Filled with the Spirit

It's a joy to be with you this afternoon. A great, great joy. And, of course, certainly have enjoyed the other conferences since we've had the privilege of coming to Norway over the years. It's been a tremendous blessing. We've been greatly edified not only through the preaching and teaching but also through our interaction with many of you. And you mean a great deal to us. We're so grateful for all the benefits that we have in Christ and particularly the benefit of fellowship with his body. Very grateful to be here once again. We're here by divine appointment, and that's huge. I mean, you can't underestimate the fact that God has sovereignly put this together. I'm very grateful for God using Bjorn as well as others to put this conference together. And I know it's been a tremendous catalyst for encouraging people to seek the Lord here in Norway. Well, this afternoon, or I should say this morning still, if you would, take your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Ephesians in chapter number 5. The book of Ephesians in chapter number 5. For those of you who have prayed for me and you've corresponded on Facebook concerning my heart issue, it just totally took me by surprise back in the latter part of October. I mean, the heart was fibrillating. There was just an inconsistency of heartbeat. My doctor, who was on our board of directors for our ministry, insisted that I go to a cardiologist. They checked it. They ran all kind of tests, radiation dye tests, echocardiogram. Everything came back negative. And I thought, man, you know, I'm good to go, but I don't know why my heart continues to beat so irregularly. And so what they did is the doctor put a monitor on me. One time during a 24-hour period, my heart was beating 200 beats a minute for about 7 to 10 seconds. And so that concerned them. So they went in. They did a catheter. They found out that I had multiple blockages, which I thought, man, I've got my mother's genes. You know, I mean, those people, they have to take a stick in North Carolina and beat them to death. They live so long. And I said, certainly I've got those genes. I never thought that I would have heart problems. But anyway, they got in there. They did a stent. Then they had me come back for another catheter, and they did some other stents. And so I'm feeling good at this time. However, I still have these fibrillations, and at times it concerns me. But thank you for your prayers. I really appreciate you believing God on my behalf and my family's behalf during these days. I was telling somebody earlier today, quite honestly, I had a foreboding sense of eternity. I thought, you know, I'm approaching death. The sands of time are sinking. My life is ebbing away. I'm getting ready to face the Lord Jesus. And I thought, Lord, am I really a Christian? Do I really know the effectual work of grace in my heart? And so I was very anxious for a couple of days to the point that it almost debilitated my emotional stamina. There was a darkness that came upon me in some measure. But suddenly I retreated to the propitiatory work of Jesus Christ. You see, friend, there is no assurance if you look at your performance. And so when I began to recognize what Jesus did on my behalf, not what I was doing presently in my walk with God concerning my sanctification, that's when the peace came. So peace does not come as a result of our performance, but rather his propitiation. And I'm so grateful for what God's done. My life is in the Lord's hands, quite honestly. I've become a little more bold. It's emboldened me to speak the truth with even a more cutting edge when I teach or preach these days. And so you really don't care any longer what people think about you. You're just going to open your mouth and let it rip. Okay? So that's what we'll do during this session. If you would, look with me here in Ephesians chapter number 5. Let me just read a few verses here concerning this matter, the reality of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 5, to get the proper context, let me begin reading in verse number 11. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light. For whatsoever doeth make manifest is light. Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be 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. That's sufficient. Let's pray together. Father, once again we come before you in the strong name of Christ. Lord, our weaknesses are to our advantage. We seek you and only you. We thank you Lord for the tenor of this meeting so far, for the fear of God, for the sobriety of the Spirit, for the love and the kindness and the grace that permeates Lord relationships. Lord, with that said, we will not underestimate the prospects of a visitation from heaven. Lord, what greater things could occur here if you would rend the heavens and come down. Lord, would you please come and enlighten our minds. Give us, Lord, great understanding, acute understanding. Spirit wrought. And Lord, may in this next session, the simplicity of this truth of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Not only would it be grasped mentally, but I pray God that it might be a reality in every heart. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. There is nothing that stands in contrast to the modern church than an individual and a people that are saturated with the Spirit. As you probably see today, there is such a dearth of the reality of spiritual power because seemingly people have grossly neglected the person and the work of the Holy Spirit when it comes to this matter of filling. Back three years ago when I was here, I did a mini-series on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. And there, those of you that were here remember that I talked about the two fillings of the Holy Spirit. There is a filling, which is Ephesians 5.18, be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be ye being filled with the Holy Spirit, which we are commanded to experience. And then there is that sovereign work of the filling of the Holy Spirit where he comes upon and he enlarges or he induces people from on high for the purpose of making their evangelistic endeavors more effectual. You identify that in the Scripture as the Bible says after they were filled with that type of the filling, they spake the word of God with boldness or they spake in tongues or dialects in that particular language that they were communicating the gospel to. So there are two fillings of the Spirit, I believe, and we don't have time to go into all that today. We're going to basically focus on this first filling or the Ephesians 5.18 of the filling of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps the greatest indictment on the modern church is what it resorts to when it has lost its supernatural distinctive. And what I mean by that is the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Can I tell you that I agree with Ian Murray who said that our great need of the hour is not for more apologetics. I'm not saying God doesn't use that. It certainly has redeeming value. But the great need, the premier need of our hour is the preaching of the gospel under the anointing of the Holy Spirit. And so with that said today, I remember years ago in my quest to understand more of the fullness of God because of my great love and appreciation for church history, I would visit a lot of the church sites and homes as well as graves of some of the men and women that made an impact for Christ and their generation. Right here in Norway, I don't know if you're aware of it or not, of the great Christian heritage that your country has. People like O. Housby and Marie Munson, tremendous missionary, others. I remember reading recently, Lloyd Jones would come consistently to Oslo and do a conference each year and expound the scriptures there because of a bunch of hungry-hearted people in that locale that really wanted more of God. So it's interesting. There is a rich spiritual heritage here and a heritage that embraced the filling of the Holy Spirit. Now, I was in Carthage, Illinois, and visiting the grave site of John Hyde, who was the missionary to India. Hyde was not a Calvinist. He was an Arminian, but a man that was passionately in love with Christ. He was not a great preacher. He did not articulate well. On one occasion, he spoke at a large Bible conference and he stuttered and stammered so much that finally a lady got up and she led the whole congregation, better than a thousand more people, in a song and sang him off the platform. He was not noted for his oratorical skills, but he was a man that was passionately in love with Christ, a man that was besought of God, a man that really loved sinners and saw people consistently come into the kingdom of God, but a man that I believe was filled greatly with the Holy Spirit. I remember that day in Carthage, Illinois, I went to the Historical Society, which was in the building of the town hall, and as I asked about John Hyde, the lady says, Well, we have a book that somebody donated. You're welcome to look through it. And I'd never seen it before, and I just began to thumb through this rich biographical sketch of John Hyde's life. I found there at the end of this book there were different testimonies of the men that he worked with. And one in particular really stood out to me was a young man that accompanied him for a lengthy period of time, considering the fact that he died, I believe, at 29 years of age, but the young man gave this testimony of the life of John Hyde. He said, I've never met a man, I never worked with a man that was more intoxicated with Jesus Christ than John Hyde. That's what I aspire to. I want to be inebriated with the very spirit and character of Jesus, and it cannot come without the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Have you noticed an abundance of plagues that have infiltrated the church as a result of the absence of the Spirit? And I might add, right along with the truth of God's Word, we never minimize the importance of theology and preaching truth, but it's interesting that because of the absence of God's Spirit in leading and guiding and teaching and exposing truth today in churches, so many isms have come into the church. Liberalism, moralism, relativism, syncretism, mysticism, subjectivism, all these various isms, many, many more have invaded, infiltrated the church because we have not safeguarded the presence of the assembly with this conscious dependence upon the Holy Spirit. So this afternoon, let's look at this matter. It's a very simple message because the filling of the Holy Spirit, friend, and understand this from the outset, is just as much a work of grace as salvation is a work of grace. We are filled by grace just as we are saved by grace. Now you may not understand the magnitude of that statement, but friend, I'll tell you something, that is huge. We are not saved as a result, or, excuse me, filled as a result of our own self-improvement. It comes as a result of us believing and asking in faith for Him to fill us with His Spirit. So I want to begin, I give you just basically three things for us to hang our thoughts on this afternoon. First of all is the nature of the filling, the nature of the filling of the Spirit. In Ephesians 5, 18, once again, he says, and be not drunk with wine, whereas in Acts 6, but be filled, literally in the Greek there, is be ye being filled with the Spirit. Now some things that are very interesting to note about this word, be filled. It is a command. It is in the imperative mood. It is not something that is optional. It is not something that we can negotiate. It is something that you and I are commanded to walk into or to enter into the reality of. The Greek carries the idea that it is as much a command to be filled with the Spirit as it is not to be drunk with wine. The grammar in the Greek word here, once again to reiterate, is be ye being filled. Now we know that according to 1 Corinthians 12, and verse 13, that there is one baptism. We are baptized into the body of Christ by the Spirit at the moment of our conversion. But there are many fillings. There are many fillings of the Holy Spirit by which he takes us and he begins to manifest in our lives through the fruit of the Spirit, the character of Jesus Christ. Secondly, though, not only is it a command to be obeyed, it is from the Greek word pleiros, which is in the passive tense or the passive voice. It implies, friend, that all we have to offer to God is emptiness. In other words, real Christianity, especially spirit raw Christianity, is a Christianity by which we are being acted upon. We're not making it happen. We can't produce spirit fullness in and of ourselves. It is something that only God can produce in us. Listen carefully. It is also the Greek word here in the present continuous tense. Once again, as I've already said, there's not just one, but the need for multiple fillings of the Holy Spirit. It is for control. It is furthermore for walk and worship. Our walk with Jesus Christ, the expression, the effectual expression of our devotion to the Son of God. This certainly is enhanced when we are operating under the control of the Holy Spirit. But it also bears the fruit of the Spirit, which is none other than the character of Jesus Christ. Now, why does he say fruit and not fruits of the Spirit? Because you see, friend, when you're filled with the Holy Spirit, all nine of those virtues of the Spirit-filled life are manifested in you. You don't pick and choose. You don't experience some to the exclusion of the others. But every one is revealed. Maybe not to the extent that others are, but every one of these fruits, not fruits, but fruit of the Spirit, is manifested in your existence, in your walk. Now, it's interesting. This term used in the New Testament is more adjectival. It means full of the Spirit. The verb there in the original language, pleru, means to make full or make feel, once again emphasizing that we are being acted upon. We do not determine it. We cannot prepare for it. We cannot do certain steps in order to attain it. It's something that God does for us. This was certainly the case when the apostles told the brethren to seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, Acts chapter 6 and verse number 3, whom the apostles were seeking to establish in diaconal ministry. Their goodness, which, by the way, was a fruit of the Spirit, and wisdom were linked to their spirit fullness. It is what you could expect to find true of these men in any situation. As being normally characteristic of them, should you come upon them unexpectedly. So this is the nature of this fullness of the Holy Spirit. It's for the purpose of walk and worship. Secondly, though, another important factor in this matter of being filled with the Spirit, what does it entail? You said, now, Brother Don, you mentioned a minute ago it's something that God does. Is there no part on our part? Is there nothing that we're to do? Listen, even though the Greek word is in the passive tense, which means, once again, we are being active on, it does not mean passivity. It doesn't mean that I just sit back and wait for something to happen. It means that I cooperate. I collaborate. It means, friend, that I have a disposition of dependence. Now here are some of the watchwords that you begin to experience, and by the grace of God we cultivate as we look to God to fill us moment by moment with the Holy Spirit. First of all is desperation. Desperation. You remember there in John 7, verse 37 through 39, which I think you can draw a very solid application from, even for the believer. The Bible says in that last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out saying, if any man thirsts, let him come unto me and drink. He goes on to say, he that believeth in me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. You see the problem today in Christendom, friend, is we are not thirsty for God. We're not desperate for Him. I mean, Ravenhill said it best when he said, the reason that we're not filled with the Holy Spirit is because we're content to live without it. I need it in my marriage. I need it to keep my speed under the speed limit on the highway. I need it when it comes to patience with my children. When I say it, I'm talking about the fullest. I'm not referring to Him, the Holy Spirit, but I need His fullest. I need His control. Here's another watchword to look for in your life and to cultivate is trust. He that believeth on me, he that believeth on me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. I ask you today, are you believing on Him? We so easily move into a state of unbelief in our lives. Let me tell you how this works for me. I ask God to fill me with the Holy Spirit by faith. Sometimes, and especially I remember in the early days of my Christian life, it seemed as if there was a manifestation of emotion. I felt peace. I had a sense of joy. But the older and older I walked with the Lord, the more it seemed like the emotions began to die off. Therefore, all that was required was trust. It was like stepping into a jacuzzi. Have you ever gotten into a jacuzzi before the first time? You remember all the swirling, the powerful swirling of the water, the sensation, the relaxation, the emotion of that moment that you experienced? And then you got into it the third or the fourth or the sixth time, you didn't feel the swirling as much. It didn't have that tantalizing affirmation like it had before. You weren't as refreshed, but still the flow was there. The feeling was gone, but the flow was still present. It's the same way with the feeling of the Holy Spirit. We pray and we ask, God, fill me once again with the Holy Spirit. Fill me before my day. And now, in my Christian life, rarely do I feel the emotions. Rarely do I have the feelings. But guess what? I must believe. He that believeth out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. Another thing, another factor in this experience is humility. Humility. In James chapter 4, verses 6 through 7, when he giveth more grace, wherefore he says, God resisteth the proud, he gives grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Humility. It's coming under all that he has for me and all that he wishes me to do. I offer no resistance. I ask him to take control and I submit accordingly. There is a factor of confession and cleansing. James chapter 4, in verse number 8, Cleanse ye hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded. And what is confession, friend? In a very simple way, but yet profound in reality, confession is getting in the witness box against yourself. Are you willing to tell the truth about yourself? The whole truth and nothing but the truth. When God puts his hot finger of conviction on an area in your life that is a pocket of resistance, a contrary area of rebellion, are you willing to acknowledge it before God accordingly and believe that the blood of Christ is sufficient to cleanse you from that sin at the moment? We never want to underestimate this next one. And that is the asking part. Somebody said that if you shoot at nothing, you'll hit it every time. Do we ever really ask God to fill with the Holy Spirit? Perhaps some of us are intimidated to ask. Maybe you've had an experience that you would align with the Pentecostal movement or the Charismatic movement. You say, well, I don't want to go there, so I don't ask at all. I'm afraid of this so-called spirit-filled experience. Let me remind you of something, friend. The security of the believer is not a Baptist doctrine. It is a Bible doctrine. Election is not a Calvinistic doctrine. It is a Bible doctrine. And the fullness of the Holy Spirit is not a Charismatic doctrine. It is a Bible doctrine. We desperately need to ask. Jesus said in Luke 11 and verse 13, if ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall the Heavenly Father, and the Greek word once again, is keeps on giving without measure the fullness of the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. Now, obviously, you can't be filled with the Spirit unless you have the Spirit. First John chapter 3 and verse 24 and Romans 8 and verse 9, we receive the Spirit at the moment of conversion. But just because He inhabits us does not mean that He controls us. And this is why we desperately need to ask. We ask. And we ask in faith. And we ask again and again. Furthermore, we ask continuously Luke 11 and verse 9. It's interesting, right there in that same context where He said, if you, being evil, know how to give good gifts, He said, I say unto you, ask and it shall be given you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you. And once again, the Greek word is a continuous seeking and asking and knocking so as not to be denied. Now, once again, let's kind of balance things for a moment. I can't make it happen. But I'm saying that this is my disposition. It's one of a person that is desperately in need for God to come and help. You see, once again, passive tense speaks to our neediness, my weakness, my desperate need to be helped. So, with all that said, here's a third point, and this is what I really want to emphasize this morning that, brothers and sisters, I hope will be a great help to you. I mentioned a while ago that we are saved by grace. You must understand, because if you do not, it will be a very frustrating walk with God that you are also filled by grace. You say, now, what does that mean? Well, first of all, the text in Ephesians 5, verse 18 presupposes that this work is a work of grace. No preparation, no performance on our part in the strength of our own flesh determines this experience. It is not required. Therefore, listen, delaying is not necessary. Can I tell you something? When I was in Bible school and after Bible college, going from church to church, doing what we call in the United States revival meetings, we would have hours of prayer following the service. Sometimes on Saturday night, we'd have a half night of prayer or all night of prayer and beseeching God to pour out the Holy Spirit. It didn't happen. Now, please, with that said, understand I'm not minimizing that second filling of the Holy Spirit where the Spirit, by sovereign order, by divine design, is poured out upon a people. That's happened in the history of the church. But here I am pleading with God to send forth His Spirit and waiting and agonizing and condemning myself and sometimes confessing the same sin over and over again, thinking that it was in my preparation that would move God to come and to fill me with the Holy Spirit. The filling, once again I reiterate, of the Spirit is as much a work of grace as believing the Gospel is a work of grace. Therefore, here's the exhortation. Ask Him to fill you now. Not when you get home. Not when you get back to your room. But ask Him to fill you now. He is able now. Because His willingness to fill you is not contingent upon what you do, what you manipulate, your waiting, your introspection, your condemnation. Can I be honest with you? I need the Holy Spirit in order to be filled with the Holy Spirit. You say, now what do you mean by that? I can't see sin in my life properly. I can't discern from those things that stand between me and the Savior and impede the fullness of the Holy Spirit without His help. So I need the fullness of the Holy Spirit to walk in the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Now watch this. It is a bad analogy that so many preachers have used, I included, over the years of the cup. And so it was taught that the way that you prepare for the cup to be filled by God is you must take initiative and many times the painstaking steps to empty the cup. I ask you a question. How much grace is in that? You have reverted back to the works of the law. Rather, my heart now is, Lord, fill me with the Holy Spirit that I might properly see anything in my life that would impede Your flow through me. Put Your finger through the fullness of Your Spirit, the control of the Holy Spirit on those things in my life presently that would impede the power of grace through my preaching. So I need the fullness of the Holy Spirit to walk in the fullness of the Holy Spirit. And once again, friend, lower the cup. Fullness is control. Lord afresh, by faith I ask You to fill me, take control of my life. And I ask now. You know what He does? Regardless of how I feel, by faith, He fills me with the Holy Spirit. I'm filled. I'm filled now. The prospects of being filled now comes as a result, friend, of grace. Therefore, listen, I do not have to wait until I feel adequate. I just don't feel like I'm a candidate to be filled with God. It doesn't matter how you feel. Or I feel so unworthy. Or I'm not to a point where I'm satisfied that I'm empty enough to be filled. Or I don't know if I really know brokenness to the extent that I need to be qualified as a candidate to receive the fullness. Or I certainly have no confidence that I've covered every base when it comes to my penance. There's still got to be something in here, somewhere, I mean, that I haven't repented of. Friend, God only requires you to confess what He's made you consciously aware of. There are secret sin, yes. There are secret faults, yes. But whatever God has made you aware of is what He expects you to confess accordingly. But it's amazing to me that when I ask for the help of the Holy Spirit, He reveals things in my life that I could never have seen in my own ability, introspective ability to see and feel like I needed to confess to be filled. I need to be filled so I might properly see and confess accordingly those impediments to His fullness in my life. Listen to this statement. Roy Hession, who wrote the book The Calvary Road, said, The Spirit's fullness is not the reward of our faithfulness, but God's gift for our defeat. That sounds like grace. That sounds like, it's not abused grace, friend. It's amazing grace. I remember Roy Hession years ago told me personally, he said, Brother Don, Calvary only makes the fullness of the Holy Spirit one step away. You don't need to beat up on yourself. You don't need to listen to the condemnations of the devil. Just by faith, ask God to fill you. You're filled. You're filled. Now what if something comes to light? As soon as you're filled, the Holy Spirit has come and now He's reigning there, so to speak, in that fullness and He shows you something. Friend, as long as I keep saying yes and obeying Him, I walk in the Spirit. The minute I withdraw, I disobey, is the minute that the Spirit no longer controls me. You understand? You understand? Calvary only makes it one step away. I don't need to tarry any longer than it takes for me to acknowledge that I've sinned against my God and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, is sufficient to cleanse me from every sin. That's good news. That's good news. Because that's grace. The command to be filled presupposes that we can ask now. It is a work of grace, not self-effort. One of the great dangers of the Christian life, friend, when you begin the journey by grace, is there's always this relentless temptation to default to performance. Remember that. You always want to make it happen. Fall back in your own cleverness, your own self-determination, your own tendency to improve yourself. You cannot do it apart from grace. Let me close with this. There was a lady who wrote a hymn. Her name was Mary Shackleton. Listen to the lyrics. I think this best describes what I sought to convey this afternoon. But though I cannot sing or tell or know the fullness of Thy love, while here below my empty vessel I may freely bring, O Thou, who art of love the living spring my vessel feel. Now listen to this. I am an empty vessel, not one thought or look of love I ever to Thee brought, but I may come and come again to Thee. With this the empty sinner's only plea, listen now, Thou lovest me. It's grace. Not me beating up on myself, bruising myself, listening to all those hounding accusations of the evil one, friend. Listen, I come as I did to Christ by faith and was born from above. I come now by faith to receive the fullness of Your Spirit. Our ultimate and only basis for being filled by His Spirit is His love. It is not my merit but His mercy that obtains the blessing. If I should measure my worthiness by how sincere I am in my confession, how contrite I am in my repentance, how broken I am over my sin, then when can I know I am capable enough to receive God's fullness? So I close. It is not my groping in self-pity, self-introspection, and self-condemnation that makes me a candidate for such blessing as the fullness of the Holy Spirit. It is His grace. It is by His love alone that I obtain the fullness. And guess what? When it's of grace, then God gets all the glory. And it's not me saying, look what I've done to prepare. Look at the all-night prayer meeting I was a part of. Not minimizing that. But you see, friend, the vantage point is I'm moving from a grace position, not from a law or a self-improvement position. I hope this helps. I really hope it helps. Father, we don't want to revert back to the works of the law, Lord. Certainly, Lord, the Galatian syndrome, having begun in the spirit, are You now made perfect in the flesh? Oh, God. My prayer is bend this proud and stiff-necked eye. Help me to bow the neck and die, beholding Him on Calvary who gave Himself for me. And Lord, as the poet or the songwriter put it, Oh, to be saved from self, O Lord. Oh, to be lost in Thee. Oh, that it might be no more I, but Christ that lives in me. Father, thank You that the fullness of the Holy Spirit is a work of grace. All we need to do is in humility, desperation, we ask, and we ask in faith, and we ask now. So, Father, once again, I pray for understanding. Give Your people understanding. Give me greater understanding, Lord, that the Christian life is most pleasing to You when we're being acted upon. And Lord, remind us that passive tense Christianity does not mean that we're passive. We should keep on believing and keep on obeying and keep on pleasing the Savior in all that we do. In Jesus' name, Amen.