Introduction
I want to start by thanking you for releasing me to be a guest speaker last week at a church weekend in France and I bring you greetings from Saint Mark’s Versailles who I was privileged to be with for four days. They are grateful to you all for letting me go to teach them from the Word of God, not least because they know that we are going through a challenging time here at All Saints.’ Of course, I had no idea just how stormy life would be here in May and June when I accepted the invitation back in January. But in fact, in the providence of God it was good for us to get away for a few days and to receive from God too.
And what better place to enjoy some scenery and good food than France? It struck me walking around Paris in particular how slim the French are and how much more they smoke compared to us here in Britain. And it got me thinking about diet and health in different countries.
The Japanese eat very little fat whilst the French and Germans eat fois gras, pâté, camembert and sausage and in shed loads - but both suffer much fewer heart attacks than the British and Americans. Saudi Arabians drink zero alcohol whilst the French and Italians drink red wine with every meal yet, once again, both have significantly lower rates of heart disease than we do. It’s baffling. It seems there is only one possible explanation: Eat and drink what you like. It's speaking English that kills you!
Do you remember your science lessons all those years ago - and how they were so much more interesting when the teacher got you to do an experiment? Well, to celebrate the memory I am going to begin this talk with some experimentation myself. Question: how can I remove the air from this glass? If I tried to suck it all out with a pump it would create a vacuum and the glass would break. If I took the glass to the moon the air would escape into space but that would not be a cost-effective way of removing the air. You could suggest other ways, I’m sure, but the best and easiest solution is this one…. as I fill the glass with water, which has a greater density than air, the liquid pushes the gas out. Problem solved.
In our reading today, Paul says to the Christians at Ephesus, “Do not be foolish, (like don’t go to the moon just to get air out a glass), but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.”
The secret of a victorious Christian life is letting yourself be filled, and filled, and filled again with the Holy Spirit. If you’re a Christian who is not filled with the Holy Spirit you’re like a beautifully crafted but empty glass for a thirsty world, or a brand new gas boiler with only the pilot light lit, but which isn’t firing, or a smart, new, gleaming limousine with the fuel gauge on empty. They look lovely on the outside, but glasses are supposed to hold drinks, boilers are designed to generate heat, and cars are meant to move. In the same way, Christians who are no longer filled with the Holy Spirit don’t deliver.
1) What Does It Mean?
“Be filled with the Holy Spirit” says God. To find out what that means we’re going to look at the grammar in this sentence. You’ll never know how a watch works unless you take it to bits and it’s the same with the fullness of the Holy Spirit. To those of you who are experts in biblical languages, I would just like to put it on record that I know a little Greek myself – his name is Theo and he runs a kebab takeaway in Thornaby! Seriously, I am no expert in Greek but I’ve done my homework here and I think I can sound like I know what I’m talking about.
I want us to unpack these words, “Be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Firstly the verb ‘to fill’ is in the imperative mood. “Be filled…” is not a suggestion, or a recommendation; it is a command with all the authority of the Word of God behind it. If you are not filled with the Holy Spirit, you will be woefully short on the power you need to live the Christian life that you have signed up to. Without the fullness of the Spirit you do not have enough spiritual food to get you through the week. Following Jesus half empty with the Holy Spirit is not God’s will for your life or mine. That’s why this is a command.
Secondly, the verb is written in the present tense. When must we be filled with the Holy Spirit? Not last year, not next month; now - and all the time by the way! “Be filled all the time…” In the original, the verb is present continuous; a literal translation would read, “Be always being filled with the Spirit” which isn’t very good English, but that’s the closest you can get to what it actually says. “Be always being filled with the Spirit” It is vital to be filled day after day. What use are last year’s blessings or even yesterday’s? I need to be receiving God’s power and presence today!
This is so important. Some Christians say that getting filled with the Holy Spirit comes with conversion. It’s a unique experience, they say, at the beginning of our Christian lives. Others say, “No it isn’t! It’s a second experience which always comes after conversion.” So who’s right?
Well, reading through the Acts of the Apostles you find that, sometimes, it’s at the moment of conversion that there is an overwhelming experience of the Holy Spirit (for example the Gentiles at Cornelius’ house in Acts 10). But not always. For Paul it was several days after his conversion. For still others it occurred and reoccurred several times. The twelve apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit in Acts 2 (at Pentecost) and again in chapter 4 (after they were threatened by the authorities) and a number of other times after that as well.
I think the Bible says that you and I need to be filled, then filled again, then filled again... That means immersed, overwhelmed, plunged into the Spirit’s life and power over and over.
Praise God if you had an overwhelming life-changing experience of the Spirit in the late sixties, or the mid-nineties, or last week! This yoghurt will taste OK if I eat it today. It says ‘best before 25th June.’ But I’m not going to be eating it in July. Last month’s blessings are out of date! Today’s fullness of the Holy Spirit is sufficient for today. “Give us this day our daily bread.” “Be being constantly filled with the Holy Spirit.” So it’s a command to be relentlessly filled, over and over and starting now.
The third thing about the grammar is that the verb is in the passive voice. That means that the filling with the Holy Spirit is not something that we do. We don’t turn on the tap. It is something that happens to us. We let it happen to us by hungering and thirsting after God. What God requires of you and me is to… ask. In fact, Acts 5.32 talks about “the Holy Spirit that God gives to those who obey him.” At my end the thing is to receive the Spirit by obedient faith. “Lord, I am coming to you again for more. As you have commanded me to do, I ask once again. Fill me again today to overflowing with your Holy Spirit.” It is up to me to come to God, hopefully, expectantly with empty hands. Like Oliver Twist, “Please Sir, I want some more.” But it’s God alone who fills us with His Spirit.
A few months ago one of my children was unwell. He had an upset stomach and he didn’t feel like eating. Being off your food is often a sign of illness, especially in young males... When you lose your spiritual appetite it’s the same; it shows that something is not right with your faith. So let me ask you a direct question this morning if I may. Are you thirsty for God? Are you seeking his presence and his refreshment today? Are you coming to him with empty hands, and a hungry soul saying, “Please Lord, I need more of you in my life, please fill me up again with your life-giving Spirit!”
2) What Actually Happens?
So - “Be filled constantly with the Spirit, and let it happen to you today” is what God says to us this morning. So what happens when God pours out his Spirit on his people? The Bible seems to indicate that each time someone is filled with the Holy Spirit there is a noticeable event followed by a greater consecration, by which I mean a deeper commitment to God and a fresh attraction to his holiness and righteousness.
There are nine occasions in the New Testament where the expression “filled with the Holy Spirit” is found. And in seven of them, there is a direct link to some kind of inspired speech - including Ephesians 5 here where it says in v19, “Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns and songs from the Spirit.” That is one expected and normative outcome of being filled with the Spirit.
Reading through the gospels and Acts, whenever people are filled with the Holy Spirit they are given new boldness to talk to others about Jesus. Or they receive, and use, new spiritual gifts such as tongues and prophecy. Or they spontaneously overflow in praise and worship, singing a new song to the Lord. Or they are given renewed spiritual authority. Or they express overflowing, evident joy. Or they have other encounters with God which bring about a change of direction in their lives.
What happens to Saul of Tarsus’ in Acts 9 has to be one of the most sensational conversions of all time. Even today, people talk about having a Damascus Road experience, meaning a life shattering event that turned their inner world upside down. A cynical persecutor of Christians, Saul is travelling in the hope that he might round up and kill more. But several days later, there he is, telling the world that Jesus is alive! Everyone is dumbfounded, obviously. “Wasn’t this the man who caused carnage in Jerusalem? Wasn’t this the scourge of the Christian community?” What has he been taking in his tea? What has happened to make such a change in his life? Good question: and here is the answer - firstly he met Jesus on the way to Damascus. Then he was filled with the Holy Spirit a few days after he got there.
I remember hearing once of a man who went to speak about Christianity to a group of about 100 students in a university amphitheatre. When he got home his wife asked how it had gone. “Well,” he replied “there’s hope for two of them. Most of the audience were very polite and listened to what I said very courteously but two were really upset. They kept interrupting and insulting me, swearing and cursing. All the others just listened happily.” Guess what? Those two young men, who disrupted the evening, were both baptised six months later! But no one else was. It seems that sometimes it is those who are the most passionate enemies of Christ who experience the most dramatic change in their lives, becoming Christians and being filled with the Holy Spirit.
Spiritual gifts, joy, shameless, confident and successful evangelism, changed lives, spontaneous worship with great enthusiasm. Of course stage-managed, whipped-up emotionalism is horrible, and I’m not advocating that - but who amongst us here would say, arguing from Scripture, that our relationship with God should be cool and detached?
In all loving relationships, affection, heartfelt feelings and passion are natural. What would Kathie say if I greeted her whenever I return home by shaking her hand and saying “How do you do?” How would she like it if, on Valentine’s Day, I bought her a red rose and then went down the pub on my own for the evening? If I never expressed any emotion at all towards my wife people would say there is something not quite healthy between us. It’s the same in between us and God. John Stott is surely right when he says, “It is right in public worship to be dignified; it is unforgivable to be dull.”
If the brightness of God’s holiness, the lavishness of his grace, the splendour of his love and the excellence of his glory leave us unresponsive and impassive there is something wrong with us! “Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns and songs from the Spirit.”
3) What’s the Result?
Have you ever opened a tap really quickly, been surprised by the strength of the water pressure and made water splash everywhere? It looks spectacular, but if you want a drink, it’s not very practical because hardly any water actually ends up in the glass. To fill a glass, the water needs to be run in a more measured way.
Power can be released wastefully, or it can be harnessed wisely. The energy bound up in 40 litres of unleaded, for example, can be unleashed in spectacular fashion by throwing a lit match onto it. Or its energy can be channelled by a motorbike engine, to be burnt slowly, and transport someone the length and breadth of the country. Explosions are impressive, and sometimes God does do mind blowing things. But that’s not the only way he works. He also wants to do things in our lives that are less sensational but longer lasting.
The remarkable signs of the Holy Spirit are works of God. I want to see more, not less, of them. But some Christians only want the short-term spark and are not interested in the long term walk.
The fullness of the Holy Spirit also brings maturity and wisdom that sees through the foolishness of sin and shows self-control. In fact, that’s what Paul insists upon most in this passage. “Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise, but as wise” he says in v15.
This is how people filled with the Spirit live; they’re careful about how they live. They show wisdom.
I want to commend a recent example of wise, Spirit-filled living. I was invited round to the house of one of our church members the other week. On the one hand he could accept a promotion with more money, more status, more kudos - he is a young, talented, ambitious man. But the appointment (described by his directors as an offer he couldn’t refuse) involved significant travel and therefore more time away from his wife and family and much reduced availability for serving God here at All Saints’. At the same time he had been offered another job much nearer home. It was a leap into the unknown, it was less prestigious, it paid less well and it might mean never reaching the directorship he had been offered elsewhere. But it would mean seeing much more of his family and being freed up to serve the Lord. He took the second option and I think, in this case, he did the right thing. I think that shows Spirit-filled maturity and he slept well on the decision and is at peace with God having made that decision.
Being filled with the Holy Spirit affects our life choices – it also affects our appetites and hungers. “Don’t get drunk on wine” says v18, “which leads to debauchery. It means reckless, wild living. The word is the same one that was used to describe the lost and wasted youth of the prodigal son when he blew everything he had on sex, drugs and rock and roll. Interestingly, the Bible consistently presents wine, in itself, as a good thing; it’s only drunkenness and excessive drinking that is improper.
The charity Drinkaware says that 1.7 million men and 600,000 women in the UK drink more than double the recommended limit.
The UK has one of the highest binge drinking rates in Europe; just behind Ireland and Finland according to a European survey in 2007. It found that excessive drinking leads to more domestic abuse, more unwanted pregnancies and more road traffic accidents, more antisocial behaviour. The damage done to our church centre last month was alcohol related.
Here are the numbers; alcohol abuse is responsible for 22,000 premature deaths each year. According to the BBC there are 1.2 million incidents of alcohol-related violence a year. 70% of night time A&E admissions are alcohol-related. Up to 1.3 million children are affected by parents with drink problems, and they are also more likely to have problems later in life themselves.
What about the cost? A study by the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit in 2003 showed that 17 million working days are lost to hangovers and drink-related illness in Britain each year. The annual cost to employers is conservatively estimated to be £6.4 billion while the cost to the NHS is in the region of £1.7billion. And about £13 billion more is spent clearing up alcohol-related crime and social problems.
Now, going back to the vandalism to the church centre, the young man who owned up to it said he gets drunk to get an emotional high. Binge drinkers are looking for the abundant life Jesus talks about; their life is obviously coming up short of that, otherwise they wouldn’t be so keen to escape from what their life is to something else. And, incidentally, alcohol is a depressant, not a stimulant, so drinking in excess is not a great strategy for getting a buzz anyway.
“Do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit…”
Ending
One day, Jesus was speaking to his disciples about the Holy Spirit and all heir fears, doubts and misunderstandings. It’s a conversation that you can find in Luke 11.9-13.
“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 7th June 2009
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