Pastor's Blog

When a child is sick, parents that love the child are afflicted in their hearts by the affliction of their child. They say, “Oh honey, I feel so badly. I feel so sorry for you. It hurts me to see that you are sick.” Well, God is afflicted when we are afflicted. That’s only in passing. “But they rebelled, and vexed his Holy Spirit.”

The Spirit of God is a person, and because He is a person, He has characteristics of personality; one of them is that He has sensibility or emotion, feeling. The Holy Spirit feels. That is why it is written:

“And grieve not the Holy Spirit whereby you are sealed to the day of redemption.” When I was a young preacher, I was quite legalistic. That’s the German, you know. It took God a long time to get the German out of the German. Now I have some characteristics, but I am speaking about this legalism.

One night, I gave the assembly that I pastured a terrible whipping. Ooh! Did I let them have it! I laid down the law and you better believe it. After I got done, they were all still. Nobody, as we say in German, “nouxed.” They were all still, and I felt so hurt in my spirit. I congratulated myself by saying, “You know Beuttler, you’re all right. You can whip God’s people and feel bad about it. That’s a good sign.” So, I even complimented myself on top of it all.

I was talking to a preacher’s wife, who was no fool. I told her the whole thing. She said, “Brother Beuttler, are you sure what you felt was not the grieving of the Spirit?”

When she said that, I knew she was right. The Spirit felt hurt because I hurt His people. We can vex the Holy Spirit.

“Grieve not the Holy Spirit, whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and clamor, and evil speaking with all malice be put away from among you.”

Now I know there is no evil speaking in Auckland, and no malice and no bitterness; they are all saints, but in New York, San Francisco and Chicago, you have those conditions in the Assemblies of God, believe it or not. Those things hurt the Spirit of God. Here the prophet speaks about the Spirit’s vexation. We can vex the Spirit, that is to say, irritate Him, trouble Him, disturb Him, agitate Him, anger Him. He can be angry. God can be angry and still be holy. Incidentally, we can vex the Spirit of God by some things. Now if we really know the Spirit, surely we do not want to vex the Spirit.

Here I want to take a little while and give you tonight four things that vex the Spirit of God. Remember He’s a person. He’s omnipresent; He’s among us. We can vex Him, trouble Him, disturb Him, irritate Him, agitate Him. Oh yes! Look how the Spirit of God was agitated in the case of Ananias and Sapphira.

I am taking you to I Thessalonians 5:19. You probably know the scripture. “Quench not the Spirit.” We can vex the Spirit, trouble Him, disturb Him, anger Him in a holy sense by quenching Him. He can be quenched; He can be suppressed. This has largely to do with the exercise of the gifts of the Spirit. We are told here to “Quench not the Spirit.” We can suppress the Spirit when He wants to use us.

We had a teacher in the school, a good teacher, but she did not like what she called, “the interruptions of the Spirit.” She would not permit any manifestations of the Spirit such as prophesying, tongues, interpretations and other things in her classes. She simply would not tolerate it, and she would suppress any attempt of the Spirit of God to use a student. That was very unfortunate because she was a top quality teacher, but this was an area for which she did not have any particular use, “Quench not the Spirit.”