Car dashboards have all sorts of indicators. Speed, engine temperature, lights on/off, and turn signals have been standard for decades. In the past few years, cars are coming equipped with radar. My two vehicles have radar and alarms that sound if we are drifting toward the sides of our lane, or if we need to brake because of a vehicle stopped or slowing down in front of us.
At a recent extended family gathering, we were discussing car radars and alarms, and one of my nephews commented that he prefers to disable those indicators for a more authentic driving experience. I get it. Those alarms are annoying, especially for those of us who have been driving for a long time without alarms.
I do wonder if radar and alarms are making for safer driving. That is the goal of all the alarms. Those alarms remind me of what the apostle Paul is talking about in 1 Thessalonians 5:19, when he writes, “Do not quench the Spirit?”
How do we quench the Spirit’s? Paul doesn’t clearly say in 1st Thessalonians, but he did clearly say in Ephesians 4:30, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.”
Open a Bible to Ephesians 4:30, and notice what comes before and after that verse.
Here is what comes before: “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. (Eph. 4:29)
What is Ephesians 4:29 about? How we talk. What comes out of our mouths.
Now let’s look at what comes after verse 30. Look ahead to verse 31, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.”
What is Ephesians 4:30 about? How we talk. Bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, slander, every form of malice. These are terms not exclusively related to speech or what comes out of our mouths, but what is in that list of actions so often causes problems in our relationships. How we talk with other people.
To repeat, verse 30 is about grieving the Spirit. What does Paul say before and after verse 30? He talks about talking. He warns followers of Jesus about how they communicate.
Paul has a flow of thought here. His theme is this: how we talk to other people in our life affects the Holy Spirit who lives in us. We can quench the fire of the Holy Spirit, ironically, by the fire from our tongues. If we use our words to tear people down, we quench the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
In Ephesians 4:30, we learn that how we talk can grieve the Spirit. What does “grieve the Spirit” mean? It is “to cause to be sad, sorrowful, or distressed” (Louw & Nida). You could translate this phrase “Don’t make God’s Spirit sad.”
I think that is fascinating. God has emotions. We can sometimes think of God, in his perfection, as a God who is emotionally impervious. As if he feels nothing. But that is not the picture we get of God in the Bible. God can grieve. God can be sad. Of course God can also be joyful.
It is a reminder to us that emotions are not wrong. Emotions are not bad. Whether joy or sorrow, whether anger or peace, emotions are not bad. Emotions are like dashboards in a car.
On a long trip when we were driving for three plus hours, my car flashed a message on the screen asking if we needed to take a break. It even had a picture of a cup of coffee suggesting we might need to caffeinate. That was a gentle suggestion. Others times the indicators on our dashboard are very urgent. The BRAKE indicator will flash at times when I’m not doing anything. When the BRAKE indicator flashes, and I feel there is no reason for it to do so, my wife says that doesn’t happen to her because she is a good driver.
Similarly, our emotions tell us something about the state of our inner being. We should pay attention to our emotions just as we pay attention to the indicators on our dashboards. What information are our emotions telling us?
Because we are created in God’s image, just as God has emotions, so do we. In this passage, we learn that we can make God sad by how we talk. More on that in the next post.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 
One thought on “Dashboards, emotions, and making God sad – 1 Thessalonians 5:19, Part 3”