Filled with the Spirit

Well, the contrast this morning in the words of our text, Ephesians 5.18, is I think striking.
Listen to it once again, "Do not get drunk on wine," which leads to debauchery, "instead
be filled with the Spirit." Notice the contrast is between being drunk on wine, which leads
to debauchery, and being filled with the Spirit. Now, if you're familiar with the New Testament,
you will know that on two earlier occasions in the New Testament, there is this linkage
between being filled with wine, or strong drink, and being filled with the Holy Spirit.
The first instance is in Luke chapter 1, when the angel Gabriel comes to Zechariah to announce
the coming birth of John the Baptist. Here is what was said by the angel concerning John
the Baptist, "He will be a joy and delight to you. Many will rejoice because of his birth,
for he will be great in the sight of the Lord." And then notice these words, "He is never
to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even
from birth." Note the linkage, don't drink wine or fermented drink. He's going to be
filled with the Spirit even from birth. The second instance, of course, and I trust this
is more familiar to us, is in Acts chapter 2 in the day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit
is poured out in church. You have the sound of the mighty rushing wind. You have flames
as a fire. You have the apostles declaring the word of the Lord in strange or different
tongues. And then what was the response of some people in the crowd? Well, we read this
in Acts chapter 2, verses 12 and 13, "Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, 'What
does this mean?' Some however made fun of them, that is the disciples, and they said
they had too much wine." Again, this linkage between being drunk with wine and being filled
with the Holy Spirit. Peter's response to that, you will recall, in verse 15 was to
say, "These men are not drunk as you suppose. It is only nine in the morning." And then
he goes on to quote from the prophecy of Joel, "It will come to pass in the last days, says
the Lord, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, men and women, boys and girls,
the young and even the old." So very clearly, in the New Testament, there is this linkage
between being drunk with wine and being filled with the Holy Spirit. And the answer of course
is that in both instances, you are being controlled by something or somebody other than yourself.
And to be drunk with wine is to be under the influence of alcohol. And alcohol, as we all
know, lowers your inhibitions. It makes people do things and say things that otherwise they
would never say or do. Often live to regret it. And that's why the text goes on to say
that to be drunk with wine leads to debauchery. Interesting word, not one that we use very
commonly. I suspect it occurs only two other times in the New Testament. And in each instance,
it's translated as the word riot. And it really refers to riotous living or loose living or
reckless indiscretion. We've all seen people spiral downward when alcohol took hold of
their lives and they, in many instances, would have lost marriages, jobs, properties. That's
what addiction tends to do. The book of Proverbs puts it this way, Proverbs 23, 19 to 21. "Listen,
my son, and be wise. Keep your heart on the right path. Do not join those who drink too
much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor and drowsiness
clothes them in rags." Drunk with wine leads to debauchery. And the world is full of people
who go home every weekend to get drunk out of their vines, to forget the pressures and
the burdens of life only to wake up on Monday morning. Everything is still there and you're
wondering what did I do? What did I say? And what should I have done differently? Now in
contrast to this, of course, to be filled with the Holy Spirit is to be under the influence
and the control of the Spirit of Jesus. The Spirit of Jesus represents the full essence
of who Jesus is, both as Son of God and Son of man. And the promise of scripture is that
as we are joined to Jesus, He shares with us His Spirit and under the terms of the New
Covenant, God wants our bodies to be controlled not by wine, not by drugs, not by addictions,
not by our own selfish ambitions and desires, but He wants our lives to be controlled by
the Holy Spirit. And just as imbibing wine leads to a certain lifestyle, being filled
with the Holy Spirit shows itself in a certain lifestyle. In fact, I'm going to point out
to you that as the passage goes on, there are two very practical outcomes that are listed
of being filled with the Holy Spirit. And the first one is this, that He gives us a
new desire and a new ability to worship the living God. Notice again how our text continues.
Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your
heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Whenever there is spiritual renewal, whether that is on an individual
level or on a corporate level, there is a new capacity and a new desire to worship God.
And the reason for that is not difficult to figure out because the job of the Holy Spirit
is to make Jesus real in your life and in my life, and to give us understanding and
an experience of the blessings that are ours in Christ. Some months back we looked at that
when we looked at the first chapter of Ephesians where in verse three the apostle Paul tells
us, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the
heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places." And back then we looked
in some detail as to what that looks like as Paul goes on in Ephesians chapter one to
describe to us what the spiritual blessings are that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ.
He says, "We've been chosen from eternity past. God knew us before we were even born."
And he said, "I want you to be mine. I want you to belong to my family." Not only that,
but he said, "I'm washing away your sins because your destiny is to be a child of God and to
share in the fullness and the blessings of God." And it goes on and on to describe for
us in Christ Jesus what it is to be a child of God and what it is to experience God's
love and God's faithfulness all fulfilled in Christ who sits at the right hand of God
the Father above all authority, dominion, and power. We're seated with him in heavenly
places. Unbelievers don't understand it. A lot of Christians are very limited in their
understanding of it. But the job of the Holy Spirit is to open our eyes, which is why Paul
says, "I pray for your hearts to be enlightened, for you to see what it is that God has called
you to, for you to see what God has done for you in Christ, for you to experience the love
of God which is beyond comprehension." The more we are filled with the Spirit, the more
we can experience that kind of reality. And so the outcome and the fruit of being filled
with the Holy Spirit is that there is a new desire to give worship to God with psalms,
hymns, and spiritual songs. Psalms are the Old Testament psalms. Hymns are New Testament
compositions that the church has created to make melody to God. And spiritual songs, more
likely than not, are spontaneous spiritual compositions that the Holy Spirit generates
in the hearts of the believing community as it gathers for worship. And for that reason,
as I said a moment ago, historically, wherever revival takes place, whenever a given individual
comes to new life in Christ, whenever revival breaks out in a church or in a country, when
the Holy Spirit is poured out in a new and in a fresh way, as on the day of Pentecost
and many times since, there is a flowing forth of new music and new worship as the church
tries to find ways to express its thankfulness to God for the good things that God has done.
Psalm 98 verse 1 puts it this way, "Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous
things. His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him." And I'm so glad
I mentioned this a number of weeks ago. A number of our musicians and singers are getting
together with a measure of regularity to share new song compositions that the Holy Spirit
has been giving them. And the more we are filled with the Holy Spirit, the more we can
expect a praise to rise in our hearts with thankfulness to God. I can't tell you how
many times in the New Testament we're told to be thankful. It doesn't come naturally.
But the more we're filled with the Holy Spirit, the more the desire and the ability to worship
is there. That's why God's people gather for corporate worship as we lift up and exalt
the name of Jesus. So that's one of the consequences of being filled with the Holy Spirit. It's
the vertical component of our relationship with God. But if you think back to what Jesus
said about what is the greatest commandment, what did he say? Love God above all and what's
the next? Love your neighbor as yourself. So there is a second dimension to being filled
with the Holy Spirit that Paul goes on to develop here in this particular passage. And
that is this. He gives us a new desire and a new ability to live God's way relationally.
Verse 21, "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." Now, unless you have a Bible
with you and open to this particular passage, you will not notice this. But after making
this statement, "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ," he goes on and he
gives us in rapid succession three practical examples of what submitting to one another
out of reverence for Christ looks like. We don't have time this morning to look at that
in detail other than to summarize it in this way. He addresses the issue of marriage. He
addresses the issue of family relationships, parents and children. And he addresses the
issue of workplace relationships between bosses and those who work for them. And in each instance,
what he does is he challenges God's people to go back to the way God designed things
in the very beginning. And so God's purpose in marriage is for a husband to love his wife
as Christ loves the church, for the wife to submit to her husband as the church submits
to Christ. Sin has made a mess of that because men become selfish, women tend to become disenchanted
and rebellious. To be filled with the Spirit and to submit to Christ is that you learn
to step into your place properly so that husbands lay down their lives for their wives. And
the wives learn to submit to and respect their husbands in ways that glorifies God. And he
goes on in that vein to do the same thing about children and their parents. Parents
are supposed to train up the children in the fear and in the instruction of the Lord. Children
are supposed to submit to the parents. The Bible says, "Children, obey your parents
in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment
with a promise that it may go well with you, that you may enjoy long life on the earth."
The first commandment with a promise. You're going to live longer if you listen to your
parents. Why? Because even the worst of parents sometimes know more about life than a child
does and by submitting to that under the authority of Jesus, you live a long life. But we live
in a broken world. Parents sometimes neglect, worse yet, abuse their children. Children
rebel. We live in a society that has huge breakdown issues. But Paul says, "In Christ
you're being restored. God gives you the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit." To be filled
with the Holy Spirit is to have a new capacity, not only to love God, but to step into your
place as a father and a mother. To step into your place as children so that the family
unit can reflect again the purpose and the instructions of God. Am I making sense here?
Same thing about employer and employee relationships. Paul goes on to say, "Slaves obey your earthly
masters with respect and fear, with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ."
A lot has been made of the fact that the Bible doesn't seem to condemn slavery. I'm not so
sure that's true, but it misses the point. Every society has an economic system of those
who provide work and those who do the work. In a fallen human society, the tendency is
for bosses to take advantage of their employees and for the employees to take advantage of
their bosses. It happens in a system of slavery, but it happens just as readily in the kind
of systems of work relationships that we are accustomed to in our day and age. Paul says
to be filled with the Spirit, to be in Christ is to reverse that process so that slaves
or employees work for the Lord Jesus, put the interests of their bosses ahead of their
own and the bosses in turn, masters treat your slaves in the same way, do not threaten
them since you know that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven and there is
no favoritism with him. There again, to be filled with the Spirit is not just to overflow
with praise and worship and thank God, that's where it begins, but love for God comes through
expression in love for your neighbor. And to be filled with the Spirit, one of the reasons
the Holy Spirit was given on the day of Pentecost was to help us under the terms of the New
Covenant to live by the power of the resurrected Lord Jesus, by the gift of the Holy Spirit.
We've never been intended to be able to do this on our own, but we can do it progressively
and increasingly through faith in Jesus who grants us the Holy Spirit. And the more filled
with the Holy Spirit we are, the more readily we can conform to the instructions of Scripture.
You still with me this morning? Now, here's where it gets interesting because I want you
to notice that this instruction to be filled with the Spirit is an imperative. It is grammatically
a passive present imperative. Listen to it. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery.
Instead be filled. In fact, the Greek says, in effect, allow yourselves to be filled continually.
Just as you have to imbibe wine to get drunk or other strong drink, so you have to drink
in the Holy Spirit in order to be filled with the Spirit. So in the time that remains, I
want to give you three very practical steps that I believe biblically are important for
us to be able to obey that command. What do we have to do to be filled with the Spirit?
How do we overcome the lethargy of body and mind that wants to drift away from God all
the time? How do we find joy in worship? How do we find joy in Scripture? How do we find
joy in Jesus? And Lord knows, how do we find joy in living biblically in marriages and
with our children and on the job? Three quick suggestions. Number one, realize that if you
are in Christ, you have already received the Holy Spirit. Earlier I quoted these words
from Peter in Acts chapter 2, 38 and 39, where in response to the cry, "What must we do to
be saved?" Peter says, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ
for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
The promise is for you and your children and all who are far off, for all whom the Lord
our God will call." What that means, practically speaking, is that if you have heard the gospel
and you have responded to the gospel, you have repented of your sin, you have put your
trust in Jesus, you're eligible, you have received the Spirit of God. When Jesus ascended
on high, sat down at the right hand of God the Father, God gave him the gift of the Holy
Spirit and he poured it out on the church on the day of Pentecost. You don't have to
be a super Christian, you don't have to be better than somebody else, you don't have
to have it all together. The Holy Spirit is a gift freely given by virtue of our union
with Christ. I cannot emphasize that enough. And the Apostle Paul teaches the same kind
of thing in Romans chapter 8 when he says, "If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ,
he does not belong to Christ." So, we'll talk more in a moment about why we are so
often not aware of that. That's a whole other thing because that has to do with being filled
by the Holy Spirit. But if you're in Christ, the Holy Spirit is yours. And if you're not
sure of that, then I suggest you ask him to make sure that you can be filled with the
Holy Spirit because that's one of the things that God desperately is committed to doing.
And Jesus puts it this way in Luke chapter 11 verse 13, "If you, though you were evil,
know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give
the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?" If you who are evil know how to give good gifts
to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give the Holy Spirit
to those who ask him? And so, if there's any question or any doubt in your mind whether
God has granted you the Holy Spirit, then I would take that promise and I would lay
it before God and I would say, "God, I don't know if I've ever done this or not. I don't
even know. Maybe I have the Holy Spirit. Maybe I don't. But whatever it is, I don't want
to miss out on him because it is too important. Please fill me with your Holy Spirit." And
if that doesn't do anything for you, then find somebody who's over you in the Lord,
ask them to pray for you with laying on of hands, asking the Lord to fill you to overflowing
with the presence of God. Most of you here have heard Dave Botting's story how years
ago on that first trip to Willow Creek, the Holy Spirit spoke to him. We laid hands on
him and we prayed him and it was like the eyes of his heart were enlightened and he
will tell you to this day that his life has never been the same. Don't underestimate the
power of being prayed over. You have the Holy Spirit. You just need to be filled overflowing
with his presence. My personal conviction is the degree to which we experience the Holy
Spirit in our lives is very much a function of yielding to his Lordship. I like what Darrell
Brown told me one time when we were talking about this. He says, "If you don't know where
things are going, think back to the last thing the Lord told you to do and ask yourself,
did I do it? And if not, then go back, revisit that until you know that you're walking in
the clear with the Lord. Secondly, make sure that you abide in Christ." And that's terminology
of course that comes from John 15, the verses four and five. Jesus speaks to his disciples,
abide in me. Newer translations remain in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear
fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I
am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears
much fruit for apart from me, you can do nothing. Very familiar image. A branch bears fruit
as long as it remains attached to the tree that provides the sap. Jesus is the vine.
That's Old Testament language by the way. It's a description of being the planting of
the Lord. Jesus was the completion of everything that Israel failed to be. Israel was the planting
of the Lord in the Old Testament. It was unfaithful to God. Jesus comes along, lives the way God
wants him to live, dies, gets resurrected, pours out his Holy Spirit. We're joined to
him by faith. The life of Jesus will flow into the branches so that abiding in him enables
us to bear fruits. Really not that complicated. How do we abide? Well we practice the spiritual
disciplines. We've talked about that in detail. Time in prayer, time in scripture, time in
collective worship with God's people. It means keeping short account with God about our sin.
The Bible says that we confess our sins. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins
and to purify or cleanse us from all unrighteousness. It means cultivating obedience. I said it a
moment ago, if you're off track, ask yourself the question, what is the last thing that
I sense God wanted me to do that I did not do? What is the one sin that he has put his
finger on in my life when I'm not dealing with it because I'm either too embarrassed
or too ashamed or too stubborn or too stupid? Lord, help me to step out and obey you because
you are Lord. And so he says in verse 8 of chapter 15, this is my father's glory that
you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. I've told you this story
before but the story is told of Dwight L. Moody, a famous revivalist preacher in the
middle 1800s. He was asked the question, "Why do you preach so much about being filled with
the Spirit?" And he said, "It's real simple. I leak." We all leak. And if we want to stay
on top of our leaks, we need to abide in Christ and do the things that we need to do to draw
our life from Jesus. There's a third thing, and that is to find and pursue your calling
in Christ. Here's a verse we often quote. It's Valerie's favorite verse where God's
workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance
for us to do. And we believe that if you are in Christ and God has a calling on your life,
there is a particular function that he has geared you for, prepared you for, and equipped
you for. And part of the key to remaining full and overflowing is to try to find out
what that is, listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and then step out in obedience
expecting the Lord to fulfill his word and to do what he said he would do. And just to
show you this morning in a very practical way of what that looks like, I'm going to
ask John and Sandra from Burkle and Susan and Dave Tapp to come forward. Don't know
how many of you know Susan's story. About three years ago, she began having serious
health issues, and after consulting her own doctor and a neurologist, she was diagnosed
after rigorous testing as suffering from Parkinson's disease. And since that time, every four months,
she has gone back to the doctor and to the neurologist, and she has been tested over
and over, and each time, it's gotten significantly worse, to the point where she could barely
walk, even with a walker. Dave would have to park the car right by the door for her
to get in here, and the doctor had told her from now on, it's going to get really hard.
And that's where I want Sandra and John to come forward. Sandra, you're going to tell
what happened in your little prayer group. Hold it up. You speak into it.
Okay. Anyway, we were involved with a group called Love and War, and we had five couples,
along with Dave and Sue, in our group, and we were led to pray for Susan and pray for
healing. But we prayed, but nothing happened. And anyway, which was a disappointment for
me because I'd been praying for her for quite a while. And so I continued to pray. Every
morning, I'd pray for Sue, and I felt God telling me that she's going to get better
and it's going to gradually go the other way. And so anyway, I think it was three weeks
ago that Dave went like this to me, and he told me about Sue going to the neurologist,
and there's no more Parkinson's. It felt so good to me because I didn't know if I heard
God's voice or it was just being hopeful. And I couldn't keep the tears, and it wasn't
tears of sadness, but it was just tears of joy that God would use you, you know? It was
great. Okay, let's have Susan tell the rest of her
story. I was diagnosed three years ago by the family
doctor, and then a year later by a neurologist, and every four months it was being tested
for the Parkinson's, as well as I was diagnosed with essential tremor. I still have the essential
tremor, but at least the Parkinson's is gone. It was very difficult. I was to the point
of I had to leave work, and then I was using a cane, and then I was to a walker. Physiotherapist
came into the home, and a social worker came in, and she brought me power of attorney papers
because I might not be around too much longer. And I had an OT come in, and he prescribed
the walker, and then there was no more stairs at home, so we moved down to one level and
rented the upstairs to my daughter, and then we were in a small group, and John and Sandra
had the group pray over me, and as she said, there was nothing happening for a while, and
then I started to notice little things, like I didn't feel as exhausted, or I could smell
stuff a little bit that I couldn't smell before, and I thought, okay, I'm just having a good
day. Let's roll with that, and then I saw my neurologist last month in May, and she
did all the tests again, and then she sat there, and she just looked at me, and she
goes, "It's gone." So, you know... I haven't used my walker in about three weeks, so let's...
I got my wife back.
Pastor John, in a sermon this morning, really spoke to me because, as you know, as elders
of the church, we are called upon to pray for people that have sickness or problems,
and whenever I went there to pray, I sometimes wondered, "Is this really going to do a lot
of good?" In our marriage group, the five couples that were there, we really jelled
together, and I think the Holy Spirit prompted me to ask Dave and Sue if we could pray for
them. We didn't do it right away. A couple of weeks passed, so we stepped out as a group,
and we prayed for Dave and Sue. The result is this. Amazing. And my faith level at that
point was probably here, and now it's up to here when I can see... when I see what God
can do. So, it's not how we feel or what we do, but we have to step out with the prompting
of the Holy Spirit, and from now on, I'm going to really pay a lot of attention to that,
and I urge you to do that too, because God is good, and He can still heal today.
Wow. Then he said it backwards. Wow. We don't lightly share stories like this because we
want it to be real, and the fact that it was confirmed by the same neurologist who made
the diagnosis in the beginning is not insignificant. It really means that the Lord has moved.
Now, the neurologist says it could come back. That's what you would expect a neurologist
to say, and we can pray against that, but it doesn't change the fact that the Lord God
has done an amazing thing in Susan's life, and I'll thank Sandra and John and their group
for stepping out in faith, because it's never just our faith that does it. It's the power
of God, and who knows what God can do in each of our lives as we try to live as obediently
as we can, because Jesus' name is above every other name.
you