The Spirit-Filled Life

Holy Spirit

Spirit Filled

The Spirit-Filled Life A Pocket Paper
from
The Donelson Fellowship
*______________* *Robert J. Morgan
*February 25, 2001 ---- *Today *we're coming to the passage in Ephesians that has really been the theme of my ministry here over these 21 years, and a theme and a passage that is very precious and dear to me. I'm talking about Ephesians 5:18 the theme of the "Fullness of the Holy Spirit." I became acquainted with this passage in 1971 at age 19. I believe that I genuinely trusted Christ as my Savior in childhood, although I can't remember the exact day and time. My high school years and my first year in college were pretty wobbly, and when I transferred as a sophomore to Colombia Bible College in September of 1971, I was confused and backslidden, weak and insecure both personally and spiritually. My father and my pastor took me to Columbia, South Carolina and dumped me out on the steps of the dormitory. I found my room, unpacked my bags, and, by and by, two guys walked in, suitcases in hand, who said they were my roommates. One of them, Bill McCoy, was from Orlando. He was a "military brat" who had gotten into surfing while his dad had been stationed in Hawaii, and there he had also gotten heavenly involved in drugs. We struck up a friendship very quickly, and that evening he shared with me his testimony. As everyone my age knows, the late-1960s and early-1970s were very difficult for Americans. The Vietnam War was raging, university campuses were marked by rioting and sit-ins. Four students at Kent State University were shot and killed by the National Guard. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy traumatized the nation. And a counter-culture developed among young people, marked by a casting off of restraints. This was the era of Woodstock, Timothy Leary, and of the hippies. But the Holy Spirit finds young people wherever they are, and a revival broke out in segments of this counter culture. Time Magazine did their famous cover story of the Jesus Movement, and these young, converted hippies were called Jesus people. My friend Bill McCoy had come to Christ during this movement and here he was now, enrolled at Bible College. As he shared his testimony with me, I was very deeply moved. His eyes were so fresh and excited, and his joy was like that of someone who had been… born again. It was one of the most dramatic and wonderful stories I had ever heard. Then he asked me to share my testimony, and it quickly became apparent I didn't have much of a testimony to share. At length that evening, he said, "You know what's wrong with you? You need to come to the Lord in full surrender and be filled with the Spirit." At first, I didn't know what he meant, and I didn't like the sound of it. The only time I'd heard the phrase "filled with the Spirit" used was when referring to people who did bizarre things such as screaming and shouting and falling over in trances and claiming to perform odd miracles and shouting out gibberish. I thought of a little Pentecostal church near my home in Elizabethton where, on occasion, all the members would be seen running out the door, dashing around the church, and flying back in without missing a note of their hymn. But Bill went on to explain that being filled with the Spirit means simply that Jesus Christ has control of one's life, that we've made Him Lord of all the corners and crevices of our lives. As we are filled with the Holy Spirit, the character of Christ begins to develop within us. I pondered this decision for 24 hours, because I wasn't sure I was ready to give up everything for Christ. But the next night, September 2, 1971, I knelt at an old vinyl sofa at the end of the hall and turned my life over to the Lord and asked Him to fill me with His Spirit. I remember going to bed a couple of hours later, looking out the open window of my dormitory. The night was a hot, South Carolina night, and the sky was clear. The moon was out. I was too excited to sleep. I had found what I'd been looking for all my life, and for the first time in my life I was genuinely excited about Jesus Christ, and I couldn't wait to share Him with others. That night was the turning point in my life. In the days immediately following, Bill and another student, Joe Medina, drew me into some discipleship Bible studies, and there (as well as in my classes at Columbia Bible College), I made the acquaintance of Ephesians 5:18. I've been preaching this message ever since. I'm not sure I have a sermon on this passage that you haven't heard in one form or another at least a dozen times, but if nothing else this morning, let me stir up your minds by way of pure remembrance. Let's read together this passage, a very dear passage to me, from Ephesians 5:18-21. } *A Command* Here we have four things: A command, a contrast, a comparison, and a change. First, the command: Don't get drunk on wine, but be filled with the Spirit. The word "drunk" comes from the Greek root word mevqh (meátheµ, /meth´-ay), /from which I'm quite sure we get our English word "methane." It referred to alcoholic cider or mulled wine, and Paul warns that being intoxicated leads to debauchery. Here the Greek word for debauchery is ajswtiva (asoµtia, /as-o-tee´-ah) /which is found several times in the Bible. For example, we're told in Luke 15:13 that the prodigal son wasted his substance on ajswtiva--riotous living. It is the idea of moral looseness. People do things when they're intoxicated that they wouldn't do otherwise, and it is never for the better. Somehow the things we do when we're drunk are never good things. We aren't to get drunk. Instead, we are to be filled with the Spirit, and I'd like to point out several things about this verb /filled:/ It is in the imperative mood. In other words, it is a command given to all Christians. Everyone in this room who claims to be a follower of Jesus Christ should right now at this very moment be filled with the Spirit. It is incumbent upon us. It is an imperative, a command. It is also a present tense verb, and in the Greek language this implies continuous action; we are to be filled with the Spirit continuously, repeatedly, again and again, over and over. It is also a plural verb. Paul here isn't just speaking to one person like you or me. He is addressing every person in the church. This verb is also in the passive voice. It doesn't mean "fill yourself," but "let yourself be filled." We can't fill ourselves with the Holy Spirit, but as we come to the Lord in full submission, He fills us with the Spirit, and so it is translated here, "Be filled…," or "Let yourselves be filled…." *A Contrast* Second, there is a contrast. Notice the conjunction. " Do not be drunk with wine, /but/ be filled with the Spirit…." Don't do the one; instead, do the other. *A Comparison* Third, there is a comparison. There is a parallel between getting drunk and being Spirit-filled. That's a very strange thing to say, but notice that Paul didn't say, "Don't commit immorality, but be filled with the Spirit." He didn't say, "Don't commit murder, but be filled with the Spirit. He said, "Don’t get drunk, but be filled with the Spirit." Because there are some ways in which being filled with the Spirit is a little like being drunk. When a person is pulled over by a police officer for drunk driving, he is charged with DUI--driving under the influence of alcohol. When we are filled with the Spirit we are under the influence of the Holy Spirit. When a person is drunk, he is being controlled by a force outside of himself. Being filled with the Spirit means that we are controlled and empowered by the Holy Spirit. *A Change* That leads to my fourth point, there is a change that comes over the Spirit-filled person. There are supernatural Christ-like characteristics that develop in Spirit-filled Christians, three of them as given here in Ephesians. First, people who are filled with the Spirit can't help singing. They love the songs of Zion. They love the music of the church. In their heart there rings a melody. Look at verses 18-19: /Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music in your heart to the Lord./ Now, the NIV divides this into three different sentences for clarity, but in the original, as Paul wrote this, is was one of his famous run-on sentences, and he uses participles: speaking to yourselves… singing… making music. How do you know if you're Spirit-filled? What is the evidence? Well, are you singing? Is there a song on your lips and a melody on your heart? And notice the variety of songs we're to sing. We're to sing psalms--that is, we're to sing the Scripture, to turn the words of the Bible into songs. We do that when we sing songs like "As the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longeth after thee," which is from Psalm 42. Or, to use a completely different example, Handel's /Messiah/ is essentially Scriptures set to music. It's really a shame that only during the Christmas season do we listen to Handel's wonderful rendition of Isaiah 9:6: /For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given…./ Ruth Graham tells of a musician who lived in a land where God's music was not allowed to be played. Daily he took out his score of Handel's /Messiah/ and placed it on the dining room table. There, on the table, his fingers silently and diligently played through the entire score. He was making music that only God could hear. Then, we're also to sing the hymns. A. W. Tozer used to say that a Christian was a person of two books--his Bible and his hymnbook. And I love the grand old hymns, especially the great body of English hymnody--most especially Watts and Wesley. /Jesus shall reign wherever the sun
Does his successive journeys run;
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more./ And then we're to sing spiritual songs, and I think that a lot of our contemporary choruses fall into that category. One of the things we try to do here at The Donelson Fellowship is to incorporate all these things into a blended service of worship and praise. But this command isn't just for Sunday mornings. We're to live with God's music in our hearts, in our minds, and on our lips seven days a week. The second characteristic of being filled with the Spirit is an attitude of thanksgiving. Here, again, Paul is writing a run-on sentence with participles. …/singing and making music in your hearts to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ./ This goes a little deeper into our hearts. It's often easy for us to have a song on our lips, but to have thanksgiving in our hearts is a greater challenge. But this, too, is the work and the evidence of the Holy Spirit. One of the books we read to our children when they were younger was /Alexander's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. /It's about a little boy who has a hard day. It begins something like this, "I went to bed with chewing gum in my mouth and woke up with chewing gum in my hair, and I just knew it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day." Well, on Monday or Tuesday of this past week, when I sat down for my devotions and started writing a few lines in my journal, it was something like this: "I woke up late, and Grace was late to school today (again), and the trash cans had to be taken out, and the dog nuzzled his dirty nose against my white overcoat, and the drive-in window McDonald's took five times longer than usual, and they poured my coffee out of an old pot, and I just know it's going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day." I hadn't planned on writing those words, but they just showed up on the paper. As I read them, I thought of Alexander and burst into laughter. And I had one of the best days I've had in a long time. It's all in our attitude. Yesterday I was flying back to Nashville from Tulsa, and the weather forecaster in Oklahoma had warned us that there would be terrible storms across the Southeast, so I was concerned about my flight. But the pilot pierced the clouds and got us above them. As I looked down on those magnificent, billowing, brilliant clouds, I thought to myself that storms are beautiful from the upper-side. We all have terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days. We all have stormy days. But when we're filled with the Spirit--when we've placed every part and parcel of our lives under the control of Jesus Christ--it affects our attitude. We find ourselves always giving thanks to God the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, there is a third characteristic of the Spirit-filled life, and this one is even deeper and more difficult. Look at verse 21: /Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ./ Here, too, in Paul's original, this is part of his run-on sentence, and we have a participle: …submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. In other words, people who are Spirit-filled are humble. This week I've been reading a fascinating book, written in the 1800s--/The Autobiography of Peter Cartwright. /Cartwright was a circuit-riding Methodist preacher when Tennessee and Kentucky were still frontier areas, and he preached and ministered in this very area where we are today. I've never read such stories like the ones Cartwright tells. For example, in one of his preaching services there were two young men, both well-off and from respectable families, and they were distant relatives of each other. But they were both interested in the same young lady, and in their rivalry they had become bitter enemies. One day they got into a fight, and it left them so embittered that each of the young men swore to kill the other. Each heard that the other one was going to attend Cartwright's evangelistic rally, and so they both showed up on Sunday morning for church--with their pistols. Cartwright warned the audience to flee from the coming wrath of God, to flee to Christ; and when he gave the invitation, he noticed that one of the young men responded and was kneeling at one side of the altar, and the other at the other side. He went first to the one, prayed with him, and asked for his pistol. Then he went and prayed with the other young man and took his pistol as well. As the young men rose from the altar they suddenly saw each other and instantly started for one another. For a second, the audience held its breath, but only for a second, because the young men instantly embraced each other and from that day they were brothers in Christ. You know, most of the problems we have with other people would be resolved in we'd get our own hearts right with the Lord. We are too proud and stubborn by nature. But when we are filled with the Spirit, a new attitude grows with us. We become submissive. This shows up in our marriages. In the remainder of chapter 5, Paul says, in summery, that if you have a marriage in which the husband and wife are both filled with the Holy Spirit, there will be humility and submission in that home. The wife will give her husband what he badly needs, which is respect. And the husband will give the wife what she badly needs, which is affection. The same ideas continue in chapter 6 regarding parents and children, and employers and employees. The teaching of the Spirit-filled life is one of the most beautiful and wonderful and life-transforming messages in the Bible, and I try to ask the Lord every day to fill me with His Holy Spirit. But it requires full submission and surrender to Him. Is there something in your life today that is grieving or hindering the Holy Spirit? Is there an unconfessed sin? Is there an area that you're holding back from Christ? /Don't be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music in your hearts to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ./ Or as the old hymn puts it: /Have Thine own way, Lord,/ /Have Thine own way./ /Hold o'er my being/ /Absolute sway./ /Fill with Thy Spirit/ /Till all can see/ /Christ, always, only,/ /Living in me./