Turn to Ephesians 5. We are coming to that
verse that I have been looking forward to, verse 18:
"And do not get drunk with wine, for that
is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit."
Turn back to chapter 3 and to the prayer that I have told you over and
over again has everything to do with the teaching of this book. It sums up
chapters 1, 2 and 3 and sets up chapters 4, 5 and 6. You can see it bleed
into almost everything Paul says in these last three chapters. In verse 16
of chapter 3, Paul says,
"that He [God] would grant you, according to the riches of His glory [that
refers to everything they have in Jesus Christ], to be strengthened with
power through His Spirit in the inner man."
Paul has told them that they have every spiritual blessing in Christ
Jesus. Now, they are to be strengthened, and we are to be strengthened,
according to what He has given to us.
Verse 17 tells us the way we are strengthened is by our willingness to
accommodate Jesus in all the areas of our life. How do we accommodate Him?
We are willing to obey Him. It is by my willingness to surrender, my
willingness to obey, that I am strengthened in the inner man by the Spirit
of God. This thought in that prayer literally permeates the rest of the
book. God lives in us. We have all of God we are ever going to get. Isn’t
that wonderful? Now God wants to control us from within. He wants all of
us. That is the key. The key is not getting any more of God. The key is
God getting more and more of us.
In Ephesians 4 he tells them to put on the new man, the new garment, a brand
new lifestyle. Remember, a garment is something that people see.
Therefore, what he is literally saying in the context of his thought there
is if you are strengthened on the inside, it is going to show up on the
outside. The garment is a lifestyle. The Holy Spirit is living inside of
me, strengthening me. The degree I am willing to surrender to Him is going
to show up in a difference in the way I live and the way people see me on
the outside.
In
Ephesians
5, he tells them to imitate God’s love, and he warns them to
walk wisely, making the most of the time. In verse 17 he says, "So then do
not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is." I don’t
think you can miss what he is saying here. He is talking about the will of
the Lord. The general will of the Lord is that we obey Him in every area
of our heart. But that willingness to obey gives us the ability to have
wisdom from above in order to make wise decisions to redeem the time as we
live as children of light in a world of darkness.
Paul continues the thought of walking wisely in a world filled with
darkness in verse 18:
"And do not get drunk with wine,...but be filled with the Spirit."
What does it mean to be filled with the Spirit of God? There are two
things I want you to see, and they are in stark contrast to each other.
The first part of the verse says, "And do not get drunk with wine." The
verb there is in the present tense. It means, "Don’t ever allow it into
your lifestyle." It is an imperative mood, which means it is a command.
There is no option. It is also in the middle voice. We all have this
responsibility. Never, ever, ever be drunk with wine.
Now why would Paul bring that out, especially in contrast with being
filled with the Spirit of God? I love to look at historical settings and
the culture of an area and what is going on during the period a person is
writing his letter. For example, if you don’t know anything about
Gnosticism when you look at I John, you miss the whole reason why John
wrote the letter. It is helpful to know what is going on their time. What
do they associate with pseudo-spirituality and those kinds of things? If I
understand the setting and the culture of the time, "drunkenness" was a
word used in religious circles. As a matter of fact, they thought
drunkenness was a means of communing with their spirits and gods. In
worshiping their "gods" in the pagan temples of that day, they would start
with a wild frenzied dance and work themselves into an emotional peak.
Then they would begin to drink wine. The drunker they got, the more they
would act in all kinds of wild ways. Sexual orgies would break out and
somehow, in their perverted way of thinking, they thought that when they
got into this state of mind, totally influenced by the wine, totally
intoxicated by the wine, far beyond clear thinking, that somehow they were
moved into a realm to where they could communicate with their gods.
That was typical theology of that day. It had nothing to do with our God.
It has nothing to do with true worship. That is what they were used to.
The pagan cults, the pagan temples of that day, were filled with this kind
of idolatry and immorality and debauchery. Let me give you an example of
what was going on at Ephesus. You know that Artemis was their goddess.
They had a huge temple for her. As a matter of fact, it was one of the
seven wonders of the world at that time. People came from all over to see
that temple. But that was just one of the pagan cults that was there.
There was another heresy that many scholars think affected the Ephesians
in Ephesus, and Paul had a lot to say about it. It was the Dionysian
heresy.
They believed that the greatest of the gods was a god named Zeus. Zeus was
his Greek name, and Jupiter was his Roman name. You can look through
history and see how Satan has always tried to counterfeit anything that
God has done, whether it be in myth or any other way. All he can do is
pervert, counterfeit and deceive. This seems to be an evident counterfeit
of the immaculate conception of the Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus being born of
a virgin. Mary had never had any physical contact with Joseph. Jesus was
conceived through the Holy Spirit of God. Well, isn’t it ironic that
during that time, part of the mythology was that Zeus impregnated a
goddess by the name of Samila? This goddess, without any contact
whatsoever, all of a sudden became with child. One day she wanted to see
the father of her child. So she approached Zeus. The mythology says that
she got too close to his apparent glory and was incinerated to ashes. But
before the unborn child in her womb could be burned up, Zeus reached into
her womb, took the child out and attached it to his thigh. The child grew
up and was born out of the thigh of Zeus. The child’s name was Dionysius.
Now this infant god named Dionysus was destined by Zeus to rule the earth.
The legend popular at this time went on to say that the people that
inhabited the earth at that time were not human beings. They were Titans.
When they heard that Zeus had a plan for his son, Dionysus, to rule the
earth, they stole the child away and ripped him apart, limb from limb. But
Zeus, always on the spot, the mythological god, somehow took the heart of
Dionysus, swallowed it and in some miraculous way they thought he recreated
Dionysus. Then he took his vengeance out on the Titans and with lightning,
he smote them and they were burned to ashes. Now listen to this! Out of
the ashes came the human race! You ought to take that to school next week
and say, "Oh, you think you’ve got something? Let me tell you this one.
Creation? Evolution? Hey, we came out of the ashes of the Titans on this
earth. That is how the human race came into being."
Dionysus now is the god over the earth, over the human beings on this
earth. Dionysus came up with a form of religion of ascendancy. In other
words, a man can rise to different levels of divine consciousness. This
mystical system that everybody thinks is so new today, New Age, is not New
Age. It has been going on ever since time has been here. You see, when God
does something, Satan has to pervert it. People would rather believe his
perversion than the truth of what God says. This mystical system that he
devised was comprised of wild music, frenzied dancing, sexual perversion,
bodily mutilation, eating of the raw flesh of sacrificial bulls, and
drunkenness. Dionysus became known as the god of wine, and the intoxicating
drink became the integral part of the pagan religion that surrounded him.
Just as Zeus was known as Jupiter in Rome, Dionysus was known as Bacchus in
Rome, the same god but just a different name. The worship of him was
celebrated with wild dancing, singing, drinking, and reveling that has for
over 2,000 years been synonymous with drunkenness and sexual orgy. In Rome, they had a temple of Bacchus and it
had huge columns that were profusely decorated with carvings of grape
vines, which were symbolic of the excessive use of wine in their pagan
worship.
Now this is some of the paganistic thought that was going on in the days
that Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians. You see, these Ephesian
believers had come out of all this. Paul knew that drunkenness used to be
a part of their religious ceremony, just like immorality, just like
idolatry had been a part of it. They had come out of this. In 4:17, he
said,
"This I say
therefore,
and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the
Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind,"
In other words...
"You can’t go back. You can’t live now as the Gentiles live. Look how they
live and look what you have in the Lord Jesus Christ."
Paul knew it would be a temptation, so he brought the command to them
never, ever be drunk with wine. The bottom line is as believers we don’t
ascend to God by some intoxicating beverage. God has descended to us. He
has sent His Spirit to live in us. God is in us. We don’t need anything
from the outside to control us. We have everything on the inside to
control us. The believer is to be controlled and influenced from the
inside out, not from the outside in. So paganism is the exact reverse of
what God has done. God came within us and gave us of Himself. Yet, they
would still listen to the deceptive messages that said they needed to go
back into this intoxicating type of lifestyle.
You see, when we are controlled from the inside it will produce a life
that is holy. Remember what the word "holy" means? It is not as
sanctimonious as you think. It simply means to be set apart in a class
that is unique all by itself. Remember back in Acts at Pentecost when the
Spirit came and they spoke in different tongues? Those tongues could be
understood by all the people who were there regardless of their dialect or
their particular language at the time. The people said,
"Oh, I know what is wrong. They are filled with sweet wine. They are
drunk."
Simon Peter...
"...taking his stand with the eleven,
raised his voice and declared to them: "Men of Judea, and all you who live
in Jerusalem,
let
this be known to you, and give heed to my words.15 "For these men are not
drunk, as you suppose, for it is only the third hour of the day." (Acts
2:14-15)
In other words
Peter was saying that...
"These men are not drunk with wine. Listen to what they are saying and
watch how they are behaving and you will see that when you are controlled
by the Spirit of God."
Your whole life edifies Christ. When you are controlled by anything else,
it is easily seen in stark contrast. So you see, when you are controlled
by something from the outside, you are nullifying the message.
Paul has already prayed for them to be controlled from the inside out. Now
he says that being drunk with wine is dissipation. What does that mean?
That took me a while to figure out. The word is asotia. It has the
idea of not being able to save anything, but that is really not it. It has
the idea of uncontrolled actions. It has the idea of wastefulness to the
very worst degree. Titus 1:6 associates it with rebellion. 1 Peter 4:3-4
associates it with sensuality, lust, drunkenness, carousals, drinking
parties, and abominable idolatries. You see, wine has no place in the life
of a believer. Because you see, it is something that leads you into that
which is corruptible, destructive and uncontrolled. Therefore, we are told
never, ever, ever be drunk with wine. It has no place in the life of a
believer. Peter says we have everything for life and for godliness,
therefore, we need nothing from the outside.
In the book of Philippians, Paul said,
"I have learned to be content in whatever circumstance I am in."
The word "content" means self-contained. Paul is not saying, "I am
depending on myself," Paul is saying,
"I have everything within me that I need to face anything in this life. I
don’t need anything out there, money or anything else. I have Him within
me and I am complete in Him."
So there is a stark contrast here. First of all he says,
"Don’t get drunk with wine. That is dissipation. That is corruption. That
is wasteful. That is a downhill spiral."
On the other hand he says,
"Be filled with the Spirit of God."
I like that a whole lot better. We have already seen the word "filled" in
Ephesians. You can’t just rip this one out of context and not put it
together with the other one. Look back in 3:19:
"and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be
filled up to all the fulness of God."
In other words, what he is basically saying is, "Let all of God control
all of you."
The word pleroo has two meanings. It has the basic meaning and then
sort of a sub-meaning. The sub-meaning is "to be satisfied with." When you
fill up a glass of water, it could be said to be satisfied because there
is nothing else that can get into it. There is a sense in which it means
satisfied. But the predominant meaning of the word is "to be dominated by,
to be controlled by." What fills a man controls a man.
WHAT FILLED WITH THE
SPIRIT
DOES NOT MEAN
It does not mean several things. I want to make sure you understand this.
1)
Being filled with the Spirit of God
does not mean a dramatic and sudden experience that somehow catapults you
into some kind of spiritual hierarchy, into a permanent state that is
called the second blessing. Forget it. That is not what he is talking
about here. As a matter of fact, we have every blessing in Christ Jesus.
Why are we looking for the second one? I just wondered about that.
2)
It is not some act of our own flesh that seeks God’s approval. It is not
an act of our own flesh. It is not somebody saying, "Okay, God, I love you
and I am going to go out there and do your work and you help me out." It
has nothing to do with being filled with the Spirit.
3)
It is not the same as possessing or being indwelt by the Spirit.
You possess the Spirit because you are a child of God. You have the Spirit
from the very inception of His coming into your life.
4)
It is not a process of progressively receiving bigger and bigger doses of
the Holy Spirit. Have you ever been around some of these pious, "I am more
spiritual than you are" people? They walk around as if to say, "Man, I’ve
got a bigger dose of the Holy Spirit yesterday. How much did you get?"
They act as if what they did get more of God. That has nothing to do with
what he is talking about being filled with the Spirit. You have all of God
you will ever get. Remember, it is all of you that is the key.
5) It is not the same as the baptism with the Spirit. Remember,
there is no such thing as the baptism of the Spirit. It is baptism with or by, by the means of. We are baptized into the body
of Christ with the Holy Spirit. That is salvation. When we were baptized
into the body, we received every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus. In
Him is the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
The verb used here in verse 18, "be filled with the Spirit," tells us
everything we need to know. It is in the present tense as was the
command, do not be drunk with wine.
In other words, it is being controlled, influenced by, dominated by the
Holy Spirit of God. Of course, it is in the middle voice, which means each
one of you individually. It is imperative. It is not an option. Do you
realize that we are commanded to be filled with the Spirit of God? Before
you point a finger at somebody who is in sin of one kind or another ask
yourself the question,
"Am I walking filled with the Spirit of God?"
If you are not, you are in the same situation they are in. It may not be
consequentially, but the sin is still there. We are commanded to be filled
with the Spirit of God, to be constantly being controlled by the Spirit of
God.
PICTURE OF CONTINUAL
CONTROL
BY THE HOLY SPIRIT
Now how in the world do you explain this? Take a glass of water. Some
people think that being filled with the Spirit means to fill that glass up
and guzzle it down. But after you do that it is empty. Now you have to be
filled again, so you fill it back up and drink it down. Now it is empty,
so you have to fill it up again. So you are constantly being filled,
emptied, filled, emptied of the Spirit. No, that is not it!
Take the glass, the same glass, and knock the bottom out of it. Make a
conduit out of it, a pipe that something can travel through. Take that
glass, put it into the water and let the river flow through it. That is
being filled with the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God is already there.
It hasn’t gone anywhere. You can’t empty yourself of Him. He is already
there. However, you can clog it up. You can shut it down. You can stop the
flow. So therefore, constantly in my life, I have to stay unhindered so
the Holy Spirit of God can flow and minister His life through me. I can’t
minister to anybody. I can’t do anything. It is Christ doing it through
me.
What do I do? It involves several things. First of all, it involves a
confession of sin. Confession is the word homologeo. It means to
say to God, "You are exactly right. I want to agree with you. Everything
in my life is a result of me. It is not the result of you. I’ve missed the
mark, which is what the word sin means, and God, I agree with you." The
more I confess sin, the more I am aware of the old garment. The more I am
aware of the old garment, the sicker I am going to get of it and the more
I want to wear the new garment. Confession of sin is very, very important
to the believer’s life. Moment by moment, day by day, it is constant.
I guess Romans 12:1-2 helped me more than anything else, when you think of
being filled with the Spirit as involving confession of sin, surrender of
will, surrender of intellect, surrender of body, surrender of time,
surrender of talents, surrender of desires, and surrender of possessions.
Romans 12:1-2 drew a picture of what it meant to be constantly "be being
filled" with the Spirit of God. In this passage Paul writes...
12:1 I urge you
therefore,
brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy
sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.2
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing
of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is
good and acceptable and perfect.
It is a process folks, day by day, constantly being broken, constantly
yielding. It is not an arrival. It is a pursuit.
"I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present
your bodies a living sacrifice."
Think of this as a blank sheet of paper. You sign the bottom of it and
give it to God. It is like going to a surgeon who says,
"I am going to do surgery on your life. Here is a blank sheet of paper.
Sign it."
We say,
" No, I am not signing it if it is all blanks. What are the blanks for?"
He says,
"That is what I may have to cut out of you when I do surgery on you.
Everything I cut out of you is keeping you from being everything you ought
to be."
I am going to go home and check this guy out. God says to do the same
thing for Him. Give Him permission to your body. Give Him permission to
your life. Present yourself afresh day by day and moment by moment.
"God, cut out of me anything that is hindering me from being everything
you want me to be. I give you full rights to myself. I want nothing but
what you want in my life."
Let me ask you a question.
Have you laid everything at the altar of Jesus Christ?
Are you being filled with the Spirit of God? Are you so full of yourself
that somehow you have meshed the two garments together to the point that
you don’t know the difference from one or the other? You see, being filled
with the Spirit is a constant, fresh, surrendered attitude to Jesus,
constantly. He wants whatever it is that usurps His authority and right to
be Lord and king of your life and of my life.
What is it in your life? I want to tell you, folks, when you start letting
Him control you, the garment comes on, the strengthening starts and it is
all the same thing. He said the same thing three different ways. You need
nothing from the outside. Oh, no. That is dissipation. You already have it
on the inside. Be strengthened from the inside out, not from the outside
in.
