Now in John chapter 16, verse 7, our Lord Christ himself is speaking. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is expedient for me that I go away. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you. But if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he has come, he will reprove the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. Of sin because they believe not on me. Of righteousness because I go to my Father and you see me no more. Of judgment because the Prince of this world is judged. I have yet many things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth. For he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak. And he will show you things to come. He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you. I want to be very frank to you tonight, and with you, and say that although I have brought sermons on the subject of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, what it is, what it is, and what it is not, about the work of the Holy Spirit, about sins against the Holy Spirit, that in many years of preaching, to my knowledge, I have never simply addressed myself in a sermon in its entirety to the person of the Holy Spirit. I believe the reason is that the Spirit of God has not allowed me to, but I have always felt compelled not to. The reason is that the Holy Spirit is to honor and magnify and exalt Jesus Christ. Baptists believe in the Holy Spirit, we do not honor ourselves and name ourselves a Holy Spirit religion or a Holy Spirit people. We are a Jesus people. And that that exalts the Holy Spirit is not of the Holy Spirit. That that exalts Jesus Christ is of the Holy Spirit. I do not pretend to have any particular special revelation or dispensation from God to preach this message to you tonight. But I've said that as a background to say that I believe that the fact that the Spirit of God has, in a sense, released my tongue and mind to preach this entire message to you tonight, and has impressed me before any other message of the revival that I've prepared these weeks. This was the first one that the Lord laid on my heart, strangely in my own mind, to preach on this Holy Spirit, says to me that it is vastly important for many of you here tonight. Many lives are empty and barren. Many lives are impotent and powerless and meaningless. Many lives are lost, given over to sin, in rejection of Christ. And in a hundred different ways in this auditorium tonight, I believe, as well as I believe anything in the world, misrelated, improperly related to the Holy Spirit. Consequently, I believe the compelling, demanding, imperativeness of this message tonight. Tonight, let us ask the Spirit of God to remove scales from our eyes, to speak to our hearts, and to help us to understand our relationship to the Holy Spirit of God. Now you will recall and observe that I am referring to him as him, not it. You insult the Spirit of God when you call him it. Lord, send the Holy Spirit, let it come. As though he were a messenger boy who comes and goes. Not true. The Spirit of God is not ours to order around. He is not a computer. Nor is he a commuter. He is not a machine. He is a sweet, precious, blessed, delicate person who indwells the life and the heart of the believer by faith. The Holy Spirit is a person. He is, as his name implies, a holy person. Now the word holy means to be revered, to be worshipped, to be held at all. It also implies sinlessness. The Holy Spirit is displeased with sin. The Holy Spirit removes himself from sin. The Holy Spirit is unhappy with sin. Consequently, the Holy Spirit honors and exalts and draws men to the sinless one. It is his prime concern in all of eternity and in the lives of men to remind people how they can come to the only one that can forgive sin, Jesus Christ, by the power of his blood. The Spirit of God is very delicate. The Spirit of God is easily offended. There are those who say that Christians worship three gods, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And I think it is perhaps unfortunate that in the Old English the word Spirit has been translated ghost. The word Holy Spirit and Holy Ghost are simultaneous. They are the same terms for the same, for one person. But the word ghost has a sort of spooky connotation for most people. And unfortunately, far too many people have gone too far away from the work of the Holy Spirit. And much of what we are experiencing in many quarters today is an overreaction to the absence of the truth and the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God. Only purpose is to exalt Christ and bring men in their hearts to the sin bearer who alone can remove the problem of sin. He is a holy person. Now, we Christians do not have three gods. We have only one God. But our God has certain capacities that we neither know or can understand. We cannot comprehend them. How our God can be one and yet be three, I do not understand. How Jesus Christ can be the Son of God and yet be God, I cannot comprehend. I do not understand. Oh, I know all of the futile attempts to explain it. Life saying H2O is only H2O and yet in liquid form it's water, in vapor form it's steam, in solid form it's ice. Yet it's like three pieces of a pig tail and a little girl's hair that all three go together to make one. The same I am many persons, to my wife a husband, to my children a father, to my mother a son, and yet I am one person. And yet all of these are mere futile attempts to explain the person of the Spirit of God and his part of the divine trinity. Theologians through the years have tried to explain it and understand it. It is not really important that you understand it. How the three can be separate and yet be one, I cannot explain. Nor do you, nor can you, nor can anyone else, nor will anyone ever, and so forget it. Don't get all tangled up on trying to understand it, but just suffice it to say that our God is one God who chooses to do his work with men through three different mediums. Sometimes, at a distance, he is Holy God the Father in Heaven. Sometimes he comes to us in spiritual form as the Holy Spirit. And for 33 years, he stepped into the empirical realm and manifested himself to us in physical form in Jesus Christ. One God, doing many things, many ways. Now you say, preacher, why is the Holy Spirit so important? We sing, what a wonderful change in my life has been wrought since Jesus came into my heart. But I am sure that you understand that in reality, Jesus Christ died on the cross, rose again, and is literally seated at the right hand of the Father, interceding for my sins. So he is not really in my heart. He is there by faith. The same as my wife is in my heart because I love her in faith. But Christ is literally at the right hand of the Father. But the Spirit of God is literally in my heart. He it is who did the work of regeneration. He first created in me a sense of need for Christ. He first revealed Christ. We praise the old God for the Son of my Lord, for Jesus who died in His mouth and above. And the next verse says, we praise the old God for Thy Spirit of life, who hath shown us our Savior and scattered our night. Had not the Holy Spirit of God revealed Christ, scattered the night of sin, and drawn us to Jesus, we would be lost in our sins. And so because the Spirit of God first created the need in my life for Christ, first revealed Christ to me, first drew me to Him, and then did the actual work of regeneration, actually put Christ in my heart, by faith, I am saying simply to you tonight that my relationship to Jesus Christ, my Savior, is absolutely determined by my relationship to the Holy Spirit. And when he is grieved and he is quenched, Jesus Christ is driven away. When I sin and the Spirit of God is unhappy and he is quenched in one corner of my heart, Christ does not live in me. When I refuse to let the Spirit of God draw Christ to me and come into my life and save me when I was unsaved, I was repelling Christ because I repelled the Spirit of God. I repeat, my relationship, our relationship as unsaved or as believers to Jesus Christ is totally dependent upon our relationship to the Holy Spirit. My question tonight is a simple one. What is your relationship to God, the Holy Spirit? How do people treat him? How do we relate ourselves to him? Whether you are unsaved or saved, whether you are a Christian or unconverted, whether you know Christ or a law, I suggest to you that there are four ways by which one can be related to the Holy Spirit of God. And that each of us tonight are probably in one of these conditions. And I want to suggest them to you. First of all, you can insult him. Secondly, you can expel him. Thirdly, you can injure him. Fourth, you can experience him. Number one, you can insult the Holy Spirit. Now this word I speak to the unfaithed. This is not to the Christian. The Christian cannot commit this sin of which I am going to speak. But you that are in the church or out of the church that are good or bad, rich or poor, who have never had a life -transforming experience with Christ, are insulting the Holy Spirit. If you have your Bibles, I want you to turn quickly with me tonight to Matthew chapter 12, verse 22. Matthew chapter 12, verse 22. Then was brought unto Jesus one possessed with a devil, blind and dumb. And he healed him in so much as the blind and dumb both spake and saw. And all the people were amazed and said, Is not this the son of David? But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow does not cast out devils, except by Beelzebub, the prince of devils. And Jesus knew their thoughts. Now I want you to turn with me to chapter 30, to verse 31. The same chapter, verse 31. Jesus Christ is speaking, Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him. But whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him in this world or in the world to come. Again, Jesus Christ was doing many things to authenticate his Messiahship. Among other things, he was working miracles and raising the dead. Now the Bible had prophesied that when the Messiah, the Savior of the world was going to come, he would do that. Most of the people, when they saw what Christ was doing, believed on him. All the people were amazed and said, Is not this the son of David? Is not this Messiah? Is not this he? Is not this the Christ? Sometimes they responded to him and accepted him and believed on him. And in the very same way I believe today, that when most people hear the gospel of Christ, they still respond. Many times they don't hear the gospel. But most people hearing the gospel respond. But now some of these people did not. When the Pharisees heard it, they said, Oh, no, this man does not cast out devils, but by the prince of devils. The Holy Spirit of God, through the ministry of Jesus Christ, was drawing men to Christ. But over and over again, the Pharisees heard him. The Pharisees were convicted. The Pharisees were drawn to Christ. And they habitually refused to respond until their hearts got so hardened that God said, Let them alone. And what happened was simply this. They finally crucified the Holy Ghost. And Jesus said that you can speak against me. You can insult me. You can reject me. But blasphemy against the Holy Ghost can never be forgiven in this world or the world to come. Why? Now what does it mean to blaspheme something? To blaspheme means to insult. I could come in here tonight and write obscene literature on the walls. I could roll up the aisles and have a big drunken debat and never say a word and I would be blaspheming this auditorium. And so blasphemy need not necessarily be spoken. Because Jesus said that whosoever speaks against me blasphemes the Holy Spirit of God cannot be forgiven. And in the next verse he adds and whosoever speaks against him that can't be forgiven either. But it need not necessarily be spoken. The blasphemy against the Holy Spirit the insulting rejection of the Spirit called the Christ is not in the mouth it's in the heart. The mouth is the fruit the heart is the root. I am saying simply this. That the only thing Jesus Christ was in the world to do with the unsaved person. Now with a Christian he does many things. But with the unsaved person the only thing the Spirit of God is in the world to do is to draw you to Christ. And if you habitually refuse to allow him to do that you harden your heart, you just continually crucify him. You have the audacity to say no Spirit of God go thy way. I'm not ready. I'll come when I want. Ultimately the Spirit of God leaves you alone hardened in your sins and you are left forever sealed in the condition of the unpardonable sin. It's insulting the Holy Spirit. That's all he's in the world to do is to draw him into Christ. And if you refuse to do that listen closely. The unpardonable sin is not the ultimate last, final, blasphemous rejection the insulting rejection of Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit called because he's the greatest it's against him because he's the latest. He's the last. There's no other way. God has no other plan of salvation. You see the strange thing of the gospel is the wonder of the gospel story is that through the ages God has been seeking man. It seems to me that man should be seeking God and indeed in the human heart as men have sought God they have made a thousand different religions a thousand plans a thousand ways by which men could work their way and seek their way up to God in heaven. But the reality of the gospel is not that man seeks God but that in Christ on the cross God came seeking man. In loving kindness Jesus came. He stepped into sin. He became part of me. He identified himself with me. Him that had known no sin became sin so that God in Christ could smack his anger and hatred and judgment for sin in the body of his own son on the cross. God's been trying to give us sin a salvation forgiveness from sin. How does he do it? Well he came himself originally but men would not have it. The Bible says that God sent the prophets but the Bible says they blasphemed the prophets they still would not accept. The Bible says God sent prophets men to speak in their own language then God wrote it down. He sent the scriptures to tell men that he loves them and wants to pardon them and that he's done everything he can to give men salvation. But the Bible says that men blasphemed the scriptures. Listen to the agony. Hear the pathos in the great heart of God as he says I will sin my son. Surely they will reverence my son. What happened? Lay with him. Let him be crucified. Near him to a cross. We'll not have this Jesus. They blasphemed the son. God says alright I have one more way of salvation. I have one more way to offer salvation. I have one more attempt by which I will attempt to get men to respond to my plea of forgiveness. I'll send the Holy Spirit and listen very closely. when you hear a gospel message and you know that God is speaking to your heart that he is making you aware of the fact that you are lost and in Christ if you habitually turn him down he is insulted he is rejected you blaspheme him to blaspheme means to insult something sacred. You blaspheme him by refusing to let him do the only thing he's in the world to do and that's call you to Christ eventually he'll say let him alone. Leave him anything. I want to warn you tonight you will not be saved when you're ready. You'll be saved when the Spirit of God is ready. He said my spirit will not always cry with me. Jesus Christ himself said, Except the Father draw me, no man can come unto me. Three times in the first chapter of Romans he says, God gave them up, God gave them up, God gave them up. What odd effort. What arrogance for a man to say to the Spirit of God, Go your way, I'll come when I'm ready, leave me alone. You insult the Holy Spirit's call and eventually the Spirit of God will leave you alone. Now, you say, how do I know whether God's calling me or not? I don't have any emotional jag, I don't have any trembling experience, I don't see any funny little grinning lies. How do I know God's talking to him? The word convict doesn't mean, doesn't mean to have an emotional experience, it means to make aware of. You know you're lost? Yes. You know Christ died for you? Yes. You know Jesus will save you, he has to ask him to? Yes. You're in a conviction. Only the Holy Spirit can make you know that. Only the Spirit of God can give you the awareness of your need of Christ. I talk to men all the time who are not under -convicted. Not because they're not bawling their eyes out, but because they say, no, I don't know that I'm lost. No, I don't want to be saved, I'm satisfied just like I am. If you understand that you are lost, that Christ died for you, that you ought to be saved, you're under -conviction of the Holy Ghost. Only he can give you that awareness. If you're unsaved tonight, I warn you with all of my heart that you're on the serious risk of insulting the Holy Spirit one time too many. And he says, let him alone. And you are left damned and doomed in your sins, and the Spirit of God will never call you again. Again, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. It is a dangerous thing to usurp your pride over the authority of the Spirit of God and say, I'll come when I'm ready. If you have any awareness, any interest, any desire, any concern, lest at all to be a Christian, now I plead with you in Christ's own stead that you will come this night and let Jesus come into your heart. Now I shall hasten to a close. There is so much to say. I'll not have time to speak long on each of these. The second thing that many people do in their relationship to the Spirit of God is to expel him. It is possible for a believer to completely drive the Holy Spirit of God from control of their life until he leaves them alone and they die. Five times the Bible suggests the sin and the death that a person can get so far away from God bringing reproach on the name of God, insulting the Holy Spirit of God as a believer that God will say, let him alone. I want you to look with me quickly in the first chapter, the fifth chapter of 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians chapter 5. I'm turning in mine too, so we'll find it together. 1 Corinthians chapter 5. It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you and such fornication as there is not so much found among the Gentiles that one should have his father's wife. Verse 3. I, verily I absent in body, but present in the Spirit, have judged already as though I were present concerning him that hath done this thing. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together by my Spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ to deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the Spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. You see, that means turning him over to the devil so the devil can beat him around a little bit and beat the devil out of him and make him a better person and he'll start living a Christian life. Not at all. The devil never cooperated with God to do anything good. Here was a man who was living in an extreme, overt sexual sin, either with his stepmother, his mother, or his mother -in -law. But at any rate, it was a sin of gross sexual sin. A believer. And this believer had so condemned and so destroyed and so hardened his own conscience that he had driven all compulsion of right and wrong from his life. And Paul says he's hopeless, he's useless. Turn him over to the devil for the destruction of the flesh that his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is my personal conviction that this man went to heaven. He was saved by the skin of his teeth. His spirit saved in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. But God snuffed out his life early and destroyed him. I believe that's happened to more than one man. One person who's lived in sins of the flesh, who's lived in immorality and incest, who's lived in sexual sins and in adultery, who has lived in sins of fornication, who has taken the body, the temple of the Holy Ghost, and has so dissipated in sexual sins that God said to the believer, that's enough. The Holy Spirit can no longer dwell in that body. Turn him over to the devil, he is killed, his spirit goes to heaven, but the Spirit of God gets out of that body, he's through with him, he has expelled the Holy Spirit. Will you listen closely for your soul's sake tonight? It is also possible to expel the Holy Spirit by perversion. Romans chapter 1, verse 24. Romans chapter 1, verses 24 through 28. I wonder if God is riding Ichabod already across this nation of ours. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lust of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves, who changed the truth of God into a lie and worship and served the creature more than the creator. For this cause God gave them up under vile afflictions. Are you listening? God gave them up. God gave them up. For even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, turning their own lust once against another. Working that which is unseemly and receiving in themselves a recompense of error which was meet or deserved. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient. Sins of sexual perversion. Now very frankly, I walk a thin line and have some serious questions as to how to deal with the problem of homosexuality. I realize there are all kinds of psychological hangups that are involved in the inability of the child to make the proper male -female role application in his mind as a child that changes him and gets him all mixed up when he's grown up. And I do not know how to be easy and how to counsel, how to love and try to help back and how much to judge and condemn. But as I read the word of God, I must be true to what I find therein and say to you that I believe it is possible for you to have a normal relationship in Christian marriage with a member of the opposite sex which is good and godly and normal as God intended and break off the homosexual relationship if you will judge yourself as a sinner and say, oh God it's wrong, forgive me. The Bible says those who did not God give them over too. They reprobate mine. And he said, all right, if you'll live that way, just go ahead and live that way. He withdrew from them. There is a third sin which expels the Holy Spirit. You say, preacher, adultery or homosexuality, these are none of my problems. Well, listen to this. Acts chapter 5, verses 1 through 6. It is the sin of hypocrisy. A certain man, Acts 5, I'm sorry, I think I said 6. Acts 5. A certain man named Ananias with Sapphira, his wife, sold a possession and kept back part of the price of it, his wife also being a party to it and bought a certain price and laid it at the apostles' feet. You see, there was a big revival going on. It was quite the prominent thing to do to look to be very dedicated because people were buying, selling their homes and selling their possessions and giving all the money to the Lord's work. But Ananias and Sapphira really weren't all that dedicated, but they were leaders in the church and they wanted to look that way. So they sell their land for so much and they brought so much to church and they kept the rest of it and hid it and said, this is all we got for it. But Peter said unto them, Ananias, why has Satan filled thine hearts to lie to the Holy Ghost and to keep back part of the price of the land? Verse 5, Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and gave up the ghost. He died. God killed him. He lied to the Holy Ghost. Hypocrisy. You will read over and over again about people in places of religious responsibility whose lives are hypocritical in serious trouble. The Bible says in 2 Peter of certain people that they rest, W -R -E -S -T, meaning to twist or pervert the scriptures to justify their own sin. And he says for this cause they died. You will remember that the Apostle Paul says the people were getting drunken at the Lord's supper table. They were unworthily handling the things of God. For this cause some are sick and many have died. I want to be very honest with you tonight and say that if you are singing in the choir or preaching the word of God or deacon as a deacon or playing a piano or taking the offering, if you are counting money or if you are passing out envelopes or teaching a class or taking up a handbook to sing the doxology on Sunday morning, unworthily handling the things of God, a hypocrite, pretending to be one thing but in reality something else, your life a lie to the Holy Ghost. You are in danger of expelling the Spirit of God from your life and God's saying let him alone. We had a preacher in Oklahoma City. He never preached the blood. He never preached conversion. It was 20 years ago. Very popular. He divorced his wife and one of his deacons divorced his wife and he married the deacon's wife and the deacon married his wife and they swapped wives and all four of them kept running around together. A couple of preacher friends of mine, Warren Terry and Hugh Bumbus went to them and fled with them to get right with God. People were laughing. They were scoffing. They were bringing reproach on the name of Christ. They were making mockery of the pastor, mockery of the church, mockery of the word of God. And he said, hey, you fanatical babbles, you tell them how to die and I'll tell them how to live. He went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania a few weeks later with his wife and the deacon and his wife in a private plane. They took off in a rainstorm and hit an electric pole at the end of the runway and God blew all four of them into eternity in a billion bit. There are hundreds of Christians in Houston this night who are hypocrites that are living in incest and immorality that are stealing God's money, stealing God's ties, taking things into their body that are wrong, that are liars and hypocrites that come to church as pious as can be and some of you are going to wake up dead. I'm telling you the truth. It is possible for you to expel the Holy Spirit. For him to say, I cannot live in that kind of a body anymore. Leave you alone. Death comes. The Bible says, if any man see his brother sin, a sin which is not unto death, I say unto you, pray for him. The word brother means Christian, brother and each will give him life. But he says, if any man see his brother sin, a sin which is unto death, I do not say that you should pray for such and one. Forget him. God will take him out of the world. Oh, you walk on dangerous ground. Flirt with God and flirt with death when you handle unworthily the things of God. If God waited for perfect people and perfect Christians and perfect preachers, the work of the gospel would never be done. But we can at least do what we always do when we walk into this pulpit and that is kneel and say, oh God, I'm a sinner. I'm no good. I'm not worthy to live. But have mercy by thy grace. Cleanse me in your blood and fill me with your power and do your work through me. We can conscientiously do what we know we ought to do. What is your relationship to the Holy Spirit? Unsaved man, some of you insult him. Some of you Christians expel him. Some of us injure him. I shall not read. But let me quote because my time has gone. Ephesians 4 .30. Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God. 1 Thessalonians 5 .19. Quench not the Holy Spirit. How do we grieve him? Christians, I believe that we grieve him by sins of omission. What we do not do. You will never convince me that God is honored with the life of the believer who is sitting home with his nose in a television set on Sunday night while the church of Jesus Christ is in session preaching the blood and the book and the word of God while the world is going to hell and Christians with their nose in a TV on Sunday night and letting her go. Oh, God knows we need Christians that will give God his money and his day and their bodies and their life and get in earnest about their relationship to God. Oh God send a revival that'll change things in our lives. You see oh the perversion, the dirty movies, the dope problems, all of this. There's only one thing that keeps the world from rotting and stinking and that's the salt of the earth. The church, Christians, believers, the salt of the earth is enough. It is impotent. It's on the shelf. It's cold. The body of Christ in Houston needs reviving. We injure the delicate, sensitive Holy Spirit of God by sins of omission, what we do not do. And we injure him by what we do. You see what we do becomes a part of us for as a man thinketh in his heart. So is he. And those sins pile up and quench the Spirit of God and he is grieved again and again and again in the one corner of our lives. I care not for table trees and gorgeous chandeliers as beautiful as they are and as nice as I like to have them, but that's not important. The Spirit of God doesn't work through pianos. He does not move on chandeliers. He does not come upon beautiful seats. He works through men and women. He comes through hearts. The Holy Spirit of God works through blood -bought Christians. Oh, and some of you withstand. Hatred, jealousy, cattiness, unforgiveness. A fine Jewish lady knelt at the altar and received Jesus Christ as her Savior last night and said, I have found forgiveness. Forgiveness? I found forgiveness for an unforgiving spirit for hatred in my heart of 15 years. First time a fine practicing psychologist. A good man had helped her. But that ultimate burden of guilt only left when she put her guilt beneath the blood of the Lamb. Oh, hear me. Christians, I pray the Spirit of God will talk to some of you that profess back there as children that haven't been in church on a Sunday night or hardly a Sunday morning for years and years. the church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church of a church Thank you.