ARE YOU FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT?

ARE YOU FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT?
Ephesians 5:18
LAWRENCE MURRAY Ph.D.

They tell me it is rude and impolite to ask people personal questions, especially people you don't know real well. You don't ask a man how much money he makes. I go into a hospital and someone is ill and has had surgery, I do not pry and ask personal questions about the nature of their illness. If they want to tell me they can. But...I want to be rude and impolite for just a moment and ask each one of you a very personal question and I want you to answer it...not out loud or with an uplifted hand, but answer it in your own heart. "Is the Holy Spirit filling you right now...at this very moment?"

Now there are three possible answers you can give to that question. One, you can say, "Yes, praise God, I know the Holy Spirit is filling me right now." You might have to answer, "No, He isn't." And there is a third possible answer. You may say," I am not certain what you mean by the filling of the Holy Spirit. I don't know if I am filled with the Holy Spirit or not." I pray by God's illumination that before we are through you will be able to answer that question honestly, clearly, certainly. I think next to the question, "Do you know Jesus?" this is the most important question anybody will ever ask you. "Is the Spirit of God, without any shadow of doubt, filling you right now?"

There is some misunderstanding about the filling of the Holy Spirit, but as I mentioned earlier I think one of the greatest truths in all the word of God is that when I became a Christian the spirit of God came to permanently indwell me to make His home in me. Now being filled with the spirit of God is NOT having more of the Holy Spirit than you have now. I've often in times past used that illustration of an empty glass with a little bit of water in it and I've said that the water represents the Holy Spirit and being filled with the Holy Spirit means that I pour more water until that glass is filled. That is not a scriptural illustration. Because when you were saved God gave you the whole Holy Spirit and I think one of the grandest truths of all is that I have ALL of God dwelling in me right now. There is not just a little bit of God in me and a little bit of God in you and a little bit of God in you...like God kind of spread Himself thin and passed Himself out to all of us. I have all of God in me and you have al l of God in you. When the spirit of God came to indwell you, the whole spirit of God came to indwell you and it takes that to save you. A half of God in you could not save you. That little daisy growing out there needs the whole sun to keep it alive. You say, well such a little flower doesn't need all that sun, all that light, but if you were to subtract half of that sun that little flower would die. It takes the whole power of the whole sun to keep one little blade of grass alive. It takes the whole God, all of God there is in you to save you and to sustain you. Being filled with the Holy Spirit is not having more of the Holy Spirit than you had before.

Paul commands us in Eph. 5:18, "And be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit." What is the filling of the Holy Spirit?

1. The filling of the Holy Spirit is a Command of God. You know that the verb, "be filled" is in the imperative mood. It is a command, not a suggestion. It is not a wish, but an undeniable and unalterable command of God. "BE FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT". And it is in the plural. He is not talking to super-saints. The filling of the Holy Spirit isn't for the hierarchy of Heaven. It is not for the elite of the elect. It is not just for preachers and evangelists. It is for EVERYONE, and God commands every person who is saved to the filled with the Holy Spirit. The first thing we need to understand is that this filling is not an optional item. It is not luxury equipment in the Christian life. It is standard equipment in every Christian's life if he is to be effective and to bring honor and glory to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

If it is a command for me to be filled with the spirit, then if I am not filled with the spirit, I am living in sin. Did you know that it is a sin for you not to be filled with the Holy Spirit? We need to be convinced of this and we need to be convicted of it. I think a great many people in our churches think that it would be nice if they could be filled with the spirit and they would love to be filled with the Spirit, but it is not absolutely necessary and I doubt if very many people are convinced and convicted that not to be filled with the Spirit is a sin against God. But it is. It is just as much a sin against God not to be filled with the Spirit as it is to be drunk with wine. Now I don't know any other way to read that 18th verse than that way.

There are two commands in that verse. One is a negative command and the other is a positive command. The same God made both commands. The same spirit inspired both commands. It is a sin not to obey the command of God. With one breath Paul said, "Don't be drunk with wine," with another breath he says, on the contrary and in contrast to that, "Be filled with the Holy Spirit of God."

What do you do when you ordain deacons in your church? You bring them together and question them. You have got to make certain that these men fulfill the scriptural obligations...do you tithe, do you drink wine, are you the husband of one wife? Do you know that according to Acts 6 it is just as much a qualification for a man to be set apart for service to be filled with the spirit of God as it is for him to give out of his prosperity? Actually, it is more of a qualification because the bible never tells a deacon that he has to give. You will never find that as a qualification for a deacon. Every Christian ought to, but it is not listed in the qualification. The next time you have a deacon ordination and you begin to select men, you stick to the word of God and bring the level of your experience up to the standard of the word of God and demand that no man be ordained unless he knows that the spirit of God is filling him with the spirit, because as we have already said, the ability of serving in the church has nothing to do with your natural talent or your native ability. The one reason that we have so many problems in our church is that we have ordained men to the ministry as well as to the deaconship or eldership who have not been and are not being filled with the Holy Spirit of God. It is a command to be filled with the Holy Spirit of God and if you are not being filled right now you are living in sin and disobedience to God.

Why does God command it? We are going to look at some verses and we are going to see that there are many reasons but primarily there are two reasons why God commands us to be filled with the spirit.

(a) First of all, it is necessary for purity of life. Galatians 5:16 says, "This I say then, walk in the spirit and ye shall not the fulfill the lusts of the flesh." Now he goes on to point out that every Christian has something inside him that the bible calls the "flesh" and he also has something inside him called the "Holy Spirit" and these two are opposed one to the other. In other words, the flesh is drawing us one way...that is the old self...that ego...the big "I", my old unredeemed, unregenerated nature is still there. You know I discovered something about that old nature and that's that when God saved me He didn't change that old nature. God didn't convert that old nature. It is a terminal illness and it cannot be saved and I discovered that the reason I failed so much in my Christian life is that I kept trying to control and improve and sophisticate and to christianize the old flesh and the old nature and I've been trying to fight it. You cannot do it. You are no better now than you were when you were saved. I don't care if you have been saved 20 years, you are absolutely no better now than you were when you were saved.

The only good thing in you, the only thing that is different about you is that Jesus Christ through His Holy Spirit is indwelling you and if He were to remove Himself from you, you would immediately revert back to your pre-conversion state. You haven't changed one bit! You are no better than you've ever been. God doesn't try to convert that old nature. He crucifies it. But it is still there, alive and active and it will do anything and it is a very powerful force. Every time you want to serve God, that flesh, the old nature, that ego is there saying, "Don't be a fanatic, don't overdo it, let somebody else do it." Every time you try to serve God, try to pray, try to read the bible, try to please God, the flesh is there asserting itself overpowering you. You have the flesh dwelling in you.

Now the works of the flesh are obvious he says and he gives a whole list of them there in verses 19 and 20. They are not just these big gross sins that we call the works of the flesh but they have to do with your attitude, bitterness, an unforgiving spirit...all of these are there.

But you also have someone else dwelling in you that the bible calls the Holy Spirit of God. You have three enemies in your Christian life: the devil, the world and the flesh. The devil is the tempter, the world is the temptation and the flesh is the tempted. The devil stands on the outside holding up the world and appeals to the flesh within you saying, "Look here what I've got". James 1 says that a man sins when he is "led away of his own desire." That old sinful desire, that old unchanged nature that the bible calls the flesh is in you. It looks and sees what the devil is offering, the world, and it reaches out and takes it.

You have three enemies. Two of them are on the outside: the devil and the world. The only enemy that you have on the inside is the flesh...the old nature. The only way that the devil and the world can get into your life is if the flesh opens the door and let's them in. The only part of us that the devil and the world can appeal to is that old nature. Every sin is an inside job because that flesh, that old nature, that old unchanged desire within you sees what the devil has, sees what the world has, opens the door and allows them to come in. Now, I don't have to worry about the devil. I don't have to worry about the world if I can somehow reinforce this harbor, if I can somehow build a hedge around the flesh, if I can somehow make my flesh inaccessible to Satan and the world, I am all right. The only way the world and the devil can get into me is through the flesh. That is his beachhead. That is my vulnerable spot. That is the only spot the devil can reach me at. Every time he appeals to me, it is through that old lower nature...the same with the world. So, my problem is the flesh, the old nature, the big "I", my ego, self and if I can somehow reinforce that and get victory over that then victory over Satan and the world will follow.

Paul tells us, "This I say then, walk in the spirit and you shall not, (by no means, bad grammar but great theology) fulfill the lusts of the flesh." Do you believe that? It is walking in the spirit, living in the spirit, it is the power of the Holy Spirit controlling me and filling me that conquers the flesh in my life. I want you to notice who fights the flesh here. Most of us have been fighting the flesh, educating the flesh, taking study courses, making rules and regulations, trying somehow to buffet the flesh. We miss it every time. Notice who fights the flesh...the Holy Spirit. I don't have anything to do with the flesh. If I try to fight the flesh, he will overpower me. The spirit of God fights the flesh. I step out of the way, take myself out of the picture...that is reckoning yourself to be dead...allow the Holy Spirit to take over, and He fights the flesh and He overcomes every time. But I tell you it is a fixed fight! Because I decide who wins. Every time the flesh and the spirit get in the ring together, I pick the winner. I have the terrible and awesome responsibility of saying the flesh is going to win in this particular situation...I can yield to the flesh and he will win because the spirit of God will never force Himself on you. Or, I can say I am going to yield to the Holy Spirit and when I do that I untie the hands of the Holy Spirit and I loose Him and let Him go and He defeats the flesh.

What we have been trying to do is overcome the flesh in the energy of the flesh. Now that is ridiculous. Jesus says, "Can a Kingdom divided against itself stand?" Of course not, the flesh isn't going to oppose the flesh. You know when I was saved, somebody said, "Now Murray, the next thing you do is to go out and do your best for Jesus." We stand up and sing, "Hear ye the Master's call, give me your best." I want you to notice how beautiful this is. The Holy Spirit fights the flesh and if I walk in the spirit (if I let my daily life be controlled and ordered by the Holy Spirit) I will not by any means fulfill the desires of the flesh.

Look in verse 22. "But the fruit of the spirit is love". Do you agree with me that Paul is picturing the Holy Spirit planted as a tree planted within the Christian? Right? The Holy Spirit who dwells within us will produce fruit. So, the picture is a tree planted within the Christian and this tree wants to produce fruit of love, joy and peace but I've got a lot of dead leaves of fornication, uncleanness, idolatry, hatred and envy. How can I get rid of the old dead works of leaves and spoiled fruit and how can I have the blessed fruits of the Holy Spirit produced in me? Well, I discovered something. I discovered that dead leaves don't fall off trees. I always thought they did. Come autumn the leaves turn, they die, they fall off the tree. No, they don't fall off the tree. You go out here and you cut a branch off a tree and let it fall down on the ground and let it lay there beside that living tree. Now, as the seasons pass, the leaves will turn brown and on that living tree, those leaves will begin to fall off. But you look at that branch on the ground. Unless you pull them off or knock them off, they are still there. They don't fall off. Do you know what happens to dead leaves? They are pushed off...as the sap as the life flows through the branches it pushes out those dead leaves to make room for the fruit and the leaves. Listen, here is what some of us have been trying to do in our Christian life. We have been going around pulling off dead leaves. We have been saying, "I've got to get rid of this dead leaf of bad habit, this dead leaf of filthy language, I've got to get rid of this dead leaf of an impure mind." We have been going around pulling off these dead leaves. That is not the way to do it. No, it is so simple. All I have to do is to yield myself to the Holy Spirit and allow him to flow through me and to fill me and to allow Him to fill me with the fullness of Christ and as the life of Jesus and the power of the Spirit flows through me, it just pushes off those dead leaves. They just fall off, pushed out by the power of the Holy Spirit. What we have been doing is focusing all our attention on our failure. That is a trick of the devil. You focus your attention on your weakness and your failure and you'll go on that way. You forget about your failure. Don't look at your sins and forget about your sins and forget about your habits and you focus your attention upon Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit and as He fills you and flows through you, HE WILL PUSH OFF ALL THOSE DEAD LEAVES. You won't have to worry about that any more.

I read over in John, chapter 15 that "I am the vine, ye are the branches. My Father is the husbandman and he will do the pruning." Oh, I thought I was supposed to do the pruning. All my life I have been going around with pruning shears trying to clip off the bad things in my life. All of a sudden I realize that the father is the husbandman and He will do that. You need to be filled with the spirit for purity of life. You've been trying to overcome habits and weaknesses and you'll never do it. Let the spirit of God fill you and as he produces love, joy and peace in you, He will just naturally push off those old dead leaves.

(b) It is necessary for power in service. I love old Elijah. I identify with him for one reason. He was on Mt. Carmel. He brought one of the best sermons I have ever heard...it was eloquent, powerfully delivered and when he finished the bible says, "The people answered him not a word." I've been in that service, haven't you? I've preached there many a time. You just preach your heart out the best you know how and they just look at you. Nobody says "Praise the Lord," nobody gets saved, nobody gets mad, nobody glad, nobody sad...nothing. When Elijah preached with fervor, they answered him not a word. But, when the fire fell the people fell on their faces and said, "The Lord He is God, The Lord He is God." Elijah had been trying to get them to say that all along, but they wouldn't do it until the fire fell. You must be filled with the spirit to have power in service.

We are always interested in how we can have more people saved in our churches and how we can have more baptisms every year. Well, right here Jesus tells us, but I have never heard anybody use this as a method of evangelism. Jesus said in John 15, "I am the true vine and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, He taketh away, and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit." Isn't that what we want? More baptisms, more people saved. All right, how do you do that? "He purgeth the branches that they may bring forth more fruit." Now look in verse 4, "Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in Me. I am the Vine, Ye are the branches. He that abideth in me and I in Him, the same bringeth forth much fruit. For without me ye can do nothing." And He goes on to say in verse 8, "Herein is my Father glorified that you bear much fruit." He is not glorified just with fruit or more fruit. He is glorified with MUCH fruit.

A man has a vineyard. Is he honored, is he glorified if his vines produce fruit or a little bit of fruit? No, he is not satisfied, he is not glorified until every branch is bearing fruit, until every vine is producing. He is glorified when that vine produces MUCH fruit. Well, how are you going to produce MUCH fruit? Jesus said, "I am the vine, ye are the branches, abide in Me and you will bring forth much fruit." Here is the relationship that the Christian has with Jesus. Jesus is the vine. I am just the branch. Did you know that the branch doesn't produce fruit? The branch simply bears the fruit. The fruit is produced by the vine. The life flowing through the vine. The branch is just a rack to hang grapes on. That is all the branch is for. It must be there so that it can bear fruit. It never produces it. It cannot produce fruit. You and I cannot produce fruit. Jesus said all I want you to be is a branch. Just make yourself available by abiding in me. Now, where is the responsibility of fruit-bearing? On the branch? NO, on the VINE. Where is the responsibility of fruit-bearing in my life? On me? I used to think so and I worked myself to death and worried that I hadn't done enough until I discovered that the responsibility for fruitfulness is not on me. It is on Jesus. He is the vine. All he asks of me is to be a branch. What does a branch do all day long? It abides in the vine. It lets the life of Jesus flow through him and the life of Jesus as it reaches through me touches the lives of others and transforms them.

How are we going to have more fruit? How are we going to have more baptisms? Let's organize a new committee and organize a new program because the baptisms are down in the church. Let's go hear this man since he baptized so many last year. Maybe he has some secret formula or method. I want us to look at the method of Jesus. "I am the vine, you are the branches. He that abideth in me and I in him bringeth forth MUCH fruit. Just abide in Jesus, getting closer to Jesus and as I abide in Him and let His word abide in me as more and more of the spirit of God flows through me, there will be more fruit. If I want to see more people saved in my church, the thing for me to do is to make sure my people are in Jesus more than they have even been and the fruit will come from the Lord.

I remember a fellow minister-friend was preparing to preach on how to learn to love the lost at an Evangelism Conference. He said, “is there an actual text for learning to love the lost?” We thought that would be easy. We found a lot of verses that told us why we ought to love the lost. We found a lot of verses that showed us what would happen if we did love the lost but we could not find one verse of scripture that told us HOW to love the lost. That is why a lot of people don't witness. They say I just don't love the lost and they pray, "Lord, give me a love for lost people". And then the Lord showed me over in John...you know when Jesus had his little breakfast talk with Simon Peter...Simon Peter comes and sits down and Jesus says, "Simon, do you love me?" Peter said, "Lord, you know I love you." Jesus said, "Feed my sheep." He asked him a second time, "Simon, do you love me?" Peter said, "Jesus, you know I love you." Jesus said, "Simon, feed my sheep." He asked him a third time, "Simon, do you really like me?" Simon said, "Lord, you know I do." Jesus said, "Feed my sheep." Did you know that Jesus never one time asked him if he loved sheep? I can just imagine Simon Peter...Jesus says, "Simon, feed my sheep." Oh, Lord, I don't like sheep. I didn't ask you that. I asked you if you loved ME. I don't care if you love sheep or not. If you love me, feed my sheep. All of a sudden I realized that the way to learn to love lost people is to love Jesus. That is the motive.

I want to tell you that the most useless preaching I've ever done in my life is as I've stood on Sunday morning and on Sunday night and told my people that you had better win souls...you need to win souls (I’m doing it right now)...they knew that. They wanted to. They were scared to death. They lacked motive, they lacked power. Nearly every christian has a guilt complex because he doesn't win souls and he knows he ought to. The preacher gets up on Sunday morning and adds to that guilt complex and intensifies it by saying that you ought to witness and win souls. They know that! I believe most people want to but don't know how. And one day God showed me what it is all about. He said, you can't get them to win souls. You get them to LOVE ME and me be Lord and let the Spirit of God fill them, I will take care of all that other stuff. And when our people began to love Jesus and began to enthrone Jesus as the Lord of their Life and they began to appropriate the fullness of the Holy Spirit, they went out everywhere witnessing and sharing Jesus Christ. That is the answer. That is the key right there. You must be filled with the Holy Spirit for power in service because one of these days we are all going to stand before the Lord at the Judgment seat and he is going to give us a reward or loss of rewards according as what our works shall be. Paul says in I Cor. 3, "The Lord shall try every man's work of what sort it is"...not what size it is. The judgment seat of Christ is concerned with quality, not quantity.

There are two kinds of work he describes in that passage. One is that which is wood, hay and stubble and the other is that which is precious gems and gold and silver. Those are the only two sorts of works and every man builds on the foundation of his salvation a superstructure of Christian living made out of either wood, hay and stubble or precious stones, gold and silver.

There are only two kinds of good: human good and divine good, right? God rejects all human good. There are only two kinds of energy...the energy of the flesh and the energy of the spirit. God rejects the energy of the flesh. Everything that I do in the energy of the flesh or in other words, everything that I do without the fullness of the spirit constitutes wood, hay and stubble. I go to that Judgment Seat...we all go together and I look over there I see a big ole stack of works with my name on them. I can hardly wait until I stand up before he Lord and he rewards me for that...look what I have done. Look how many I baptized. Is that yours over there? Well, that's all right. You made it to heaven anyway. It is kind of small. Yeah, I believe I see it. There it is. Your nametag is bigger than your pile of works. The Lord reads my name and the closer I get to that huge stack of works I become aware of something. I stand there and it is wood, hay and stubble and the Lord Jesus Christ strikes a match, sets fire to it and says, "Let's just see if you lived in the spirit or in the flesh. Let's see if you preached, witnessed, sang and taught for my glory or your ego." He touches the fire to it and whoosh...gone. He comes over here to this other fellow and his little pile of gold, silver and precious stones and says, "Let's test yours," and strikes a match. It doesn't hurt because that is the way you make gold, silver and precious stones...with fire.

I want you to know that it is highly possible that a man can live all his life as a minister of the gospel or a deacon and work and work and work and stand before Jesus at the Judgment Seat of Christ and have his entire life of Christian service lost. I believe that with all of my heart. The key is not building bigger churches because sometimes you are just building bigger haystacks, that's all. It has got to be done in the power of the spirit if it is going to stand the test and I want to know if you were to stand before Jesus and he were to test your life, has your life been lived in the fullness of the spirit or in the energy of the flesh? If it has been lived in the energy of the flesh, it is going to be wasted and it will go up in smoke and you shall be saved "so as by fire." You will be like a man awakened in the middle of the night and they say, "Your house is on fire, run for your life" and you get out and all you escape with is just the sheet wrapped around your body and you look back and your whole life's savings, your work, your possessions, everything goes up in smoke. It is a very solemn truth that a man's entire ministry, a Christian's entire life of service can be lost at the judgment seat of Christ unless it is done in the fullness of the spirit.

2. It is a command to be controlled by the spirit. Let the spirit of God fill you. That is a passive verb and the New English Bible translates it properly. "Let the Holy Spirit fill you." You see that puts the reluctance on our part, not on His part. Some of you have never been filled with the Holy Spirit because you think God is reluctant to fill you and you beg Him and plead with Him and you hope that someday you will grow up into the filling of the Holy Spirit. You DO NOT grow up into the filling of the spirit, you grow FROM the filling of the Holy Spirit. There is no spiritual growth until you are filled with the spirit. You may grow in knowledge and may grow in church membership and church activity, but spiritual growth comes only after the filling of the Holy Spirit. You do not grow TOWARDS the filling of the Holy Spirit. You appropriate the filing of the Holy Spirit and then you grow FROM it.

What does it mean to be filled? It means to be controlled. One man translates this "to be possessed completely of the Spirit." And we get the idea from wine. When a man is drunk with wine he is controlled by that wine and to be filled with the spirit is to have the Holy Spirit controlling you. You say, "I would love to be filled with the spirit." Would you? Would you really like to have a person controlling you that would not tolerate any self-centeredness in your life? Do you mean that you really want to be controlled by a person who will not tolerate any thinking of self? Do you really want to be controlled by a person who will not tolerate any enmity or jealousy? You mean you really want to be controlled by a person who is going to demand that you recognize you have no rights of your own, you are nothing but a slave? Do you really want to be controlled today by a person who is going to demand absolute holiness of life and not tolerate anything less? To be controlled by the Holy Spirit involves two things.

(a) One, of course, is saying "no" to self. There can only be one operator of the Christian life, either self or the spirit and the first thing I have to do is to recognize that I am not my own, I am bought with a price and I dethrone "self." That is just a negative.

(b) Two, I must enthrone Jesus as Lord of my life.

Do you know what that is? It is the first thing mentioned in the fruit of the spirit. What happened was that I made Jesus Lord after the Holy Spirit had awakened me to my need, He has to do that, just saying it doesn't make it so. The Holy Spirit must reveal to you the need and awaken you to the need, when I made Jesus Lord and was baptized, the Holy Spirit filled me. It has made all the difference in my life. It has made all the difference in my ministry. It has made all the difference in my home. I discovered that you can't fulfill Eph. 5:21-13 about wives submitting yourselves to your husbands and husbands loving your wives until you are filled with the spirit. That follows verse 18, did you know? That is a result of being filled with the spirit. We had a new home. I had a new church. The church had a new preacher. I had a new Jesus, a new Lord. All things were new!

3. To be filled with the spirit is a command to be continually controlled. That verse literally reads "and be ye being filled with the spirit." It is not a roller-coaster type of existence. I am not talking about a little inspiration now and then. I am not talking a little holy kick once in a while. I am talking about a daily walk, a daily abiding in Jesus, continually filled with the spirit. That is why I phrased the question, not "has the Holy Spirit filled you," but "at this moment is the Holy Spirit filling you?" Is he at this moment controlling you? Is he? I have discovered in my own life that there are two ways to continue to be filled with the Spirit.

(a) One is instant confession of sin. The moment I become aware of sin to instantly confess it.

(b) Secondly, by immediate obedience. The moment the spirit of God impresses me to witness, speak, pray or whatever, immediate obedience. It is a continual filling of the spirit of God.

Let me ask the question again. "Is the Holy Spirit of God filling you right now?" Is He? By that I mean is the spirit of God in absolutely sovereign control of you right now. If he is not in control, if there is any unconfessed sin, any disobedience, if you know of a command in this bible that you are deliberately disobeying, He is not in control. If there is unforgiveness, if there is any sin at all, the spirit of God is not in control.

STAY IN-STEP WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT!!!!!!!! Dr. LM