Walking Wisely As the Church

Intro:

Ephesians 2:4–7 “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

We gather today on this Resurrection Sunday with the hope and confidence of the risen Christ. We hope knowing that his death satisfied the requirements of law of God which seeks justice for sin. Our Lord laid the debt of sin upon himself so that the bride of Christ, his church, could be liberated from their debt and escape the wrath of God. After the resurrection of Christ, he promised his people a gift that would accompany them in this life. This gift would be the seal of their salvation, the applicator of the blessings of that salvation, and the power that they need to live holy lives as regenerated followers of Christ. That gift is the Holy Spirit.

The book of Acts records the moment that the Holy Spirit was ushered into the church age of history. While having an active role throughout all history in some capacity, it was at the time of Christ’s earthly ministry and the inception of the church that the Spirit would come on the scene in full display as the power of Christ and the power for the church.

Look with me briefly at the role of the Spirit in the earthly ministry of Christ. Turn with me to the book of Luke:

It was at the starting line of Jesus ministry when the Holy Spirit appeared to descend and fall upon the Lord Jesus in full power. There at the baptism of Jesus we read:

Luke 3:22 “22 and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came out of heaven, “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.””

This began as a visible sign for the people of the presence of the Spirit with Jesus. In the next chapter 4, we see that Jesus was prepared for the temptation in the wilderness by the full power of teh Spirit. After his temptation victory over Satan, Jesus was ministered to by angels and he returned to Galilee “in the power of the Spirit”(4:14).

Now the Spirit’s power was not only for the Lord Jesus, but he would follow the Lord Jesus in an earthly ministry of sorts. Once Jesus ascended, the Spirit would take up his effect upon all those who put their trust in Christ. Those believers who are the Bride of Christ are empowered to fulfill the work of the church and the expanse of God’s kingdom in this world until Jesus returns.

John 14:16–17 “16 “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; 17 that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.”

Now the theological term that John is describing here is called the baptism or the indwelling of the Spirit. All believers receive the HS at the time that they are born again in Christ. John uses terms like “be with you forever” and “he abides with you” to depect the permanence of the HS in the lives of true believers in Christ. What this means is that, regarldess of what we may see in some charismatic worship, believers in Jesus do not need nor can they invite the Spirit into anything. Christians do not hold any power over the Spirit. He does not do our bidding or grant our wishes. He is always with us and his power is always available to be used for God’s glory.

Therefore, we must reject the idea that some higher level of Christianity exists for those who receive the HS in some later phase of their spiritual journey. This is not taught in the Bible. The baptism or indwelling of the Spirit on believers is always at the moment of regeneration.

But Paul is not speaking of the indwelling of the Spirit in our passage today. He is speaking to the church and to those Christians who he is calling to holy living with Spirit empowered wisdom. This series is called Walking Wisely because Paul wants the Christians of Ephesus to turn from foolish living, following the desires of their flesh, and turn to wise living following the pathway laid out by God through the Holy Spirit. Last week, we look generally at the call to walk wisely in v 15-18.

In our verses today, Paul focuses on how the Spirit leads us as the church.

1. Spirit-led Living(18)

Ephesians 5:18 “18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit,”

To understand the difference terminology that Paul is using regarding the Spirit, we turn to a key verse in our Pneumatology. Pneumatology is the theological term for the study of the Holy Spirit. Since I have already defined what the indwelling/baptism is in the Christian life, we turn now to the distinct filling of the Spirit, which Paul mentions in v 18.

What is the filling of the Spirit?

As I previously stated, the HS does not come and go like he did in the lives of OT saints. He is present always with those who walk with Christ.

1 Corinthians 6:19 “19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?”

But what Paul is saying in v 18 defines not in the place where the Spirit dwells but the way in which we employ his power in our lives. Notice the comparison that Paul makes in v 18 between drunkeness and spirit filling. Paul’s contrast starts with a prohibition. “Do not be drunk with with wine which is dissipation.”

Paul makes the comparison using a common issue of drunkeness in the culture. All throughout the Bible, the idea of drunkeness is linked to rebellion, immorality and evil. Paul lists drunkeness multiple times in his letters as an action of those who live in darkness. His point is not that Christians cannot stumble and drink too much. He is talking about a life of habitual drunkeness communicates a bondage to sin and not freedom in Christ.

The comparison he makes with drunkeness is all in regards to control. When a person is intoxicated, he/she is not in control of themselves and self-control is a fruit of the Spirit in your life. Instead, alcohol takes over and begins to lead a person into bad decisions with challenging consequences.

Martyn Lloyd Jones states,

Wine—alcohol—… pharmacologically speaking is not a stimulant—it is a depressant. Take up any book on pharmacology and look up ‘alcohol’, and you will find, always, that it is classified among the depressants. It is not a stimulant’.4 Further, ‘it depresses first and foremost the highest centres of all in the brain … They control everything that gives a man self-control, wisdom, understanding, discrimination, judgment, balance, the power to assess everything; in other words everything that makes a man behave at his very best and highest’.5 What the Holy Spirit does, however, is the exact opposite. ‘If it were possible to put the Holy Spirit into a textbook of Pharmacology, I would put him under the stimulants, for that is where he belongs. He really does stimulate … He stimulates our every faculty … the mind and the intellect … the heart … and the will …’6

So the comparison that Paul is making then is that when a person is drunk, he lacks control but when a person is filled with the Spirit, the Spirit is leading him to not only produce a self-control towards holiness but He also brings a joy and satisfaction to the believers life.

All of this is important in the church as we consider that we are be a healthy church we must be led by the Holy Spirit. This is not some mystical, experiential leading. No one should be desire to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, as if he makes the makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. I relegate this type of phenomenon with hollywood horror influence. Some want the Holy Spirit to be ghost like in the same phantom type way we see ghosts on the big screen. Thats not a biblical Holy Spirit.

Instead, being filled by the Spirit is a spiritual leading of the heart, mind, and will, towards Christ-likeness which is comes from how the word of God informs our lives. I appreciate the illustration John Macarthur uses in his Ephesians commentary:

“The Christian who is filled with the Holy Spirit can be compared to a glove. Until it is filled by a hand, a glove is powerless and useless. It is designed to do work, but it can do no work by itself. It works only as the hand controls and uses it. The glove’s only work is the hand’s work. It does not ask the hand to give it an assignment and then try to complete the assignment without the hand. Nor does it gloat or brag about what it is used to do, because it knows the hand deserves all the credit. A Christian can accomplish no more without being filled with the Holy Spirit than a glove can accomplish without being filled with a hand.” Jmac

How can you live as a believer being filled by the Spirit? Submit your heart and mind towards holy things for that pleases the Spirit which includes knowing, meditating on the words of God. looking back on verse 17…understand what the will of the Lord is…v 18 be filled by the Spirit (doing what the Spirit has instructed).

Turn to Galatians 5:22–23 “22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”

These fruits in your life prove you are walking by the Spirit

Calvin has a great quote as we transition to point #2

Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians Chapter 5

The children of this world are accustomed to indulge in deep drinking as an excitement to mirth. Such carnal excitement is contrasted with that holy joy of which the Spirit of God is the Author, and which produces entirely opposite effects. To what does drunkenness lead? To unbounded licentiousness,—to unbridled, indecent merriment. And to what does spiritual joy lead, when it is most strongly excited?2

2. Spirit-led Singing (19)

Ephesians 5:19 “19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord;”

As a church, we are to be led by the Spirit and in being led, it leads us to the last three points of this sermon. These are also three additional fruits of the Spirit that will be present in the church.

Spirit-led Singing.

In v 19, Paul mentions the effect of the Spirit in the congregational worship of the church. When you have the gathering of the church and they are submitted to the work and will of the Spirit of God, then there will naturally be singing in the church. Throughout the Bible, God’s people Sing!

In March 2010, I was privileged to go to Grace Community Church for the Shepherds Conference. It was there, for the first time, that I heart over 3000 men singing hymns and it shook me. I had never heard or even listened to such a chorus of male voices all singing hymns to God. Thats because I grew up in a culture of church where singing in church was about performance more than heart saturated worship of the Lord. I wasn't taught that singing is simply the pressure valve that releases a built up praise to the Lord for all that he has done. If there is joy in the Lord in your heart, you cannot and should not be quiet about it. Sing!

Paul first states that singing is actually a way that we encourage and admonish each other in the church. We are not singing to another as much as we are singing with each other the truths of God’s word. Look at the parallel passage in Colossians 3:16

“16 Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”

The words of Christ and the truths of all the Bible make for great lyrics to sing. When we have solid truths communicated through music, we have a way to disciple on another with “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.” As your pastor, let me exhort the men in our church, Sing if the love of the Lord lives in you. Don’t sing because I asked you to…sing because you encourage others in your singing. You disciple other men to sing when you sing.

I am not trying to pick on the men, but this is a male problem in the church. But ladies, another problem arises for you. Singing to the Lord is worship of the Lord, not worship of your voice. Women particularly have amazing voices to sing..but use those gifts with humility. Again, for the church culture I was apart of, there were choir solos and theatrical musicals that only seemed to highlight the person singing and not the subject of the song.

Basil of Caesarea once wrote of the great spiritual effect of singing with the saints and to the Lord….

A psalm is the tranquility of souls, the arbitrator of peace, restraining the disorder and turbulence of thoughts, for it softens the passion of the soul and moderates its unruliness. A psalm forms friendships, unites the divided, mediates between enemies. For who can still consider him an enemy with whom he has sent forth on voice to God? So that the singing of psalms brings love, the greatest of good things, contriving harmony like some bond of union and uniting the people in the symphony of a single choir.

Notice Paul’s words again in v 19,

“singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” It is no surprise that singing followed great displays of God’s power in the OT. Moses sang, Hannah Sang, Deborah Sang, the Levites designated musicians. The Early Church sang, the contemporary churches sings, and the eternal kingdom of God is prophesied to includes singing to the Lord. The spirit of God leads us in singing with one another and to the Lord because he put a new song in our mouth and on our lips.

3. Spirit-led Thankfulness(20)

Ephesians 5:20 “20 always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father;”

Thirdly, the Spirit leads the church to be thankful in all things. He is the subject of our thankfulness because in Him we have been given all things providentially to provide and teach us. It is on this day as we celebrate the risen savior that we stand in awe of all he have done in His Son and we celebrate with Thankfulness.

It is the church that stands in unity with thankfulness because we have all expereinced the blessings of the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord. So Paul states then that we give thanks….in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, the Father.” We praise the Father with thankfulness…in the name of and because of the work of the Son on our behalf, and our thankfulness is empowered by the Spirit. The Spirit draws our attention back to Christ when we stray. He brings to remembrance all that Jesus has said and done to lead us to praise and thanksgiving.

Guys. you know how your wife is really good at reminding you of the things that you don’t remember very well….like how old your kids are, when your anniversary is, etc. This is what the Spirit does for the believer.

John 14:26 “26 “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.”

Notice also that our thankfulness as the church is “always and in all things.” Again this continual thankfulness in all circumstances is empowered by the Spirit because only in his power would we be thankful in suffering and loss. How does a father and mother have thankful hearts in the loss of a child? Only by the Spirit’s power. How does a Christian pastor beaten for his gospel proclamation have thankfulness? It can only be by the power of the Lord’s spirit in us.

Hebrews 13:15 “15 Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name.”

Friends, we stand here today as Christians that only deserved death and wrath and suffering for our rebellion against God and yet by his grace he chose you to be saved, he gifted you the faith to believe, he opened your eyes to see Christ as worthy of your worship, he washed away your sin, he adopted you into his family, he gave you an heavenly community to walk along with you in your spiritual journey, he sealed you for the day of redemption. Rejoice in Him an dbe thankful!

4. Spirit-led Submission(21)

Ephesians 5:21 “21 and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.”

This last verse is a segway into our next section, but I think it is best included in our look at the church who walks wisely. Sometimes this verse is used to begin the discussion of the roles of husbands and wives because Paul starts with mutual submission and then focus on submission of wives to husbands. Mutual submission is such a strange statement in humanity because submission is resisted. In our sinful humanity, we do not like submission. We want to rule and dominate and lead as humans. Partially this is ingrained in us because God gave us this role to rule over the fish of the seas, birds of the air. Humanity was created to be sub-rulers but always with a submission to the rule and reign of God. Sin perverted that and therefore mankind rejects God’s sovereign rule and wants to rule in his place.

When we read Pauls’ words here, the onlooking world finds this a strange phrase. Submitting to one one is simply a way to say that we humbly serve each other. Submitting to one another does not mean you are my Lord or I am your lord. It is mutual meaning that we are always seeking the best for those around us. How can I serve you, how can I pray for you?

A church with people that are always trying to dominate and rule one another is not a healthy church. Its more like a gladiator arena where everyone is fighting everyone else to win in the end.

1 Peter 5:5 “5 You younger men, likewise, be subject to your elders; and all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

Of course, the Spirit arrests our fleshly desires and elevates the spirituial fruit in our lives that shows compassion, self-denial, patience, forgiveness. This leads to an attitude of helping each other, caring for each other, serving one another.

Conclusion:

When I look out over the landcape of our church, I am thankful for the Spirit continually doing this in us. WE are not a perfect church but your elders see the work of the Spirit bringing forth these qualities of thankfulness, submission, and healthful admonishment in words and worship.

Prayer:

Nathan’s cousin Cito is a drug addict and needs prayer for freedom from addiction and salvation in Christ

Continue to pray for Jeremy’s grandmother in her recovery from tornado damage in Cave City.

Continue to pray for David, Tina’s brother who is having cardio tests

Questions:

How does the resurrection of Jesus Christ lead the church to have hope?

How does the resurrection of Jesus lead to the church’s empowerment for kingdom work?

How would you define term baptism/indwelling of the Spirit?

Read 1 Corinthians 6:19 “19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?”

How does this theological truth give believers confidence in the permanence of their salvation?

How is filling of the Holy Spirit different than the indwelling of the Spirit?

What was Paul’s point with his comparison of drunkenness and the filling of the Spirit?

Read Eph 5:17 How does the filling of the Spirit relate to this verse?

What is the Spirit’s role in the church singing together?

How is singing in the church perverted in today’s churches?

What is the importance in having rich theological lyrics to sing?

What is the importance of the heart in our singing to Lord? Is musical talent and skill important in our singing?

In what circumstances is it the hardest to be thankful to the Lord? How does the Spirit help us overcome this?

How can the church also aide us in thankfulness?

Why is the idea of submitting to one another a difficult phrase for the church?

What are examples of submitting to one another we might see in the church?

Read Philippians 2:3-8