Be Filled with the Spirit, Part 2

Ephesians 5:18-19

We come again this morning; for our study, to the fifth chapter of Ephesians. It's taking us a little time to get through verses 18 through 21 because it's so loaded with truth and we don't want to bypass any of the wonderful things the Spirit of God has for us in this very key passage. If you don't have your Bible with you there is one near you in the pew, you can look along. And let's look at verses 18 to 21 of Ephesians 5 and you follow with your eyes as I read to you.  

"And be not drunk with wine in which is excess but be filled with the Spirit; Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God."

Now in our last study we learned that being filled with the Spirit as it indicates in verse 28 is living every moment as if you are standing in the presence of Jesus Christ. As we compared Ephesians 5:18 with Colossians 3:16 we noted that letting the word of Christ dwell in you richly is the same as being filled with the Spirit. We saw from the illustration of the life of Peter that Peter, when he was standing next to Jesus Christ, could do the miraculous, say the miraculous and had miraculous courage. The same Peter when filled with the Spirit of God is seen doing the miraculous, heard saying the miraculous and seemed to have miraculous courage. In other words, the parallel is interesting. When he was near Jesus Christ, in His presence, and when he was filled with the Spirit of God he got the same kind of results. And, see, that is exactly what Ephesians 5:18 and Colossians 3:16 is saying to US. To be filled with the Spirit is not some ecstatic experience. It is not to have some supernatural zap. To be filled with the Spirit is simply to live moment by moment in the conscious presence of Jesus Christ.

I remember one of the old evangelists, years ago, saying that an Indian used to come early to church and sit in the front row and held come about 45 minutes before the service would begin. And somebody finally said to him, "Why do you come early and just sit there?" And he said, "Me come early, me sit down, me think Jesus." Well, that old Indian had a good idea. Because that is the heart of the whole of the Spirit filled life; Christ consciousness. Having your thoughts controlled by the consciousness that Jesus Christ is real and that He is there. That He is present. It's a moment by moment by moment by moment experience. It's a commitment for now, not the future. God is never interested in future commitments. You know that don't you? In fact, you're not very interested in them either. If your wife comes to you and says, "Honey, do you love me?" You don't say, "Check with me in a couple of weeks." She's not interested in a couple of weeks. She wants to know now. Well, God is not interested in your future; He's interested in your present. It's the moment, it's the now. It's whether your life is controlled by the Holy Spirit now that is the issue.

And, by the way, did you know you'll only live now; you'll never live in the future? You never will. You keep looking for it but you'll never get there, it's always the future. And you never live in the past, some people try awfully hard especially in our society today, old is good, you know. People want to reach back the past but you'll never make it you'll always be right here and this is the only moment that matters. And what the apostle Paul is saying is ‑ Be being kept continuously filled in this moment, controlled by the Holy Spirit. That's the way to live the Christian life. Not controlled by yourself but by God's Holy Spirit. How? By filling your life with the Word of God so that your thoughts are God's thoughts, your ways are His ways as much is as possible. So that the Christ Himself dominates your thinking and that's how you are controlled by His Spirit.

There'd a wonderful by‑product of this in II Cor. chapter 3 and verse 18. It says there that as you gaze at the glory of the Lord, as you focus on Christ consciousness, you will be changed into His image by the Holy Spirit. In other words, Christ consciousness leads to Christ likeness, you see. That's the work of the Spirit. As you are filled with the Spirit you become like Christ. So, we say, then, that moment by moment absolute commitment to being filled with the Spirit leads to eventual maturity. You become like Christ as you live in the Spirit, as you walk in the Spirit, as you are filled with the Spirit.

The Christian life is really a movement to be like Christ. And the only time you are moving that direction is when you are filled with the Spirit. When you are working on the function of the flesh you flatten out and there is no progress. The only progress in your life is during those times when you are filled with the Spirit of God, that's the upward movement. And most Christians, you know, they just go like this ‑‑‑, they flatten out and go a little bit. God wants us to move toward Christ's likeness. So, as we are filled with the Spirit, gazing on the glory of Christ, we become like Jesus Christ. That's the key to the Christian life. That's where you get the victory, that's where you know the joy. That's where the exhilaration comes and the fruitfulness and the usefulness to God.

Now, we saw there were three things in this text that we wanted to note. First there was the contrast in verse 18. You remember that?  The apostle Paul says, "Be not drunk with wine in which is excess," or asotia, dissipation, a hopeless, incurable sickness. "But be filled with the Spirit." And that's the contrast. In other words, we are not like the pagans who get drunk and they induce some sort of false notion that they are communing with the gods through drunkenness, our communion with God is through the filling of the Spirit. We are not like the pagans who think that they reach another level of life or they get a greater strength, or greater power, or a greater whatever, by drunkenness, we gain all of our greatness through the power of the filling of the Spirit of God. So, that's the contrast. We aren't like them anymore. Our control, our controlling influence, our resource, our power, our resource to life us to the consciousness of the presence of God is the filling of the Spirit not drunkenness.

Following the contrast, we saw the command, didn't we? And the command is at the end of verse 18, "Be being kept continuously filled with the Spirit." It's a way of life. It is not just one zap you get and it's good for the whole life, you know. It's not like Right Guard; one shot and I'm good for the whole day. It's not that at all. The Holy Spirit doesn't function that way. It's a moment by moment by moment yielding of total control to the Spirit. In fact, it may be best illustrated by the metaphor of walking, it is walking and walking is one step at a time. It is an even kind of pace as we yield one step at a time to the Spirit of God. It's as simple as every decision in life. Life is a matter of decisions. The alarm goes off in the morning, you have your first decision ‑ Do I get up r stay in bed? Do I call in sick or do I tell the truth? What am I going to do? You go to the closet, you have your second decision _ do I wear the blue shirt or the brown shirt? And that's the way it goes. All through life you go to the kitchen you have another decision ‑ are you going to eat Fruit Loops or Captain Crunch? Then you go ‑ whatever, it's a process of decisions. It's just one after the other. And the Spirit controlled life is the one that yields ever step to the Spirit of God. It's a matter of decision making, one thing at a time. And when you surrender to the Spirit of God, you're just constantly following His track. The only way that will happen is when you are controlled by the Word of God because you are putting it in every day. You can skip your Captain Crunch if you made sure you got some of the Word. Then you would have the right information and data going in for the Spirit of God to control your thinking.

Now, wa lking then is a good way to look at it. Because you just take one step at a time. Let's look at Galatians, one book back, in the fifth chapter and see that this,   in fact, is the very illustration the apostle Paul uses in another context. People say ‑ Well, you know, how can we build a whole theology on Ephesians 5:18? How did we ever get this whole thing based on that one verse? It isn't based on that one, verse, that is only one way to look at it. This same truth of a Spirit controlled life is all over the New Testament. It's everyplace in the New Testament. You run into it all the way through the book of Acts, you run into it in Colossians, you run into it in Ephesians, you run into it here in the book of Galatians, you run into it in the eighth chapter of Romans. It's in the gospel of John as Christ talks about the coming of the Spirit. It's all over the place. Well, I want you to notice Galatians chapter 5 and verse 16 because this is where he uses the term 'walk' to speak of this ministry of the Spirit.

He says, "Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh." Now here is the Spirit controlled life. It's a walking thing. It's one step at a time. It's just taking one step at a time in the Spirit, that is under the control of the Spirit. Keep on ‑ literally in the Greek ‑Keep on walking in the Spirit. Don't deviate from that. And if you do that, you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. In other words, the way to override your sinfulness and the way to override your evil desires and the way to override the temptations of Satan is simply to walk in the Spirit. Just continue walking in the Spirit. You see, the positive thing takes care of the negative problem. You know, people say ‑ Oh, the devil is after me and the demons are after me, I'd better go get somebody to get the demons out of me. I don't know how to fight the demons; I've got to get somebody who is an expert on that. Just walk in the Spirit and you're not going to have a problem, you see. It's the positive that solves the negative. So, if you walk in the Spirit you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

Now you ought to know that there is a war going on in you. Look at verse 17; "The flesh lusts against the Spirit." Now you say ‑ what is the flesh? The best way to explain the flesh is the flesh is the beachhead of sin. The flesh is where Satan lands with his temptation. It is that part of our humanness that is exposed to the capability of sin. Even though I am a redeemed creature, and in Christ all things have become new, and it's a new I that lives in Christ and Christ lives in me. Even though I am a new creation, and even though I have a new nature, there is still about me because I am human and earthy there is the possibility of sinfulness and it is that beachhead that Satan lands on when he wants to tempt me. it is that element of man that is opposed to goodness. It is that element of man that wants to do evil. It is that thing in the apostle Paul in Romans 7, that even when he wanted to do good, kept choking him off so that he didn't do what he wanted to do and wound up doing what he didn't want to do. And we all have that. And the way to deal with that is not to stand around fighting it but to just walk in the Spirit. If you walk, controlled by the Spirit of God every moment of every day, Christ conscious because you are feeding in the word of God, Christ conscious because you are thinking of Him, and gazing at Him, and conscious of Him, then you are not going to have a problem with the flesh. You see, your mind cannot ... two things cannot occupy your mind at the same time. You cannot be concentrating on Jesus Christ and concentrating on temptation and the lust of the flesh at the same time. You have to dispel one or the other for one or the other to happen. So, he says ‑ Look, there is a war and the Holy Spirit and your flesh are at each other. They are contrary the one to the other.

Now if you give into the flesh what is going to happen? If you just go the way of easy resistance, you don't study the Scripture, you don't spend time in prayer, you don't walk in the Spirit, you don't yield control of your life, you do your own thing, what is going to result is in verse 19; "The works of the flesh." And the works of the flesh are these; "Fornication, (some texts included adultery also, fornication would encompass that, sexual sin) uncleanness, (which is general impurity of life) lasciviousness, (which is the Bible ‑ old Bible word wontedness, in other words, it's a lewd desire that never gets satisfied, that's all kind of a sexual perversion) then you have idolatry, sorcery ( which would have to do with pagan religions, sometimes that word is related to drugs as well) he adds to that hatred, strife, jealousy, wrath, faction, seditions (revolutions really) heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, carousings, etc." These are the things produced by the flesh. And, by the way, he says ‑ These are things that should characterize those who shall not inherit the Kingdom of God. In other words, that's the way the non‑Christian lives. That's the furthest thing from the way we should live. But if you give into the flesh, if you don't walk in the Spirit, just don't let the Spirit control your life, don't step at a time in His power, that's the stuff that is going to happen in your life. And, by the way, when it happens you're going to fall into God's chastening. Verse 18 says; "If you be led by the Spirit, you are not under the law." The opposite of that is this, if you are not walking in the Spirit you will fall under God's law. What does that mean? If you do evil things, God's law will take its retribution. Right? It has to.

So, if you walk in the Spirit you will escape the chastening of God. But if you do the things of the flesh you fall under the consequence of a violation of God's law. So take your choice. You've got ... the Holy Spirit desiring and the flesh lusting against the Spirit and what happens? You follow the flesh, immediately you're going to see that kind of stuff produced in your life, you're going to come under God's law, and there are consequences. But, on the other hand, verse 22, let's say you walk in the Spirit, let's say you yield your life to the control of the Spirit, everyday, you taken in the Word of God, everyday you spend time in prayer with the Lord, everyday, you concentrate on the presence of Jesus Christ, everyday, when one decision comes and the next decision, from morning to night, you yield it to the control of the Spirit of God, what is going to happen as you walk in the Spirit? The fruit of the Spirit will be produced and this will characterize your life. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and self‑control, and against those things there is no" what? "Law" You do that and you'll never fall under the consequences or condemnation of a broken law, you see. There is no penalty for that kind of living. You want to live a happy life, you want to live a meaningful life, you want to live a joyous, peaceful life, then there it is ‑ walk in the Spirit. It's that simple. Verse 25 sums it up; "If we already live in the Spirit (positionally) then let's walk in the Spirit (practically)." Right? What is the sense of living in the Spirit and walking in the flesh? It doesn't make sense at all. If you wanted Christ to begin with, don't you want Him now? If you have begun in the Spirit, are you now going to be made perfect in the flesh? I mean, if you live in the Spirit, then walk in the Spirit; fulfill the ultimate capacity and potential of your destiny. And so it's really the same thing, beloved, that Paul says in Ephesians, he's just saying live in the Spirit, walk in the Spirit, be filled with the Spirit, be controlled by the Spirit, let the Word of Christ dwell within you. The whole point is God wants us to be controlled by Him, not by us. Do you get that?

All right, let's go to the third point, and that's what we're going to talk about this time and next time, the consequences; the contrast, the command and the consequences. What are the consequences? If you are filled with the Spirit what happens in your life? Well, really, the consequences stretch clear to the end of the book of Ephesians. All the rest of what happens in this book is consequence. If you're filled with the Spirit all kinds of things are going to happen. But there are three main ones I want you to notice this morning, and we'll finish these up next time. And then we'll delineate them specifically later on in January after the Christmas time. Three things happen when you are filled with the Spirit in general. One, singing, verse 19, singing; two, saying thanks, verse 20; three, submitting, verse 21. Three things; singing, saying thanks, submitting. Those are the three things. Those are the general categories. By the way, the third one, submitting, becomes then the basis for everything in chapter five verse 22 through chapter 6 verse 9. That entire section is an exposition of verse 21. That entire section explains verse 21. Then, 6:10 and following, the armor of the Christian, shows what happens to somebody who lives walking in the Spirit, Satan moves in to try and stop him. And that's how you deal with Satan there.

So, the whole rest of the thing, really, deals with this response to being filled with the Spirit. This is the locus crucious, this is the here‑pundt, this is the highpoint, this is the key, this is the key, this is the mountain peak of the book of Ephesians, this is where it all comes together. You are walking in the Spirit, controlled by the Spirit, this is what happens.

Now, let's take the three of those things. First of all is singing. That is personal, that is toward myself. The result, first of all, of a Spirit‑filled life is a certain thing that occurs in me, that produces song. Okay? So, the first thing is very personal. That's very beautiful the way Paul does that, the way the Holy, Spirit inspired him to do that, that to live walking in the Spirit, to be filled with the Spirit, first of all, has a result in my life. It produces something in me apart from anybody else. Secondly, saying thanks. That has to do with God. Thirdly, submitting. That has to do with everybody around me. So, that every possible relationship is made right by the filling of the Spirit. I am right with me, I am right with God and I am right with you. See. Everything comes together. And there's no other way to live, right? To be right inside, to be right with God, and to be right with everybody else is the way to live. And when I am right with me I sing. And when I am right with God I pour out thanks. And I am right with you, I submit. Beautiful, the way God's Spirit just pulled those three together. All relationships possible are covered in that area. Those three simple truths. But it always, it always kind of amazes me that the first result is this very personal thing. How wonderful it is of God, again, to be considering how we respond. It's just like Jesus with the Beatitudes starting out by saying ‑ Blessed, happy, blessed, happy, blessed, happy is the man, happy is the man, happy is the man. You see, that's always God's first consideration for us as He approaches us ‑is this is for you. Ah, but there is an element of that which is for Him, and that which touch s everybody else and they all go together.

But let's look at the first one, that's ... we're not even going to get through that this morning, so don't worry. Singing; now this is a very personal issue. And it fascinates me, just literally fascinates me to take a tremendous theological truth like this, Be filled with the Spirit," and you say ‑ Oh, boy, if we were filled with the Spirit, what would happen? You say ‑ Oh, ahm, we could... say that mountain be removed and it would be removed. Boy, we could do wonderful things. Could preach the word and souls would be saved and mighty things ... and you know what it says? Be filled with the Spirit and you could sing. You say, well, that seems a little, I don't know, something missing there. That's ... you say, I'm a monotone, you know? I mean is that for me? It doesn't say you have to sing on tune, I want you to know that, great comfort in that. It doesn't even say anybody has to listen to YOU. YOU See. But the first product of the Spirit‑filled life is something that happens in my life that is released in a song. Do you see? Singing is the expression of the emotion of the soul. And next week I'm going to show you some things that are absolutely fantastic. Do you know you could even whistle in the Spirit? Oh, this is terrific. That's for next week. That's right. The root Greek word of the word speaking to yourselves is to chirp like a bird, but we'll get into that next time. Some of you do better to chirp then to sing, frankly. But, anyway, this is a tremendous statement of the fact that when a believer walks in the Spirit there is an inside joy that is released in the music that comes from the soul. God has put music in the soul of man and releases it in its most beautiful form by the filling of the Holy Spirit. Boy, I'll tell you, when somebody is filled with the Holy Spirit and they sing, it doesn't even matter, it doesn't even matter if they sing very good, very well, it doesn't matter... and it doesn't necessarily mean they've got to be on pitch either. Last Sunday morning we had a young man in the service who came up and introduced himself, and I never met him, he said, "My name is Randy Menninhall." And I said, "Oh, yeah, I know your name, Randy, I've written to you many times." And he said, "Yeah." He just got out of Soledad in Vacaville; he's been in prison for nearly three years, or two‑plus years. And when he first got into prison somebody gave him a tape of ours and he wrote for some more tapes, and got a whole lot of tapes and he came to Christ and dedicated his life to Christ and he's been a Bible teacher in the prison. It's incredible and he says that our tapes are all over those prisons and men sit in their cells each day and listen to the tapes and the Lord is doing wonderful work but ... but he said, "I want you to hear my testimony." He said, "You've written, and you sent all the tapes and I want to give you a tape that I made of my testimony." And so I said, "Great, Randy, I'd love to have it." And I took it, and I, I, stuck it in my car, little tape deck, and was driving somewhere and I listened to it and he started out by saying ‑ I want to sing first, he said. He's giving his testimony, his farewell testimony to all the prisoners as he was getting out two weeks ago. And he said, I want to sing, first, I just feel that I have to sing in my heart. And so he started to sing. And I want to tell you, he covered five different keys in the first measure, trying to find where the thing begins. You know, and try to find the melody. And he sang that song. There was no piano, no guitar, nothing. He was in ... he must have been in a solid cement building with a solid concrete floor because it just banged around and echoed and he just sang and he sang and he sang and then he got all done and he said, "I want to sing another song." And he sang...he must have sung for ten or fifteen minutes. And, you know, by the time he was done, I was laughing in my heart, I was so full of joy and I had tears in my eyes. And, you know, it didn't matter that there wasn't an orchestra, and it didn't matter that there wasn't a great big piano or an organ, it didn't matter because the man was singing out of the fullness of the Spirit of God. It didn't even matter that he wasn't on pitch. He was singing filled with the presence of Christ and it was obvious to everybody and to me. On the other hand, I've heard stuff with all the talent and all the instruments and all of the backgrounds and all of the amplification and all of the everything that didn't sound to me like it was really generated by the Spirit of God. That is what Paul is talking about. There was something in Randy's heart, see. Something in his heart because of what God was doing in his life. And now he': given his life to go back into those prisons and take Jesus Chris to the men. See. There's something inside of him that gave him a song. It was new song. The song that only Christ can give. Contrast that with the pagan wild music of the orgies that would have gone on in the city of Ephesus connected with evil demonic religion, what a difference would be the sweet song of the Holy Spirit born in the hearts of those under His control. And that's the difference, you see. Paul is saying, When we come together, in our congregations, we sing to ourselves and it's different than the songs we use to hear.

Beloved, if there is anything that ought to be new in the Christian life it ought to be the music. If ... listen to this, if music really reflects the language of the soul, then ours ought to be different than that of the world's Shouldn't it? Because we're different. Colossians 2:16 says the same thing. It says when you are filled with the Word of Christ, this is what is going to happen, you're going to speak to each other in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, here it is again, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. It always starts from the heart and it always goes to the Lord, you see?

In James chapter 5, such a beautiful statement there, it says, verse 13; "Is any among you afflicted, let him pray. Is any merry, let him sing. Songs are always the expression of the joy of the Holy Spirit. And in Romans it tells us that the Kingdom of God is righteousness and joy and peace in the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit, produces that peace and that righteousness and that joy, it breaks forth in a song. That's a great thing. The Spirit of God has given us that release. Redemption gives us a new song. You see a new one.