Be Filled with the Spirit

15 Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, 16 making the most of your time, because the days are evil. 17 So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; 20 always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; 21 and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.

[PRAYER]

It will help us to remember that Paul is writing to the saints at Ephesus who are faithful in Christ Jesus (1:1).

It will help us to remember that he is writing to those who have been sealed in Jesus by the Holy Spirit of promise, Who is a down payment of their inheritance of salvation (1:13-14).

It will help us to remember that these are those who have access in the Spirit to the Father (2:18).

It will help us to remember that they are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit (2:22).

It will help us to remember that these are those who have been sealed by the Holy Spirit of God for the day of redemption (4:30).

But it might confuse us that Paul writes to these saints, these sealed-by-the-Spirit Christians—do not get drunk with wine… but be filled with the Spirit.

[INTER] Why does Paul write this? Was drunkenness really a problem for these saints—these holy ones? And if they were sealed by the Spirit, were they not already filled with the Spirit?

This might be a little confusing at first, but as the Spirit guides our thoughts about these commands in Ephesians 5:18, all will become clear.

[TS] There are two COMMANDS in this verse—one negative and one positive.

Let’s take a look at each…

Major Ideas

The Negative Command: Do Not Get Drunk with Wine (Eph. 5:18a)

Ephesians 5:18 NASB95

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

[EXP] The Bible has nothing good to say about literal drunkenness.

The Bible mentions the physical effects of drunkenness as staggering around, receiving wounds and beatings, vomiting, and hallucinations. It mentions the mental effects as a false sense of one’s own abilities and strengths. It mentions the spiritual effects as the numbing of one’s self to God and all religious thought (Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary).

The Bible mentions several who get drunk, and they always suffer some bad thing as a result. For example…

Noah got drunk and brought shame on himself by exposing his nakedness (Gen. 9:21). Lot’s daughters got him drunk, and Lot became the father of his own grandchildren (Gen. 19:33). Nabal got drunk one night, heard some bad news when hungover, and died ten days later (1 Sam. 25:36). David got Uriah drunk and then he had Uriah killed (2 Sam. 11:13).

And we could keep going. We could talk about Amnon, Elah, Ben-hadad, Ahasuerus, Belshazzar—all got drunk and all suffered some misfortune in the midst of or shortly after their drunkenness.

Proverbs 20:1 says…

Proverbs 20:1 NASB95

1 Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, And whoever is intoxicated by it is not wise.

Drunkenness is foolishness. This is one reason Paul brings it up here in this passage on wise living.

The wise do not get drunk with wine.

Drunkenness was a big problem in the ancient world. Drunkenness was such a problem that the Jewish philosopher, Philo, tried to warn people off of drunkeness by writing treatise on the subject called, On Drunkenness. But despite the obvious foolishness of drunkenness, people still got drunk.

In Ephesus and other cities there was a cult that worshipped Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, merry-making, and insanity. He was often pictured inebriated or accompanied by wine. The grapevine was the symbol of his drunken cult. As a part of their worship, cult members would get drunk and, being controlled by their drunkenness, engage in all manner of immorality and violence. The cult became so disorderly that at one point the Roman Senate banned it.

This is likely the sort of drunkenness that Paul has in mind when he writes, “Do not get drunk with wine.”

Wine is, of course, fermented grape juice. It intoxicates when consumed in excessive quantities. To get drunk means to come under its intoxicating influence, which really means to lose self-control. (As one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is self-control, so one of the fruits of wine or alcohol in general is a loss of self-control.) And as Ephesians 5:18 says, Christians should not get drunk with wine because drunkenness is dissipation.

Some versions translate the Greek word behind dissipation as debauchery (ESV, NIV, NET) and others translate it as excess (KJV, Tyndale).

The Christian Standard Bible actually translates the word here in Ephesians 5:18 as reckless living and in other places as wildness or wild living (Titus 1:6; 1 Pet. 4:4).

It’s “behavior which shows a lack of concern or thought for the consequences of an action,” (Greek-English Lexicon of the NT). It “refers to a life-style by which one destroys oneself,” (Holman Standard Bible).

It’s the wild, loose, reckless, riotous, foolish, wasteful living that caused the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable to squander his inheritance (Luke 15:13). One paraphrase says of that prodigal son, “There (in that distant country), undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had,” (The Message).

That’s the life of the drunkard. The dissipated life. The wasted life. And we Christians are told not to be filled with, intoxicated by, under the influence of wine or anything else that leads us to waste our lives.

We are to live lives of purpose.

We are to invest in eternity by being filled with the Spirit.

[TS] That brings us to the positive command.

The Positive Command: Be Filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18b).

Ephesians 5:18 NASB95

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

[EXP] There is a lot of confusion today regarding the Holy Spirit. Some say that the church today is guilty of ignoring the Holy Spirit. I recently heard about a Christian saying, “You know, it’s not all about Jesus. It’s about the Spirit too.” The truth is the Holy Spirit would say, “It’s all about Jesus.”

The Holy Spirit said, “It’s all about Jesus,” by teaching the Apostles all things concerning Jesus and reminding them of all the things Jesus said. Jesus said in John 14:26…

John 14:26 NASB95

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.

The Holy Spirit said, “It’s all about Jesus,” by being sent by Jesus to testify about Jesus. In John 15:26 Jesus said…

John 15:26 NASB95

26 “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me,

The Holy Spirit said, “It’s all about Jesus,” by glorifying Jesus and by declaring the truth of Jesus. In John 16:14 Jesus said…

John 16:14 NET 2nd ed.

14 He will glorify me, because he will receive from me what is mine and will tell it to you.

We could go on to talk about the Holy Spirit being the Spirit of Christ or the Holy Spirit inspiring the Word of God/the Word of Christ—the Word that testifies about Jesus, or we could go on to talk about Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles so powerfully and they all began to preach about the Holy Spirit, right?

Wrong.

They began to preach about Jesus crucified and resurrected because the Holy Spirit says, “It’s all about Jesus.”

The Holy Spirit is third person of the Holy Trinity. He is coeternal and coequal with the Father and the Son, so that when the Father and the Son are glorified, the Holy Spirit is glorified.

He is the Comforter, Helper, the Intercessor, and, as I’ve said, the One who inspired the Scriptures we study this morning and every time we gather together as the church—these Scriptures that all point to Jesus.

But here’s the question Ephesians 5:18 would have us ask: What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? And I’m afraid there is confusion on this point as well.

Some teach that being filled with the Spirit is the same as being baptized by the Spirit.

We are baptized by the Holy Spirit when we believe on Jesus Christ for salvation. By the working of the Spirit, we are joined to Christ Jesus in His death and resurrection through faith. Our sins are thus wiped away, and we are made righteous before Holy God.

But being filled with the Spirit is something different, and its the word filled that throws us.

For example, if I ask you to imagine yourself filling up a jar, you might imagine yourself beginning to pour water into an empty jar.

Or perhaps there was already some water in the jar and you imagine yourself filling the jar to the top.

But neither picture is what it means to be filled by the Holy Spirit.

You see, when we are saved, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us, and we can never do anything to have less of Him and we will never do anything to have more of Him.

But what we can do—and what Ephesians 5:18 is calling us to do—is fill our lives with more of the Spirit’s influence.

This is the contrast that Paul was making to these Ephesians. Perhaps some of them used to belong to the Dionysus cult. Perhaps some of them were them were having a hard time breaking away from drunkenness, the intoxicating influence of paganism or immorality or worldliness in general. Paul told them to break away from all of that by allowing the Spirit to influence more and more of their lives.

That’s the word that we should think about when we think about being filled by the Spirit—we should think about the word influence.

Everyone is influenced by something or someone or multiple somethings or someones. No one, no matter how independent, is uninfluenced. The question is, do you know what is influencing you?

Do you know who is influencing you?

Do you know what is influencing you?

How do you know if the Spirit is influencing you?

Well, the Spirit glorifies Jesus, so if you’re being influenced to glorify Jesus, you’re being influenced by the Spirit.

His influence comes to us most often through Scripture and prayer, but the Christ-exalting influence of the Spirit may come to us through a Christ-exalting conversation, Christ-exalting media (e.g., Christ-exalting movies, music, or books); His influence may come to us during a Christ-exalting walk through nature, or any number of Christ-exalting activities.

As the verses that follow Ephesians 5:18 say, the Spirit’s influence leads us to exalt Christ in singing (v. 19), in thanksgiving (v. 20), in submission to one another (v. 21), and in a million other ways, but we won’t exalt Christ at all unless the Spirit is filling our lives.

[ILLUS] Barry Cooper, a Bible teacher with Ligonier Ministries put it like this, he said, “Imagine you want every room in your home painted white. And imagine that you already have a painter standing in the living room ready to paint. The problem is that some of the rooms are locked.

“The solution isn’t to invite the painter in a second time or invite him to some how be even more present that he currently is. What is needed is for the doors to be unlocked so that the painter can work.

“Although the Holy Spirit comes to live in us when we first believe. Most of us have ‘locked rooms,’ parts of our character are that not immediately changed by His presence.

“When Paul calls us to be filled with the Holy Spirit then, he calls us to unlock the doors and joyfully submit every aspect of our character and lives to Him, to be increasing conformed to the character of Christ who lives in you.

“So, the call to be filled with the Spirit, doesn’t imply that you somehow don’t have enough of Him. You do, if you are a believer. But it does imply that there are parts of your character where you have not yet fully yielded to His sanctifying work

“Where is that true for you? What doors do you need to unlock in order to be filled with the Spirit?”

Conclusion

[PRAYER]

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