Is the Spirit's Filling That Big a Deal?, Part 1

Today, on Insight for Living from Chuck Swindoll. What the key is to the car, salvation is to the Christian. It gives us access to God. It opens the door to prayer, to an understanding of the Bible.

We are changed on the inside. We become new creations, new creatures, and the key that has gotten us into this new life is the cross of Jesus Christ. Yes, as Chuck Swindoll said a moment ago, what the key is to the car, salvation is to the Christian. It's the instrument that opens the door to a brand new relationship with God. But here's the question, once our spiritual engine is started, what's the fuel that keeps us moving forward? Well, today on Insight for Living, Chuck helps us understand God's gift to every believer. It's the gift of God's indwelling spirit. In fact, Paul said that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.

As Christians, our job is to honor this sacred relationship. There have been times in all of our lives when we have sensed the need for a deep presence of the Spirit of God within us. We have faced some awful trial that we cannot escape.

We are looking into the immediate future of illness or a surgery or some illness and difficulty of a loved one of ours. Or perhaps we are not sure of God's direction and we want it more than anything else, and yet we can't seem to filter the essentials from the incidentals. And we just long for a touch from the living God so that we might know with assurance that he is at work and that he is directing our steps and that he is in charge of our lives and he will give us comfort and grace and mercy in this time of particular need. I have faced those times in my life, more occasions than I can even remember right now, and I have always been grateful that in the training I have received even from early childhood that there are times when I will find myself wholly dependent upon God to get me through or to get me to someplace or to get me beyond where I am finding myself.

It helps me on occasion to just review some very basic things. The Christian life is a life lived on a spiritual plane. To the unbeliever it is an unreal life.

In fact, if you were to press them there would be those who would say it is a foolish way to live. We believe in one we cannot see. We talk to one we have never heard. We relate to one by faith and not by sight.

We have never touched him. We believe in a book that is ancient and is attacked by those in the realm of academia all around the world and yet we stand firm in our faith. In fact, we would if necessary die for some of these things that we hold so dear and precious. A person becomes a Christian by being rightly related to Jesus Christ. However the process, whatever the pilgrimage, we came to the same person, though we came in different ways. And we have become Christians by being rightly related to God through faith in his son Jesus. A person is spiritual by being rightly related to the Holy Spirit.

And it's at this point that it tends to get a little bit fuzzy in the minds of some, even some Christians. Because we cannot see the Spirit and because not as much is known of the Spirit as is known of Christ and because we have not been taught as much about the work of the Spirit as we have about our Savior, when we get to this subject it is a little bit iffy if the truth were known. But it is as important as knowing Christ that we walk with him, that we follow him. My Bible is open to Colossians chapter 2 which offers a simple single verse, verse 6, that describes these two aspects of the same life lived on a spiritual plane. Colossians 2, 6 says, As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. The first part of the verse is conversion. As you have received Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, that's conversion, so walk in him. And that is the Christian life. We come to the cross by receiving Christ Jesus the Lord. We walk beyond the cross, we continue our walk of faith as we have come to Christ by faith, we continue our walk by faith as we are fueled and as we are energized as we are empowered by the person of the Holy Spirit.

Let's see if a simple illustration will help. Let's say that we decide to purchase a new car. We go to the dealership, we look around, we kick a few tires, we decide on the particular automobile we want and we happen to be in such a condition financially that we're able to pay cash for the car and having found the car, we talk to the salesman, we work out a deal and we pay for the car. We really only need from then on two things to enjoy the delights of that car.

Basically just two things. First we need a key. We need a set of keys. The keys give us access through the door to sitting behind the steering wheel, to the glove box, to the trunk, even to the hood that will open. Once we get in the car and throw the right switch or pull the right lever, the hood will open. We have access to the car with the use of the keys. However, we're not going to drive very far until we get the fuel.

Most dealerships I know don't fill the tank and once you take that car out on the road and you're enjoying it, you discover you're on empty rather quickly and you make your first stop at a place you will stop hundreds of times during those years you own the car as you fill the car with fuel. What the key is to the car, salvation is to the Christian. It gives us access to God. It opens the door to prayer, to an understanding of the Bible, to an understanding of fellowship with other Christians.

The keys that come at salvation are numerous and many of them are not visible to other people. We are changed on the inside. We become new creations, new creatures and the key that has gotten us into this new life is the cross of Jesus Christ. However, we discover as we begin to live this life that we can operate only so long on empty and we must have the fuel of the Holy Spirit to empower us and to energize us and to move us from where we are to where we want to be. Now, we have been engaged in a study of the intimate Holy Spirit for some time.

We have been through some interesting observations in the Scriptures and it has become, as you have observed, much more personal in recent days. We have discovered that Christ promised the Holy Spirit before he left the earth. Having left the earth, he sent the Holy Spirit in fulfillment of his promise. When he sent the Spirit, he transformed a handful of frightened and somewhat backward, awkward, intimidated men. He changed those men. He transformed them into public evangelists. He gave them discernment. He gave them power.

He gave them a dynamic. He gave them an assurance and a confidence that they could operate in a world that had once frightened them and caused them to run in the other direction once he had died. We have discovered also that this transforming presence of the Spirit of God is available to us because as we saw last time in the book of Romans, please turn back to Romans chapter 8, we found out that there are these things of the Spirit that are meaningful and available to us.

In fact, we even enumerated them. With the coming of the Spirit into our lives comes the blessing of life and peace, verses 6, 11, and 13. With the presence of the Spirit in one's life, there is an absence of fear, verse 15.

We're now able to call him Father, Abba, Father. There is an inner assurance where doubts depart and confidence comes, verses 16 and 17. The Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God and if children and heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. And in addition to that, we have assistance in prayer, verses 26 and 27. The Spirit helps us in our weakness because there are times we don't even know how to pray as we should. And then there is a deep awareness of God's will and we want to walk in it and the balance of the chapter talks about how nothing can separate us from this love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Now having reviewed where we've been, let me get even more personal and let me talk about who we are and perhaps even more importantly whose we are. The book of Romans is followed by the book of 1 Corinthians and if you'll just go over to that book, find chapter 6, locate the last two verses of the sixth chapter of 1 Corinthians and you'll see that we don't belong to ourselves. Now that we've been given a set of keys that provide us access to God and through God access to an entirely new spiritual world, there was a time in our life we didn't even know existed, we now have been given the fuel and the fuel is to empower us to live for God's glory as you see in verses 19 and 20 of 1 Corinthians 6. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you?

Now please remember something, the Corinthians are notorious for their carnality, they are the example frequently used by Paul and to this very day by those who teach the scriptures as people who walked in the flesh rather than in the spirit and yet will you notice they had the Holy Spirit. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God and that you are not your own, do you know that? He asks him, do you not know that you are not your own, you don't belong to yourself? You don't, to use today's terms, call your own shots, you don't pave your own way, you don't press for your place in the sun, you don't push for first place, you don't own yourself, you belong to another, you belong to Christ. Verse 20 tells us that you and I have been bought with a price and then the follow up comment therefore glorify God in your body. We belong to him, we are new creations as a result of faith in Jesus Christ and because we are new creatures in Christ we have a whole new identity, we are owned by our Lord, we are his servants, in fact the term used most often for that is slave, bond slave. We have a will that is greater than our own to please and to fulfill and that's the Father's will. Now that we are in Christ, now that we belong to him, the major goal in life is not to find happiness, the major goal in life is not the creature comforts, the major goal in life is not to locate the place where you will be the most fulfilled, not necessarily, the place you want to occupy as a Christian who has the Spirit of God is the place God would have you filled. For some of you it is a life of singleness, for others it is a life of marriage, for some it is a life in a profession of a certain type, a career, for others of you it is not in that realm, for some of you it is in vocational Christian service but for more of you it is not. Whatever may be his will and wherever he may have you live, you are to suspend your days and I am to spend my days glorifying God in my life, you in your life and I in mine.

Because we are Christians and because we belong to him, his will is of paramount importance. Now go to chapter 12, from chapter 6, look at chapter 12. Once again you will see these people called Corinthians, though often carnal, they are told that they have the Spirit of God. Chapter 12 verse 13, by one spirit we were all baptized into one body. Whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, we were all made to drink of one spirit using vivid word pictures to describe this oneness we have in the body of Christ and that which pulls us together in unity is the person of the Holy Spirit.

Never question it again, never doubt it. If you are a child of God, you have the Spirit of God. Romans 8 and 9 says the same thing as this is saying. You are not a Christian if you do not have the Spirit. If you are a Christian, you have the Spirit of God. It is not a question of do I have the Spirit, do I need to pray for the Spirit, is there something about the Spirit that I do not have, all of that is settled.

You have the keys and the keys have given you access to the very presence of God included in that is the person of the Holy Spirit who resides within you. Now to stay with this analogy of the car and the fuel. Your tank is full.

My tank is full and the beauty of it all is that it stays full. The question is whether we are operating with our lives in gear or whether we are sitting idling our engine, revving the motor, going nowhere. The power, the dynamic, all that is needed is there. All of the insight, all of the comfort, all of the guidance, all of the inspiration is there within us. The issue is have we put it to use in our lives? And this, as I understand the teaching, is called the filling of the Holy Spirit. When the Spirit of God fills the child of God, he takes charge, he gets full control and he moves us in the direction he would have us go. To see the importance of that, turn next to the book of Ephesians chapter 5.

This secret, though it's not a secret at all but some refer to it, the secret of the Spirit-filled life is to know what it means to be filled with the Spirit. Now let me show you some things in Ephesians 5 and then I want to spend most of the rest of our time on one verse. Look at verse 1 of Ephesians 5. Written to Christians, therefore be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. Please observe the command to be imitators of God and to walk in love. Look at verse 8. For you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. The chapter begins with a command to imitate God. It includes walking in love, verse 2, walking in light, verse 8.

Now drop down to verse 15. Therefore, be careful how you walk. See, he said walk in love, walk in light, and now he goes back to the idea of moving through life, moving through the Christian life called here a walk. He says be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. At the end of that sentence, there awaits us the answer to the question, well, what is the will of the Lord?

Walk in love, walk in light, be careful how you walk. Obviously, it has reference to the will of God. This walk is a walk in the will of God. And in answer to that question, what is his will for us, verse 18, do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit.

Now I'm going to ask you to put your thinking caps on. I'm going to be a little bit pedantic with that verse that I've just read. I'm going to be a little tedious with it because I think it is so critical to the Christian life. We hear a lot about the cross and a great deal about conversion, so much about that set of keys, but we aren't taught much about the fuel of the Spirit and how to engage the gears and get our lives moving to that which is important in a direction that pleases God since we are his.

We have been bought with a price. Obviously, it is a command in verse 18 to be filled with the Spirit. You will look in vain through all of the New Testament any of the letters or of the sermons of the apostles to find a command, be baptized, be sealed, be gifted, be indwelt.

We're never commanded those things. They're all part of the car keys. They're all part of the original set of keys that you got when you were saved. You were gifted. You were indwelt. You were sealed. You were baptized by the Spirit into the body of Christ.

All of that became a reality whether you knew it or not. However, we are commanded to be filled. So there's something about this that we are to participate in. There's a command to obey. We do not need to seek the sealing of the Spirit. You don't ever need to pray, Lord, indwell me, because he does. But there is something about this command that involves the engaging of the gears within us. Let's look deeper at the verse.

Please observe there are two commands, not one. The first is negative. Do not get drunk with wine. And then there is the positive. Be filled with the Spirit. Now some have erroneously taught that these two ought to be combined.

And the teaching goes something like this. The fullness of the Spirit is like spiritual inebriation. It's sort of like an intoxication where you're virtually out of control with drunkenness. You are physically filled with alcohol, but with the Spirit's fullness, you are full of the Spirit. Sounds like the analogy can work.

This excitement about life, this change of personality as drunkenness can create a whole new kind of person out of an individual. But wait a minute. The commands are in contrast to each other. He's not comparing them. He is saying one is not to have a part of your life, and the other is to be a part of your life.

In fact, see right in between the two commands? That is dissipation, debauchery, excess. Drunkenness leaves a person literally out of control. But the Spirit-filled Christian is never out of control. Matter of fact, as I read the fruit of the Spirit, one of the fruits of the Spirit is self-control. So these are not to be likened to each other, but rather they are to be in contrast to one another.

John R. W. Stott has a good word on this. He says, We can indeed agree that in both drunkenness and the fullness of the Spirit, two strong influences are at work within us, alcohol in the bloodstream and the Holy Spirit in our hearts. But whereas excessive alcohol leads to unrestrained and irrational license, transforming the drunkard into an animal, the fullness of the Spirit leads to restrained and rational moral behavior, transforming the Christian into the image of Christ. Thus the results of being under the influence of spirits on the one hand and of the Holy Spirit of God on the other are totally and utterly different.

One makes us like beasts, the other like Christ. You're listening to Insight for Living. We're midway through a message from Chuck Swindoll titled, Is the Spirit's Filling That Big a Deal?

It's the fourth study in a 14-part series called, Flying Closer to the Flame. To learn more about this ministry, we invite you to visit us online at insightworld.org. Here at Insight for Living Ministries, it pleases us that God uses this daily program as a channel for communicating His truth, but we know it's the Spirit of God who does the transforming. To that end, we're pleased to equip you with helpful Bible study tools. For instance, every sermon in this series about the Holy Spirit is accompanied by an online document. We call these free resources are Searching the Scriptures Studies. They're available as interactive PDF documents that allow you to keep personal notes in a digital file, or you can print them out if you prefer to study God's Word with a pen in hand.

All the details are at insight.org slash studies. In addition to the study notes, Chuck has written a book about the third person of the Trinity called, Embraced by the Spirit. Let's face it, most of us are intrigued by the Holy Spirit, but we hold back because we're afraid of getting this relationship wrong or being misunderstood by family and friends. Well, in this book, Chuck steps away from the theological battlefield to help us enjoy the one God sent as our companion. To purchase a copy, call us. If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888 or visit insight.org slash store, and look for the book titled, Embraced by the Spirit. This daily program relies on the generosity of supportive friends like you. So thanks so much for doing your part in helping others engage with the Bible, just as you did the very first time you heard Insight for Living. To give a donation today by speaking with one of our friendly ministry reps, give us a call.

If you're in the United States, call 800-772-8888, and you can give online by going to insight.org. Is the Spirit's filling that big a deal? I'm Bill Meyer. Chuck Swindoll continues to answer this honest question tomorrow on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Is the Spirit's Filling That Big a Deal?, was copyrighted in 1992, 1993, 2003, and 2008, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2008 by Charles R. Swindoll Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.