Be Filled with the Spirit, Part 3

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Here's enemy number one to being filled with the Spirit. First Thessalonians 5 19. Do not quench the Spirit. You know what the word quench means?

It means to put out. Quench is a fire term, right? You know, so you got a fire, you got to quench it. You know how you quench the Spirit?

Listen, you say no. How do you quench the Spirit? You say no to God. You say no to God.

Whatever he's telling you. Welcome to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor, author, and theologian, J.D. Greer. I'm your host, Molly Bidevich. You're joining us today while we're in a teaching series called Rushing Wind. We're studying the third person of the Trinity, the ever-present but often misunderstood Holy Spirit. If you've missed any of the previous messages or if you want to hear them again, you can listen online free of charge at J.D.

Greer.com. But right now we're headed towards the conclusion of a message titled Be Filled with the Spirit. Pastor J.D. is describing what it means to live in the power of the Holy Spirit.

So let's get started. Ephesians 5 18. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. Addressing one another in songs and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. There are three questions about the fullness of the Spirit that I see answered in those three verses.

Here they are. First of all, what is the filling of the Spirit? Then secondly, when are we filled by the Spirit? And then lastly, how are we filled by the Spirit? Number one, what is the filling of the Spirit?

The word filled in Greek that Paul uses here literally means permeated or saturated. It's when every part of you is consumed with something. Or you notice the contrast that he draws. Don't be drunk with wine, but be filled by the Spirit. When a person is drunk, alcohol doesn't affect one part of their body.

It consumes all of them so that your thinking is affected, your speech is affected, your reflexes are affected. Now, the contrast that he draws here to alcohol is a good one. He says don't be filled with wine, but do be filled with the Spirit because there are some ways that being filled with the Spirit is similar to being filled with wine, but then there are other ways that it is very different. So let's talk first about the ways that being filled with wine and being filled with the Spirit are similar. When you are filled with alcohol, when someone is filled with alcohol, they lose a lot of their inhibitions.

Is that not true? Well, one of the things that happens when the Spirit of God comes into somebody is, I don't want to totally say in a similar way, but in a similar way, their inhibitions are removed. Hopefully not in a chatty, annoying way, but see, they begin to not care as much about things they used to care about because they care about other things. So that's how I would say being filled with the Spirit is like being filled with wine. But let me show you some ways that it is different. In the Spirit, you don't lose control of your mind like you do with alcohol. You gain control. That's one way it's different.

Here's the second way. In the Spirit, you're not deadened to reality. In the Spirit, you're awakened to reality.

So here is my point. To be filled with the Spirit is about being under the control of and absolutely alive to the realities of God in the world. Fullness with the Spirit is a felt sense of the attributes of God. So what is the fullness of the Spirit? It is being filled with and under the control of and alive with the knowledge of God.

Here's our second question. When are we filled with the Spirit? When are we filled with the Spirit? Well, there's a real clue there in verse 18 with how Paul says it, be filled with the Spirit. In the Greek there, that is what they call a present imperative that implies continual action.

In English, you would literally translate this, although it'd be wooden so they don't do that, be being filled. Be being filled with the Spirit continually because it's something that happens over and over and over again. You see, there are two different experiences with the Holy Spirit in the Bible that a lot of people get confused. The first one is what we call the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The baptism of the Holy Spirit happens, hear me out here, happens at salvation. People sometimes will say, well, I was saved on this day. I received Jesus and then three years later I was baptized in the Holy Ghost.

That's impossible. First Corinthians 12, 13, for we are all baptized by one Spirit into one body. We're all given the same Spirit to drink. It was the Spirit of God that took you out of your sin and baptized you into the body of Christ. That's Spirit baptism. In other words, if you've not been baptized in the Spirit, you don't belong to Jesus and you're not a Christian. So the idea that you're saved in one place and baptized in another is just not possible. Now, I know what some of you will say back to that.

You're like, whoa, okay, okay, okay. Yeah, I see what those verses say, but I know of some places in Acts where somebody was pretty clearly saved and then later the apostles laid their hands on them and they were baptized in the Spirit and then they spoke in tongues. You got to understand what's happening in the book of Acts, okay.

The Great Commission, follow this. The Great Commission was that the Jewish apostles were to take the Gospel to every different people group in the world. Now, this was a completely new thing for Jews because up until this point salvation had only been a Jewish thing. The Spirit of God had only dwelt in Jerusalem on the temple and now the Spirit of God is going out into all these different people groups. And so what God did is he gave signs that went with the spread of the Gospel to validate to the Jews that this was really happening.

And one of those signs, there were twofold. One, the apostles would lay their hands showing their endorsement of the movement in this people group and then God would give the gift of tongues to this new people to show that he was validating it, to show that God no longer just spoke through the Hebrew tongue, he spoke in other tongues. And so what you see throughout Acts is every time the Gospel goes to a new group, you see this ceremony.

Now, after the initial ceremony for the group, it's not like every individual member of that group goes through the same ceremony. So what you find is throughout the epistles that Paul writes, he is never telling a believer to seek the baptism of the Spirit. He's telling the believer to access the baptism of the Spirit. Baptism of the Spirit happens one time when you're saved. But while there is one baptism, there are many repeated fillings. That's what Paul is referring to, be being filled.

That occur frequently. Every time that you are wanting to know God more, every time you need power and mission to overcome temptation, that's when you access the fullness of the Spirit. Let me tell you why this is important. Because there are a lot of people, a lot of Christians in my experience who obsess about whether or not they have the Holy Spirit when they ought to be concentrating on accessing the Spirit that they have in confidence for power and for ministry. Because the question is no longer do you have the Holy Spirit, the question is how much of you does the Holy Spirit have?

Does that make sense? Here's the third question then. How then are we filled by the Spirit? How then are we filled by the Spirit?

All right, so we saw what it was, when it happens, number three. How are we filled by the Spirit? Verse 18, be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. All right, so what do you see there? What do you see there? How are we filled by the Spirit?

See it? Singing and making melody in our hearts, giving thanks in the name of or because of. In the name of means because of or for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, what exactly does it mean to address one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs? Does that mean every time you walk up to a friend you're like, all hail the power of Jesus' name?

No, that's not what it's saying. When you are addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and when you are singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord, what are you dwelling on? What are you dwelling on? You're dwelling on the Gospel. And it is as what Paul is saying is as you dwell on the Gospel that the fullness of the Spirit is released in your life. By the way, there is some discrepancy among scholars as to whether singing and making melody in your hearts is the result of being filled by the Spirit in verse 18 or whether it's the cause of being filled by the Spirit.

And the answer is both, right? The result of being filled by the Spirit is a greater understanding and being in greater touch with the Gospel. And the result of being in greater touch with the Gospel is to be filled by the Spirit.

So it just kind of works like that. The result and the cause of fullness of the Spirit is dwelling on the Gospel. So what is the Gospel? See, the Gospel is the news that God in His grace and His mercy loved you enough that He came and substituted for you and died in your place so that through His merits, not your own, you could live eternally and have a promise that is secure. The Gospel is about the grace of God, not about your righteousness. The Gospel is that you were powerless. He was powerful.

You were wicked. He was righteous and forgiving. The Gospel is the news about God, not about you. And when you begin to dwell on that, the Spirit of God is released inside of you.

Let me show you this. Galatians 3. Yeah, look at Galatians 3. Flip back a couple of books in your Bible. This is a really important verse where Paul makes the same point. Watch this.

Let me ask you this. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or did you receive Him by the hearing with faith? Hearing what with faith? The Gospel. Does He who supplies the Spirit to you, present tense, and works miracles among you do so by the works of the law now or by what?

Continual. How did you first get the Spirit? You heard with faith. How do you continue to be supplied by the Spirit?

By the hearing the Gospel with faith. It is as you hear and believe the Gospel that the Spirit's power is released more greatly inside of you because you become aware of the attributes of God. And the reason some of you can't be filled by the Spirit is you're so filled with yourself. You are so filled with yourself and so out of touch with the Gospel that you can never be filled with God's Spirit.

You can only be filled with your own. The fullness of the Spirit comes to those who are most in touch with the Gospel because it is a Spirit of adoption and a Spirit of grace. So when you say, I am wicked, He is righteous, I am powerless, He is powerful, that's when the Spirit of God is beginning to flow inside of you because He's putting you in touch with the grace and the mercy and the beauty of the Almighty God.

Does that make sense? See, that's when you got to be filled with the Spirit. The enemy to being filled by the Spirit is being filled with yourself.

And some of you have spent all your life in an American culture that tells you to be filled with yourself. You have to say, God, I need your Spirit to be a mom or dad. I need your Spirit to be a witness to my friends. I need your Spirit to do whatever it is I'm doing so I yield myself to you. That's how you're filled with the Spirit is you reflect on the Gospel and that's the fullness of the Spirit. It's the cause of and the result of the fullness of the Spirit. All right, so let me tell you real quick before I land this plane, let me tell you a couple things you should not do if you want to be filled by the Spirit.

And we'll go outside of our text really quickly, but just hang with me because these are really important. All right, here's enemy number one to being filled with the Spirit. First Thessalonians 5 19, do not quench the Spirit. You know what the word quench means? It means to put out. You know how you quench the Spirit?

Listen, you say no. Quench is a fire term, right? You know, so you got a fire, you got to quench it.

How do you quench the Spirit? You say no to God. You say no to God, whatever he's telling you.

Right, here's how that works. You get in an argument. You get angry. You say stuff you know you shouldn't say. About three hours later, you think back on that argument and you think, I really kind of lost my temper.

So what does the Spirit of God say inside of you? You need to go humble yourself and apologize. What do you say? Yeah, yeah, I do, but they're more wrong than I was. So they, if I go apologize, I'm going to make them think they're right. So I'm not going to do that. The Spirit of God says, you know, that really doesn't have anything to do with the conversation.

You need to go apologize for what you did. And you say, let me think about this for a while. Boom, quench the Spirit.

And then the next day, that argument doesn't bother you nearly as much, does it? Why? Because the Spirit of God has been put out.

Spirit of God tells you to be generous, right? And what do you say? Well, I need to think about that for a while.

That's a big decision. I can't give up. Why don't you give that money away?

You can never get it back. Boom, you quench the Spirit. Spirit of God tells you to get involved in our kids' ministry.

Happened about 35 minutes ago. Let me think about that. I'm going to pray about it. More quenching of the Spirit has been done under the phrase, let me pray about it, than we could probably ever acknowledge. When the Spirit of God speaks, you act. Some of you quench the Spirit every single week when you leave here. Every single week. Because God speaks to you.

And let me tell you what you do. God speaks to you about this one area over here, and you don't want to talk to him about that area, because you like that area. What you want him to do is help you with this area over here. So you need the fire of the Holy Spirit to burn in this area. Now, I know that fire in our house is typically a bad thing, but in this analogy, let me make it good, right?

If you're going to put the fire out in one area, it's never going to get to the other area. And we're like, God, I want your power over here, and God says, well, my power is going to start here. And you're like, but I don't want it there, I want it over here, and God says too bad.

That's where it starts. You can't say no to me here and expect my power over here. Some of you here because you want God's power in one area of your life, but he's like, you need to get rid of this relationship. You need to change this habit.

You need to do this. You're like, God, no thanks. And he's like, fine, you're never going to have my power over here because you're quenching my Spirit.

By the way, let me downgrade this one. At some point, quenching becomes what we call rejecting. Genesis 6-3, God says, my Spirit will not always strive with man. That is a scary verse because that means there comes a point where you say no to God, and God says as you wish, and he departs forever. It's what Luke calls the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. You reject the Holy Spirit so many times that he just leaves. Now, I know when I bring that up, some of you are like, well, maybe I committed the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit because I did something really bad when I was 18. Okay, as long as you're asking the question, you haven't committed the blasphemy of the Spirit because the Spirit of God is the one who works inside of you, the desire to know God. As long as that desire is there, you've got the Spirit working inside you, which means you can never repent and God say it's too late ever. Okay, so if you're asking the question, you haven't committed the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, but there are some people that say no to God so many times that they lose all desire for God.

They lose all desire for repentance, and they go happily on their way to eternal hell, and that comes from having rejected the Spirit one too many times. I know that you think you're playing around. I know that you think you can do this when you're 35.

I know you're in college right now. It's not a big deal. It's a big deal, not because of how bad your life is, but because of the glory of the one you are rejecting. You do not look into the face of God and say no, and when you do, you put yourself on such precarious grounds that when you're 35, God's Spirit may say hands off. At 19 years old, they told me hands off, and I've been honoring that request now for 16 years, and I will for eternity. Don't get there.

Let me give you the second thing that you are not to do that is kind of related, but it's a different angle on it. Ephesians 4.30. Don't grieve the Holy Spirit of God. Don't grieve God's Spirit. You see, because the Holy Spirit is a person, He can be grieved.

This is what some of you need to see. You see, grieve. J. Oswald Sanders says, grieve bespeaks love.

An enemy can frustrate you. An enemy can wound you, but only a friend can grieve you. Only somebody you love can grieve you. God's Spirit is grieved. When there are things that you are doing that displease Him, and He says, how could you love me and then grieve me this way? I mean, imagine if one of your best friends had lost a child, and you're around them, and you're always laughing and joking about the death of their child.

How could you possibly say you love that person and joke about what caused them such pain? How could we say we love God and then entertain and dwell on and be okay with the things that ultimately crucify Jesus? You can't love God and entertain sin. That's why one of my favorite purists and writers, a guy named John Owen, said, you've got to be killing sin constantly, or it will be killing you. You've got to be killing sin constantly, or it will be killing you, because God's Spirit cannot reside in the same place that the lusts of the flesh are entertained.

Here's what Owen said. Listen, every sin, he says, weakens and darkens the soul. Every sin weakens and darkens the soul. It drinks up our joy.

It weakens our resolve. It corrupts our affections. It expels the love of the Father. It chokes us so that we no longer delight in God. It is a thick cloud that spreads itself over the face of the soul and intercepts all the beams of God's love and favor.

It takes away all sense of the privilege of our adoption. So you must be killing sin, or it will be killing you. Don't grieve the Spirit of God, because God's Spirit cannot dwell where you entertain and delight in the things that crucify Him. Again, real quick, I know that some of you hear this and you're like, I have grieved God's Spirit. If you knew some of the things that I have done, God's Spirit can never come and live inside of me, because I've grieved Him so much He can't even look at me without thinking such grievous thoughts.

I know that, and I am hopeless. I have very good news for you. I want to take you to a guy we all know in the Bible, most of us do at least, a guy named David, who committed about as bad a sin as you could commit, slept with his best friend's wife, and then had his best friend murdered.

That's a varsity in anybody's book. And then sat on it for a year, a year, didn't do anything. Psalm chapter 51, there's a little phrase in there I love, take not your Holy Spirit from me. How could anybody in David's position not feel like God's Spirit had departed from them forever when you've committed that kind of sin?

Do you know what David understood? Jesus on the cross would say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The Spirit of God was taken from Jesus, and all of the consequences, all of the grief of your sin was put onto the heart of Jesus, was put into the body of Jesus, and He was crucified with it, because He lost God's Spirit forever. David and you can pray, take not your Holy Spirit from me, and restore to me the joy of your salvation. Yes, you have grieved God's Spirit. Yes, you have quenched God's Spirit. But Jesus was wounded for our transgressions, and He was bruised for our iniquities. The punishment from our peace was placed upon Him, and by His stripes, we are healed. You do not deserve God's Spirit. You are not a place for God's Spirit, but Jesus gave it to you in His place, so that you can have the blessing and the fullness of the Spirit that He purchased for you.

You can stand in front of Him and say, God, I don't deserve it, but Jesus purchased it, and I demand it, because you have to honor what Jesus did for me. You stand not in your own righteousness, you stand in the finished work of Christ, and when you stand there, the Spirit that He purchased for you flows inside of you, given according to the measure that He has earned, not according to the measure that you deserve. That make sense? Here's my last statement. It's a statement that I profoundly agree with this statement.

Listen to this. This came out of the Azusa Street Revival of 1904, which was a great awakening to the power of the Holy Spirit and the birth of what is now known as the charismatic movement. Okay, I said this last night, and one girl went, whoop, whoop.

All right, so she was excited. I profoundly agree with this statement. The solution to the problems of the church today is to solve the individual Christians' problems, and the solution to these problems is a person, the Holy Spirit. He is the antidote for every error, the power for every weakness, the victory for every defeat, and the answer for every need, and He is available to every believer, for He lives in His heart and His life. The answer and the power have already been given to us in the power of the Holy Spirit, and I might add, having been purchased forever by the finished work of Christ. So take it and rest in it, and use it for the purposes that God gave it for, which is redemption and healing in your life and through you in your family.

Why don't you bow your heads with me, if you would. Have you ever received it, the fullness of the Spirit? Have you ever?

Right now, could you open your life up to that? God, it's been about doctrine. It's been about morality for me. God, I need to sense and I need to feel your love. Maybe you're the brokenhearted. Maybe you're the one abandoned by your father, or by a trusted loved one, and you need to hear, you are my son, you are my daughter. Maybe you are the struggling and the defeated, and what you need to hear is, I am the conqueror.

Maybe you are the ashamed, and what you need to hear is, behold, I make all things new. Would you let His voice take His attributes and make them real in your heart right now? Father, it is because of what Jesus has purchased for us, that we rise up to take the power of the Holy Spirit available to us to take the power of the Holy Spirit, available to us for communion with you, for victory over sin, and for power in the mission. We grab it now because of Jesus. In Christ's name.

Amen. Because of the Holy Spirit, God can dwell in us. He's not just out there somewhere watching us from afar.

He's living in us and through us. This is a transforming message from J.D. Greer here on Summit Life.

J.D. titled today's message, Be Filled with the Spirit, and it's part of our series called Rushing Wind. The online resources and these daily radio programs are available thanks to listeners like you who generously give to keep Summit Life going. We're committed to bringing you gospel-centered Bible teaching without finances getting in your way, but that's only possible when we all work together to keep this ministry funded. When you give, we'll say thanks by sending you a new 20-day devotional by Pastor J.D. titled Rushing Wind, Understanding the Holy Spirit.

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Sign up today at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch, inviting you to join us again next week as we dive into the gospel yet again. We tend to do that pretty much every day around here on the program. We're continuing our study of the Holy Spirit on Monday, right here on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.