Filled with the Holy Spirit

Ghost - The Holy Spirit  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  29:43
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NOTE:
This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.
Engagement
To get started this morning, I’d like to ask all of you some questions. I’m not looking for a show of hands, but rather just asking you to think about these things. I’ll begin with the main question and then ask some follow up questions.
Are you filled with the Holy Spirit?
It’s very possible that the way you answer that question is going to be influenced to a large degree by your church background. As we discussed in the first week of this series, in some Christian traditions, being filled by the Holy Spirit is viewed as a one time event that is usually evidenced by speaking in tongues. It is often referred to as the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” or the “second blessing” or the “second work of grace”. In other traditions, that might mean some kind of emotional mountaintop experience. And it’s certainly likely that there are some of you who have no idea whatsoever what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit or that you at least have a lot of questions about what it means. Maybe some questions like these:
How does it occur?
Is it something I do or something God does?
What different does it make in my life?
How will I know if I’ve been filled?
Tension
I will do my best to answer those questions this morning as we wrap up this brief four week series on the Holy Spirit. And I think you’ll find that the process of being filled with the Holy Spirit is actually quite simple, although actually doing that is not easy by any means.
Truth
Let me begin by briefly reviewing some of the important things we’ve learned so far in this series that provide us with an important foundation for what we’ll discuss this morning.
REVIEW:
Every disciple of Jesus receives the Holy Spirit at the moment they place their faith in Jesus
From that point forward the Holy Spirit dwells permanently in that person’s life
The Holy Spirit works in our lives to glorify Jesus in a way that is consistent with God’s character and God’s Word
Every believer has at least on spiritual gift that is to be used to build up the body of Christ and give glory to Jesus
So that means that even though I obviously benefit from the work of the Holy Spirit in my life, His work is not primarily about me at all. His primary purpose is to build up the body of Christ and point people to Jesus.
Not surprisingly, being filled with the Holy Spirit is 100% consistent with all we’ve learned so far. Today I’m going to give you the main idea right off the bat and then we’ll take a look at some Scriptures that will help us develop that idea further.

Being filled with the Holy Spirit isn’t about me getting more of the Spirit, it is about the Spirit getting more of me.

At the moment I place my faith in Jesus, I get all of the Holy Spirit. So there is nothing more I can do to ever get more of Him because I already have all of Him. However, as we’ve discussed, He won’t force me to yield to His guidance in my life. So, as we’ll see this morning, being filled with the Spirit is about me dying to self and yielding to His work in my life.
This week I actually discovered something fascinating about the filling of the Holy Spirit that was new to me. In the New Testament, subsequent to the day of Pentecost when the disciples of Jesus first received the Holy Spirit, there are two different kinds of fillings that are distinguished by the use of two different Greek words. I don’t want to get into this in too much detail now, since that would distract from the main idea we want to develop, so we’ll spend some more time talking about this in the Bible Roundtable after the service. But here is the gist of what we see in the early church.
There are 5 times in the book of Acts (Acts 2:4; 4:8, 31; 9:17; 13:9) where a disciple of Jesus received a filling of the Holy Spirit that appears to be a sudden, temporary equipping that that person to boldly proclaim or demonstrate the gospel. In each of those cases the Greek verb pimplemi is used. That kind of filling seems quite similar to the way the Holy Spirit worked in the Old Testament. It is given by God in His sovereign discretion for a specific purpose. I need to do some more study, but my initial thought is that this kind of filling may very well have some kind of connection to the way spiritual gifts operated in the early church and potentially in our lives, too. It is important to note that this kind of filling is never asked for or commanded.
The other kind of filling, the one we’re going to spend the rest of our time on today, is more of a process of maturing in our faith. It is found six times in the book of Acts and once in the passage in Ephesians that we will study this morning (Acts 6:3, 5, 8; 7:55; 11:24; 13:52; Ephesians 5:18). In each of those instances, the Greek verb pleroo is used. This kind of filling, as we will see, is both commanded and something that is expected of all disciples of Jesus.
The most extensive description of that kind of filling is found in Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus so go ahead and turn with me to Ephesians chapter 5 and follow along as I read:
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.
I preached through the book of Ephesians back in 2008 and I’m sure you all remember from that series that Paul’s letter has two main sections. The first three chapters contain doctrine and then the last three chapters show how that doctrine ought to impact the way we live our daily lives. And this passage is right in the middle of that section.
I want to begin by looking at verse 18, which is where Paul writes explicitly about being filled with the Holy Spirit:
And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled (pleroo) with the Spirit.
First let’s look at the verb “be filled” and make some important observations about it that are going to be crucial to our understanding.
“be filled”
imperative = command
This has two important implications:
First this is not optional. This command is addressed to all disciples of Jesus, not just pastors or elders or the “super-spiritual”. So that means it applies to every one of us. A disciple who is not filled with the Spirit is outside God’s will according to Paul.
Second, this means that we play a part in the process. Otherwise there would be no need for a command.
present tense = continuous action
If you’ve been here at TFC for any time at all, you should know this by now. So we could literally translate this “keep being filled”. We know right away that this is not just a one time event, but rather a lifestyle or a process.
passive = work of God
I am not commanded to fill myself. Something or someone else fills me and obviously that is God. So, even though, as we have already seen, I play a part in this process, I am 100% dependent on God to do the filling.
That is an important start, but it still doesn’t tell me what it means to be filled or what I need to do to allow God to fill me. So let’s look next at...
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE “FILLED” WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT?
The verb pleroo that Paul uses here has several nuances to its meaning:
It was often used to describe wind filling up the sails of a ship. So there is the idea of being moved along in our life by the Holy Spirit.
It sometimes conveys the idea of permeation, like salt that permeates meat to flavor and preserve it. So the influence of the Holy Spirit is to permeate every area of our lives.
The primary meaning here is total control. Elsewhere in the New Testament that same verb is used to describe people who were under the control of their emotions like fear (Luke 6:11) or sorrow (John 16:6). This meaning is confirmed here by the direct parallel between being drunk with wine and being filled with the Holy Spirit. A drunk person is under the control of the wine and that person will say or do things they wouldn’t normally do. His mental processes decision making abilities are altered. A disciple of Jesus, on the other hand, is supposed to be under the control of the Holy Spirit.
So we could summarize what it means to be filled by the Holy Spirit by saying it is:
being under the total control of the Holy Spirit
Or, as we said earlier...

Being filled with the Holy Spirit isn’t about me getting more of the Spirit, it is about the Spirit getting more of me.

Allowing the Holy Spirit to be in control of my life means that day-by-day, moment-by-moment, I have to give up control of my life and turn that over to the Holy Spirit. That is a process. It doesn’t happen all at once any more than you get drunk all at once.
This is exactly what Jesus told us we must do:
Luke 9:23 ESV
23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
The cross is an instrument of death. And if I am going to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that I can follow Jesus, then daily I must die to self so that the Spirit can get more of me.
So how do I do that in practical terms? Earlier I mentioned that I was going to do the “In the Bag” message in the middle of the message, so kids if you want to come up now, you can be a part of this.
Application
HOW TO LET THE HOLY SPIRIT FILL ME
I have before me a jar that represents my life. Right now it is filled with blue water that represents me and my desires. The red water in this other jar represents the Holy Spirit and I want Him to fill my life. So how do I do that?
Open
That’s right. Right now the jar has a lid on it, so the first thing I need to do is to open that lid. Otherwise there is no way to get the blue water out of the jar, is there?
Some Christians are like that. They have closed their hearts to the work of the Holy Spirit because they want to do things their way. And when we refuse to cooperate with the Holy Spirit because of that kind of attitude, He won’t force His way into our lives. He’ll allow us to do things our own way and suffer the consequences.
So first of all there must be a willingness. We must have a heart that says, “Lord, I want to be open to you and your Spirit. I am willing to be filled and be under His control right now.”
In his book Forgotten God, Francis Chan writes these insightful words:
So, if you say you want the Holy Spirit, you must first honestly ask yourself if you want to do His will. Because if you do not genuinely want to know and do His will, why should you ask for His presence at all? But if you decide you want to know His will, there will be moments when you have to let go of the fear of what that might mean - when you have to release your grip of control on your life and decide to be led, come what may.
But even though I’ve taken the lid off, I’m still not ready to be filled with the Holy Spirit yet, am I? What else do I need to do first?
Empty
That’s right, I have to empty out the blue water that represents my own wishes and desires. The passage that we’ve been looking at this morning comes right after a long section in chapter 4 and the beginning of chapter 5 where Paul has been writing about putting off the things that characterized the lives of the Ephesian Christians before they became disciples of Jesus.
Ephesians 4:22 ESV
22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,
There is kind of a paradox here, because without the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we are incapable of doing that on our own. But I don’t think Paul is as focused here on our outward behavior as he is on our hearts. He is basically saying that we need to have a heart that no longer wants to hang on to our old way of life. There is a theological word to describe that. Does anyone know what that is?
That’s right - repentance. To repent literally means to “change one’s mind”. In the Bible, it is always changing one’s mind about sin and seeing it from God’s perspective. And that kind of repentance always leads to a change in behavior.
That is exactly what Paul is encouraging the Ephesian disciples to do. He wants them to see their sin from God’s perspective so that they are then motivated to take action to make sure that doesn’t become a lifestyle.
Because we will never stop sinning in our life here on earth, this is something we have to do constantly by asking God to reveal our sin, confessing it to Him and then taking action to make sure we turn away from that sin.
Now that we’ve opened the jar and emptied it, we are finally ready to take the last step, which is?
Fill That’s right, now that I’ve prepared my life for the Holy Spirit to fill me, I can now let Him do that. As we mentioned earlier, that is 100% His work, but I also have a part to play in that process. I have to cooperate with the Holy Spirit. Paul wrote another letter to the church at Colossae which has many parallels to this letter to the church in Ephesus.
In chapter 3 of that letter, we find some wording that is very similar to what we’ve read here in Ephesians 5. Paul also writes there about singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs and about thankfulness to God. And then he follows that with instructions to husbands, wives, parents, children and slaves, which is exactly the same structure we see here in Ephesians. In the midst of that section, Paul gives this command:
Colossians 3:16 ESV
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.
Interestingly, the verb “dwell” that Paul uses here is the very same verb he uses in his other letters to describe how the Holy Spirit takes up permanent residence in our lives (Romans 8:11; 2 Timothy 1:14). So there is undoubtedly a connection between being filled with the Holy Spirit and letting the word of Christ - the Bible - dwell in us richly.
I think a sponge is a great illustration of what this looks like. I can us a sponge to pick up a little water here or there, or I can submerge that sponge into a container of water until it becomes completely saturated. The same thing is true with the Bible. I can read a verse of the day or maybe even read a chapter here and there. While there is nothing particularly wrong with that I will never have God’s word dwelling in me richly if that’s all I do. If I want to have my life saturated with God’s Word, I need to read it consistently, I need to study it and memorize it and meditate it. and most of all I need to apply it.
I hope that now you can see why we’ve said this about being filled with the Holy Spirit:

Being filled with the Holy Spirit isn’t about me getting more of the Spirit, it is about the Spirit getting more of me.

Action
How can I tell if I’m filled with the Holy Spirit? Some people would say that it produces some ecstatic, emotional experience. But that is certainly not what happens according to Paul. Nobody gets zapped, nobody rolls on the floor and laughs, nobody speaks in tongues, nobody barks like a dog. nobody even gets healed. Instead what happens is that relationships with God and with others become right.
In your relationship with God you give thanks and you sing praises. And you do that both personally and in community. All the verbs in this section are plural, which means that not only is this what our individual lives should look like, but this is how the body of Christ should operate, too. That is confirmed by the phrase “one another” in verse 19 and again in verse 21.
And beginning in verse 22 Paul goes on to describe how the filling of the Holy Spirit equips us to be loving husbands and wives, effective parents, obedient children, and good employees and employers.
As we close this message and this series, I want to take you back to a quote from Francis Chan that I shared at the very beginning of this series:
If it’s true that the Spirit of God dwells in us and that our bodies are the Holy Spirit’s Temple, then shouldn’t there be a huge difference between the person who has the Spirit of God living inside of him or her and the person who does not?
Is there a noticeable difference in your life because the Holy Spirit lives inside of you? If so, then all praise goes to God. But if you would honestly answer that question “no”, then what are you going to do about it? Over the last four weeks Ryan and I have shared a lot of information about the Holy Spirit and how He operates in our lives. As I stated at the beginning of this series that is not just so you can have more information, but so that you could experience the working of the Spirit in your life in a new and fresh way.
In a moment, we’re going to sing “Make Room” which is such an appropriate way for us to close this message and this series. But before we do that, I want to give you a few moments to just quietly reflect on what we’ve learned over these past four weeks and ask God to reveal what concrete steps you need to take in your life in order to apply what you’ve learned. I’ve listed a few possible responses in your sermon outline, but it’s very possible that God will put something else on your heart, too. We just ask that you be obedient to Him whatever that might be.
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