11. Walking in Submission

Ephesians 5:15–21 (ESV)

15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Introduction & Review

Good Morning Church, how are we doing?

Thank you Sami for sharing that reading for us today, especially because I changed it on her like three times and so she was so gracious in her flexibility with that. If you have not had a chance to read and would still like to minister in this way there are just a few spots left so check the sign up sheet on the red board in the lobby and we would love to have you participate in this way.

You have probably noticed how we are returning today to our series from the book of Ephesians called “God’s Plan. Our Place In It”. And you might remember how the chapters of Ephesians are evenly divided in their focus on these two compounding topics.

GOD’S PLAN...is the focus of Chapters 1-3

OUR PLACE IN IT is the focus of Chapters 4-6.

And what we have already discovered is that our place in God’s plan is to “walk” in unity with Him and with one another. That is the word that Paul uses over and over in the book of Ephesians to mean how we go about life, how we behave, how we walk. And we saw this early on in chapter 2 verse 10 were it says:

Ephesians 2:10 (ESV)

10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should WALK in them.

This was always a part of God’s plan. He created us to walk in these good works but we couldn’t because our sin corrupted our design. So God sent Jesus to redeem, or buy us back from our sin so that now we are these new creations, “created in Christ Jesus for good works”.

And we find a description of what it looks like to “walk” in these good works in the second half of the book, chapter 4 and so on. Chapter 4, opens out with...

Ephesians 4:1–3 (ESV)

1 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Because of God’s plan, we find ourselves called to this place: Humility. Gentleness. Patience. Forbearance. Love. Unity and Peace. This is how we are to walk now. This is the calling, the expected behavior of those who are “in Christ” and called to walk together in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Paul goes on to say that...you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. (Eph 4:17) but instead we are to ...walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, (Eph 5:2) and since we are no longer darkness we are to Walk as children of light (Eph 5:8) and to Look carefully (circumspectly) then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, (Eph 5:15)

If you were with us, you might remember that those were the themes of our last message in this series. That we would walk together as Children of love, Children of light and Children of wisdom.

Tension

But that was a lot to cover in just one message, so this morning I feel the need to go back and unpack somethings that I missed there at the end, especially because it has direct application to where Paul is going to bring us next.

So looking at verse 18 of Ephesians chapter 5 it says...

18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit,

So we can, and did, talk about this as a command not to abuse alcohol or other drugs, but Paul’s point goes much further than that as the verses that follow are dependent on a right understanding of this verse. Especially, that second half of the verse that says “be filled with the Spirit”.

Because this filling of the Holy Spirt was promised from way back in the Old Testament. The prophet Joel, in the book bearing his name, prophesied:

Joel 2:28–29 (ESV)

28 “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. 29 Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit.

You see in the days of the Old Testament the Holy Spirit was active but only temporarily. He would come upon a particular individual at a particular time for a particular purpose and then His presence and power would leave.

But here we see Joel prophesying that it will not always be this way. That someday everyone of God’s people, from the greatest to the least, will have access to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

And this did “come to pass” to use Joel’s words.

After Jesus rose from the dead he appeared to His Disciples, opened their minds to understand the Scriptures...

Luke 24:46–49 (ESV)

46 and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47 and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

This was the plan! It was written down in the Scriptures but the people somehow missed it until Jesus showed them where it was. So He told them the plan, the role He was to play in it and then He told them their place in this plan...

48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

And they did. So that later in the book of Acts chapter 2 we read of the day of Pentecost when the disciples were clothed with this power.

Acts 2:4 (ESV)

4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

So just like before the Holy Spirit came to a particular place a particular time for a particualar purpose but this time there was something different. “They were ALL filled with the Holy Spirit.” There wasn’t one particular person but all the followers of Jesus were filled with the Holy Spirit and had this power to speak languages they had never learned.

And then it says that since there were devout Jews from all over the world there for the festival, they were all bewildered not just because they suddenly knew how to speak languages they could not have known but because…verse 11

Acts 2:11b (ESV)

...we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”

This is what the prophet Joel prophesied and what Jesus promised. That the Holy Spirit would be poured out on them all and that they would be witnesses of all that God has done.

But the people who watched that day had mixed responses...

12 And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13 But others mocking said, “They are filled with new wine.”

So here we have the first correlation between being filled with wine and being filled with the Spirit. There was something in how these disciples declared the mighty works of God that looked to at least some there that day that they had been drinking.

So the Holy Spirit leads the Apostle Peter to respond to their misunderstanding.

Acts 2:14–18 (ESV)

14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. 15 For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day.

16 But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: 17 “ ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men ...

Do you see what he is doing? He is quoting the prophet Joel to explain to the people that what Joel said would happen is what they are seeing happen right in front of them. He wanted to make sure they knew that this is not due to some sort of chemical “high” as in drugs or alcohol, but that the peace, joy and boldness that came over these otherwise common fishermen was due to being filled with something much better! The Holy Spirit.

All of that is just to make sure that we understand what the Apostle Paul is teaching us from Ephesians 5 verse 18, because it is not really about wine at all. He says...

Ephesians 5:18 (ESV)

18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery (wasting your life, throwing it away), but be filled with the Spirit,

Because, hear me Church, this is where the Christian life is found! It is not found in doctrines or practices - those are support systems to help us keep on the right track - but our place in God’s plan is found is found in this command to be filled with the Spirit.

And it is a command, but not the kind of command that we can just get after and do. The Greek verb here is πληρόω (play-roe) and it means to fill, but for those grammar nerds out there... it is present, passive, imperative, second person, plural.

I know I had to look it up too, but it means that this is not a command for us to do something, but it is a command for us to have something done to us by another. In other words we are to - be continually filled - but we cannot do the filling. We can only “be filled with the Spirit”…by the Spirit.

But just because the Spirit is doing the work, does not mean that there is nothing for us to learn here. Following his command to “be filled”, Paul gives us is three identifiers, three effects of this filling so that we can recognize what a spirit filled life looks like…and they might not be what you think.

So that is what we are going to focus in on this morning, so if you haven’t already, open up your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 5, page 978 in the Bibles in the chairs. I will pray and we will ask God to guide our next steps into greater understanding of Our Place that we are find in God’s Plan.

Truth

So in the ESV translation verses 18-21 are all one continuous sentence. Some of your translations may bump 21 into a new sentence but I would argue that this is a mistake and I will tell you why later, but even without verse 21, this long sentence has just one verb, “be filled” and then a whole string of verb-like words that end in “ing”.

These are called “participles” by the grammar nerds, and the Greek language uses them a lot! All the rest of us need to know, however, is that these verb-like words work to describe what this “be filled” verb is all about.

And in the ESV they are nicely divided along with the breaks in the verses, so the first one we see in verse 19 is that we are to

Be filled with the Spirit in “Joy-ing” (Eph 5:19)

I know I made up a word there, but this is a participle so an “ing” ending is most fitting. And as a participle that is describing the verb we could start this verse with…To “be filled with the Spirit” is to be...

19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart,

To our modern ears this sounds like being filled with the Spirit changes our daily life into some sort of musical where people are randomly bursting out into song, but that is not exactly what this is calling for. The truth is that we are more inundated with music than anyone in the first century could have ever imagined. If they had any idea what a musical was, they would probably think we already lived in one.

Have you ever stopped to think about how many times throughout our day we encounter music of one kind or another? Our alarm clocks wake us up with music and then we have music playing in our cars, at every gas station, at every store and in every lobby. Every movie, tv show and commercial has a soundtrack playing in the background. Even our phones call us with musical ringtones not to mention they have given us unlimited access to music at any moment.

It shows up everywhere and so in a sense it shows up nowhere...because it just operates constantly in the background and we often don’t even notice it. It has become common so it is easy to take it for granted.

This was not the experience of people in the first century. Most of their music was A-Capella singing so if someone played an instrument, any instrument, it drew a crowd. Music never got lost in the background and it wasn’t used for simple entertainment or to escape life for a little while.

From everything we know of the music of the first century, everyone from the pagan Greeks and Romans to the Jews and Christians primarily sang songs of worship. Without Pandora, Spotify or even radio stations, their music primarily happened when people joined their voices together in song and it was almost always to teach and remind each other of the god they worshiped.

So when they found someone else “singing their song”, then they knew that person worshiped the same god and it was a bonding kind of experience. Something close to the meeting of two university alumni’s who begin singing their school fight song because it brings them closer together and shows their loyalty to that school.

So what Paul is teaching here is that to “be filled with the Holy Spirit” is to have something happen in our spirits when we come together like we have this morning. There should be something first of all that draws us here together and then that inspires us to join our voices in joyfully declaring what God has done for us. And as we sing these various types of songs there is a spiritual connection happening. That is the worship.

Now maybe you are thinking, I am not much of a singer so can this be done without singing? Maybe. The fact that music is seen in our culture as more of an entertaining performance than a religious practice makes that question hard to answer…but you would have to find a way to declare the greatness of our God with same kind of joyful exuberance that would cause you to want to sing. And I can’t think of a better way to do that than to just sing. That is why singing is such a focus for us here.

And remember that it was how joyfully they expressed all that God had done that caused onlookers to think that they were intoxicated. It should make us stop to consider the tone and flavor of how we talk and sing about our God.

We are to be filled with the Spirit in our Joyfulness and Secondly, we are to...

Be filled with the Spirit in Thanksgiving (Eph 5:20)

Again, because this is a participle describing the verb we can read it as...To be” filled with the spirit” is to be...

20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Every one of the “participles” or verb-like adjectives have their end objective aimed at Jesus Christ. We just talked about how we are to be making melody to the Lord and here we see that are to be giving thanks …in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We have talked about how Paul’s letter called Colossians shares many similarities with the this letter to the Ephesians. The parallel verses for this section are found in Colossians chapter 3 and for whatever reason Paul seems to emphasize our need for thankfulness even more in the way he wrote this letter and we should hear them as instructions for our Church today. He says in Colossians 3:15-17

Colossians 3:15–17 (ESV)

15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

That is a pretty all encompassing statement, isn’t it? Whatever we do and whatever we say we do it all aimed at our Lord Jesus giving thanks to God through him.

There is just something about living lives of thanksgiving that seems to calibrate our lives in such a way that we can see that the Holy Spirit is filling us up in it.

And we can see these things, can’t we? To Be filled with the Spirit in Joyfulness makes sense and to Be filled with the Spirit in Thankfulness seems right…but what about this last one?

Be filled with the Spirit in Submitting (Eph 5:21)

Ooooohhh. This is the one that catches us off guard. This is the one that we are like…wait a minute...that doesn’t sound right.

Because “submitting” sounds hard. It can even sound oppressive and domineering to our ears. We are such a fiercely independent people and the idea that anything good could come from willingly submitting to another offends our modern sensibilities.

We will love. We will serve. We will help. We will acquiesce…but to “submit”?

And in truth, this is why I took us on this journey this morning where we have been “geeking out” on the grammar involved with the text. Because even though some of our Bible translations kick out this next verse into a new sentence, there really is no cause for that in the original Greek. This word has all the same markings of the other participles, so it is hard to see it a commanding verb in a new sentence.

And if the ESV has is right, then that would mean that we could still say…to be” filled with the spirit” is to be...

21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

The Greek word used here is ὑποτασσόμενοι (hypotasomenoi). I know, it’s a mouthful…but that because particples in Greek have more than just “ing” added to the end as they do in English. This is formed from the verb ὑποτάσσω (hypatasso) which means “to place, arrange under, subject or be obedient to.” And because it is a participle, this means that this submitting happens as a result of being “filled with the spirit”.

And the key to understanding the first half of this verse is to really focus on the second half. We are not called to a submission that is born out of the force or fear of another person, but out of a reverence for Christ.

In other words, anytime a “spirit-filled” Christian willingly submits to an earthly authority it is not really them that we are submitting to, but we are submitting to Christ.

I like to get this picture in my mind where that person that I am called to submit to is standing right in front of me but Jesus is standing behind them. So my submitting to them is really my submission aimed at Jesus. Since Jesus is the one who is calling me to submit to them, my submission to them really passes through them on it’s way to it’s target in Jesus. They receive benefit from it but I aimed it at Jesus.

Because even though we might not like the idea of “submitting”, that is what accepting Jesus as our Savior and Lord is all about. We often forget that to use the word “Lord” is to submit ourselves to Jesus and His plan for our lives. Too often Christianity has been sold just on the “Savior” part, but you can’t have one without the other. They are two sides of the same coin.

Picture again that the person that Jesus has placed in my life and called me to submit to is standing there in between us. If my submitting to the person is really aimed at Jesus, what do you think that my refusing to submit to that person is saying to Jesus? Am I really submitting to Him then as my Lord?

Every “spirit-filled” Christian is already a submissive person in that the Holy Spirit drives us to submit to Jesus as our Lord. And we have just the one Lord! We may submit ourselves through another person to Jesus, but it never stops with them. We have no other Lord - not even ourselves.

As we are filled with the Spirit, He opens our eyes to the reality that He is the Author of our lives and as such, He is our Ultimate Authority over every aspect of our lives. And it is only from a posture of submitting first to Jesus that any other earthly submission will ever make any sense.

Application

And that is going to be our focus over the next couple of weeks. I backed us up into this foundation of being filled with the Spirit and it’s many effects because over the next couple of weeks we are going to look at what submitting ourselves to God looks like for our marriages, our parenting, and our employment. And that would have been really hard to do if we didn’t first grapple with this foundation of how it is the filling of the Holy Spirit, by the Holy Spirit that empowers us to do the Joy-ing, Thanksgiving and Submitting that God has called us to be

Landing

God has the plan. He is writing our stories. He has ordered his world and we are to take our place within that order but none of that will happen without out being continually filled by the Spirit.

So I invite the Worship Team up for singing....