Lessons from Ephesians No.5 The Spirit Filled Man

And then perhaps you'd like to be ready for the reading in the New Testament, which is from the 7th chapter of John's Gospel. John chapter 7, if you care to have your finger in the page. John 7, reading first from Isaiah 55 verse 1. Come all you who are thirsty, come to the waters.

And you who have no money, come buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money, and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest affair.

Give ear to me, give ear and come to me, hear me, that your soul may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful love promised to David. See, I have made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander of the peoples.

Surely you will summon nations you know not, and nations that do not know you, will hasten to you because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has endowed you with splendour. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call on him while he is near.

Let the wicked forsake his way, and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. And now in John's Gospel, and chapter 7, at verse 37, verse 37, just a few verses here.

On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, If a man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him. By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.

Up to that time, the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified. On hearing his words, some of the people said, Surely this man is the prophet. Others said, He is the Christ.

Still others asked, How can the Christ come from Galilee? Does not the scripture say that the Christ will come from David's family, and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived? Thus, the people were divided because of Jesus. God will bless to us these readings from his word. I'd be glad if you'd open your Bible at Ephesians chapter 5. And once more we come back to this great statement of the Apostle Paul.

And it's with a degree of excitement that I come to this favorite verse of scripture. Verse 17, chapter 5, Ephesians. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is.

Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to riot, debauchery, excess. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Be filled with the Spirit.

And you remember I twinned this text to another that commanded our attention on several Sunday mornings a few weeks ago. The 30th verse of the previous chapter. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Now let's just, for the sake of those who have not been present with us for the last week or two, let's just revise what we have already learned. The Apostle is speaking about one of the great truths of the Christian gospel. One truth in terms of experience.

It's experimental. Be filled with the Spirit. And I said that it was most significant that when Paul introduces us to this injunction, he does so by, first of all, telling us by way of contrast of an experience that he does not applaud.

Do not get drunk on wine. And I suggested to you last week there were one or two reasons why the Apostle perhaps had this imagery in mind as he goes on to lead to the thought of being filled with the Spirit. The day of Pentecost, the disciples were reckoned to have been filled with wine, drunken.

And there are certain factors, I said, about drunkenness, which, if you like, have a common denominator with being filled with the Spirit. There are certain similarities and there are certain dissimilarities. And you might recall that one or two of the similarities that I suggested were these.

The drunken man is a very relaxed man. Very relaxed man. By and large, assuming that his state of intoxication is not such that it's made him to be quite angry, that sometimes does occur.

But if he's not imbibed too much, he's usually quite a happy man. In the precincts of Shakespeare Road last night, those of you who are happy to live there or unhappy as the case may be, then you will recall that up to one o'clock in the morning we were serenaded by some folks who were having a party in one of the gardens by one of the larger houses there. And they were obviously very happy.

I could have wished them less than happy trying to get to sleep, but be that as it may, they were obviously quite jubilant. And there's something else that I didn't bring out last week about the state of drunkenness, and that is that a man who is drunken is often a very bold man. Indeed, in days gone by, drunkenness was used or drink was used to try to reduce pain if some surgery had to be undergone.

And you will know of the term Dutch courage. Here is a man and he's presented with a great challenge. Maybe he's one of these motorcycle riders who's a stuntman and he's going to go through some flames and the crowd are watching him.

Will he have the nerve to do it? So perhaps, I'm suggesting, perhaps he downs a glass of whiskey. Why? Well, to give him Dutch courage, boldness. And I argue that you get that sort of feeling of boldness when you're filled with the Spirit.

If you were to read in Acts chapter 4, you will find three times in the AV and it also comes out reasonably clearly in the NIV that the apostles, the early disciples, the early followers of the Lord Jesus, they were bold in preaching the gospel. Well, these are all things that I say are in common between the state of drunkenness and being filled with the Spirit. But there are very marked dissimilarities.

The drunken man is a man whose mind is impaired. He's knocked out part of the thinking processes, the ones that are very much at the front of his psyche. He's knocked them out.

He's done this for a specific reason. He wants to relax. He wants to drown his sorrows.

The Spirit-filled man never does that. And if you're filled with the Spirit, then that will give you a mental clarity and ability to face facts and to face them very clearly indeed. What is more, the man who is filled with the Spirit, he never loses control, never in a riot of emotions.

He will never lose his virtue. She will never lose her virtue as a result of being filled with the Spirit. You can't say that about drink.

You lose your control. But the man who is filled with the Spirit, he's in control. Even the Spirit of the prophets, who is subject to the prophets, says the apostle.

And what's more, though there may be ecstasy at times when you have spiritual experience, there is never frenzy. There is never uncontrolled excess. There is never the sort of thing that Elijah witnessed on Carmel as far as the Baal prophets were concerned.

So, you see, these were some of the similarities and dissimilarities that I introduced you to before we come to examining in particular this great statement of the apostle Paul. Be filled with the Spirit. And we thank God that he used the imagery of drunkenness beforehand.

It helps us to understand what he's referring to. Be filled with the Spirit. Well, let's come to this statement.

And the first thing I want to point out to you, and in one sense it's the most important thing for me to share this morning, is that what Paul has in mind here in giving this injunction is not a crisis but a condition. It is not a crisis but a condition. I think that you will be in grave difficulty unless you fail to recognize this when you come back, as I trust you do time and time again, before Ephesians 5 and 18.

Now, there are critical experiences in the Spirit. I would suggest to you that in Acts chapter 2 and verse 2 you have a classic example, the mighty baptism of the Spirit that falls on those 120 men and women on the day of Pentecost. It was a crisis experience.

And sometimes when you move through the Acts of the Apostles you find that men have a specific endowment of power to cope with a challenging situation. When you go to Romans chapter 8, reference is made to the Spirit giving us an assurance that we belong to God. I argue that that represents a crisis experience.

I would say, in case you haven't followed me, that our own conversion is exactly that. I have grave difficulty in believing that a man or a woman is converted if they cannot give some account of an encounter with the living God, the cleansing of sins, the assurance of sins forgiven, because conversion is not just a mental process, it is the regeneration. I would go so far as to say it is the baptism when God in power comes down upon the individual and he is so transformed that Scripture says he is reborn.

Now, I'm arguing that there are many experiences of the Spirit along life's journey that one might conceive of in terms of crisis experiences. But clearly, the Apostle here is not referring to such. He is referring to something which is continual.

If you move in the Acts of the Apostles, whether you're considering the case of Peter or you're considering the case of Stephen, you find that these men are filled with the Spirit and then they're given a specific endowment for a particular task. They're raised, if you like, from this plateau to that peak. Now, Paul here, it seems to me, is speaking of the plateau.

And I use that word not in a derogatory sense. It's a very high plateau. But it represents the continuing experience, the norm, if you like, of Christian spirituality.

If you were to read Acts 6 and 5 or Acts 11 and 24, reference there is made to Stephen and Barnabas. These were great men of God. How are they described? Men as full of the Spirit.

And the idea is not that they were specifically filled with the Spirit then, and then the Spirit was taken from them, but rather they are filled with the Spirit in terms of the continuing experience, the plateau, the spiritual plateau on which they are living. So when Paul here enjoins the likes of ourselves be filled with the Spirit, he's not talking about something that ebbs and flows. There are those endowments.

Thank God for them. The speaker, the preacher, should know something of them. There are occasions when he feels taken out of himself.

He can't condition this. It just happens. There is what Martyn Lloyd-Jones used to call the romance of preaching.

There you are. You were preparing your address. You thought you had a good word, so to speak, from the Lord, and you could deliver it with power, and then the whole thing went awry.

And then another occasion you're in the pulpit and you feel somewhat hurried, somewhat disjointed in your preparation, and then suddenly an anointing falls upon you and you're airborne and you're going this way and that way, and you recognize and the congregation is aware that this is unusual. This isn't the plateau. This is the peak to which the man has been taken.

Well, I use an illustration of preaching. There are other areas in which this is also the case. But here the apostle is referring to the continuing normal experience of ordinary Christian people.

They are to be filled with the Spirit. You remember how when he uses the term for drunkenness, he uses that word which actually means soaked, soaked in alcohol. Well, there's a Christian corresponding experience to that, and it is being drenched in the Holy Spirit of God, to change the metaphor up on this plateau.

And when this happens, well, how do you describe the person? You say, well, they are filled with the Spirit. You see, the Christian is an abnormal person. If you're a Christian, then let me make you aware of this in case you weren't.

You are very abnormal. In a most lovely spiritual sense, here is the world and it's afraid. When I listened to the news yesterday at the human level, I groaned.

I heard men and government, our own government, men warring with the government, the government not seeming able to cope with the situation, dissension, problems exacerbated. And you think to yourself, where on earth is all this going to happen? And terror can flood your heart. But not if you're a Christian.

Why? Because you know what it is to be filled with the Spirit. You can relax. Not in a way that indicates you're not concerned.

You have grave concern, but you have no panic. You can be bold. On the day of temptation, you can stand fast.

You can take on the whole armor of God. Whatever happens to you in your life, and you can do this continually. Why? Because you're filled with the Spirit, this holy boldness.

Now, I've argued, this is not a crisis. This is a condition. This is something that should be descriptive of you, wherever you are and whatever you are doing.

And what is more, I can sustain my opening observation by bringing you to examine the statement itself, be filled with the Spirit, and you will discover that what is enjoined there is active and not passive. It's active and not passive. I'll come back to that in a moment, but here's an illustration.

You're a drunken man, or you're a man who's going to drink. Not necessarily excessively, but he goes to the bar and he orders his drink. He is in utter control at that moment of what is going to happen.

He's decided he's going to drink. And maybe he decides he will drink more and more, and so he orders more alcohol or spirits, as the case may be. And ultimately, he's swamped.

Ultimately, he's lost his control. But right at the beginning, he's in control of the situation. He went there, he ordered the drink.

Now, in a similar fashion, I'm arguing that you're active in this manner. There are certain things that happen to you in the Christian life and you're not active, you're passive. Certain times when God endures you.

You weren't expecting it, but it occurs. I remember on one occasion having a burden for a man who just lived somewhere north of the Brighton Road, and I went to see him. A very sick man indeed.

He was paralyzed with a stroke, and he could barely speak. And I suddenly found myself saying to this man, and it was rather an astonishing thing, as I recall, astonishing to me as well as to him, don't be afraid, you'll get better. And I prayed for this man.

And within a matter of weeks, he was in the balcony over there on my left. And he came to me after the service. Now, he was a mature Christian.

I say that or else you'll misunderstand what he did next. The end of the service, he handed me an envelope, and inside were 50-pound notes. He wasn't trying to pay for what had happened to him.

As I say, he was a very mature man. But he thought that he would love to bring to the Lord a thank-offering for the way that God had blessed him and healed him. Now, these things don't happen all the while.

In one sense, I wish they would. In another sense, I'm glad they don't, because of the tremendous responsibilities that that would imply. But there are occasions, you see, when something comes upon you, the power of God.

You operate in this way and in another way. Now, Paul isn't speaking in this respect when he talks about being filled with the Spirit. No.

Why not? Well, you see, you are in control. The verb here is be, being filled. It's a continual thing.

Not only is it continual, but it's a command. It's not just the elders, not just the pastors, not just the leaders of the church community. Everyone, be filled with the Spirit.

Now, the Bible, it doesn't mock you. It won't tell you to do something which clearly you are incapable of doing. The Bible is not that sort of book.

So, when the injunction comes, be being filled with the Spirit, it's something that applies to each one of us. And in one sense, we are very much in control. Let me just wear you with English grammar for a moment.

Have you noticed how the verb controls the subject? And actually, the subject is understood. You, in brackets, be being filled with the Spirit. The verb is acting on the subject.

Be being filled with the Spirit. Not speaking to someone else. There's no object in view at all.

Just the subject. You, be being filled with the Spirit. And I argue, therefore, that this is something that is not passive.

It is something that is active. It is not out of your control. Your regeneration, it was out of your control.

You did not seek for God. God sought for you. He brought you to that point.

Maybe at the Tabernacle, maybe at Queen's Park, Rangers Stadium, for some people. I don't know. It doesn't really matter.

But He brought you to the point where you confessed Him as your Lord and Jesus Christ as your Saviour. That, in one sense, was out of your control. The Spirit came and He wooed you.

With His irresistible grace, He drew you. And in a mighty way, He made you realize that you belong to God. Now here, in this business of being filled with the Spirit, the control is very much in the hand of the person who is endeavoring to fulfill the injunction.

So, having argued that, and I don't really see how you can come to any other conclusion from Scripture, let's move into the practicalities of this then. We've looked at that it is not a condition. That it is a condition and not a crisis.

It's active and not passive. Here are some do's and some don'ts for you to enjoy this experience more and more. Be being filled with the Spirit.

And the first thing that I want to remind you of, which takes me back to my preaching of Nyon three months ago now on the Trinity, remember the Spirit is a person. The Holy Spirit is a person. D.L. Moody says, think of the Spirit as an it, and you will want to have more of it.

Think of the Spirit as Him, and you will want Him to have more of you. The Holy Spirit is a person. How can you be filled with a person? Well, here's a little girl, shall we say.

A teenage girl. And she's got her idol. In terms of pop music.

And she goes to the concert. And she listens to her idol. And then she comes back and she talks to her mum.

She talks to her dad. In fact, she talks to everybody about him. And it would be true to say she's absolutely full of him.

Absolutely full of him. Now, I'm not applauding the idea, but I'm making it very plain. We can be so influenced by a person that we're full of that person.

Can we not? We go back to drink. Here is this man and he's stopped for driving. He's going too fast.

And he's driving in an erratic fashion on Worthing's Seafront. The police apprehend him. And ultimately he's up before the magistrate.

What's the charge? He's driving under the influence of drink. Now, you can be under the influence of a person. And there is no greater person under whose influence you can ever come than the person of the Holy Spirit.

So I acknowledge this. It's not a fluid to be poured into you. You might have thought that if you didn't look at Paul's teaching in the previous verses in the fourth chapter.

You might have thought it because of his analogy with drink. But it's only an analogy. It's not to be pushed too far.

The one under whose influence you are to come is the Holy Spirit of God and He is a person. And there's something else that follows from that. If He is a person, then you are not to grieve Him.

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. The Spirit has taken up residence within your life. The apostle makes this very clear when he's writing to the Corinthians at the end of the sixth chapter of the first letter.

He speaks about our bodies being a temple of the Holy Spirit. In fact the authorized version brings this out perhaps even more dramatically. In verse 19 it leads off with what? And an exclamation.

What? Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? What is Paul talking about? Well you see, the possibility is that these Corinthians may fall back on their testimony. They might indulge in sexual immorality. And Paul says flee the notion.

Why? Why should I flee? What says Paul? Don't you know? You're a Christian. And resident within you is the Holy Spirit of God. What? Don't you know this? So in no sense are you to embarrass your heavenly guest who resides within you.

Remember he's a person. Do not therefore grieve him. What's more, if you're going to be filled with the Spirit, do not quench him.

1 Thessalonians chapter 5 and verse 18 comes out again perhaps more powerfully in the authorized version. The NIV puts it like this. Do not put out the Spirit's fire.

Do not put out the Spirit's fire. In no way stifle the Spirit's ministry within your heart. You say well how do I do that? Well quite easily.

Here you are as a Christian and your life has been changed. In one sense it's brought its solution. In another sense it's brought its problems.

In what way has it brought its problems? Well your conscience has been repaired. It's been renewed. And it is through your conscience that the Holy Spirit will affect, will influence what is the mind of the Lord Jesus so that you have an insight into what he wants you to do and where he wants you to go.

And so there you are shall we say at home or at work or maybe having some leisure hour and you suddenly have a notion in your mind regarding a specific thing that you ought to be involved in. Maybe to give yourself to a little bit more Bible study. Maybe to use money in a specific fashion.

Maybe to visit someone. Maybe to get down on your knees or at least adopt some attitude of prayer and bring some person whose name is on your mind before the Lord. These you see are the promptings of the Spirit.

Now every Christian is bound to have these promptings but not every Christian acts on the promptings. And when you don't act on the promptings you stifle, you quench. And one of the great sins of the Christian church today is quenching the Spirit of God.

Not reacting to those inbuilt promptings that he brings as he gives you some insights into the mind of Christ. And so the apostle makes it clear that one of the don'ts is don't quench the Spirit. Respond to his promptings.

Let me put it another way. Coax the Spirit. You say well that's a very strange concept.

Where do you get it from? Well let's turn to 2 Timothy and chapter 1. And here is Paul writing to this young man. A young pastor and he's got great needs. Paul knows him.

Timothy's been with Paul for quite a long period of time. And Paul is aware of his strengths and of his weaknesses. And one of his weaknesses was a timid spirit.

And so Paul in the 6th verse writes something that is applicable to Timothy particularly. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame. Authorized version.

Stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power. Of love.

And of self-control. How do you coax the Spirit? How does a little child who's got any wisdom at all and it's amazing how much wisdom a 3 year old girl has when she wants something from her dad. She coaxes.

And it's the most enjoyable thing. The loving father wants this. He's related to the little girl.

Of course he is her father. And to be asked to do something within your power or to be pleased by the way that the little girl has reacted. That's all part, if you're pleased, of parental upbringing.

It's part of coaxing on the part of the child towards the parent as well as on the part of the parent towards the child. Now I say this is possible as far as the Holy Spirit is concerned. Coaxing him.

How? Well, so he feels pleased. What pleases the Holy Spirit? Well, the Holy Spirit inspired this book to be written. 2 Peter chapter 1 right at the end of the chapter will tell you this.

Holy men of God moved by the Holy Spirit. So when he sees you reading his word it coaxes him to make his presence more real to you because you recognize his word for what it is. So you're slovenly around the Lord's table as far as your attendance is concerned.

Now that must be grieving the Spirit. Why? Well you see the Spirit has come to glorify Jesus. He never glorifies himself, never preoccupied with himself.

He'll always take you back to the Saviour. And Jesus has said, This do as oft as ye drink it. This do as oft as ye eat it.

In remembrance of me, I am arguing this, that the person who is consistent in his attendance around the Lord's table is someone who is coaxing the Spirit, stirring up the gift within them. And so we could go on. The whole area of obeying the Spirit, thirsting for the Spirit, in these references which I've given you and some that I have up on this overhead screen which I can't go into, they will help you as you endeavor to be being filled with the Holy Ghost.

It's a condition, it's not a crisis. It's active, it's not passive. There are do's and there are don'ts.

But remember this. It is the aim or should be the objective of every Christian to be filled with the Spirit. Look at this poor drunken.

What an awful fellow he is. How sorry you should be for a man who can't leave the liquor, who can't control his intake. How unfortunate are those wretched alcoholics.

What's the problem? Well, they're soaked. They're soaked with the wrong stuff. They're soaked with the liquor.

But here is that man, here is that woman, here is that boy and girl. They've confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord. There's something different about them.

How do you explain the difference? They haven't just turned over a new leaf. They have a new life. They are soaked in something that is making them completely different from the average person.

What has happened? Well, do you remember when Jesus died on the cross? Before his actual death he said, I thirst. And one Roman soldier with a more tender heart got a sponge, soaked it in vinegar, put it on a rod and he squeezed the vinegar up. So our Lord's thirst was slaked in some degree.

At least the attempt was made. Now that is exactly the word that Paul uses here. Filled with the Spirit.

Soaked with the Spirit. You say it's just for the pastor. Say that and I quit preaching from now on.

If I haven't made it clear to you that this is something for everyone, then I must be the worst preacher in this town. Be filled with the Spirit. Soaked by the Spirit.

It's a condition. Not a climax. Not something that you know today and gone tomorrow.

Not like the ebbing and flowing of the tide in twice a day. That might be sufficient. That might be optimistic enough for us at the natural level, if we're thinking of the grace of God.

But God says, no, I don't want it to be an ebb and flow. I want you up on that plateau, living there, ready to be launched, occasionally to peaks of spiritual experience. Endued with power for specific acts of service.

This is the dynamic into which we are caught as children, called as children of God. The experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Well, there we are.

I said what I want to say. Well, I haven't actually, because I want to get on to verse 19. But we'll keep that until next week.

The aim of the Christian is to be filled with the Spirit of God. And when that happens, you become more like the Lord Jesus. And the more like the Lord Jesus you are, the more you please God the Heavenly Father.

So in this experience, the whole Trinity come into play. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. May it be increasingly yours.

And may you work at it as we work at our salvation. Until we know consistently the soaking of the Holy Spirit. Living under His influence for our lives.

Amen. Now in the yellow book, number 277, is the perfect application of what I've been trying to share this morning. Oh, to be like the blessed Redeemer.

This is my constant longing and prayer. Well, I could wish that we had the baptismal service immediately to follow. At least one would feel cooler.

We are going down to the seafront, those who are prepared for this, for our family picnic. And we look forward to having the company of many friends. Father, send us on our way rejoicing.

Praise you for the prospects of the life of a man who's filled with a spirit. That boldness. That peace of mind.

That self-control. That dignity. All that resembles our Lord Jesus.

Father, in all the wonder of reproducing the Savior in our lives, may the Spirit be successful and endeavor us to coax Him to this end. For His sake. Amen.