Filled With the Spirit — Part One

the following message by Alistair beg is made available by truth for life for more information visit us online at truth for invite you to turn with me to Colossians chapter 3 and we're going to read the first 16 or 17 verses of Colossians 3 which provides us at least in part something of a parallel passage to our verses today in Ephesians 5 so Colossians 3 and verse 1 if then you have been raised with Christ seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God set your minds on things that are above not on things that are on earth for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God when Christ who is your life appears then you also will appear with him in glory put to death therefore what is earthly in you sexual immorality impurity passion evil desire and covetousness which is idolatry on account of these the wrath of God is coming in these you too once walked when you were living in them but now you must put them all away anger wrath malice slander and obscene talk from your mouth do not lie to one another seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator here there is not Greek and Jew circumsized and uncircumcised barbarian City and slave free but Christ is all and in all put on then as God's chosen ones holy and beloved compassionate hearts kindness humility meekness and patience bearing with one another and if one has a complaint against another forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you so you also must forgive and above all these put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony and let the Peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful 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 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 amen Lord this is the great longing of our hearts as we turn to the Bible our lives individually and collectively may be the very place where you come to live by the Holy Spirit so help us as we look to the Bible now in Jesus name Amen well I encourage you to turn to Ephesians and to chapter 5 as we pick up our studies there perhaps be helpful for us just to read from verse 15 through to 21 Paul writes look carefully then how you walk not as unwise but as wise making the best use of the time because the days are evil therefore do not be foolish but understand what the will of the Lord is and do not get drunk with wine for that is do but surely but be filled with the spirit addressing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ well here we are in chapter 5 and moving on towards the end of the book all of our studies have flowed from essentially the beginning of chapter 4 most recently where Paul has urged those who are in Christ to make sure that they are walking or conducting their life in a manner that is worthy of the fact that they belong to Jesus he's writing to those who are in Christ who have heard the word of the gospel who have believed who have been sealed with the Holy Spirit and now he says to them I want you to make sure that your life and your lifestyle bears testimony to this truth and we've tried to say very carefully and consistently all the way through these the second half of his letter that the imperatives all the calls to action to do or to cease from doing are grounded in the indicative in other words in the things that are true of the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ he's not issuing a kind of ethical treatise urging people to try and fix themselves to try and become something they're not but rather as we've tried to say consistently he wants them to become what they are and classically actually if you turn back a page and or two in your Bible this comes across so strikingly in the fourth verse of chapter 2 we're having outlined the state of humanity outside of Christ he then says however although you were once like this but now God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us he says even though we were dead men and women by his grace we've been saved and triumphantly there in verse 6 and he's raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus not so that we would just be living in some rarefied and obscure atmosphere but saw that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness towards us in Christ he's a wonderful terrific picture and when we studied that some months ago now I remember I quoted to you from an old musical by Jimmy and Carol Owens that was around certainly in the early 70s in the United Kingdom and these words you are the children of the kingdom of God here's our identity in Christ you are the children of the kingdom of God you're the chosen ones for whom the Savior came you're his noble new creation by the Spirit and the blood you're the church that he has built to bear his name and then keep looking down were seated in the heavenlies God's mighty power has raised us overall keep looking down above all principalities for we have died and risen with the Lord so it is by virtue of our union with Christ our identity in Christ and some of you this morning hearing me using this phraseology may find yourself just scratching your head and say I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean well the rest of the congregation would not be happy if I go all the way back to chapter 1 and start again but I do want to tell you that if you have questions along these lines we want to give you a Bible to take we want to offer the chance to pray with you or talk with you so that the message might come across very clearly Jesus Christ is great and Jesus Christ is the one who gives us a new heart and makes us new people and we would we would love the opportunity to talk that through with you now it is to such individuals that Paul is writing and in verse 15 here of chapter 5 he has given them this exhortation steady as you go we might paraphrase it look carefully then how you walk is this he's been emphasizing this again and again the walking of the Christian peripeteia the it's an expression as a metaphor our way of life so you should walk in a way that is worthy of your calling he comes back to it on various occasions and now again be careful in the way you walk and then he then he gives us these three contrasts do not be foolish but instead be wise don't waste your time but instead make good use of your time and now in verse 18 and don't get drunk but be filled with the spirit incidentally and in passing for those of us who are tempted to keep telling people you know that the Christian life is not about do's and don'ts have to be very very careful about what we're saying when we say that because the Christian life has a tremendous amount about do's and don'ts it's not that the do's and the don'ts are upfront in order that we might find ourselves accepted with God on the strength of that but that once we are in Christ in order for us to manifest the change that is ours in Christ it has to do with making sure that we do what we're supposed to do and that will refrain from doing what we attempted to do tempted to be foolish instead of wise tend to just a waste our time but the Christian employer and employee doesn't they don't waste their time they realize that time is a gift they don't trivialize the passage of time they seize it and in the same way as we consider now in this matter of the influence on our lives now there is a little phrase there that I want to pause on because I didn't when we looked at verse 16 but I want just for a moment to recognize what Paul is saying there when he says the days are evil the days are evil it's a quite striking statement I think you would agree and what Paul is not saying is that these are peculiarly evil days in Ephesus they may well have been but it is a comment on the fact that the world in which we live is a world in which evil is present that the world in which we live is a fallen world and the reason I want to pause on it is because I've noted and perhaps you would have identified this too that the word evil or the notion of evil is seldom a part of people's vocabulary in our day I think we could see certainly in Western culture at this point in history and definitely here in America I almost affixed desire to make sure that we move of ourselves away from any notion of evil or badness or wrongness at all now you can test this out by just thinking and by considering the literature and the statements that are made in the media I wonder if you agree with me that moral categories moral categories right wrong categories have been replaced largely in our culture with psychological categories so that the problem with the child in kindergarten or the student in the halls of the university will not then be determined in relationship to right and wrong as much as it will be determined in relationship to for example where they somehow or another misguided where they unfortunate where they victimized where are they all of these different things which they may well have been as if somehow or another these symptoms are actually the issue but if you think about our culture as it endeavors to address these things all symptomatically without any awareness of the underlying condition then it's virtually program for futility so for example you go to the average parent-teacher conference and the teacher is explaining to you about your children and then she she seems to be a little bit this way and a little bit that way and a little rambunctious and this and that the next day you just cut through it yes I understand she's bad oh no says the teacher she's not bad no no no she's not bad although she's worse than bad she's evil oh no you can say evil you could we can't have this in the school there any conversation like this at all no but that's what the Bible actually says you see now people say well this is a dreadful thing for the Bible to say no follow with me follow with me you see unless there is a proper diagnosis then there is no possibility of cure so symptomatically we're trying to deal with the fact that everything is messed up now what the Bible says is that we live in a fallen world so that the days are evil all the days are evil not they weren't evil in the garden before Adam sinned there was perfection there was no contradiction to God there at all perfection the world we know it today is not the world as God made it but is the world as man by sin has spoiled it and as a result of that since the fall men and women by nature defy God's Authority disobey God's law reject God's Word and refuse God's son your sensible people think it out people say we're not going to obey the law of God and what it has to say about marriage for example I don't have to submit to that kind of authority I'm on my own authority and what are you talking about about that Bible of yours there are many possible ways to think about God and his revelation and so and I I reject the notion of an authoritative and sufficient Word of God and I at the same time I'm prepared to give some credence to Jesus of Nazareth but I refuse to accept him as a savior and a lord and as a king man consequently is hard pressed to explain why we are as we are man kWe man recognizes that our world is dark it is broken and it is full of hatreds we say well it's a beautiful world and it's Thanksgiving why do we have to be so gloomy I agree with all of that into all of the brightness and gladness and joyfulness of it all the achievements and the advancements and the programs and the progress the fact of the matter is that in the heart of man there is a deep deep shadow there is a deep darkness that that shines into or overshadows even our greatest achievements and man has great difficult rying to make sense of it war in our world is simply the expression of the war in our hearts we have the capacity to be jealous of one another to be spiteful to be hateful no one ever taught us this we never went to a course I'm sure you never went to a course on how to be an absolute pest yeah chapter one being our complete royal nuisance in your family no you're a natural at it and if you're not my wife says I am it is just there it is endemic in us and so when nations go to war nations are the collective expression of individuals so why would you be surprised that nations fight Nations sends husbands fight wife's since parents fight children since employers fight employees since the brokenness is there I came across an interesting quote as I was thinking along this line along these lines this week by the fellow who was the founder of Twitter F Williams because one of the things about social media in the last quarter of a century or so has been with the expansiveness of it all a kind of optimism that this is probably going to really fix a lot of things for us there the fighter we can all communicate like this we can all be in touch with one another and there is tremendous joy and that isn't there I mean who would ever thought that you could FaceTime across the world with your friends and your loved ones is fantastic but this is f Williams quotes I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas the world is automatically going to be a better place I was wrong about that I was wrong about that because what do we know we know that all of the benefits that are represented in this our counter balanced by all of the other stuff which is dark and undermining and broken and hateful and evil you see the only way that we'll ever get to this is from our Bibles and that's why when we've gone through Ephesians and we've had to wrestle with these statements by Paul you were dead you were sinful you were accountable and so on it comes across with just a resting chilling engagement doesn't it and we go back to Paul as he writes his great treatise in in Romans chapter 1 and how he explains there and we've said it again and again that the fact that although God has made himself known in his world that man men and women have chosen to disregard that they knew God they didn't honor him as God they didn't give thanks to him that became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened darkened and claiming to be really wise they became fools and they exchanged the glory of an immortal God for things that creep and crawl and fly so in other words they said well no we're not gonna have a god to whom we are accountable and who created the universe and sustains it by the word of his power if we run of any kind of God we'll have a little God a little God that will will answer our questions and deal with our dilemmas and fulfill the obligations that we present him there's no God at all that's an idol and the implications of it he says since they did not see fit to acknowledge God God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done how did that work out they were filled with all manner of unrighteousness evil covetousness malice full of envy murder strife deceit maliciousness they are gossips slanderers haters of god insolent haughty boastful inventors of evil disobedient to their parents foolish faithless heartless ruthless though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die they not only do them but they give approval to those who practice them in critique of life without God isn't it and a word of God through the Prophet Jeremiah in brevity is straightforward the heart of a man or a woman is deceitful above all things deceitful so we tell lies to ourselves about ourselves we tell lies about the real predicament of our world about our marriage about our home about our addictions about our conjectures so what possible hope is there well God speaks through the Prophet Jeremiah and says the heart is deceitful above all things and through the prophet Ezekiel then he says and I will give you a new heart I will give you a new heart you see here's here's what's needed isn't it and here we are at the the center of heart surgery in the entire United States tomorrow as every day there will be those who are the beneficiaries of the transforming power of heart surgery they will go in breathless and impoverished and then the goodness of God they will come out breathing and enriched there's not enough to give them a little cream not enough to give them a little - they need a new heart and that's what the Bible says so you see the bad news is more than impacted by the good news first I need to recognize what the predicament is I live in an evil world why because I myself am evil even on my best is that's who I am well what possibility is there for me I've tried this I've tried that and I try to fix a number of things in my life but I really taking one step forward and two steps back what did you say that he'll give you a new heart you get a heart transplant yes that's the gospel that's why Nicodemus was stunned by it when Jesus said to him you know I want to tell you Nicodemus unless you're born again you will never see or enter the kingdom of heaven the word there's use there's for regeneration in order that you might be reborn that's what it takes and only in the gospel is it provided so I've paused on this purposefully I reckoned that some will want to interact with it as you follow it up but let's be very clear in light of this the reason Jesus came wasn't to show us how to live he didn't come as an example Jesus did not come and offer himself as your life coach Jesus came to bear our sin in his body on the cross in order that we then might die to sin in Christ and live unto righteousness in other words that in discovering that Jesus took the penalty that I deserve bore the punishment which is mine to face and grants to me all the benefits of his perfect life and his sufficient atonement then the word comes so be careful how you walk don't waste your time use your time don't be foolish be wise and now don't get drunk be filled with a spirit you see here's one of the classic illustrations of folly folly drunkenness and he highlights it he points it out to them now when you think about it it's not it's not a hard thing to understand the the context of Ephesus was such that not only was it dominated the skyline dominated by the Temple of Artemis the goddess of love but it was also engaged with frequency in festivals related to Bacchus who was the god of wine and so the Ephesians were very familiar with these occasions when one of the expressions of what it meant to be engaged in this wonderful festival was to get completely blasted to be completely intoxicated and so the con texe of ephesus would have been that many of these people before they had found a new life in Jesus we're all part and parcel of that they were the ones who were intoxicated running through the fields in the vineyards and and just enjoying themselves immensely and yet falling over in a dead heat and so fall is right into people for whom this is not sort of arms land theology some of them that was probably a big part of their life and he saw issues a warning since you know that was the old stuff you don't want to start that again and then for others for whom that had never been a part of things but who had now we discovered that they had a freedom in the Lord Jesus Christ some of them might then be tempted to take that freedom and to abuse it to the point where they actually fall foul of enjoying the things that God has provided for them in other words that some needed to hear the exhortation of Paul which he gives in 1st Corinthians 6 where he's talking about how all things are lawful but not all things are beneficial and in light of that he says here's my general rule of thumb I will not be mastered by anything other than my Lord and Master Jesus Christ so I'm not going to allow anything to take control over my life and one of the areas that where there is a peculiar potential for doing so which is why Paul addresses it here is in the realm of alcohol now you see what Paul is doing is you know this is not a he's not giving a sermon here on temperance as it were he's continuing his pattern don't be foolish be wise don't waste your time make good use of time don't get drunk be filled with the spirit so his emphasis is actually on life in the spirit it's positive the negative sets of the positive and what he's going to show is that when life is lived in the spirit it makes an impact on what it means to be a husband and a wife in marriage it impacts the nature of home life in terms of parents and children if you just follow the text it will have an implication on employers and employees which is down there in the beginning of chapter 6 and it has an impact on how the church then lives in a world in which the evil one opposes it so make sure that you have that clearly in your mind he introduces the importance of life in the spirit in this way because of comparison and contrast I remember those essays at school where you gather you turn the paper over and I said compare and contrast and I can still feel the chills in my back but a compare and contrast the leadership style of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and if you have to make two columns the compare column the contrast call them because if you start thinking you're on compare and you've moved already the contrast it's a it's a dilemma I mean because the time is going and anyway that's fine and I don't have to share all my fears publicly with everybody and and I don't have to do any of them anymore but but I've thought about it now because the comparison is is fairly superficial and the contrast is radical the comparison is straightforward when you're drunk you're under the influence of alcohol when you're filled with a spirit you're under the influence of God's Spirit in that sense it is comparable but really that's where the comparison stops because the contrast is far more significant because in drunkenness the issue is a loss of control whereas in being filled with a spirit the issue is being brought under control and living under the control of God's Spirit now the word that is used here for drunkenness and it is drunkenness that he's addressing is a word that is also used to depict what happened in this time frame in the in the curing of the skins of animals for the creation of product and they would often take the the skin and they would soak it they would soak it in creams or in substances in order to be able to expand it in order to make it supple in order to make it pliable so that was so that word there is they plunged it in there and it was immersed in there and it was soaked in there that's the word here you're not talking about somebody who's having a glass of wine at their Aunt Mary's graduation party or something he says do not get soaked in this stuff if we want to put it in common parlance he would have said if you've been around today in with his street cred don't get sauced don't get sauced that's what he's saying do not get sauced to be sauced and I looked it up is to experience an altered state of mind that occurs after drinking exorbitant amounts of alcohol that's what he said all right because remember there is a wonderful balance in Scripture and there's another subject matter for today but there is a wonderful balance of Scripture even in Proverbs itself where it is clear that wine is the staple drink if you like that is described in the Bible grain and wine and so on it's the principle drink it's regarded as being among some of God's good gifts it's regarded as a natural part of food and drink that's how it's addressed in Scripture it is acknowledged to that it has the ability in measure to gladden the heart but it then it makes it perfectly clear that it does not provide what is often suggested namely enjoyment and contentment and happiness Paul recognizes that it has a medicinal value remember when he says to Timothy take a little wine for your stomach's a I've heard some people believe that that was to be applied externally that Paul was talking about rub it on your tummy which is an interesting approach to biblical exegesis but never nevertheless the balance is there and in the same section of Proverbs you have the warning that accompanies you see remember Screwtape Lancers remember the Screwtape Letters the the devil says to his to his nephews what wormwood says what we want to try and do is get our enemies that is the followers of Jesus what we want to try and do is get our enemies to take good things that God has given them at the wrong time with the wrong people in the wrong quantity and if we can do that then we really managed to make some significant headway so for example the gift of food may become the occasion of gluttony the gift of sex may become the occasion of fornication the gift of wine they become the occasion of debauchery don't be naive the days are evil you see what he's saying now listen to this in Proverbs here's here's here's Solomon and he's saying to his son said now look you should really listen to what your folks are telling you and he says who has wool who has sorrow who has strife who is complaining who has Wooden's without cause who has redness of eyes those who tarry long over wine those who go to try mixed wine don't look at wine when it's red when his sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly because in the end it bites like a serpent it stings like an adder your eyes will see strange things and your heart utter perverse things you will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea like one who lies on the top of a mast they struck me you will say but I wasn't hurt they beat me but I didn't feel it when shall I awake I must have another drink and what Paul is saying to the believers in Ephesus is look the culture in which you live is this kind of culture there for if you are going to shine as lights in a dark place if you're going to be shining examples amidst a crooked in a perverse generation then don't do this just don't do this because you see alcohol is ultimately a depressant it's offered on the on the advertising to us as a stimulant it may free you up a little bit at the party you talk to your boss or whatever it might be but at the end pharmacologically it is a depressant it depresses the higher centers of the brain and that is why the Corp says can you walk and say yeah of course I can walk yeah yeah but you can walk straight why can't you walk straight because of what it is done to your brain it is affected the realm of self-control of judgment of understanding of balance of speech and the power to discriminate in what I'm saying or in what I'm doing and says Paul the reason it's so significant is because it leads to wantonness or it leads to excess or it leads to debauchery again you don't have to be a genius on this just read the newspaper face things listen to what the Bible has to say the Bible is here in order to guard it and to guide us and to keep us not to restrict us but to Shores where true joy is found where true happiness is found where genuine singing is to be found we come back tonight all being well and we deal with the whole singing aspect of it one of the things about the by the the Bacchus festivals was all the singing the people get intoxicated and then he's saying and as I told you before when you go on the rugby bus and they've had a few beers after the rugby match their songs get filthier the more the beer takes hold why because it is depressed the sensibilities of the brain and the teacher who hasn't been doing any stands up and says boys I think that's quite enough and a few answers will come from the back and they won't be anything that they're proud of either because of what happens by cons though incidentally the word here associa for excess or for debauchery is also the word that is used as an adjective in the story of the prodigal son in Luke chapter 15 where it says that he wasted or squandered his substance with riotous living riotous living so he was completely overwhelmed by it now in direct contrast to that the believer is to be filled with a spirit so that in heart and in mind and in will it is brought under the control and direction of God now unfortunately as in the first service I have utilized all of my time and and I feel bad about it but it's too late now to feel bad about it and so I will pick it up here this evening and we will come to the positive side of things do not go out the door and say there were the the talk this morning was about how if you don't get drunk you can go to heaven the the Bible is saying this to those who are in Christ you were once this way but you're not that way anymore therefore live in the power of the Holy Spirit by the enabling of the grace of God bring your mind under the jurisdiction of its truth settle your heart in the fullness of its provision and bring your will underneath the authority of God's plan and purpose and that then allows the Christian to speak to a generation not in terms of do's and don'ts but to be able to say I once was this way and I'm tempted still to be this way but you know I have in Jesus a wonderful Savior because some of you have a particular background in this and this is difficult for you isn't it and not not everybody who has wrestled with this has had a instantaneous transformation some of my best friends in Scotland who wrestled with alcohol in their lives they would be going along steadily for a while and then BAM then I wouldn't hear from them for a week or two weeks guy would go out for lunch to go to a business lunch they'd never come home ten days later he'd be found somewhere in the South of England after lunch he's got on a train and he'd gone somewhere he didn't know where he was and when he got off he didn't care he was like a man trying to sleep on the top of a mast some of these things although in Christ we are removed from the Dominion of sin instantaneously once and for all we are not removed from the presence of sin and we are not removed either from the promptings and the urgings that one today has back to where we once we're and I incidentally love once it's why we're supposed to exhort and care for one another and watch out for one another and we'll come back to more of that later on father thank you that your word is sufficient for I said cover ceased it just covers everything it shows us where what we really are without you it tells us of the wonder of what you've done in Jesus it speaks with such clarity to the challenges and privileges of living the Christian life and so we pray that that you will so come and invade our hearts and transform our minds and subjugate our wills that we might be on the the receiving end of this exhortation with great joy and that when we come to sing that we might sing out or the fullness of your love for us and to is in Jesus I want to say together and as individuals take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to thee say my heart take my mind my will we pray in Christ's name Amen this message was brought to you from truth for life where the learning is for living to learn more about truth for life with Alistair beg visit us online at truth for

Channel: Alistair Begg

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Keywords: Truth For Life, Christian Living, Christian Thinking, Effects of Sin, Secular Culture, Self-Control, Wisdom, Alistair Begg, Ephesians

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Length: 40min 55sec (2455 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 14 2020