Filled with the Spirit (Part 2 of 3)

All of us need to be careful about the choices we make.

There's always a temptation to follow the wrong influences. That's why Ephesians 5 18 tells us we are to be filled with the Spirit. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg explains exactly what that means. But this is F. Williams. Quotes, I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place.

I was wrong about that. Because what do we know? We know that all of the benefits that are represented in this are counterbalanced by all of the other stuff, which is dark and undermining and broken and hateful and evil. You see, the only way that we'll ever get to this is from our Bibles. And that's why, when we've gone through Ephesians and we've had to wrestle with these statements by Paul, you were dead, you were sinful, you were accountable, and so on.

It comes across with just a resting, chilling engagement, doesn't it? And so what possible hope is there? Well, God speaks through the prophet Jeremiah and says, The heart is deceitful above all things. And through the prophet Ezekiel then he says, And I will give you a new heart. I will give you a new heart.

You see, here's what's needed, isn't it? And here we are at the center of heart surgery in the entire United States. Tomorrow, as every day, there will be those who are the beneficiaries of the transforming power of heart surgery. They will go in breathless and impoverished, and in the goodness of God, they will come out breathing and enriched. There's not enough to give them a little cream, not enough to give them a little tune. They need a new heart.

And that's what the Bible says. So you see, the bad news is more than impacted by the good news. First, I need to recognize what the predicament is. I live in an evil world. Why? Because I myself am evil. Even on my best days, that's who I am. Well, what possibility is there for me? I've tried this, and I've tried that, and I've tried to fix a number of things in my life, but I've really taken one step forward and two steps back.

What did you say? That he'll give you a new heart? You get a heart transplant?

Yes! That's the gospel. That's why Nicodemus was stunned by it when Jesus said to him, you know, I want to tell you, Nicodemus, unless you're born again, you will never see or enter the kingdom of heaven.

The word that is used there is for regeneration, in order that you might be reborn. That's what it takes. And only in the gospel is it provided. So I've paused on this purposefully.

I reckon that some will want to interact with it as you follow it up. But let's be very clear. In light of this, the reason Jesus came wasn't to show us how to live. He didn't come as an example. Jesus did not come and offer himself as your life coach.

Jesus came to bear our sin in his body on the cross in order that we then might die to sin in Christ and live unto righteousness—in other words, that in discovering that Jesus took the penalty that I deserve, bore the punishment which is mine to face, and grants to me all the benefits of his perfect life and his sufficient atonement, then the word comes. So be careful how you walk. Don't waste your time. Use your time. Don't be foolish. Be wise. And now, don't get drunk.

Be filled with the Spirit. You see, here's one of the classic illustrations of folly. Folly.

Drunkenness. And he highlights it. He points it out to them. Now, when you think about it, it's not a hard thing to understand. The context of Ephesus was such that not only was it dominated, the skyline dominated by the temple of Artemus, the goddess of love, but it was also engaged with frequency in festivals related to Bacchus, who was the god of wine. And so the Ephesians were very familiar with these occasions when one of the expressions of what it meant to be engaged in this wonderful festival was to get completely blasted, to be completely intoxicated. And so, the context of Ephesus would have been that many of these people, before they had found a new life in Jesus, were all part and parcel of that.

They were the ones who were intoxicated, running through the fields and the vineyards, and just enjoying themselves immensely, and yet falling over in a dead heap. And so Paul is writing to people for whom this is not sort of arm's length theology. Some of them, that was probably a big part of their life, and he sort of issues a warning. He says, you know, that was the old stuff.

You don't want to start that again. And then for others, for whom that had never been a part of things, but who had now discovered that they had a freedom in the Lord Jesus Christ, some of them might then be tempted to take that freedom and to abuse it to the point where they actually fall foul of enjoying the things that God has provided for them. In other words, that some needed to hear the exhortation of Paul, which he gives in 1 Corinthians 6, where he's talking about how all things are lawful but not all things are beneficial.

And in light of that, he says, here's my general rule of thumb. I will not be mastered by anything other than my Lord and Master Jesus Christ. So I'm not going to allow anything to take control over my life. And one of the areas where there is a peculiar potential for doing so—which is why Paul addresses it here—is in the realm of alcohol. Now, you see, what Paul is doing is, he's not giving a sermon here on temperance, as it were.

He's continuing his pattern. Don't be foolish, be wise. Don't waste your time.

Make good use of your time. Don't get drunk, be filled with the Spirit. So his emphasis is actually on life in the Spirit. It's positive. The negative sets up the positive. And what he's going to show is that when life is lived in the Spirit, it makes an impact on what it means to be a husband and a wife in marriage. It impacts the nature of home life in terms of parents and children, if you just follow the text. It will have an implication on employers and employees, which is down there in the beginning of chapter 6. And it has an impact on how the church then lives in a world in which the evil one opposes it.

So make sure that you have that clearly in your mind. He introduces the importance of life in the Spirit in this way because of comparison and contrast. You remember those essays at school where you got there, you turned the paper over, and it said, Compare and Contrast. And I can still feel the chills on my back, but Compare and Contrast, the leadership style of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. And you have to make two columns—the Compare column, the Contrast column—'cause if you start thinking you're on Compare and you've moved already to Contrast, it's a dilemma. I mean, because the time is going, and anyway, that's fine.

I don't have to share all my fears publicly with everybody, and I don't have to do any of them anymore. But I've thought about it now, because the comparison is fairly superficial, and the contrast is radical. The comparison is straightforward. When you're drunk, you're under the influence of alcohol. When you're filled with the Spirit, you're under the influence of God's Spirit. In that sense, it is comparable.

But really, that's where the comparison stops, because the contrast is far more significant. Because in drunkenness, the issue is a loss of control, whereas in being filled with the Spirit, the issue is being brought under control and living under the control of God's Spirit. Now, the word that is used here for drunkenness—and it is drunkenness that he's addressing—is a word that is also used to depict what happened in this timeframe in the curing of the skins of animals for the creation of product. And they would often take the skin, and they would soak it. They would soak it in creams or in substances in order to be able to expand it, in order to make it supple, in order to make it pliable. So that word there is… They plunged it in there, and it was immersed in there, and it was soaked in there.

That's the word here. You're not talking about somebody who's having a glass of wine at their Aunt Mary's graduation party or something. He says, Do not get soaked in this stuff. If we want to put it in common parlance, he would have said, if he'd been around today with his street cred, Don't get sauced. Don't get sauced. That's what he's saying. Do not get sauced. To be sauced—and I looked it up—is to experience an altered state of mind that occurs after drinking exorbitant amounts of alcohol. That's what he's saying.

All right? Because, remember, there is a wonderful balance in Scripture—and this is another subject matter for today—but there is a wonderful balance of Scripture even in Proverbs itself, where it is clear that wine is the staple drink, if you like, that is described in the Bible—grain and wine and so on. It's the principal drink. It's regarded as being among some of God's good gifts. It's regarded as a natural part of food and drink. That's how it's addressed in Scripture. It is acknowledged, too, that it has the ability in measure to gladden the heart.

But then it makes it perfectly clear that it does not provide what is often suggested, namely, enjoyment and contentment and happiness. Paul recognizes that it has a medicinal value, remember, when he says to Timothy, Take a little wine for your stomach's sake. I've heard some people believe that that was to be applied externally, that Paul was talking about rub it on your tummy, which is an interesting approach to biblical exegesis. But nevertheless, the balance is there, and in the same section of Proverbs, you have the warning that accompanies it. You see, remember Screwtape letters? Remember in Screwtape letters, the devil says to his nephews— Wormwood says, What we want to try and do is get our enemies—that is, the followers of Jesus—what we want to try and do is get our enemies to take good things that God has given them at the wrong time with the wrong people in the wrong quantity.

And if we can do that, then we really manage to make some significant headway. So, for example, the gift of food may become the occasion of gluttony. The gift of sex may become the occasion of fornication.

The gift of wine may become the occasion of debauchery. Don't be naïve. The days are evil. You see what he's saying? Now, listen to this in Proverbs.

Here's Solomon, and he's saying to his son, he said, Now, look, you should really listen to what your folks are telling you. And he says, Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife?

Who has complaining? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes? Those who tarry long over wine, those who go to try mixed wine. Don't look at wine when it's red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly, because in the end it bites like a serpent. It stings like an adder. Your eyes will see strange things, and your heart utter perverse things. You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, like one who lies on the top of a mast. They struck me, you will say, But I wasn't hurt.

They beat me, but I didn't feel it. When shall I awake? I must have another drink. And what Paul is saying to the believers in Ephesus is, Look, the culture in which you live is this kind of culture. Therefore, if you are going to shine as lights in a dark place, if you're going to be shining examples amidst a crooked and a perverse generation, then don't do this.

Just don't do this. Because, you see, alcohol is ultimately a depressant. It's offered on the advertising too as a stimulant. It may free you up a little bit at the party, and you talk to your boss or whatever it might be, but at the end, pharmacologically, it is a depressant.

It depresses the higher centers of the brain. And that is why the cop says, Can you walk? And you say, Yeah, of course I can walk.

Yeah. Yeah, but you can walk straight. Why can't you walk straight? Because of what it has done to your brain. It has affected the realm of self-control, of judgment, of understanding, of balance, of speech, and the power to discriminate in what I'm saying or in what I'm doing. And, says Paul, the reason it's so significant is because it leads to wantonness, or it leads to excess, or it leads to debauchery. Again, you don't have to be a genius on this.

Just read the newspaper. Face things. Listen to what the Bible has to say. The Bible is here in order to guard us and to guide us and to keep us, not to restrict us but to show us where true joy is found, where true happiness is found, where genuine singing is to be found. We come back tonight all being well, and we deal with the whole singing aspect of it. One of the things about the Bacchus festivals was all the singing. The people get intoxicated, and then they sing. And as I told you before, when you go on the rugby bus and they've had a few beers after the rugby match, the songs get filthier the more the beer takes hold.

Why? Because it has depressed the sensibilities of the brain. And the teacher, who hasn't been doing any, stands up and says, Boys, I think that's quite enough! And a few answers will come from the bag, and they won't be anything that they're proud of either, because of what happens. By contrast, incidentally, the word here, asotia, for excess or for debauchery, is also the word that is used as an adjective in the story of the prodigal son in Luke chapter 15, where it says that he wasted or squandered his substance with riotous living. Riotous living.

So he was completely overwhelmed by it. Now, in direct contrast to that, the believer is to be filled with the Spirit, so that in heart and in mind and in will it is brought under the control and direction of God. Do not go out the door and say… The talk this morning was about how if you don't get drunk, you can go to heaven. The Bible is saying this, to those who are in Christ.

You were once this way, but you're not that way anymore. Therefore, live in the power of the Holy Spirit by the enabling of the grace of God. Bring your mind under the jurisdiction of its truth, settle your heart in the fullness of its provision, and bring your will underneath the authority of God's plan and purpose. And that, then, allows the Christian to speak to a generation—not in terms of do's and don'ts, but to be able to say, I once was this way, and I'm tempted still to be this way. But, you know, I have in Jesus a wonderful Savior.

Because some of you have a particular background in this, and this is difficult for you, isn't it? And not everybody who has wrestled with this has had a instantaneous transformation. Some of my best friends in Scotland who wrestle with alcohol in their lives, they would be going along steadily for a while, and then, bam!

Then I wouldn't hear from them for a week or two weeks. Guy would go out for lunch, go to a business lunch, and he'd never come home. Ten days later, he'd be found somewhere in the south of England after lunch. He got on a train, and he'd gone somewhere. He didn't know where he was. And when he got off, he didn't care.

He was like a man trying to sleep on the top of a mast. Some of these things—although in Christ we are removed from the dominion of sin instantaneously, once and for all—we are not removed from the presence of sin. And we are not removed either from the promptings and the urgings that want to take us back to where we once were.

And that, incidentally, loved ones, is why we're supposed to exhort and care for one another and watch out for one another. And we'll come back to more of that later on. You're listening to Alistair Begg with part two of a message titled Filled with the Spirit. We'll conclude this message and our series tomorrow on Truth for Life.

And in just a minute, Alistair will be back to close with prayer. But first, I want to let you know after two years off, the Basics Conference is back this year. Basics is a conference that encourages and equips pastors and those in church leadership.

The theme this year is aptly titled Back to Basics. The conference will be held at Parkside Church May 2nd through the 4th. Alistair will be speaking along with guests Toni Morita and John Woodhouse. Online registration is now open at BasicsConference.org. This conference fills up quickly.

Registration closes March 1st, so if you're interested in attending, I want to urge you to register soon. Now, you're probably familiar with the book Pilgrim's Progress. It's one of the best-selling books of all time. Well, our book offer today is a children's version of this classic work. It's titled Little Pilgrim's Big Journey. It's a colorful picture book that follows the same storyline as the original.

However, as you might expect, the language is substantially abbreviated and simplified so young children can easily follow along with this compelling story. As you read through the book, your kids will travel side by side with the main character, a young pilgrim named Christian, as he embarks on a journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, and along the way your kids will learn important lessons to help keep them on the path that leads to salvation. This is a book you will definitely want to add to any child or grandchild's library. It's a hardcover book. It provides many nights of captivating bedtime reading, and it comes bundled with a coloring book and stickers.

There's even a map to chart the journey. Request your copy of Little Pilgrim's Big Journey when you donate to Truth for Life at truthforlife.org slash donate. You can also request the book when you sign up to give a monthly donation by becoming a Truth Partner. As a Truth Partner, you can request our featured book selections each month. It's our way of showing appreciation for your ongoing support.

You can also request Little Pilgrim's Big Journey when you call us today at 888-588-7884. Now here is Alistair to close with prayer. Father, thank you that your Word is sufficient for us.

It just covers everything. It shows us what we really are without you. It tells us of the wonder of what you've done in Jesus. It speaks with such clarity to the challenges and privileges of living the Christian life. And so we pray that you will so come and invade our hearts and transform our minds and subjugate our wills that we might be on the receiving end of this exhortation with great joy, and that when we come to sing that we might sing out of the fullness of your love for us and to us in Jesus. We want to say together and as individuals, take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee. Take my heart, take my mind, my will. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.

I'm Bob Lapine. If you wanted to fill your car with fuel, you'd head to the gas station. Where do you go to be filled with the Spirit? Find out tomorrow as we conclude our study in the book of Ephesians. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.