the places you go? Or if you were to make him listen to some of the things you listen to? Yet we go to those places rejecting the leading of his Spirit of us.

We make a lot out of the Holy Spirit. We say we need his power and his anointing--and we do. But when his anointing wants to come upon us we don't sacredly consider it but go out to dabble with the trash of the world that defiles us. Don't we know we are the temple of the Holy Ghost?

We are instructed to walk in the Spirit. That means to allow God's Spirit to "exercise" himself within us. When he speaks, we must obey. We cannot stop to think about it. We obey him so he becomes more active in our lives. As we humble ourselves he shows forth his glory. As we trust him through trials he refines us and brings out good things in our lives.

Some of you sit in church night after night with sin in your life, and essentially you have been telling the Spirit, "Shut up. I don't want to hear that." We think it so awful that Jesus was struck on the mouth and bled from the face, but we deliberately slap the Holy Ghost in the face and say, "I have no need of you."

Friend, you will never love Jesus more, nor will your experience ever be greater, than your obedience to the Spirit of God. You can have an experience that sets your hair on edge, but it won't be the Holy Ghost. Only when you experience conviction of sin and gain the power to turn from that sin will you know it's the Holy Ghost.

Part of our problem is a misunderstanding of the Holy Spirit and the part he plays in our lives. Today much that is unholy and anti-God goes on in the name of the Holy Spirit. The secular people made a movie mocking TV evangelists and faith healers, and to my sorrow it looked very much like Benny Hen. I don't use names through the pulpit very often, but I was struck by the movie's portrayal and its resemblance to him. The movie was a total mockery, but what it was mocking was equally evil. At the close of the movie I was grieved in my heart that this is what the world is seeing of the Holy Spirit. Those in the world don't know a lot about Jesus or Christian people, and they are getting their impressions of the Holy Spirit from those who make a mockery of him.

There was a time when people were so moved by the Holy Spirit that they laid themselves flat on the ground and called out to God for help. But that power has left the church, so we try to somehow manufacture it, pushing people over on a platform and calling it a changed life. These are abuses for personal gain. Such people make a great show of power and then pass the offering plate.

God still heals today. I have witnessed it. But he also demands holiness and repentance of sin. The enemy has come and gotten people to duplicate or fabricate the work of the Spirit without the demands of holiness. That kind of feel-good gospel has a lot of appeal. But the gospel of Jesus Christ is not a feel-good gospel. It is a gospel of deliverance but also a gospel of trials and endurance. It is a gospel that says with much patience and with much tribulation shall we enter in. There is no quick fix.

I often hesitate before I walk outside the motel room with Bible in hand because others will immediately associate me with the kind of evangelist that appears on TV. I hesitate on a plane to tell someone I'm a preacher because of the impressions created by TV preachers. What grieves me most is what outsiders think of the Holy Spirit, our precious Comforter who has been so rejected by the TV crowd.

I wonder this evening how your idea of the Holy Spirit would look if we could sit that idea on the platform. Would his mouth be bleeding? Would he be so small, so pressed together, and so inactive that we hardly would recognize him as the Holy Ghost? Would he look sickly? Have we pushed him down and suppressed him so much that his holiness cannot shine through?

Often God allows us to trip and fall so that we can see ourselves as we actually are. How do we respond at such times? Do we blame God for not giving us more power? Do we imply that he doesn't love us any more? It is hard for me to hear people say that Jesus doesn't love us when he sent the Holy Spirit to live within us. We are a temple. How and why would heaven give a precious one-third of the Trinity to walk with us if God didn't love us? No, whenever the Spirit ceases to work in our life it is only because we won't allow him to. We reject him.

If I were to pull the Holy Spirit out of your life, would people see any difference? Or has he already been so quenched and so silenced that there would be little change?

Ezekiel 36:26-27: "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statues, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them."

What a gift is the Spirit of God! He gives us the very judgments of God, speaking to our hearts about the rights we must do and the wrongs we must avoid.

Perhaps he's saying you shouldn't be involved in sports the way you are. The words "spirit," "Holy Spirit," and "sport" all come from the same root word. You can have one or the other. If you are involved in sports, the Holy Ghost is indeed rejected, for you have replaced him with another spirit, the spirit of our world. Sports and the Spirit of God just do not mix.

In my past I was involved in sports. Every Saturday I had to go fishing up in Lake Erie. But you know, the Holy Ghost filled me and I haven't been to Lake Erie since. And nobody ever told me I shouldn't. I just completely lost interest in it. That's how the Holy Ghost works--he lives within us and teaches us what pleases him.

Hebrews 10:29: "Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?"

Because we have been given much, our punishment will be that much greater if we persist in rejecting the Holy Spirit. The rich man who looked up from hell and saw Lazarus in Abraham's bosom is still crying and begging for water. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah are still begging for water. Yet we have ample water everywhere. We have had the opportunity to sit in the tent where repentance was preached, but the rich man probably never did. Sodom and Gomorrah never heard the gospel preached, either, because there was no gospel in the Old Testament. Jesus had not yet brought redemption. Yet not only do we have redemption, we have the very Spirit of God living within us to guide us into all truth.

The Spirit is tugging at many hearts even now, telling us to deal with certain sins, but we tell him "no." We cannot expose ourselves. We cannot humble ourselves. Those in hell tonight would be pleased to sit in our seats, to have the chances we have and taste the water available to us. How much sorer shall the punishment be to us who have persisted in sin despite the Spirit of grace in our lives!

Some of you may feel guilty but believe that your sins are so big that they cannot be forgiven. You think you have to go home and be punished for a while first. You have to kick against the pricks for a while. But God's provision has been totally made, and it is freely given for your forgiveness. Don't fall into the trap of saying, "I need to merit some of this grace."

The other night I gave a man an example of what that kind of thinking is like. Suppose you bought a friend a precious gift for a thousand dollars. When you went to give it to him, he said, "No, I can't accept that. Here, let me give you this dollar bill first. You have to take this dollar bill." He felt he had to pay at least a little something for it--a mere dollar for a thousand-dollar gift. That is what we do when we try to merit the grace of God. That is telling the grace of God that it's just not quite good enough.

Isaiah 63:10 says, "But they rebelled, and vexed his Holy Spirit: therefore he was turned to be their enemy, and he fought against them." How long can the Holy Spirit fit inside a life and be vexed and angered? When the Holy Spirit was vexed in this passage, he began working against them. How many of you have experienced that? I certainly have. The Spirit will put things in our path and let things go wrong for us--whatever it takes to get our attention because we won't yield to him.

I wonder how many of you have been aware today of the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life? Yes, with our minds we may know he is there. But can we point to his influence and to specific things he has done? I believe many Christians go through life hardly aware of his daily presence, because they think they don't need him--until they get into trouble. If there is no evidence of the Holy Spirit in your life, you need to open your eyes to a deep problem.

Remember when Samson gave in to Delilah and lost his strength? When he heard her say, "the Philistines be upon thee, Samson," he went to fight as usual, not knowing that the Lord had departed from him. And the Philistines took him and gouged out his eyes. Friends, that's exactly what happens when the Holy Spirit leaves us. One of the evidences that the Spirit is not in you tonight is that you are blind to your situation. If you are not bothered by your lack of power or by the lack of evidence that he indwells you, then you must wonder whether the Spirit has left you just as he left Samson.

Will you be like Samson, jumping up to fight without even realizing the Spirit is gone? You'll come into a crisis situation and call out for God but receive no answer. Your strength will be gone.

Have your eyes been gouged out? Has your discernment fled? Do you have problems in your life that you have no strength to combat? At one time you had a deep conviction, the conviction of holiness. Today it's gone. Have you quenched the Spirit of God?

Think about yourself for a moment. If we could take the Holy Spirit out of your life and shine him up on a screen, how would he look? How many times have you wounded him or spoken words against him? How many times have you ignored him and refused to live a holy life? Give it serious thought. I think the Holy Spirit bleeds in many places.

We are to walk in the Spirit. The Bible never says that we should "flow" in the Spirit. The experience isn't like that. We are to walk in the Spirit, to allow him to exercise himself within us. His steps will actually place our feet and his motivation will actually change our desires. It is not some magical thing with little twitches on the back of our neck that pull us here and there. No, it is simply obedience, a walk of holiness, a heart of service burdened for a lost world and willing to share the gospel whenever possible.

A walk with the Spirit is not a life of "have-tos." If you "have to" live holy and "have to" go to church and "have to" endure the sermon, then that's evidence the Holy Spirit is not very alive within you.

If you've quenched the Spirit, how do you get him back? If you have heard his word, then do not harden your heart. Come to the altar. Find again the great blessing Jesus sent us, the Comforter who guides us into all Truth, who gives us strength. Delight yourself in him. You can't give a thing for this great gift. Just accept it in repentance and humility. And determine in your heart to reject him no more.