Be Filled with the Spirit, Part 3
Ephesians 5:19
We want to continue in our wonderful and exciting study of Ephesians chapter 5 verses 18 to 21. We've been in this passage because we've gone a little bit off on a few tangents and divergencies for about six weeks but we're having a great time and we're going to be here for awhile to come. I really feel this is a tremendous portion, it holds so many great and important truths for us that we've got to take our time in really comprehending it. Ephesians chapter 5 verses 18 to 21, I'm going to read it and you follow along as I read.
"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."
Let's pray together as we begin.
Father, we ask this morning, Lord, that You would somehow quiet our hearts from the things about us, that You would help us to be able to come apart from all of the vicissitudes and struggles and parts of out lives that tend to fill up our thinking. Lord, as it were by a divine act, clear our minds so that we can draw into Your presence without any preconceptions, without any predispositions, with a pure mind and a pure heart to receive at Your hand what it is that You have for us. And 0 Lord, I pray that You would guide the one who speaks that he might only be a vessel that Christ might be the teacher and the Spirit of God might be the one who communicates. That we might hear from You, that we might go from this place knowing that we have met with You and we'll praise You in Christ's name. Amen
In Jesus' final night with His disciples recorded for us in John 13, 14, 15 and 16, He promised to them many things. Many wonderful, incomparable, somewhat incredible things. But the key to all of them was the same one thing and it was the coming of the Holy Spirit. Every promise Jesus ever gave in that last night before His betrayal and crucifixion, every promise Jesus ever gave that night found its fulfillment, in some sense, in the coming of the Holy Spirit. Now we all know that God is one God, "Hear 0 Israel the Lord ou God is one Lord," says the Shema of the Old Testament. But we also are well aware that that one Lord, that one God is in three distinct persons. And that is the mystery of the triune God. That God is one and yet God is individually God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. And God often makes promises through Christ which are confirmed to us by the Holy Spirit. It is really God in His third person making good His original promises. And so the Spirit f God is none other than God Himself in the third person. And it is the coming of the Holy Spirit into the life of the Christian that makes real all the promises of Jesus Christ. Look with me for a moment at he 14th chapter of John, and this will help us to get a setting for our thoughts.
In John chapter 14, particularly in this 14th chapter maybe more so than in the 13th, the 15th or even the 16th, our Lord promises them a great group of important things. Jesus is about to leave His disciples and He does not want to sort of leave them fearful, several times He says, "Stop letting your heart be troubled," because they were very fearful about His leaving, and so to compensate for the vacuum and he absence they were going to feel, He grants to them these amazing promises. All of which become fulfilled in the Holy Spirit's coming in some way or another. Look at verse 16, for example, an there you have the heart of the matter. "The Spirit of Truth," e says, "whom the world cannot receive because it seeth Him n t neither knoweth Him, but ye know Him for He dwelleth with you an shall be in you."
Now there is one of the great dispensational statements of the Bible, there is one of the great statements bout God's design for the New Testament era. The Holy Spirit has been with you, shall be in you. This is the promise that in the new covenant age, in the new era, after the day of Pentecost, the Spirit of God would not be just with His people that is along side them but He would be in them. That then becomes the thing which makes possible all the other promises. If the Spirit of God does not take up residence than all of the things that Jesus is promising cannot come to their full fruition. To show you what I mean look at the first six verses of the 14th chapter. And here Jesus is essentially promising them heaven. He has promised... there is a promise here in verse 2, that in My Father's house are many rooms, if i were not so I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for y u and if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you unto Myself that where I am there ye may be also. Now here is a great promise. Jesus said, I'm going to go away, I'm going to make ready a place for you, I'm going to come back, and I'm going to take you to be with Me in that place.
Now that's a wonderful promise. But if you are like I am you like promises that have guarantees. Right? If somebody makes a promise you say it's fine, I appreciate your promise, have you got any way that you can provide some collateral for that, can you verify that? And God knows that He needs to verify His promise so in II Cor. chapter 5 it tells us, you don't need to look it up, it also tells us in Ephesians 1, He says He has given unto us the arrabon of the Spirit, it's called the earnest of the Spirit in the Old English. The word arrabon means guarantee, first installment, down payment or engagement ring. In other words, Christ is saying here, I am going to take you to heaven to be with Me to inherit My Kingdom. As the first installment or as the down payment the guarantee or the security, the engagement ring to prove I am serious about the marriage, I'm going to give you the Holy Spirit. So you see, the Holy Spirit, then, becomes the guarantor of this promise of a heavenly inheritance if there was no Holy Spirit in us we would not have the security to know that Christ would fulfill His promise. It is the Holy Spirit in us that cries from within us, Abba Father, has the consciousness of understanding that we do truly belong to God and someday we'll inherit. Later on in this chapter, look at verse 12. And here our Lord makes another magnanimous and amazing promise. He says, "Verily, verily I say unto you, he that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than thee shall he do because I go unto My Father."
Now Jesus here is saying ‑ You will do greater works, not greater in kind because you couldn't do any greater in kind, but greater in extent, greater in breadth than even He did. He was confined to a very localized area. He is saying because I go to the Father, you'll do greater things. Well, what? ... How could that be possible? And especially in His absence. The answer is in Acts 8 where our Lord says, "You shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you." "And you shall be witnesses unto Me," moi marturas, My martyrs, watch, "In Jerusalem, Judea and the uttermost part of the earth." There's the fulfillment. Jesus did it in Jerusalem, Jesus did it in Judea but you will do it in the uttermost part of the earth. Places where Jesus never went and you will be able to do it because of the Holy Spirit. So the very fulfillment here is dependent on the Spirit of God in us else we cannot be witnesses to the uttermost part of the earth. We will not have the security and the guaranty of our inheritance in His Kingdom unless we have the security and the guaranty of the presence of the Spirit of God.
Then Thirdly He says in verses 13 and 14, I want to give you another promise. It is this; "Whatever you shall ask in My name that will I do." Now that's an incredible promise. He repeats it in verse 14. "If you shall ask anything in My name I will do it." In other words, He is saying I'm going to give you a resource, that resource is called prayer. You ask in My name and I will do it. But you know something? That's hard to do. Very hard to do. You know why? Because Romans 8 says we know not what to pray for as we ought. We don't know how to pray. But the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us with groanings which are unutterable and He knows the mind of the Father. In other words, that verse wouldn't be fully fulfilled if it were not for the indwelling Spirit's continual intercessory work before the throne of God. The fact, then, that we are secure in heavenly inheritance, the fact that we will do greater things than our Lord; the fact that we can ask and receive is dependent upon the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. Further, you will note that He says in verse 18, "I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world sees Me no more but you see Me." Now how is that going to happen? You are going to go away? An d the world isn't going to see You anymore? What do You mean You're going to come to us? Verse 20; "At that day you shall know that I am in My Father and ye in Me and I," where? "In you." At what day did they know that God was in them? At what day did the people of God know that God had come to live within them? The day of Pentecost. The Spirit of God descended and dwells in them. And that is exactly what He is saying. Jesus says, I am going to go away, but I'm going to come back and in that day you will know that I am in you. The fulfillment of that is the coming of the Holy Spirit. That is the guarantee that God lives in me.
Look at verse 27; "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you not as the world giveth, giveth I unto you but let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." Now wait a minute. Jesus promised peace. And, by the way, look at chapter 15 verse 11, "These things have I spoken unto you that My joy might remain in you." Jesus said I want you to have My peace, chapter 14, 1 want you to have My joy, chapter 15, and He said I want you to have My love in chapter 13. Remember that? Love, joy, peace. Well, you say, that's a wonderful promise but where do we get it? Galatians 5:22, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. You see? Everything that Jesus ever promises a believer comes to pass because of the indwelling presence of the Spirit of God. This is so very important. We all have that potential resource. And that's why in chapter 16 verse 14 the Lord says; "When the Spirit comes He shall glorify Me for He shall receive of Mine and shall show it unto you." In other words, the Spirit, then, becomes the channel through which the promises of Christ come to the believer. Do you understand that? Very essential. If it were not for the indwelling Spirit the promises of Christ could not be fulfilled in your life. But here is the key. All of this is yours by the indwelling Spirit but it is only appropriated in your life, it is only functional in your life when you are filled with the Spirit. Do you understand? You can possess the Spirit of God as all Christians do, you can be indwelt by the Spirit of God, you can have all of the potential for all of these fulfillments to the promises of Christ but unless you are filled or controlled by the Spirit of God, unless you are guided by the Spirit of God you will never know what it means to possess these tremendous promises. Promises unfulfilled are the equivalent of promises unmade, or unkempt. God has given you Christ and in Christ great and precious promises, Peter calls them. And they are yours, you possess them, But you will never realize them, you will never know what it is to have security for life and death, you will never know what it is to see things in your life beyond what you could dream possible. You will never know what it is to have prayers answered constantly. You will never know what it is to have the sense of God alive in you. You will never know what it is to have love, joy and peace unless you know what it is to be controlled by the Holy Spirit. Even though you possess it, it won't be active in your life. And that's essentially what Paul is saying.
Now back to Ephesians 5. He is saying if you want to see the fruition of all of these things in your life, then it is absolutely necessary that you be filled with the Spirit. There is no other way. There is no other possibility for realization of these things. And all the way through the five chapters of Ephesians Paul has been describing the tremendous power and the tremendous potential of a believer but it all boils down to this one thing, people, you can fly through he first five chapters and seventeen verses and if you get bogged down here you're going to mess it all up because unless you are controlled by the Holy Spirit all of that resource available to you, all of that potential for living a life of wisdom and love and light and uniqueness and humility and oneness, all the potential is lost. And when you get into chapter 6 and you start your warfare with Satan, if you're not living controlled by the Holy Spirit you're going to go right down the tubes. This is the heart of the matter.
You ought to take your red pencil and draw a big box around verse 18, this is the heart of the issue.
Now as we've looked at 18 to 21, we've really only looked at verse 18 and a little bit of 19, but as we've looked at it we noted three things that I want you to see; the contrast, the command and the consequences. The contrast, the command and the consequences. We studied in great detail the contrast; "Be not drunk with wine in which is excess but be filled with the Spirit." In other words, our joy and our peace and our exhilaration and our communion with God and our fellowship and our power does not come like the pagans from getting drunk but from being filled with the Spirit. That's the contrast.
Then out of the contrast comes the command; "Be being kept filled with the Spirit." In other words, if all of our resources are bound up, if all of the realization of our potential is bound up in being filled with the Spirit then keep on being filled with the Spirit or keep on being controlled. And it is a matter of moment by moment yielding your life to the will and the working of the Spirit of God. It's not some mystical strange, divine zap it is simply yielding one moment at a time to the Spirit of God. And that will only happen in your life when you are thinking thoughts about the Spirit of God and that will only happen when you saturate your heart and mind and soul with the pages of the Word of God. And so as you do that, you will be controlled by the Spirit, filled by the Spirit. And, thirdly, consequences will happen. And there are three that He speaks of in this text and I'll probably add another one by the time we get there in a few weeks. But there are three.
First of all, he says there will be a consequence within yourself, singing. Secondly there will be a consequence toward God, saying thanks. Thirdly, there will be a consequence among the believers, submitting. And, fourthly, I'll probably add, there will be a consequence even to the unbelieving and that will be service. And I'll show you what I mean by that as we go.
So that when you are filled with the Spirit you see all the relationships are right. You're rightly related to yourself, you'll be a whole healthy person. You know, people go to counseling and they go see the psychiatrist and the psychologist and the analyst and the Christian counselor and so forth and so forth, and so on ... and they take Valium, and Thorozene and Librium and all of that trying to be able to solve their problems and they take long naps, you know, they want to play the Rip Van Winkle game and just forget it all. People try to run from their problems when the way to be at peace with yourself and have a song in your heart is to be filled with the Spirit, you see. That's rightly related to yourself.
Secondly, when you are rightly related to the Spirit of God you are going to find yourself doing what verse 21 says; giving thanks always for all things unto God.
Thirdly, you're going to find verse 21 a reality; you'll be submitting to everybody around you. There will be a spirit of humility. There will be a spirit that says ‑ I don't seek my own thing but I seek to do what is best for you. All of the relationships become right and the fourth one; the area of service is way back in John 7 where our Lord there said ‑When the Spirit of God fills you out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water to everybody around you. So that all relationships are summed up in being filled with the Spirit. As He controls your life everything is right.
Now, we've been looking at number‑one; singing. This is the personal element. When you become a Christian and the Spirit of God comes and lives in you, and the Spirit of God fills you, you become joyous on the inside. A Spirit‑filled Christian is going to be happy it doesn't matter what is going on. He may be in jail and stocks, like Paul and Silas, and by the way the stocks weren't like the Pilgrims had where you hang your hands like this ... and you hang your feet through like this ... they were stocks with graduated holes extending further and further and wider and wider so that your legs were pulled as far apart as they could go without splitting and then they were locked in that position and kept there for weeks on end. And it was in the midst of that circumstance that they were spending all night doing what? Singing. Why? Because the circumstances are not the issue, th