Be Filled with the Spirit - Part 3 - The Pathway

I want to ask you to take your Bible and turn to Ephesians. This is going to surprise you. Ephesians chapter 5 back to those verses, verses 18 to 21. I know I'm throwing you a curve ball. I'm changing what I said I was going to do Sunday morning. I did say that we're going to start a verse by verse study through the book of Philippians. And let me tell you why I have chosen not to start tonight. We're going to start next week. That is because there have been several things that we've been studying here that I cannot get out of my mind.

There have been several things that have been on my heart since we were here together in these verses Sunday morning that have really really been on my mind and I really felt like I needed to repackage certain things, emphasize certain things and revisit these verses. And I promise you we'll move on from here but we'll come back to these verses in the future I know. But I know I'm doing something that I rarely do and that is to address something that we study on Sunday mornings on a Wednesday night. Now I'm not committing any crimes. It's just something that I normally don't do.

But like I said I feel the need to take some things that we've been studying concerning being filled with the Spirit, living the life of being filled and controlled with the Spirit. I want to take some of this teaching, Father. I want to combine some of these things and I'm going to combine some of these things to package it for us in a better way. Now why am I doing this? What's the purpose? You might even say, "Pastor, is this too much? Is this redundancy?" Those are legitimate questions.

Now I'm doing this because living the Christian life controlled by the Spirit, filled with the Spirit, always living the Christian life filled with the Spirit is vital. It's vital. It's vital to living a holy and a victorious Christian life. It's vital to living a productive Christian life and ultimately our number one motive should be this. This is vital to living a God glorifying life. And what is the alternative? Turn it around. The alternative would be no victory in the Christian life. The alternative would be for us to be an unproductive Christian or we could be limited in our productivity in our Christian life.

And we could be limiting the glory of God that He should be getting out of our life. So we must, we must understand what it means to be filled with the Spirit. We must strive and work to do all that it takes so as to live our lives under the control of the Spirit day by day, week by week. And notice, we must know the path. We must know the pathway to get to this Spirit controlled life. And we will not get to this place by sitting around, by waiting. We will not attain and keep the Spirit filled life by only understanding what the Scripture say here.

There is a path, I believe, to being a Spirit filled Christian and that's what we're going to study. So I believe there is a pathway to being a Spirit filled Christian. So that's what I want us to do tonight. I'm going to take some of the instruction from Sunday morning sermon, it was a part two Sunday morning. I'm gonna also take some of the instruction from the part one that we covered back in December and I'm going to repackage it into a how-to teaching all together. I'm gonna add to it and again this will be our pathway. I think it'll be clear, I think it'll be laid out for you.

As a matter of fact some of you in your own study you might could tweak this, you might get add to this and I love it when people come up and say, "Pastor, I think you just missed something here." They could be a part of what you shared. That tells me you're studying on your own and you should be. So if I'm gonna title this, this would be filled with the Spirit part three, that's the title I've had. But I'm adding to that by calling this the pathway. I do want to go back and I want to read the verses and then we will not revisit these verses. We'll look at some other verses throughout the message.

Ephesians 5 verse 18, "This is the negative, do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery." We understand their setting. We looked at that thoroughly and here's the positive command, the main command here, "but be filled with the Spirit." And then here are the results, addressing one another in Psalms, 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. And then I love verse 21, "Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ." So first, I want us to look at the fact that we can hinder this work.

We can quench this work. We can even prevent the work of the Spirit in our lives. And that's shocking to some. We can hinder, quench and even prevent this work. Now I'm talking about true believers. There are false believers, there are false converts in the church. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about people who have been converted to Christ and the Spirit does dwell within them. Remember as believers we are indwelled by the Spirit of God. We learned that in John 14, 16 and 17. We are sealed with the Spirit according to Ephesians 1, 13 and 14. We are baptized spiritually into the body of Christ.

That's the church according to 1 Corinthians 12, 13. We are anointed of the Spirit of God according to 1 John 2, 27. So notice how this flows together. In conversion the Spirit comes into us as a believer. Paul says in Romans 8, 9, if we don't have the Spirit we're not converted. And in conversion the Spirit comes and takes up residents and we are sealed, we are preserved by the Spirit. And in conversion we are spiritually baptized or immersed into the body of the church. And then in conversion the Spirit anoints us with this abiding presence for the purpose of teaching us.

But as true believers we must accept the fact and the reality that we can hinder and quench and even prevent the work of the Spirit in our lives. Now I want you to ponder something with me. Think about this. Now don't call any names. How many true believers live their everyday Christian lives hindering and quenching the work of the Spirit in their lives? If we've walked with the Lord for a while and been in the life of the church we can probably think about a few. We might not want to call their name because we want to be nice. But think about that.

How many true believers live their everyday Christian lives hindering and quenching the work of the Spirit in their lives? Now I want to be a little more personal. Do we want to work to find out? Do we want to discover if we are hindering and quenching and even preventing the work of the Spirit in our life? And here's the million dollar question. If you find out that this part of the sermon applies to you will you do anything about it? If we find out that this applies to us will we go down this path? Or not? So let's look at this. I want us to look at three facts here from Scripture. Number one believers can grieve the Holy Spirit.

True believers can grieve the person and the filling of the Holy Spirit in their life and remember the Holy Spirit is God. The Holy Spirit is not a thing. He is not an influence. As a matter of fact maybe we need to make sure that when we speak about the Holy Spirit we do not act like he's a thing or an it. It's a person. It's a he. He's the third person of the Godhead. And we see in Ephesians 4.30 that he, God the Holy Spirit, can be grieved. Ephesians 4.30 write that verse down to go study on your own. Paul says "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by who you were sealed for the day of redemption." We know what that ceiling means.

And this word grieve means to cause distress. It literally means to bring sorrow and distress and even hurt. And this happens when believers refuse to put their past life behind them and they continue to stay in sin. This happens also when a believer allows new sin to come into their lives. And here the Holy Spirit's personhood is clearly seen and it should be because he, God, the Holy Spirit can be grieved and hurt. So Paul clearly shows us that true believers can grieve the Spirit. Now question in application. What causes this grieving of the Holy Spirit? What causes the grieving of the Holy Spirit?

Now let me show you how Scripture answers our questions. I read earlier in Ephesians 4.30 Paul says "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit." Or earlier, earlier in the verses he shows us what grieves the Spirit. I'm turning back in my copy of God's Word to Ephesians 4.25-29 and notice how it all comes together. Verse 25 "Therefore having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor for we are members of one another." That would be one body. "Be angry and do not sin and do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity for the devil.

Let the thief no longer steal but rather let him labor doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth but only such as a good thing for building up as is fit for the occasion. That it may give grace to those who hear and do not grieve the Spirit of God." So what I'm showing you is this in many ways Paul shows us what grieves the Spirit. And so the exercise for us to do is this go back through those verses. Pray over them. Ask the Spirit of God to show us if any of those things are in our lives. Number two believers can also quench the Holy Spirit.

Now this is similar to the grieving but it is a little different. Yes a believer can quench the feeling of the Spirit in the person's life. 1 Thessalonians 5.19 Paul says "Do not quench the Spirit." Here in this verse Paul is using language that speaks of putting out a fire. We understand that a fire may be put out. It can be fed or nurtured. We know how to do that. And so it is with the feeling and the working of the Holy Spirit in the believers life. The Spirit can be quenched. The Spirit can be dampened. The Spirit can not be extinguished as in you can lose the Spirit. No. The Spirit also conversely can be nurtured and fostered.

So in this Paul is saying that the feeling and the work of the Spirit should be encouraged. It should be fed. It should be nurtured. If not the Spirit of God then is quenched in the heart. So Paul clearly shows us that true believers can quench the Spirit. I love what William McDonald says here about this quenching. He says and I'm reading from his commentary sin quenches the Spirit. Traditions quench Him. Man made rules and regulations in public worship quench Him. Disunity quenches Him. Someone has said cold looks, contemptuous words, silence, studied disregard go a long way to quench Him. So does unsympathetic criticism.

You could add to that. Now I'm going to read that and I'm going to ask you could any of those things be in our lives. He says sin quenches the Spirit. Traditions quench Him. Do we love tradition sometimes more than Scripture? Don't be quick to point at the other denominations in churches. Baptists can be just as guilty. Also in regulations in public worship can quench Him. Do we have unnecessary regulations in public worship? I don't think so. Disunity quenches Him. I've seen people in the life of the church be very, very, very ununified, disunified, even attack the unity. Someone has said cold looks. Do we look at people wrong?

Contemptuous words. Do we have contemptuous words? One night in a meeting one time my wife was in the room and it was a conference room and my wife asked me a question and it kind of bothered me. It got on my nerves and I didn't react well. One of the men of the church asked me about it. Well that quenches the Spirit I believe. And the list goes on and on and on. So what I'm showing you is this. These things can be in our lives and we must see that these things quench the Spirit. Now let me show you something. This grieving and quenching is closely related.

But as I'm going through it, here as believers it's the Spirit of God that says, "Ah yeah, it's the Spirit of God that taps us on the shoulder. It's the Spirit of God that says, "You're guilty." It's the Spirit of God that makes you, "Mmm, is that me?" Don't ignore that. And number three, believers can reject the Holy Spirit. Now this one can get people. I know this sounds unbelievable but believers can reject the work of the Spirit, the filling of the Spirit. And we see this with the Galatians. I think that Tommy has mentioned this before it needs to be said.

We're preparing soon to get into a verse by verse study in Galatians in small groups. That's on the horizon. But notice what Galatians 3 verses 1 to 5 says. Paul says, "Oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, who has tricked you?" That's what that means. It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. In other words, Paul says, "I gave you Christ. Let me ask you only this. Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing of faith?" Verse 3, "Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer for many things in vain?

If indeed it was in vain, does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works of miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing of faith?" Now here we see in these verses there were some genuine believers. These were genuine believers in the Galatian church. They had begun their Christian journey by faith and in the Spirit. They were Christian. But they had turned to works of the law because of the false teachers, the Judaizers. This simply means that they had been convinced that faith in Christ and the work of the Spirit in their life wasn't enough.

They were convinced that something else was needed and that was going back to law keeping. So they were seeking to grow in their faith not by and through the working of the Spirit in their life but by their own religious efforts. And Paul calls them foolish. What that means is spiritually dull. Basically he's saying, "Are you hard-headed spiritually? Are you spiritually kind of dumb here?" So in this verse here Paul clearly shows us that true believers can reject the Spirit. Now the question is, can that happen today? Of course. I'm gonna piggyback off the Galatian problem.

Any people who get into legalism and rules and rule keeping and they rely on legalism and rule keeping for their sanctification and their walk with God, they're committing the same crime and sin as the Galatians. And let me tell you that is a rejection of the Spirit. What they're saying is this, "I don't need the Spirit to guide me and to teach me and to lead me. I don't need the Spirit. I've got my list of rules." And nothing rejects the work of the Spirit in the life and in the church more than legalism and rule keeping. It's greedious.

If we're on the pathway of seeking to live and always live the Spirit-filled life, we must clearly see that the Spirit of God can be grieved, quenched, and outright rejected. And the opposite should be the norm in the life of a believer. Notice Paul is giving us the normal Christian life. Paul says that the believer should be filled, guided, saturated, and controlled by the Spirit. In Galatians 5, 16 he says that the believer should always walk by the Spirit. So my question is this, is the Spirit doing a work in you now? Now let me show you. If you ignore what I'm putting before you, now notice I've been giving it to you bite by bite.

If you ignore it, well you're going to grieve and quench the Spirit. If you procrastinate, you're going to grieve and quench the Spirit. If you don't take this serious, you're going to grieve and quench the Spirit. Now is it okay to question? Pastor, I'm just not so sure. But our questions must lead us to what? Study. So my question is, how is the Spirit working in you? Now to me, that leads us to ask the question we asked this past Sunday, how? How are we to be filled? And again, we dealt with this, but I'm going to take some of this a little further. Second, I want us to look at how we are filled.

I want us to look at how we are filled and led to this Spirit-filled, Spirit-controlled life, day by day. Now I know I did cover this this past week, but we need to see also these things connected. I wanted to put all of this how-to practical stuff together. And in seeing how we can hinder the work of the Spirit, it highlights our needs. It highlights our need. It highlights the fact that we need to see that we need this. And if we're hindering or quenching the Spirit, then we are naturally living in spiritual weakness. We are living at a level of spiritual defeat, maybe even great defeat.

So what I'm showing you is this, all of this leads us to the how-to. Now here we have four responsibilities that we have in seeking to be controlled by the Spirit. This comes from William McDonald. This is some Warren Wiersby. This is some John MacArthur. And this is some of me. And sometimes I can't tell where it starts and stops. But number one, we must confess all known sin. This is where we start. If we see that we are not filled with the Spirit, well then there we're in sin. And if we're not filled with the Spirit, chances are we have allowed other sin to take up residence in our life. You see?

And in our efforts to surrender to this work of God, we may find, and we probably will find, sin in our lives. And the Scripture tells us what to do. First John 1.9, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness or all of that sin." But we need to ask what is the sin? William McDonald gets at this really good. I like this. He's explaining what this sin is. And it actually can be many things. This is really good. Some of you have this work and you can go back and look at it. Now I'm quoting.

McDonald says, "In order for us to walk day by day in fellowship with God and with our fellow believers, we must confess our sins." Sins of commission, sins of omission, sins of thought, sins of act or action, secret sins, and public sins. And I will add to that the sins of even our wrong motivations and selfish intentions. And sins of commission are sins of action, sins that we openly commit. Sins of omission are sins of not doing something that we know we should do. See how those work together? Sins of commission are sins of action, things we commit. But sins of omission are things that we don't do, that we know we should do.

What are sins of the thought life? They are endless. What are sins of the secret life? I don't know. It's your secret life. But God knows. Probably your spouse knows. Probably your children know. Well, what are these public sins? Well, public sins are public sins. Sometimes we don't know they're there, but brothers and sisters know they're there. They're there, and they're the ones that need to come up and say, "Well, brother or sister, I'll see this in your life." McDonald goes on to say, and this is really good, he's commenting on 1 John 1.9 about this confessing sin. He says, "We must drag them." I love that.

"We must drag them out into the open before God." Now, that's good. "And call them by their names." Don't make excuses before God. Well, Lord, you know, a little struggle here. "We must drag them out into the open before God, call them by their names, take sides with God against them, and forsake them." Yes, true confession involves forsaking sin. "He who covers his sin will not prosper." He's quoting Proverbs 28, 13. "He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them, they will have mercy. So we must confess and repent of our sin so as to be spirit-filled." I thought about the word examination.

There are people who have serious illness or sickness. I've never been there. But when someone has serious illness or sickness, they go to the doctor and they say, "Examine me." Every way. Even those difficult, humiliating, hard examinations. Right? You know, if we have the common cold, if we're sick with the crud, we go to the doctor and say, "Examine us." They poke us and make us cough on them and all that good stuff. But examination. Now, think about a serious illness. If you had cancer, if you had a heart problem, if you had some serious disease, would you want your doctor to examine you top to bottom? Yes.

And if you didn't have that examination, people would question the wisdom of it. So we need spiritual examination here. And we also need accountability here. Sometimes we just can't see things the way we should. And this is work. This is a serious work. So again, my question, how's the Holy Spirit working in here? How's the Holy Spirit working in you right here? Some of us confess all known sins. Number two, we must empty ourselves before God. We could say another word, crucify ourselves.

In Galatians 2.20, Paul says, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh, and I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me." Here we see that if we are going to be filled, we must be emptied. Really, we could say it like this, we've got to die. And this makes perfect sense. Paul says that if we reckon ourselves as empty and dead, and we do the work of emptying ourselves and even killing ourselves of sin and self and the things that prohibit this feeling, then and only then can we be filled. I love what McDonald says here again.

He simply says, "This is the end of me. This is the end of me." But that does not mean it's the end of our personality. Some people misunderstand that. We still are who we are. He goes on to say, "The Savior did not die for me in order that I might go on living my life as I choose." See, when we hold on to sin and self in the world, that's what we're saying. McDonald goes on to say, "He died for me so that from now on he might be able to live his life in me. So we must empty ourselves, even crucify ourselves so as to be filled with the Spirit." Again, examination, evaluation, sacrifice. You might have to die to a lot, a lot of change.

You can't get this in five minutes. Again, if you've got a serious disease, if you've got something serious going on with your health, you might have to go through a battery of tests. You might have to go through time, test after test. Same thing with spiritual matters like this. And then number three, we must surrender ourselves to God for the work.

We know this verse, Romans 12.1, Paul says, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual act or reasonable act of worship." And here we see that to be filled we must present our bodies, even our entire lives, as a dead sacrifice. No, as a living sacrifice. And this surrender means to surrender our body, our mind, our will, everything. And this is reasonable. This is the only acceptable offering to God. If Christ died for men and men, well then it is only reasonable for men and men to commit oneself totally to God.

So we must surrender all of ourselves completely to the work. You know, I thought about some illustrations. You know, illustration can only go so far. Isn't that what men do when they go into the military? Of course, women can go into the military too. Now, I happen to think there are certain parts of the military that should only be reserved for men. But think about it. When one goes into the military, what do they do? They surrender themselves. They even lose some of their rights. Isn't that correct? Yes. Their freedom of speech is limited. There are other ways in which they're limited.

But when someone goes into the military, they are a living sacrifice. One step further, when someone goes to war, they are literally becoming a living sacrifice. Whether they're drafted or volunteered, they are alive knowing they could die. Isn't that what we see with missionaries? I don't know if you read missionary biography. You should be good at that. I can help you there. I've got quite a few. I've given most of mine away. That's good. That's okay. I go through stages where I read biography, especially missionary biography, one that would be great for you to get. Now, that's a difficult read as David Brainard very much lived this.

This surrender of themselves to God and for the Word. And what we see in those missionaries is they leave their family, they leave their homeland many times, they leave their conference, they leave their security, they even risk their health, things like that. But shouldn't that be normal Christian life in living? We might not be called to go to Uganda, but shouldn't that be the normal Christian life? We surrender ourselves to God for everything and especially for this specific work. And then number four, we must let the Word of God dwell richly in us. I'm going to go further here than I did this Sunday morning.

Paul says in Colossians 3, 16, "Let the Word of Christ, the Word of Christ being the Word, dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing songs and hymns and spiritual songs with thank when it's in your hearts to God." Sounds like Paul's been reading Ephesians while he kind of wrote it. But here Paul tells us that to have Christ inhabiting our lives, that takes place by allowing the Word to richly dwell in us. This Word richly is important. I didn't cover this Sunday morning because of time. It actually can mean abundantly or extravagantly rich. In this Word dwell is important. It simply means to be at home.

And notice what Paul is saying. Paul is telling us that to have Christ in our lives, it means the Word must richly and abundantly and extravagantly be at home in our minds, hearts and lives. And notice the connection Paul makes here. Paul connects the Word to Christ and the Word and Christ to this dwelling, this inhabiting. He seems to be saying that for Christ to inhabit our lives, it almost seems like he's saying it starts by allowing the Word to inhabit richly, taking up residence in our heart and life. So we must allow the Word to richly inhabit our hearts and lives. A couple of words here. The first word, plan.

If you don't plan to study the Scripture, you won't. Now there are Bible reading plans out there. I love them all. I mean some have the Bible reading plans where they work through the Bible through the year. One of the men of our church casually one day just made the comment that this year he and his wife were reading the Bible through together. I just thought, "Hmm, yeah, that's good stuff." Some have Bible reading plans where they go in different places in the Scripture. This is what you do. You find a plan that works for you. But another word that comes to mind. It takes time.

Look, I think if we say one statement here, we're going to grieve, quench and just reject the Spirit all of the above. We say, "We don't have time." That's one of the biggest lies we could ever say. We have time for television. We have time for Facebook and Twitter and social media. We have time for hobby. We've got the time. And not only do we have the time, we have the resources. I mean, how many translations of the Scriptures do we have? Good translations so we can read them. How many resources do we have to help us? We come across a word like propitiation and we have a good study Bible that tells us what it means.

Go study the life of William Tyndall. It's a biography for you. I mean, he gave his life to give the Scriptures in the English language. It was against the law. He died for it. As a matter of fact, when you look at what the translators of the King James version in the original there, they really used about 75% of his work. And then another word, disciplined. We need discipline here. There is no excuse for us not to have the Word of God dwelling richly in us. Well, Pastor, I'm really not a good reader. There are apps that will read it for you. Jeez, you can find somebody that will read it to you with a British accent.

You can speed it up, slow it down. Pastor, I really don't hear well. Slow it down. I can hear well. Put in earbuds. And you know, sometimes we do need some accountability here. But you know, I also want to make a couple of comments here. Don't make a mistake. Don't have a Bible reading plan and then you can't study what we are studying together at church. If your leaders and pastor and elders have worked hard and studied and felt led of God to take you through a study like Ephesians or Genesis, then it could be that God is tapping you on the shoulder and saying, "Son, daughter, this is what I want you to study." Read through Genesis.

Go back through Ephesians. One of the things that I had to do in seminary when I took Genesis and Exodus, the professor said, "I want you to read Genesis and Exodus in three translations. They have to be approved and I want you to keep a reading log." At first I thought, "That's easy." That was laborious. But I'll tell you what, I learned it in a new way just by reading. Have a plan. Study what we are studying together. You read ahead of me in Ephesians and I'll come along behind you and explain it to you.

So if we're going to get into the pathway, on the pathway of seeking to live and always live the Spirit-filled life, we must step by step confess sin, empty ourselves, die, empty ourselves of sin, self in the world, surrender ourselves as living sacrifices to God for this work and let the Word of God extravagantly be in our home, in our minds, and in our lives. And that, I believe, can be called a pathway to being filled with the Spirit. And if I miss something, show it to me. I'll put it in my notes and next time I preach on this, I'll preach it. I'll give you credit. Now as I close, I want to look at what you have before us.

I want you to look at what you have and what we have before us. You got your Bible. If you don't have one, I'll give you one. You've got study notes, study Bibles. Some of you have commentaries. I know you do. I had one of them in the church came up to me once. He said, "Would you please quit talking about people in books because my wife goes home and buys every one of them?" I just smiled. You've got your Bible. You've got study Bibles. You've got study helps. If you need help with study helps, I'll show you. I can give you some good free resources. Look at what else you have. You have the indwelling Spirit.

Didn't you learn that you have the Spirit within you to teach you? Sometimes we're not taught because we don't lean on the Spirit. Look what else you have. You have the teaching concerning the Spirit, the filling of the Spirit, and the Spirit filled life, part 1, part 2, part 3. It's there. You also have the practical teaching combined. I worked hard to put all of this practical together. So if you take all of the notes and everything I've taught you, you've got a lot of good building material. And then also think about what else you have. You have God's invitation. The Spirit of God's been dealing with some of you.

And then guess what else you have in front of you? Motivation. Doing all for the glory of God. You should be living this life and doing this work all for the glory of God. Not for a better life. Not that it would help you with your marriage. Not so you'll be able to go to small group and brag, heaven forbid. No, your motivation should be for the glory of God.