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 pos