Filled with the Spirit

To be filled with the Spirit, we saw last week, is to allow our lives to be controlled
by the Holy Spirit.
And just as a drunk person is controlled by alcohol, so a Spirit-filled person is to be
controlled by the Holy Spirit.
And just as being drunk with wine leads to debauchery or loose living, so being filled
with the Holy Spirit, we saw last week, according to the passage before us here in Ephesians,
leads to two things.
Number one, we are given a new desire and ability to worship God.
Verses 19 and 20 speak to one another with songs, 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.
The second thing that happens, according to Ephesians chapter 5, is that we are given a
new desire and a new ability to live God's way relationally.
Verse 21, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
And then of course follows very practical teaching on marriage, family, life, and labor
relations to be filled with the Spirit has us growing in our relationship with the Lord
vertically, and vertically with the Lord and horizontally with each other.
That brings me this morning then to still a third aspect of what happens when we are
filled with the Spirit, and that is that we are empowered, we are empowered to bear witness
to Jesus.
Acts 1 verse 8, a verse you've often heard us quote around here, "You will receive power
when this Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all
Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth."
Some of you have been in this church long enough to remember the dunamis conferences
that we used to have 10 to 15 years ago with Dr. Brad Long, and you may recall that he
was fond of distinguishing between the Spirit within and the Spirit upon.
The Spirit within is the Holy Spirit given to live within our hearts to conform us to
the image of Christ, to teach us to love God, to teach us to love our neighbor.
But the Spirit upon is given to empower us to do the work of God and to join with Jesus
in the great commission, the process of making disciples of all nations.
And so in the time that we have this morning as we prepare for the celebration of communion,
I want to share with you four, maybe five, depending on how we fare for time, ways in
which this being filled with the Spirit upon will manifest itself in your life and in my
life as we try to engage the world in the ministry of Jesus.
So what happens then when we are filled with the Spirit in the upon way of which the Scriptures
speak?
Well, a number of things.
The first, I believe, is that we experience a heightened sense of the spiritual world.
We experience a heightened sense of the spiritual world.
We live in a world, as you know, that is divided both into the material or the physical world
that we experience with our physical senses of sight and touch and hearing and all of
those.
But we also have a spiritual world that we cannot normally experience very much with
our natural senses but is every bit as real as the physical world in which we live.
Normally there is a veil that divides the natural world from the spiritual world.
And when we're joined to Jesus, that veil breaks through in the Holy Spirit and we begin
to experience the reality of life in Christ.
Jesus puts it this way in John 14, 21, "He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and
I too will love him."
And then these words, "Show myself to him."
The promise of the new covenant is that by the Holy Spirit, Jesus will show himself to
us.
And when one of his disciples said, "Lord, we don't understand that.
How are you going to show yourself to us but not to the world?"
Then Jesus went on to respond with this, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching.
My Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him."
And that, of course, is the genius of the new covenant.
That's what happened on the day of Pentecost when heaven opened and God came in a very
real way to dwell among his people.
And already in the Old Testament, we have glimmerings of this where God pulls back the
veil and he reveals the invisible spiritual world to his people.
Two very quick examples.
One is the example of Jacob at Bethel.
Jacob, you may remember, was running for his life because he had cheated his brother Esau
out of the inheritance.
Esau was furious and so his parents sent him off to go back to Pandanaram where the relatives
lived where Rebekah had come from originally.
And then on that journey, he stops for the night, puts his head on a rock, and then he
has this marvelous dream of a ladder reaching into heaven and God standing on top of that
ladder making promises to him.
You'll remember the story.
His comment after that is really very interesting because this is what scripture says.
When Jacob woke from his sleep, he thought, "Surely the Lord is in this place."
And I was not aware of it.
He was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place.
This is none other than the house of God.
This is the gate of heaven."
Jacob has a transcendent moment and he calls the name of the place Bethel because Bethel
means the house of God.
Now we don't have time to talk about it this morning, but if you will read the first chapter
of John's Gospel, you will see Jesus make reference to this story in a very oblique
way.
It's the story of Nathaniel and how Jesus saw him under the fig tree before he even
knew that Jesus was there.
Nathaniel's response is to say, "You are the Son of God," and Jesus says, "Greater things
than these you will see."
Remember that story?
What happens next?
Jesus says to him, "You will see angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man."
Remember that?
And what Jesus is saying in that story, just for the record, is that he is the new Bethel.
He is the new house of God, God coming to dwell among his people.
One other quick example from the Old Testament where the heavens are open, and that's the
story of the prophet Elisha.
The king of Aram has been attacking the king of Israel, and the prophet Elisha has been
giving information to the king of Israel where the king of Aram is going to be, and the king
of Aram is extremely upset, finds out that there isn't a spy in his midst.
But the prophet Elisha is telling the king what the king of Aram is going to do, and
so the king of Aram decides he needs to take out the prophet Elisha, and so he gets all
his armies together, and Elisha and his servant are in the city of Dolphin, and in the morning
they wake up, and the servant looks out, and there he sees the whole city surrounded by
the king of Aram's troop.
Perhaps you remember the story.
The young man freaks out.
What in the world are we going to do?
And Elisha makes the observation that the Lord God is with him, and then we read this
in 2 Kings chapter 6 verse 17, and Elisha prayed, "O Lord, open his eyes so that he
may see."
And the Lord opened the servant's eyes, and he looked, and he saw the hills full of horses
and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
See, the veil gets pulled back, and heaven comes down as the old gospel song used to
say, "And glory filled my soul."
When the Spirit comes upon you, there is an increasing awareness of the spiritual dimension
of life, and for most of us it probably takes the form of those moments in prayer where
you feel that God's presence is near, or those transcendent moments when you see a
beautiful sunset or you look into the face of a newborn baby and you say to yourself,
"There's got to be a God."
Or those moments when you gather in corporate worship and people are united in spirit, and
the Spirit of God hovers or broods over the assembly and you just know that you know that
you know you're standing in the presence of God.
You want to take your shoes off because the place where you're standing is holy ground.
Not all of us perhaps experience that, but let me ask how many of you can identify with
at least a moment in your life, a moment in your life where you just knew that God was
real in ways that normally you don't experience?
Let me see your hands.
Ah, wonderful.
That's what we're talking about, the Spirit of God hovering over the water.
Very important because when the Spirit hovers, stuff happens.
He broods and He incubates new life.
And so the next thing that happens as the Spirit of God comes upon us afresh is that
our spiritual gifts are activated.
Now spiritual gifts, as you know, are anointings given by Jesus to His people to help us accomplish
the purposes of God.
It's what Jesus meant when He said, "Wait in Jerusalem for the Spirit to come upon you
and you will be My witnesses."
Spiritual gifts vary in number and different people count them in different ways, but they
include things like the gift of mercy and the gift of leadership and the gift of faith
and the gift of prophecy.
On your bulletin cover this morning is a bit of a diagram that lists a number of spiritual
gifts kind of heavily on administration and evangelism and apostleship, but anointings
of Jesus to help us do the work of God and apportioned by the exalted Lord Jesus according
to His sovereign pleasure.
They may or may not match our natural giftings or our natural inclinations, but it's what
God has created and redeemed us for so that we can do the work of the kingdom.
Now listen to me here, most of the time these gifts lie pretty much latent in our lives.
You don't generally go around saying to yourself, "Well, you know, I have the gift of faith
and I can move mountains anytime I want to, or I have the gift of evangelism and I can
preach the gospel to the whole world and everybody's going to listen."
Not quite that simple, but every so often when a situation arises where the Lord wants
to use you for His glory in somebody's life and you experience a fresh infilling of the
Holy Spirit, that gift, whether that's a gift of prayer or a gift of evangelism, a gift
of leadership, or a gift of preaching, the Spirit of the Lord will fill you up and you
will discover a new courage and a new boldness to step out in faith and be used of God to
accomplish His purposes.
Give you an example, Acts chapter 4, Peter and John have just been instrumental in healing
the cripple at the beautiful gate to the temple, draws a big crowd, they're preaching Jesus
to their heart's content.
The religious leaders aren't very happy about that.
Peter and John get dragged before the religious leaders and the question they get asked there
then is this question, "By what power or by what name did you do this?"
And then notice what the text goes on to tell us in verse 8 and following, "Then Peter,"
quote the phrase, "filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, 'Rulers and elders of the people,
if we're being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and
are asked how he was healed, then know this, you and all the people of Israel, it is by
the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom you crucified but whom God raised from the
dead that this man stands before you healed.
He is the stone you builders rejected," that's a quote from Psalm 118, "which has become
the capstone," or the head of the corner, "salvation is found in no one else for there
is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved."
Now, what's really interesting is the next verse and the reaction of the religious leaders.
Listen to this, "When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were
unschooled ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been
with Jesus," two things there, courage.
It takes courage for Peter in the presence of powerful leadership that can destroy your
life to stand there and boldly proclaim this, "Jesus, you killed God raised from the dead."
That's not how you make friends and influence people, courage and powerful words coming
from an ordinary, unschooled individual.
That's what happens when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you're filled with power.
You know what blessed me so much last week when Susan and Dave Tapp were up here and
John and Sandra and shared that story of healing.
I mean the healing itself is an amazing, glorious and wonderful thing, but you know what really
struck me, these are ordinary, regular people, not to put them down in any fashion, but no
huge heroes of the faith.
John shared his own struggles in terms of area.
God can use Balaam's donkey to speak a prophetic word.
And so when the Holy Spirit hovers over a community or hovers over your life, something
is going to happen and it begins by stirring up your spiritual gifts.
And our challenge then is to learn to step out into that with courage and boldness to
watch what God will do.
And that's the third thing that we can expect to happen when we are filled with the Spirit
upon us.
God moves through us with authority and power.
He moves through us with authority and power.
See, spiritual gifts are the power tools of the kingdom.
They are intended to push back the darkness and make room for King Jesus.
And a fantastic example of that again from the book of Acts is the story of Paul and
Barnabas on their first missionary journey on the island of Cyprus.
Barnabas was from Cyprus and so that's where they naturally start their missionary journey.
Paul is preaching the gospel to the proconsul, a man by the name of Sergius Paulus, and he
is speaking with authority and he is speaking with power and Sergius Paulus is on the verge
of becoming a Christian, and you may remember the rest of the story.
So often the seat of political power is supported by a spiritual power, in this case a Jewish
false prophet by the name of Bar-Jesus or Elimus, and Elimus runs interference to keep
Sergius Paulus from submitting to and receiving the gospel, and here's how the story goes.
Notice again how it's worded.
Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit.
Let me pause there and say the phrase "filled with the Holy Spirit" is part of Luke's specialty.
It doesn't really occur anywhere else in the New Testament that I know of except in the
writings of Luke, who sometimes has been called a theologian of the Holy Spirit.
So Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elimus and said, "You are a child
of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right.
You were full of all kinds of deceit and trickery.
Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord?
Now the hand of the Lord is against you, you're going to be blind, and for a time you will
be unable to see the light of the sun."
Immediately, mist and darkness came over him, and he groped about seeking someone to lead
him by the hand.
When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was amazed at the teaching
about the Lord.
Spirit hovers, the Spirit births spiritual gifts.
You step out into that spiritual gift with authority and power, and guess what happens?
Jesus said, "Greater works than these you will do."
And he empowers his people to push back the darkness for God's kingdom to come.
That's why spiritual gifts are important.
I've often thought, you know, you can plow a field behind your house with an old-fashioned
shovel and hoe and eventually you may even get there.
But how much quicker to hook up a tractor and a plow and a cultivator and use the power
tools of the kingdom?
God has equipped us in Christ with power tools of the kingdom, and if we can be but sensitive
to what the Holy Spirit is directing us and we gain some courage and boldness to step
out into that, then we will often be surprised at what God will do.
Did John and Sandra and their team when they prayed over Susan and her Parkinson's expect
the kind of healing that she testifies and her neurologist testifies to her having experienced?
Probably not.
Parkinson's doesn't go away, generally speaking, certainly not easily, but you see, if you're
in tune with the Spirit and you're stepping out in faith, it is amazing what God can and
will do if we will but lay hold of Him by grace.
How many more miracles would we see in this church, in our lives, in our relationships
if we could grab hold by faith of the Spirit of God hovering, let Him quicken our spiritual
gifts and have the grace and the faith to step out into it and see His kingdom come?
That's how it works and that's how the world gets transformed.
One more thing just very quickly then that I think we can anticipate happening as we're
filled by the Holy Spirit and we move out in His power to do His will and that is this,
we experience joy unspeakable.
I don't know if you remember this but in training His disciples to take over His work of ministry
after His ascension into heaven, the Lord Jesus not only sent out the twelve disciples
to be His apostles, but He also sent out seventy-two.
You'll find that in Luke's gospel in particular and He sends them out to preach and to teach
and to cast out demons and to heal the sick.
Who remembers their reaction when they came back?
Luke chapter 11 verse 17, the seventy-two returned with joy and said, "Lord, even the
demons are subject to us in Your name."
They returned with joy.
Now Jesus made sure to mention to them to not rejoice in the fact that the demons were
subject to them, but rather that their names were written in heaven, but the fact remains
they were filled with joy.
And terrifying as it is to be in the presence of God, and terrifying as it is sometimes
to step out into what it is that God has for us to do, there is nothing in the world for
God's people that compares to knowing that you've heard from God, knowing that you have
been able to step out in obedience to His will, trusting Him, and then to have been
surprised by joy because of the way that He has used you in helping somebody else.
And that may be as simple a thing as you follow the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and you
talk to somebody, and they affirm that this was exactly what they needed when they needed
it.
It may be as simple a thing as you're taking a meal over to somebody's house, and this
is exactly what meets a deep, deep spot in their heart because they know their heaven
had been forgotten, there is joy in obedience to God.
And for most of us, this comes by trial and error.
I'm willing to bet that for most everybody here, there have been lots of instances where
we have felt, what we have experienced, what very much felt like the prompting of the Holy
Spirit.
Isn't that true?
And isn't it safe to say that nine times out of ten, we talk ourselves out of following
the prompting of the Holy Spirit because we don't want to look foolish, we don't want
to make a mistake, and we don't want to take any risks.
True?
Fortunately, God is extremely gracious, and what happens in instance after instance when
He is trying to teach us how to be the body of Christ through which He can express Himself
with power and with authority, is afterwards you'll find out what you felt you needed to
do or what you felt you needed to say was exactly what was needed, and that encourages
you for the next time to step into it, and eventually we learn an increased level of
obedience.
Wouldn't it be neat if in a church like this, all of us who are members of the body of Christ
would be like a body well-tuned to the head, well-tuned to the head, experiencing the in-feeling
of the Holy Spirit to carry out the work of God, and instead of talking ourselves out
of it, we yield to it, we learn from Him, and we learn from each other, and we could
see Jesus moving through His people to accomplish His purposes in our generation.
I believe with all my heart that God calls this church to be a prevailing regional church
that can draw people from far and wide and introduce them to Jesus and help them to experience
the powerful redemption that only Jesus can bring.
I also believe that He pours out His Holy Spirit upon all flesh, and that He not only
gives us a greater passion to love Him, not only gives us a greater passion to love each
other, but also a greater passion to reach out to the world in the power and in the authority
of the Holy Spirit, and He wants to raise us up to accomplish that in our simplicity
and in our brokenness.
We've already had to pay a high price for that.
Price isn't going to get any less, but when we embrace our weakness and we embrace our
limitations and we cry out to God for His mercy and His power, God says, "I'll fill
you with my Spirit, and you'll not only love me more, you'll not only have greater love
for your neighbor, but you'll also have an increased level of power to be about the business
of the kingdom."
And so as we turn to communion this morning and as we take in His life by faith and as
we lay hold of His promises by faith, let's rededicate ourselves, if we can, to being
the hands and the feet of Jesus.
Let's quit making excuses for the fact that we're weak and powerless and we're ordinary,
uneducated men and women, doesn't really matter much in the kingdom.
Let's just invite Him to make us sensitive to when the atmosphere is pregnant with the
Holy Spirit, to be sensitive to the stirrings of our spiritual gifts, to learn to step out
into those gifts as He leads us with wisdom and grace and power.
And then let's watch Him move, do the unexpected, do the unexpected, and fill our hearts with
incredible joy, because we know that God is alive and He's in the midst of His people,
and He has promised to be with us always, even to the end of the age.
What do you think?
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