When I tell people who have known me for some time that I am now pastoring a Baptist church they often express some amazement. After all, aren’t Baptist churches supposed to be straight-laced and legalistic, especially about things like drinking alcohol, dancing and going to movies?
That’s certainly the reputation that Baptists have in North America. But on the other hand, soon after I started attending MacDiv and hanging out with Baptists I started hearing the jokes.
[don’t recognise…]
[going fishing…]
Jokes often reveal things that everybody knows, but few talk about. In this case, that much of “Baptist” behaviour is governed more by what we think people expect of us than by what the Lord expects of us.
Last week we looked at Paul’s call to us to imitate God as our heavenly Father. At the end of that passage he talked about being wise rather than foolish, and at the beginning of this week’s passage he begins to fill that out in very concrete terms.
18
Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to
debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.
I looked up “debauchery” on the internet and basically it means, getting drunk and riotous partying. The Greek word behind it is actually closer to wastefulness. And getting drunk is a waste of time, a waste of money, and it leads to people doing really stupid things. People do things they often regret later, things that sometimes can never be undone or fixed.
I know what I’m talking about. I grew up in Scotland where the main point of going out on the weekend wasn’t to have a good time with your friends; it was to get plastered. Been there, done that.
However, I do want to point out that the issue here is getting drunk, not the use of alcohol itself. After all, Jesus’ first miracle in John’s gospel is making more wine for a party – and some of the guests were already somewhat the worse for wear! Of course, there are some people who should never drink alcohol. I’m thinking of those who have a history of alcoholism or who can’t stop once they start. But that is no basis for laying down a law that the Bible doesn’t require.
But the main point here is positive, he says “…be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
It’s interesting that Paul contrasts the two, getting drunk and being filled with the Spirit. He obviously saw some connection between them. I’d like to suggest to you that he saw getting drunk as a shallow copy of what God would have us experience in his presence through the Spirit.
When the Holy Spirit first came upon the disciples in Acts 2 it says, “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them… 12 Amazed and perplexed, [the people around] asked one another, “What does this mean?” 13 Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”
When was the last time that you were at a church service that could have had people suggesting that everybody was drunk? I’m not suggesting that we manufacture some kind of hysteria, but clearly there are parallels between the way people behave when they’re drunk and the way they behave when they’re full of the Holy Spirit.
Think about it. One of the things that getting drunk does is create community. Suddenly everybody is your long lost buddy. My dad used to turn up drunk at the house with people we had never seen before and never saw again. But for that evening they were best buddies.
That’s just a faint shadow of the kind of community that the Holy Spirit can create amongst us if we will let him. For one thing you can remember who your new friends are in the morning. More importantly, the community that the Holy Spirit creates between people is based on true sharing of who they really are, not who they are when their inhibitions are temporarily removed by too many beers.
Something else that the Holy Spirit gives us is boldness. In one of the early episodes of “Everyone Loves Raymond” his father gives him a hip flask to help him get through his wedding. Debra, the bride, is understandably offended at the suggestion that he would need to be drunk to have the courage to go through with marrying her. As it turned out he never touched the bottle. His love for her was all he needed to get him to the altar.
When we give our lives over to the Holy Spirit we find ourselves doing things that we would never have dreamed of doing before. There is a boldness and courage that the Holy Spirit gives when we submit our lives to him, boldness and courage to share our faith with others, to go out on a limb and serve the marginalized, to do the strangest things for Jesus. Things like singing and dancing on the street, preaching, or going half way round the world to do mission work.
Possibly the greatest mark of the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives is joy. Luke certainly thought so. In Luke 10:17 The seventy-two returned with joy from their short term mission trip. Luke 10:21 describes Jesus as full of joy through the Holy Spirit. And in Acts 13:52 the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.
When the New Testament talks about joy, it isn’t talking about the shallow happiness that comes from drowning our troubles. It’s talking about a deep joy that stays in spite of our problems. It’s a joy that is a by-product of something else.
I was at an event at Stanley Ave. Baptist last night, hearing about the Chinese church and their vision for mission. There was story after story of church leaders who were in prison for 10, 20, 30 years but the focus of their testimony was always the joy of having the Lord present with them in the prison cell. That’s the kind of joy that only the Holy Spirit can give, joy that rises above our circumstances.
That’s the main thing that Paul focuses on in the following verses. Joy expressed in praise and thanksgiving as a mark of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
When we’re filled with the Spirit our lives change, and when we look at what the New Testament says about changing how we live we have to see it first as the work of the Holy Spirit. Our lives should change as we submit them to God, but they don’t change by us gritting our teeth, digging in our heels and making ourselves do what’s right. That’s not what the Christian life is about. All that does is produce people who are, as we say in Scotland, “dour.” You know the type. They’re trying so hard to be good they never have time to be happy. Their faces would turn milk sour.
Nothing could be further from what God calls us to. In fact, when Paul describes what it looks like to be filled with the Spirit it’s all about praise and thanksgiving. And it’s important that we realise that what he’s doing here is describing the Spirit filled life. Our English translations translate these next verses as lists of commands when they’re not really. The next command is in verse 25. He’s not telling the Ephesians how to behave. He’s telling them to be filled with the Spirit, then describing what that looks like.
So let’s see what it looks like.
19singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves,
According to this, a spirit filled congregation is one that is characterized by singing. All through the Bible God’s people have always been a singing people. The book of Psalms is a collection of songs, many of which were written to be sung in the temple. And when Paul refers to “psalms” here he’s probably referring to those in the Old Testament. Do you realise that when we sing Psalms we’re singing songs that are over 3000 years old? The music may be newer, but the words are that old.
But Paul also talks about “hymns” and “spiritual songs.” Those were probably more contemporary compositions that grew out of the churches in the first century. They would have been more focused on Christ, like the hymn in Philippians 2, and they would have been very Greek. One of the marks of God’s Spirit moving in the church is the creation of new ways of praising him in song alongside the old ways. And one of the things that missionaries look for and encourage when we plant churches is that the people will write worship songs in their own language that reflect their own culture.
The Methodist revival in the 1700s produced thousands of hymns by Charles Wesley and others. And the current flood of new music in the Western church by people like Graham Kendrick and Darlene Zschesch is a good sign that the Holy Spirit is at work in the church today. Likewise, one of the marks of dryness in the church is when we sing only the same old songs without anything new being added.
And it isn’t just the spirit filled church that sings. Spirit filled people sing when they’re alone too …singing and making music in your heart to the Lord is a way of responding to God when we’re alone and it helps us build ourselves up in the faith. Marilyn does this all the time, humming or singing praise songs as she goes about her day.
More than one of the stories that we heard from China last night referred to how these Chinese pastors sustained themselves in years of solitary confinement by repeating scripture and singing worship songs in their heads. (They weren’t allowed to speak unless spoken to.)
Another evidence of being filled with the Spirit is being thankful people, 20always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
[One last example from last night. – pastor kept in the area of the cess pit for years – guards wouldn’t come there – prisoners slipped him food – he gave thanks for the cess pit because he had those years alone with the Lord]
giving thanks for everything
Paul’s last example of what it looks like to be filled with the Spirit (and remember these are just examples, he lists other things in other places.) His last example is 21submitting to one another out of respect for [the Lord Jesus.] So, if we are full of the Holy Spirit and we respect the Lord Jesus, it will show in the way we relate to one another. We will submit ourselves to each other.
It doesn’t say that some will submit to others, and that some will be in authority over others. For instance, in some churches the pastor is very definitely an authority figure and everybody does what he says, they submit to him. In other churches it’s the other way around, the congregation hires the pastor and he or she had better do what they say. He submits to them or he’s out.
That’s not what Paul’s talking about here. He’s talking about mutual submission; submission that goes both ways. You may wonder what that looks like. I think Paul describes it in Philippians 2 “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Php 2:3-4) Mutual submission is an outworking of humility. It’s an attitude that puts the other person before yourself, where you consider others better than yourselves and you look out for the interests of others as well as your own. And the reason Paul gives for why we should behave this way is simply - because that’s the way Jesus behaved.
We talked last week about living in the light. That’s what mutual submission looks like. Being open to having other people speak into your life and them being willing to have you do the same for them. It’s part of what we do when we affirm the church covenant at our meetings and when we accept people into membership. It says that we enter into covenant with each other to do certain things and in doing that we make ourselves accountable to each other. We agree to submit to one another.
Then Paul gives what, for him in his context, was a great illustration – wives submitting to their husbands – but for us it opens up a can of worms! We’ll look into that can of worms next week. For now we’ll try and tie down some practical applications from today’s message.
I’m always a little wary of anything in the church that begins with the words “how to” but it would be really unfair of me to preach on being filled with the Holy Spirit without giving some direction in how to do that.
It’s not hard. It’s not something you have to strive for or fast and pray for. God wants to fill you with his Holy Spirit. He wants to keep on filling you. The great evangelist D.L. Moody was once asked why he talked so much about being filled with the Spirit, to which he replied, “Because I leak!” We can’t live the Christian life by ourselves. We need to be constantly full of the Holy Spirit. That’s how it’s supposed to work. So, I want to give you some pointers towards that.
First, you have to want to live a life that’ll please the Lord. We talked about that last week, when we talked about finding out what pleases the Lord. Jesus promises that, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." If you want to please him, he won’t leave you empty.
Second, be willing to surrender your life totally to God. In Romans 12 Paul writes, "I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - which is your spiritual worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will."
Third, confess whatever sin the Holy Spirit reminds you of. You don’t have to go digging, God can and will remind you of whatever you have done wrong. When he does, simply confess it to him and receive the cleansing and forgiveness which God promises in 1 John 1:9: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."
Then simply ask the Lord to fill you with his Holy Spirit. “You have not because you ask not.” It isn’t something that you do. You don’t fill yourself. It’s something he does and that you receive by faith. You just trust him and take him at his word that he will do as he says and give his Holy Spirit to those who ask him. (Luke 11:13)
Finally, believe God and trust his promise to give you all that you need to live for him. You may or may not feel different but over the next days and weeks you will experience a new sense of community with other Christians, boldness to serve God, and joy in serving him.