In this sermon, the speaker discusses the concept of the "walk of the new man" as described in the book of Ephesians. The walk of the new man is characterized by humility, unity, and a unique identity in Christ. The speaker emphasizes the importance of living a loving and righteous life, walking in the light and wisdom of God. The sermon also touches on the themes of gratitude, submission to one another, and the fear of God.

Once aimlessly I wandered, no hope within my soul. A vessel with no pilot's hand, no haven and no goal. I tried to find an answer to calm the troubled sea. I drifted with no sight of land till Jesus rescued me. He whispered, please be still to me. My heart obeyed his will. His word made calm me. Jesus spoke to me. The one thing to do is to be. Be still to his word. Well, it's Thursday. Getting close. Getting close to the end. And I'd like you to all get to know somebody that's come and joined us in camp this week. A friend of ours down from St. Louis just got out of the hospital yesterday. And from having an accident at work, he was hit by a truck that was left in neutral up on top of a hill and came down and hit the truck he was in. And he made like a ping pong ball inside of his truck. He got painted by all the cans of paint that were inside. And he just, first time he was up with yesterday and he flew down here to be with us. And I know he needs a lot of loving right now, a lot of encouragement. He's our local Irishman, Tony Gualtieri. But Antonio's here, so we're glad Tony's here. So, yeah, buongiorno. And I guess you know what that means. I don't know how to finish that. I just hope it's not swearing. And I trust that you all had a good night's sleep last night, because I didn't. And I'm going to need somebody to keep me awake during this message. And you can smile. That's all right. You people are looking so serious and so stern. How many of you went to Pizza Hut last night? Those aren't my notes. No, no, those aren't my notes. I don't preach with notes. Thank you. Okay. Well, anyway. I'd like to go into the message today, the message that motivated me for this whole series. And that's in Ephesians chapter 5. I'd like you to read with me, beginning at verse 15. Blespeta un acrobos post paceteta. Oh, okay. That's right. English. You know, it's really a terrible thing to follow a guy who spoke the last time in a three-piece suit. I don't know if that was his girdle, trying to keep all the fat in. If I kept looking at him, it didn't look like there was much fat. So, I don't know. And then you get this brother from England who, you know, despite intimidation, threatening and all the rest, he's wearing a tie. So, he's there. So, I come and I wear my tennis shoes. So, unpolished. But anyway, Ephesians chapter 5, verse 15. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore, be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Father, we're thankful for your Word, which is alive and powerful. We're thankful that, Father, in spite of our limitations, in spite of our lack of wisdom, in spite of our human frailty, that we have great confidence and knowledge that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are here with us today. And that, Father, the ministry of the Holy Spirit is that which would bring honor and glory to your Son. And, Father, we are confident that the Spirit of God today will bring honor and glory to your Son in our lives individually and in our lives corporately. Father, we know, even as Zechariah said, it's not by might, nor is it by power, but by your Spirit, sayeth the Lord of Hosts. We are trusting the working, the outpouring, the filling of your Holy Spirit in our midst today. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Just a couple real quick comments in verses 15-17, because I really would like to get and spend that time with verses 18-21, as our time just seems to move on very, very quickly in the morning. First thing he says in verses 15-17, now just kind of a quick review. We've been talking about the walk of the new man. As we go back to chapter 4, the first thing we saw in the first three verses, that the walk of the new man is a walk in humility. And then you start at verse 4, go down through verse 16. You see that this walk is a walk that is in unity, but a unity that has diversity. A diversity that has edification or building up within it. And then we see, beginning in verse 17, that this walk is to be a different walk. It's to be a unique walk. It is to be a walk that uniquely belongs to those who name the name of Jesus Christ and who have been crucified with Christ as the new man. And we put off the old man who no longer has a claim to us because he's dead with Christ. And we put on the new man that we have been created in Christ Jesus. And we saw the difference between that in the end of chapter 4. Then we saw yesterday that this walk is to be a loving walk in verses 1-5 of chapter 5. And then we see in verses 6 down through verse 14 that this walk is to be a walk in the light. And then the last part of this walk that we were just reading here is to be a wise walk. That there is a need for great wisdom among the people of God in walking in this world. Because Satan is the type of enemy and adversary who throws up all kinds of traps, who has all kinds of schemes, who has all kinds of devices that are out there to destroy the children of God one way or another. And by the way, I am convinced that Satan's masterpiece is not a bum on skid row. Satan's masterpiece is a wolf in sheep's clothing. And there are a lot of those out there who are Satan's devices in this world. But anyway, he says to walk circumspectly, or that word is to walk carefully. And then he says redeem the time because the days are evil. And he is saying we are living in an evil day and there is a great need for buying up, using our time. That if you lose a hundred dollar bill, you can replace a hundred dollar bill with a little bit of work. But if you waste time, that time is never replaceable. The psalmist says, teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. And there is a great need for us to use our time wisely. That is the type of thing, I enjoy football. I have seen Dallas Cowboys shirts around here and I can really get into watching football. But you know what, after you watch the football game, you spend three hours watching that football game and you get back up off of the chair and you say, so what? What has been accomplished? Now I can see that sometimes there might be good therapy. Maybe a little bit of time that we come apart and rest a while. Or as Elton Trueblood says, you will come apart. There is a need for having a Mid-South type experience. We don't need to feel guilty when we relax. You don't need to feel guilty if you sleep eight hours in a night and say, oh, look at all the time I have wasted. God has built us mechanically that we need to have these times of respite and these times of rest. But there is also a place where there is an urgency. There is a place where we need to redeem the time. We need to buy it back. We need to use it to the utmost. And a wise walk, a person who is being wise of the Lord is a person who has learned the value of time. And he uses that time wisely. Therefore he says, wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. Now I would like to go on and begin at verse 18. Now, we've got problems today, don't we? And the problems are is that whenever we start talking about the Holy Spirit, that those of us who are non-charismatic, non-Pentecostal, we go into nine shades of apoplexy. And it's interesting looking now as I look at the preachers out here, they've all got their eyes wide open for a change. What is this guy going to say about the Holy Spirit? Now we reject Unitarianism, don't we? People who don't believe in the Trinity. But you know what? I think that we have a tendency of those of us who are becoming binatarians. And we believe in the Father and we believe in the Son, but don't you dare talk about the Holy Spirit. Because you know what's going on today. All that nasty, cruel, mean stuff. Hey now, just a minute. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And I agree with the brother yesterday. Not the first, second, and third person of the Trinity. Because there's no question of superiority or inferiority. They're all equal. They're all God. They're all equal in power. Equal in knowledge. Equal in where they're at. They're all equal persons within the Godhead. Now they are different persons. They have different functions. If you think you understand the Trinity, please come up afterwards and explain it to me. Because I really, you know, I believe it because that's what the Word of God says. Not because I understand it. And if you think I don't understand that, then we go into the hypostatic union that Jesus being God-man. And how that happened. How Jesus as a man could die, and yet if God not die. And we can go on from there. I can't understand eternity either. Eternity past, never having a beginning. You understand that? I mean, I can say the words, but I don't understand it. And now we want to talk about the Holy Spirit. Are you a Spirit-filled Christian? Huh? Ever had anybody come up and ask you, are you filled with the Spirit? And you know what they mean, don't you? You know what they mean. And you say to them, yes. And they know that you don't have what they're talking about. And say, oh no, you're not. And you say, oh yes, I am. Well then, have you been baptized in the Holy Spirit? Yes. Oh no, you haven't. Oh yes, I have. And you go on, because the terminologies are very difficult terms today. And because they're so used, and maybe misused so much today, that we've gotten to a place where we stop using them. And here there is a command in the Word of God to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Now it's interesting, of course, that there's a contrast here between don't get drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but, in contrast, be filled with the Holy Spirit. Now, to understand this a little bit, I think it might be kind of a fun thing to do before we talk about this, to back off and take a look. Now I do have a few notes here, I'll get them. And how this works. If you were to take this little book right here, and you look up the word for fill or fulfill, it's the word plerao in the Greek New Testament. And if you look it up, and here's some uses of the way it's used within the Bible. I'd like you to turn with me, just to get an idea of what this word plerao means. Now, most of the time it's translated in the Gospel by the word fulfill. The Scripture was fulfilled. You know, the words of Jesus were fulfilled. And so that's the way it's normally, most of the time, it's translated by the word fulfill. But there's some other very, very interesting uses of it. John chapter 12, verse 3. In John chapter 12, verse 3, we see that Mary, the sister of Martha, is anointing the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ. And notice verse 3. Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the odor of the ointment. Same word, plerao. Now, have you ever seen these things in the hardware stores where they, you know, that if you want to kill roaches in your house, what they have is this little thing that you go and you lift off the top and you light it. And it sends off this nice big smoke and says, okay, after you light it, get out of the house. Make sure all the windows are shut, doors are shut, and all that. And what it does is, it's not that the fact that the roaches are flying right through the middle of the air and it's going to zap them in the smoke cloud. It says that that smoke cloud will go out and it'll creep underneath the baseboards. It'll get into the cracks and crevices in your house. And if you've got a log house like we do, we've got all kinds of cracks and crevices, especially when I built it. So there's all kinds of those. And so the smoke gets out there and it fills all these cracks and crevices where the roaches are hiding, where their eggs are laid and all the rest. And it fills it. And you take a look at that room when you're running out of there like gangbusters because you're afraid you might have a little bit of roach blood in you. And you want to get out of there. And you take a look back at that smoke cloud and you see that it's going everywhere. That's the idea of this word. It fills the whole house. It went out into every nook and cranny. Okay. Acts 2. Uh-oh. Acts 2. Day of Pentecost. Guess what? The word fill was there. Acts 2, verse 2. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind and it filled all the house. Play Ra'o. It filled all the house where they were sitting. Okay. Acts 13, verse 52. Acts 13, 52. This is a little bit of a kangaroo sermon here hopping through the Bible. Acts 13, 52. And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost. An association there, do you think? Filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost. 2 Corinthians, chapter 7. 2 Corinthians, chapter 7. Boy, there's a lot of wind here today. It is filling the building. We've got a play Ra'o wind today, don't we? It's just challenging my old worn Bible here. 2 Corinthians 7, 4. Great is my boldness of speech towards you. Great is my glorying of you. I am filled with comfort. I'm exceeding joyful in all tribulation. There he's filled with comfort. And then Philippians, chapter 1, verse 11. Philippians, chapter 1, verse 11. And the appeal starts with the prayer beginning up in verse 9, that he prays, verse 11, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God. They're filled, play Ra'o, with the fruits of righteousness. And then, this is an interesting one, Philippians, chapter 4, verse 19. You wouldn't have detected this out of the English text. But my God shall supply all your needs. That word supply is the word play Ra'o. But my God shall fulfill all your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. And then just one more. Colossians, chapter 2, verse 10. Colossians, chapter 2, verse 10. And it says, and ye are complete in him. Same word, play Ra'o. And ye are filled full in him. Okay, now let's keep on those ideas in our minds. And let's go back to Ephesians and let the wind blow those pages. Now, Ephesians, chapter 5. This command of being filled with the Spirit is a present passive imperative. Doesn't that impress you? A present passive imperative. Not having had a Greek class or a Greek course, you can go back and you can tell all the people in your home assembly, Ephesians 5.18 is a present passive imperative. And they'll say it sounds Greek to me and you'll say it's right. It is. Okay, present passive imperative. So what? Here's what. Present, okay. The present tense in the Greek language brings with it the idea of continuousness. The aorist tense brings with the idea of punctiliar action or point action. It happens maybe once for all or it looked at a series of events and that one event. But the filling of the Holy Spirit is present tense. Be filled with the Spirit. Be continuously filled with the Holy Spirit. Now, it's very interesting that the other ministries of the Holy Spirit are used in the aorist tense or the perfect tense. Now, the aorist tense, for instance, in 1 Corinthians 12, verse 13 when it talks about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, it says, For we were all baptized into one body, if not the present tense, it's the aorist tense. It's a once for all happening. It never occurs again. And there's never an encouragement from the Word of God to go out and get baptized with the Holy Spirit once, get baptized with the Holy Spirit a second time, get baptized with the Holy Spirit a third time. It's a once for all event. And that once for all event places a person into the body of Christ. The Word of God, when it talks about us being sealed with the Holy Spirit, there's never a command in the present tense to go out and be sealed with the Holy Spirit. There's never a command to go out and get adopted. There's never a command to go out and, you know, many of the ministries of the Holy Spirit that we could think of. But the ministry of the filling of the Holy Spirit, though, is a present tense. Be continuously filled. Okay, that's present, continuous. Passive. Okay, now there are three voices in Greek, two in English. In English we have active voice and passive voice. In Greek there's active, middle, and passive. We don't need to get into middle voice. That's not important at this point. But active is the subject does the action and there is an object, the receiver of the action. So subject does the action, the verb is the action, and the direct object of the sentence. You all remember this, English classes? I mean, if you're as fuzzy in your English as this man from Bremerton, you may not remember that. Okay, or if you went to a southern school, you may not remember it either. And, but you know, there's the subject performing the action. That's the active voice. Now, the passive voice is the subject is the receiver of the action. That the action is performed upon the subject. And so this is the difference, you know. I kicked the dog. That's active voice. Passive voice, the dog was kicked by me. Okay, so there the first situation, I did the action. The dog received the action. Now, I put it into passive voice. The dog is the subject, but it's also the receiver of the action. Now, being the passive voice here, notice that the subject of this is us. That he's commanding you, you all, it's a plural here, by the way, you know, I said you all, and you do, I'm sure all of you have used the illustration of the Apostle Paul with southern. You're right, okay. Southern Greek. But anyway, it's in the Greek text too. But anyway, so that you all are the subject, but you're the receiver of the action. It's not that you out and go continually fill yourself. That's not it at all. It's that you all be continually filled by somebody else. And here it is by the Holy Spirit and Numati, that we are to be filled by means of the Holy Spirit. So it's present, that it's continuous. Passive, somebody else. God Himself is doing it to us. God is doing the filling. And thirdly, it's imperative. That is, it's a command. This is not an option. Now, of course, with an imperative, there is always the fact that the person who is being given the command has the choice of doing or not doing that command. That when the Bible says, be filled with the Holy Spirit, we have to understand that we as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ have the option of saying, I will or I won't. I will be filled. I will allow the Spirit of God to fill me and all the way to the recesses of my life. Or I won't allow the Holy Spirit to fill me. That choice is there and it's available for each believer to make. Of course, the Apostle Paul is mightily encouraging him to make the right decision. The wrong decision is saying, well, I'm going to live for myself. I'm going to do my own thing. No, that's the wrong decision. The right decision is be filled constantly, continuously by the Holy Spirit and that is what God expects from us. God does not expect people to be half-filled, quarter-filled, three-quarter-filled, partially-filled, mostly-filled. He expects them to be plural, fully-filled, filled full, all the way to the cracks and crevices in your life. That is the command of the Word of God. He wants Spirit-filled believers. All of them. So now, when we think about this, now this is a command. We know, now you can go back to your home assembly, right, and tell them what a present passive imperative is in Ephesians 5, verse 18, right? You can tell them what it is and you can tell them that it is something that we have the choice of doing and it is something that God expects of us. He holds us accountable. He holds us responsible to be Spirit-filled believers. Okay, now, the question is, what does a Spirit-filled believer look like? How about verses 19-21? Just in case there's any question, just in case there's any doubt about what a Spirit-filled believer is, here's what it is. Speaking to yourself, and that's the word for one another, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. A person that's being filled, controlled to the cracks of his life by the Spirit of God is a person who goes up and he starts speaking to somebody else in a psalm. You know, that you come in to a group of people and all of a sudden, the Spirit of God just gives you a psalm. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord. And you sing a psalm. Now, it would help if you had a voice like our brother Hurley, you know, if you could sing that psalm. But, you know, it doesn't have to be like that, does it? It could be a person who doesn't have that ability, but you come up and you speak to the brothers and sisters in a psalm right out of the Bible. Or you can speak to one another in a hymn. I can remember there have been times when I was in a situation where there was a lot of conflict going on between some people. And all of a sudden, I just looked up and said, Turn your eyes upon Jesus. And, you know, you start singing like that and all of a sudden, these people, they turn and the daggers come at you. But you're speaking to them, okay? And when you sing with my voice, they hear you loud and clear because it's all over the notes. You know, it's all around. And all of a sudden, it's just amazing what starts happening. You're giving them an appeal. You're giving them an exhortation. Or maybe it might be a person that is going through deep trials and you speak to them a song and you sing that song to them. Or a spiritual song. What in the world is a spiritual song? That was done back during the slave era, right? Spiritual. Now, you know what a spiritual song is? That's just a song that the Holy Spirit produces inside of a spiritual person. A person is under control of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of God all of a sudden just starts giving you a song. You ever had that happen to you? I mean, you're just walking along and you're driving your car and all of a sudden you start singing. It's not a psalm and it's not a hymn that you've learned. It's just words that the Spirit of God is giving you right then in English, okay? Don't doubt me here. Unless you know French or you know English or something like that, you start singing a song and you understand what you're saying and you're singing a song and your voice is being lifted up to God and you don't know what the next word is until you sing it. You ever had that experience? You're looking at me like I'm some sort of oddball. But that's what a spiritual song is. Amen. Thank you, Hal Green. Okay, but then you go a little bit deeper. What happens next? A person feels the Spirit of God singing and making music in your heart to the Lord. Now, you might be able to put on an act of singing a psalm or a hymn or a spiritual song. You might be able to put on an act. But he says, hey, let's go a little bit deeper about a Spirit-filled person. A Spirit-filled person is a person not only has got his mouth working, it goes a little bit deeper. It goes into his heart and his heart's working. And you know that out of the abundance of the heart a man speaks. If the Spirit of God is filling your heart, it's just amazing how it comes out through your mouth. So he's going back to now down here a Spirit-filled believer, a person that's having the Holy Spirit going out and filling all the way out to his fingernails, all the way down to his toenails, right up to the edge of his hair. He's filled with the Holy Spirit all the way that this person, his heart is just bubbling over. You know, I was listening to Stuart Briscoe and he was talking about the psalm that says, my heart is indicting a good manner. Does anybody know what the word indicting means? That's it. We got it. You didn't see that, did you? That's what it is. It's a heart that's bubbling, bubbling, bubbling, bubbling, bubbling. Your heart is just bubbling, you know. You come around that person. I had a chance of sharing, we had Ken Poore come in from California and he's the kind of guy his heart just bubbles over. We went into this restaurant about 6, 15 in the morning before the conference started. We were going to spend some time together and there's these four waitresses sitting on the table bragging on cigarettes and they look so sad. I mean, they really down and out and Ken came in there and his heart was indicting a good manner. It was bubbling over. He was singing, making melody in his heart and these girls looked up at us and we had four waitresses who couldn't do enough to please this guy because he had a heart that was bubbling over. He was walking down this big Baptist church there where this conference was being held and he was walking down there and this little old black janitor was walking down there and he was just shuffling his feet and Ken just took a look at that guy and stopped and caught the guy's attention and the guy looked at him and Ken went that's all he did. He just stood like that and you should have seen the smile go right in the middle of that black face all these white teeth were showing and all day long that little old black janitor was smiling just for a that's all I mean and it wasn't an act. It came out of a heart that was bubbling over from the Spirit of God. Let's go a little deeper. Giving thanks always for all things unto God and crying out and throwing up the hands and saying God save me I'm a sinner I'm lost I'm going to hell. Now just a minute that guy didn't exactly set the mold of Howard Hendricks. He didn't have all the eloquence and all the power. That's a kind of dull preacher but the problem was not the problem the thing was he was filled with the Spirit of God took his word and brought conviction and you think the Spirit may affect our evangelism. It's not the best preacher that you want behind the pulpit. It's a preacher that the Spirit of God is using and I believe the Spirit of God did that last night. We don't want to look for the most eligible preachers. We want people who are filled with the Spirit of God. We don't want the most talented businessman to run our church. We want men who are filled with the Spirit of God. We don't want women who are just maybe the best school teacher at school teaching our Sunday school classes. We want women who are filled with the Spirit of God. I believe the Spirit of God will make a difference in all of that. But then the question that we have to ask in just our last couple of minutes here is, how are we filled with the Holy Spirit? Obviously, two objects can't occupy the same place. If you're filled with sin or if you're filled with self, then you can't be filled with the Holy Spirit. And you can ask our brother Tony. Two trucks can't occupy the same place. You know, when they try to occupy the same place, you got a collision. It just doesn't work. And if you're filled with sin in your life, you're filled with self, guess what? You're not going to be filled with the Holy Spirit. So that's where we need a confession of sin. That all of our sin, we confess it to God and we give it to Him and say, Lord, look at our sin. That's where the blood of Jesus Christ right now, present tense, continually cleanses us from all sin. The Spirit of God is cleansing us from all sin. And from ourselves, we yield up to God and say, Lord, I'm not the boss anymore. You're the boss. You're the master. You're in charge. You're in control. So there's a yielding to God and acknowledging Him as our Lord and master. But still, it is a command here. I believe part of being filled with the Holy Spirit is being filled with the Word that the Spirit of God has given us. Letting the Word of Christ dwell in you richly and the Spirit of God taking His Word will produce the manifestations of the Holy Spirit in our life. But I believe there's one more thing. That if this is a command, we recognize we can't do it ourselves and we recognize we need it. So I believe there's a place having dealt with the sin, having yielded the authority and control to God and acknowledging and zealously studying the Word of God. I believe there's a place where we as believers ask God to fill us. Say, God, I can't fill me with You. It's You that's got to fill me with You. I need it because I know how weak, how selfish, how finite, how incapable, how unfaithful and how all these things... I have the tendency in my flesh to be. But God, I know You're different from that. I know You're capable of coming and filling my mind, filling my heart, filling my entire being, right out to my fingertips and toes and hair. I want it all to be filled with You. Just like the sweet savor of the ointment of Spikenard from Mary's box. So we want the Spirit of God to fill all of us so that the evidence would be that people would not see us, but that which the Spirit of God would make manifest. And what does the Spirit of God make manifest? He always makes manifest the Lord Jesus Christ. The Spirit of God filling a Christian demonstrates Jesus Christ. Father, oh, how inadequate we are to speak Your words. I pray for each of us that we would have lives that reflect Jesus Christ by the filling constantly of Your Holy Spirit. And Father, that there would be nothing that we would allow in our lives that would hinder the working of the Spirit of God. That He would have total freedom to work, to control, to lead and guide and direct and then magnify Your Son in each of our lives. Father, I pray and I ask for myself and for each person here, that we would be filled to the full with Your Holy Spirit. Amen.