Be Filled with the Spirit

by Graham Jones - The Church at Gun Hill

"And be not drunk with wine wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God." Eph. 5 vv. 18-21.

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Practical Issues from Being Filled with the Spirit

Glorious Harmony
Then we find that it affects our lives. Here are the practical issues flowing out of it. As we allow the Holy Spirit to fill us with these things, we discover there is harmony. You are encouraged to be filled by the Spirit, speaking to yourselves, that is speaking to one another, in the assembly, in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. There is a harmony - singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord - in the assembly. There is a harmony in your own life and in your family life, because it goes on to speak about wives and husbands and parents and children; it extends to work-life, to masters and servants. There is a glorious harmony.
Glorious Victory
The world cannot attain to this or know this. But we can, because it is the work of the Holy Spirit. If you go back from that verse, you will find Paul talking about all the things that we should be doing and all the things we should be abstaining from and ejecting from our lives. Our cry of despair may be that we cannot get all of these things out of our lives. It is impossible to the world but it is not impossible to us. Read from Ephesians 4 v 17 to 5 v 13 and you will find all those things. The legalistic mind will say, "Well, I try to do this and I try not to do that," and will get bound up in knots. But as you let the Holy Spirit fill you, you will find a glorious victory. You will have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but you will go on in His glorious power. There will be a holiness of life. You see the natural man cannot receive the things of God; the natural man cannot walk in the things of God. They are foolishness to him. In Ephesians 2 vv 2/3, it says:
"In time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience: among whom also we all had our way of life in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind."
Now God has dealt with all that and there is a glorious victory and a holiness of life. We do not take these things from the Scriptures and start telling all and sundry that they must live by these rules. You cannot start preaching these things to the world, for you will not change the world like that. I am not too happy about this idea of signing petitions and sending them to the government. You cannot change the world like that. We are called in this world not to start telling the world or the government to clean up their act, and to clean up the cinemas and television and so on. That is not our primary role. If we want to see people's lives changed, they are to be saved. That is the answer we have got. Jesus said that if you clean up a man's life and cast out the demon from his life, the demon will go out through all the dry places of the earth, eventually coming back to that man's life bringing with him seven other demons that are far worse. If you get someone to clean up their act and their life and to start living more morally, without the power of God, they will end up far worse. Jesus said it. What we have is a gospel which has been committed to us. We are ambassadors saying to a dying world, "Be reconciled to God! Be saved!" The message that we have is one of salvation. When people are saved then the Lord will deal with their lives and He will get things sorted out that are not right. That is what we are looking at here: be filled with the Spirit!
Not Grieving the Holy Spirit
The Bible warns us not to grieve the Holy Spirit. If He is leading you in a particular way, respond to that leading. In Galatians it tells us that we live in the Spirit and it tells us to walk in the Spirit. Now we live in the Spirit because we are born of the Spirit and are baptised in the Holy Spirit. But if we are going to be filled by the Holy Spirit, we have got to walk in the Spirit, following Him, being led by Him. That's what Galatians 4 teaches. If you live in the Spirit, you have also got to walk in the Spirit. You may have thought about that verse, "What's the difference?" Well, if you have been baptised in the Holy Spirit, you live in the Spirit because you are full of the Holy Spirit. However, you can still ignore the leading of the Holy Spirit, and grieve the Holy Spirit. Walk in the Spirit; follow His leading; be filled by the Spirit and you will find your life blossoming in all these wonderful practical areas. Read Romans chapter 8 vv 1-14: it is all about the Spirit-led life. The carnal mind is at enmity with God, but the Spirit-filled life is victorious. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. In Thessalonians it speaks about being sanctified by the Holy Spirit. This is all the work of the Holy Spirit.

Conclusion

Be filled by the Holy Spirit. You realise, because it has been stressed in this fellowship before, that that command, in Greek, means "Go on being filled with the Holy Spirit." It is a continuous present tense. You were baptised with the Holy Spirit and you received that glorious fulness of the Holy Spirit. Now, go on, day by day, moment by moment, letting the Holy Spirit fill you with all the fulness of God. That is the limit, and it is no limit, is it?

"And to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fulness of God." Ephesians 3 v 19.

That last phrase signifies "unto all the fulness of God." Marvellous! Boundless! Worship in the Spirit. Pray in the Spirit. Read the Scriptures; read them attentively; listen. You know, I have found a number of things in the Bible about the Holy Spirit speaking. The Holy Spirit speaks: Acts 2 v 4; 8 v 29; 10 v 19; 16 v 7 - scripture after scripture where the Holy Spirit spoke to the disciples. The Holy Spirit speaks today, but you must listen. If you read the Word of God, read it attentively, listening. Let the Lord speak to you through the Word. These are practical issues. In your private prayer life, listen to the voice of the Lord. As you receive ministry in the church, listen to what the Lord says. The Lord will prompt you by His Holy Spirit. He will be filling you with good things. When you are confronted by situations, listen. You will hear the Lord speaking to you. We were at the market one Saturday and I saw an acquaintance sitting on the bench opposite. I gave him a wave, not really wanting to go over to him. I did not want to get involved in conversation. He waved back and immediately I felt the Lord urging, "Speak to him." I did not want to, but because you come to know the voice of the Lord, you know you must do what He says. Jesus said that His sheep would know His voice. So I went over and sat down next to him and began to talk to him. Now I do not know what the outcome of that situation will be, but the word has again been sown. Some time ago, the Lord spoke to us here, in this church, in an open meeting, that we would be ministering to gypsies before there were any around. Eventually a large group arrived in our area and put their caravans on a large piece of vacant land locally. When we got the witness that these were the ones, we went and sang and spoke to them. And what did we discover? They had already been discussing, the previous night, where the Bible came from and how it was written. Again the seed was sown. Since that time, many travellers have been welcomed to our assembly and some have continued in regular fellowship with us. We too have been privileged to support the work of the Gypsies' and Travellers' Evangelistic Movement (GATEM) to which we were introduced by Travellers coming to us. The Lord speaks; we must listen.

Rejoice together in the fellowship the Lord has brought you into. Sometimes, maybe, we allow ourselves to be drunk with the wine of this world, with activities and so on, and then we do not get filled. The Holy Spirit cannot then move and operate in our lives. The Lord says to us, "Be still: be still and know that I am God." We can spend so much time complaining to the Lord that He does not seem to be doing anything in our lives; but He urges us to be still and know that He is God. If we listen, we will hear the voice of the Lord. Without Him we can do nothing. So if you want the solution to all these practical issues and problems of the Christian life, let the Holy Spirit fill you. If you are not full of the Holy Spirit, seek that blessing. It is yours; it is a gift from God. Be baptised in the Holy Spirit. Know that fulness within. Get thrilled with Jesus; the Holy Spirit will thrill you with Jesus. Then go on letting the Holy Spirit fill you with Jesus and all the wonderful treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are in Him. Keep on being filled by the Holy Spirit!

And now a benediction:

"Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Spirit." Romans 15 v 13

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