Be Filled with the Spirit

Introduction: The Command to Walk Worthy and the Means to Do So

0:04 May we look to the Lord in prayer for His blessing upon the Word tonight.

0:11 Our Father, how we do bow before Thee with gratitude in our hearts for that secret place of the Most High in which we may abide and dwell. Thank Thee for reminding us of this, of this message and song tonight.

0:29 We do praise Thee. Thou dost invite us to come. Now we do thank Thee for these who gathered in this building tonight. We praise Thee for Thy promise that those that hunger and thirst should be filled.

0:44 Thank Thee for Thy promise to fill the longing soul with goodness. Thank Thee for Thy promise if we'd open our mouths wide, Thou wouldst fill them.

0:55 And Lord, we believe Thee to be true to Thy Word tonight and through the written Word and the ministry of the Holy Spirit, minister to us. Lord, we're tired of our own voices. Give us that sweet refreshment. Refreshing voice from heaven to our hearts.

1:17 Speak, we pray Thee, that hearing we might believe and obey and go out in the power of the Spirit to demonstrate Thy truth embodied in the light. To this end, we trust Thee for Thy blessing. In the name of our lovely Lord, Amen. Would you turn, please, to the book of Ephesians tonight.

1:44 The book of Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 5 and verse...

1:54 18. Now, most of you are familiar, I'm sure, or a goodly number of you, with the general structure of the book of Ephesians, where in chapters 1, 2, and 3, the Apostle Paul is setting before believers their glorious position in Christ, their glorious heritage in Christ through His grace and through the quickening together with Him. In chapters 4, 5, and 6, he sets before them in quite specific detail what their walk should be in the light of their position. And he opens in chapter 4 by saying, I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation or the calling wherewith ye are called. Having demonstrated the marvelous calling to which they've been called in Christ, now he begins to lay upon them the responsibility to walk worthy of that calling. Amen. Amen.

2:55 Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

2:55 Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

2:56 In other words, it is not enough for us to know our heritage in Christ, we must, as believers, appropriate that heritage and begin to walk worthily of the calling wherewith we are called. And he sets before them one duty after another in relationship to their fellow believers, in relationship to the world outside of them. We come to chapter 5, verse 18, which is God's command, and in a sense, God's promise, which, if appropriated and obeyed, will give us the wherewithal in order to walk worthy of the calling wherewith we are called. And so in Ephesians 5, verse 18, we read, And be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit, or to translate it literally, to give the sense of the tense, be ye being filled with the Spirit. And so Jesus made several very clear statements, statements concerning his commandments.

Obedience as the Measure of Love for Christ

4:01 He said, He said, He said, In another place, he said, There's only one measure, or one test of the measure of your love to the Lord Jesus that's a valid one. You know what that test is? How seriously do you regard his commandments? Ye are my friends, if ye point to me and call me the Son of God, no.

4:39 Ye are my friends, if ye point to me and describe me and laud me and praise me, no. Ye are my friends, if ye give to my work and support my church, no. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me, and only he truly loves me.

5:03 Now that's simple, so simple my flesh doesn't like it. I'd like to think that my love for the Lord Jesus is measured in terms of my lofty concepts of him, or my transports of affection when I sing a hymn like this one we've just sung tonight, Glory, glory dwelleth in Emmanuel's land. If your heart can't get lifted up and get at least close to shouting at a hymn like that, there's something wrong with it. But listen, the measure of my love to the Lord Jesus is not in terms of my emotional transports when I sing hymns or hear preaching.

5:35 The measure of my love is in direct proportion to the extent of my obedience. Nothing could be more clear in Scripture. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Now we have in Ephesians 5.18 a two-fold command of the Lord Jesus by his Spirit through his servant Paul unto the church.

The Two-Fold Command: Not Drunk with Wine, But Filled with the Spirit

5:56 And here it is. And be not drunk with wine. This is a negative command in which God is telling these believers, do not at any point in your experience give yourself over to the control of excesses, excessive use of alcohol. Now that's what he's saying.

6:14 More simply, don't get drunk. Be not drunk with wine wherein it exists. Now, most of God's professing people live in obedience to this command. Most of us here live in obedience, if not all of us, to this command.

6:32 I bet it's, not I bet, but I'm quite sure that it's been some time since any one of you have gone out and gotten drunk. Most of us and almost all of us live in a perpetual regard to this command. Most of us and almost all of us live in a perpetual regard to this command. Be not drunk with wine.

6:47 The reason we do is that obedience to this command does not necessarily demand anything spiritual. Obedience to this command can be based upon carnal motives. We don't want to lose our reputation. We may have no natural temptation or liking for drink.

7:02 We don't want to reproach our families or bring them into disrepute. There can be a number of natural carnal reasons that keep God's people in obedience to this command. Be not drunk with wine. Can you think what would happen in the church if suddenly, on a Saturday night, 75% of the people in this local church decided that they would throw off obedience to this command for just one night and all go out and get drunk and come in here on Sunday morning nursing hangovers and half drunk and try to worship and praise and carry on the work of God and your Sunday school teachers try to teach?

7:37 Can you imagine what havoc would come to the church if God's people for one night lived in disregard of this commandment? Can you imagine the havoc that would come? The Corinthians experienced a little bit. They came to their love feast and some of them were getting drunk right at the love feast.

7:52 And it wreaked havoc in the church. If we lived in disregard of the first part of this command, it would be havoc. And we all agree with that. The same God who said, Be not drunk with wine, said, Ye must be ever filled with the Spirit.

8:09 The great majority of our ills in the local church and in the church in a broad sense are not due to the fact that we disobey the first command. But these ills and problems have their root in the fact that the great majority of God's people live in disregard of the second commandment, to be filled with the Holy Spirit. The havoc wrought in the church today does not come because men and women are given over to the control of alcohol but because through their failure to be given over to the control of the Spirit there is manifestations of uncrucified flesh and self-life and sin and carnality which are a blight and a reproach to the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Is not this our problem? How long has it been since you've had a problem in your life with alcohol? How long has it been in your life since you've had a problem in this church with someone getting drunk?

9:10 How long has it been there's been a problem in your life because you are not filled with the Spirit? How long has it been since there were and are problems existent in this local fellowship because we are not filled with the Spirit? What right do we have to live in compliance with the first part of this command and to live in disregard of the second? For if you love me, Jesus said, keep my commandments.

The Parallel Between Drunkenness and Spirit-Filling

9:41 Not merely those which are carnal. Not merely those which through carnal motives we can obey but even those which demand spiritual appropriation. I believe there's a definite parallel in these two things which our Lord has put together. Be not drunk with wine but be filled with the Spirit.

10:03 A drunk man has all his individual characteristics. You can still tell that it's a certain person and name him. It has the same features. But it's obvious his whole bearing, his whole being has come under the control of that alcohol.

10:17 His walk is affected, his talk is affected, his speech is affected. His whole being has come under the control at its very nerve centers of the foul spirits of excessive alcohol. God says, be not drunk with wine. Do not be under the control of the foul spirits and give yourself over to the false joy of excessive use of wine but be filled with the Spirit.

10:41 Men and women filled with the Spirit. Peter filled themselves. Peter did not become John. John did not become Peter when God filled them with the Spirit.

10:50 Paul did not become Barnabas and Barnabas did not become Paul. They maintained all their individual characteristics. But listen, they were so possessed and permeated and empowered of the Holy Spirit that it became obvious to all that though this was Paul, this was not Paul. Though this was Peter, this was a different Peter.

11:07 Though this was John, this was a different John. It became obvious that though they were the same men, another power had possessed them and was infilling them and controlling them. This is so obvious when we read the account of what followed that first outpouring and infilling of the Holy Spirit of the 120. When they began to go out and share the wonderful works of God, we find in Acts chapter 2 these words.

11:35 They were all amazed and were in doubt saying one to another, what meaneth this? Or others mocking said, these men are full of new wine. But Peter standing up with the eleven lifted up his voice and said, these are not drunken as you suppose seeing it is but the third hour, but this is that which is spoken by the prophet Joseph. Now some of them mocking said, these men are full of new wine.

11:57 They didn't rightly analyze what it was, but it was obvious that they were under the control and the power of another. They didn't call it the right thing. But even these men who mocked had to confess that these men were not acting and speaking and moving under their own impulse. Another power had possessed them.

12:17 They called it the wrong thing and Peter stood up to correct them. But it was obvious to them that these men were possessed and controlled by a power that did not have its source and its roots in this cowering little group who just a few days before were found behind closed doors for fear of the Jews, but now outstanding amongst these same people loudly and boldly proclaiming the works and the wonders of their God. From that initial infilling and outpouring of the Holy Spirit this band of 120 went forth demonstrating the power of Christ in anointed ministry, showing forth the beauty of Christ in holy lives, displaying the compassion of Christ in sacrificial service, living in utter disregard of the world's wisdom, living in utter disregard and disdain of the world's approval or the world's blame, living in complete indifference to death and to suffering and persecution. And in one generation a gospel witness was planted in every major population center of the Roman Empire. Without a radio, without a TV, without a book, without a New Testament, without a gospel tract, without a correspondence course, without a bookstore, without any of these means. And there's only one explanation.

13:43 They were men and women made of the same stuff of which you and I are made, that they were men and women who were not drunk with wine but were filled with the Spirit. There is no other explanation but this. They did not have super hopped up kind of personalities. It wasn't this at all.

The Purpose of the Acts Record and Overcoming Satan's Deceptions

14:00 It was because they were men and women filled with the Spirit. And God has left the record for us. For what purpose? That we might read it and sort of regard it as a museum piece.

14:11 It's nice to look at, nice to go and see once in a while, but you'd never have it in your own living room. No, no. Why has God left the record of the Acts of the Holy Spirit in the book of the Acts that we call the Acts of the Apostles? Why has He left it?

14:25 So that you and I might forever see what God will do when His people will be not drunk with wine but be filled with the Spirit. God's left the record for us. God's left the record. Now, I fully realize that Satan has very cunningly cast suspicion about the whole doctrine of the work of the Spirit and the fullness of the Spirit.

14:46 I realize that. I fully realize that Satan has very cunningly associated me, associated fanaticism and extremes with this matter of being filled with the Spirit. I'm fully aware of that. I'm also aware that the devil has created doctrinal systems which rule out the experimental aspects of the Spirit's working and would take my God and lock Him up in the book of Acts and throw the key away and say that He can't come out and do anything there that He did in our day, do what He did then.

15:18 I'm aware of all of these things, and yet because my Bible sets before me and your Bible sets before you the clear command to be not drunk with wine but be filled with the Spirit and sets before us the provision in the person and work of the Holy Spirit that we might be to the praise of His grace, then we can approach this subject without fear. A.J. Gordon says, What is the work of the Holy Spirit?

The Holy Spirit's Office: Communicating and Applying Christ's Work

15:44 But that of communicating and applying the work of Christ to human hearts. May I repeat that to you? What is the work of the Holy Spirit? But that of applying and communicating the work of Christ to human hearts.

15:58 The office of the Holy Spirit is to communicate Christ to us, Christ in His entireness. Would you be afraid of the Lord Jesus? Should He be pleased to presence Himself with us as He did in the days of His flesh? Would you be fearful?

16:13 If He should, of course we know He will not, but if He should come as He was in the days of His flesh and tabernacle among us as the Son of Man, would you be afraid of Him?

16:26 If you were a hypocrite you would be, for He knew what was in man and He spoke very scathingly and penetratingly towards the hypocrite. But if your heart was open and responsive to light and you wanted all that God had for you, you would have no fear. Publicans and harlots who were pressing into the kingdom sat down to eat with Him. There was nothing austere and distant about our Lord.

16:50 Little children felt free to come and sit up on His knee. Children never come to an austere man. Never. Never.

16:59 Little children felt free to come and sit upon His knee. Publicans and harlots felt free to sit down and eat with Him, cringed in His presence and well-mighted. And the only reason we would have to be fearful of the Lord Jesus is if we were hypocrites. But if God by His grace has worked in us a desire to know Him and to know the truth, even where it means the exposure of our flesh and our self-light and the dealing with our darling little idols and our pet sins and the little lambs of iniquity that we cuddle to our bosom, if God by His grace has worked in us so that we're willing to deal with even these things and our hearts are open as we read in John 3, He that doeth the truth cometh to the light.

17:42 If that's the attitude of our hearts, walking in the light as He is in the light, we would not need fear in, would we? The Holy Spirit has come to communicate the Lord Jesus to our hearts. And we need not fear the Holy Spirit any more than we feel the Lord fear the Lord Jesus. For He has come as the revealer of Christ.

18:01 He has come as the One who alone can apply His power in our experience, what the Lord Jesus has made possible for us positionally. As believers, we are blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, Ephesians 1. Colossians 2 says, as believers, we are complete in Him. All the fullness of the Godhead bodily dwells in Him and we are complete in Him.

18:30 This is true of us as believers. In Ephesians 2 it's declared that we have been raised up to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Now here's our position. Complete in Christ.

18:40 Blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ. Raised up to sit together in the heavenlies in Christ. But may I ask you a question? It's awfully hard, isn't it, to try to rejoice in your glorious position, all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, when day after day you fall before the setting sin that has plagued you for weeks and months and years.

19:04 It's awfully hard to crank up some kind of rejoicing, isn't it? It's awfully difficult spiritual exercise to try to rejoice in my glorious position when I'm bound by the fear of man and cannot open my mouth and boldly speak when God gives me opportunities. It's awfully hard to try to rejoice in the fact that we're complete in Him when there's no grip in our witness, no passion for the lost, no power in prayer. And all of these things I've mentioned, which are ours potentially in Christ, all of these spiritual blessings, deliverance day by day from the power of sin in our lives, boldness to witness, confidence in prayer. Whose work is it to make these things a reality? Listen to the testimony of Paul. If ye by the Spirit do put to death the doings of the flesh, ye shall live.

20:02 If ye by the Spirit mortify the flesh, who alone can enable us to mortify the flesh? The Holy Spirit. And the blessing of overcoming, that is ours in Christ positionally and potentially, is only ours experimentally as we are filled with the Spirit. For it's by the Spirit that we mortify the deeds of the flesh.

20:24 The blessing of boldness which is ours in Christ, how is it made mine? God hath not given to us the spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind. And I can know boldness in my own life only as I am filled with the spirit of power. Compassion for the lost, compassion for souls and for sinners.

20:55 Where does it come? This is a spiritual blessing. It's stored up for me in Christ. How does it become mine?

21:01 Paul could say, the love of Christ constrains me. How does that love become mine and experience the fruit of the Spirit? It's love. It's only as we're full of the Spirit that we know something of a sympathy with the compassion of our Lord.

21:17 No power in prayer. Whose work is it? Paul said, praying with all supplication in the Spirit. We know not how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself maketh intercession.

21:28 And so do you see the general principle I'm trying to get across to you tonight? The work of the Holy Spirit, if I may speak reverently, is that of taking what is mine positionally and potentially in Christ and making it mine in my experience here on earth day by day as a Christian. That's the work of the Spirit. Jesus said, he has come to take the things of mine and reveal them unto you.

21:54 He has come to reveal who I am and what I am and to impart what I am to the heart and life of the believer. Now the moment you begin to preach along these lines of being filled with the Spirit, some with a false sense of spiritual perception say, well, the minute you begin to preach on the Spirit, you become Spirit-centered and you're not Christ-centered and that's not of the Lord. Now just a moment. The office of the Spirit is to glorify Christ, to take the things of Christ and reveal them unto us, to take the things of Christ and impart them unto us.

22:32 Now how can he do this work where he is ignored, where he's grieved, where he's quenched, where he's forgotten? Our Lord spent much time on the eve of his departure to the cross to set before his disciples much teaching concerning the Comforter who would come, that he might raise their expectancy, that he might clarify their thinking, that he might prepare them for the coming of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. I'm convinced in our day if we ask the average believer, if Paul asked those at Ephesus, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed, they answered, we've not so much as heard that there be a Holy Spirit, and in most churches where I go this is the truth. We've not so much as heard if there be a Holy Spirit.

23:15 Oh yeah, he's someone who came to dwell in me when I got saved and was supposed to help me once in a while, but that's the average concept. But it's probably knowing who he is, what he's come to do, not just intellectually, but knowing experimentally the work of the Spirit in mortifying the deeds of the flesh, the work of the Spirit in producing the love of Christ in my heart for sinners, the ministry of the Spirit enabling me to pray in the Spirit, the work of the Spirit in empowering me to witness. This is what I'm talking about. Not dead theological discourses on the work of the Spirit, but warm living life experimental knowledge of who he is and what he's come to do.

Avoiding Extremes: Wildfire vs. No Fire

23:54 In order that Christ might be formed in me, and I might be to the praise and the glory of his grace. And so Paul commands these Ephesian believers to whom he had declared their glorious position in Christ be filled with the Spirit in order that there might be demonstrated in you what the Lord Jesus has made possible for you. Now it's so difficult in a conference as brief as this to even begin to cover all the aspects we might call just the basic introductory aspects of the work of the Spirit, but in the time that I have, I'd like tonight to make just five very simple statements that I trust will be a solid foundation that will keep us from the two extremes in this realm of teaching. Will you follow me now? Two extremes in the realm of teaching regarding the Holy Spirit. One extreme, and most of us have at least heard about it if we haven't seen it, and it's acted like a scarecrow and it's scared us away from anything on the Holy Spirit, that's the extreme of wildfire.

25:06 Now God hates strange fire. You know what he did in the Old Testament when strange fire was offered. You know what he did. And we have heard and we have seen, some of us, strange wildfire.

25:18 People who claim to have a niche and a monopoly on the Holy Spirit and that for the most part it's nothing but a lot of soulish foolishness that's dishonoring to God and grieving to the Spirit and a reproach to the name of Christ. Now we've heard about it and we've seen it. And God's not the author of it. May I say this is not our practical danger.

25:39 Unless we're in circles that are generally labeled as holiness or Pentecostal circles, this is not our danger. Our danger is the other extreme, the extreme of no fire. Barren, lifeless, dead, spiritless orthodoxy. Both of these extremes are not in the plan and purpose of God for his people.

26:07 God does not want us to drift off into the terrible extreme of wildfire. May I say God just as surely is sickened, if I may speak reverently, sickened at the terrible extreme of no fire. For his most scathing word to any church in the book of the Revelation was that last word to the lukewarm church of Laodicea who had no fire and warmth of the Holy Ghost. Not a trace of wrong doctrine at Laodicea.

26:38 Not a trace of it. I'm about to spew thee out of my mouth. Those are terrible words. I don't want the Lord to speak them to me.

26:55 So if we're to be kept from these extremes, it's necessary we have several very simple biblical concepts before us. And I want to lay this foundation tonight and then God willing I want to build on it tomorrow. Are you too tired to listen as I go over five things? It's an awful thing to ask you this hour of night to remember five things, isn't it?

Foundational Truth 1: No Christian Without the Indwelling Spirit

27:18 Number one. Number one. No man or woman is a Christian unless he is indwelled by the Holy Spirit. Romans 8 and 9 forever puts this beyond controversy where Paul said, If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

27:37 No man or woman is a Christian unless he possesses the Holy Spirit. Why is this so? For the simple reason that all the blessings of salvation are stored in Christ. He is the divine reservoir, the divine depository of all spiritual blessings.

27:54 God is blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. God does not suspend spiritual blessings apart from Christ. Now His general mercy He does. He sends His rain upon the just and the unjust apart from man's relationship to Christ.

28:09 Breath and food and health and strength and the common mercies of God are dispensed out of the general mercy and goodness of our God. But spiritual blessings, forgiveness of sins, adoption, justification, all of these spiritual blessings God has deposited in His Son. Now, if I am to know them, I must somehow be joined to the source of them. God does not give out a little bit of forgiveness and give out a little bit of mercy here and give out a little bit of eternal life here and a little bit of peace here.

28:43 Apart from the Son, there is no dispensing of spiritual blessings. We could have the Son, as life. He that hath not the Son of God hath not life. Now, how is it that we are put into the reservoir?

28:57 How is it that we are joined to this repository of all spiritual blessings? Who does this? 1 Corinthians 12, 13. For by one Spirit ye are all baptized into one body and have been made to drink of one Spirit.

29:17 It is the Holy Spirit who by indwelling me thereby joins me to that great mystical body of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the head and we become members of that body. We become engrafted into Christ Himself. As Scripture says, we become bone of the soul and flesh of the flesh.

29:48 And as a Christian, unless he possesses the Holy Spirit, for the Holy Spirit is the one who joins us to Christ. And then, a Christian is not called, merely someone who looks to Christ and can say the proper things about Him, who can describe Christ and give some good thoughts concerning Him. But the Christian is described as one who is in a living relationship with a living person. I am the vine, we are the branches.

30:13 There is living relationship. I am the head, we are the members. Living relationship. Not merely a model, an association of some facts, but a living relationship is brought about by the life principle of the Highly God who is the Holy Spirit who has come to indwell in us and has joined me to the body of Christ.

Foundational Truth 2 & 3: Spirit Indwells Sons, Marked by Repentance and Faith

30:33 Secondly, no man possesses the Spirit until he has been drawn to the Lord in repentance and faith. In whom does God place His Spirit? Galatians 4 verse 6 puts this beyond controversy. And because ye are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son unto you, so that you may receive the Holy Spirit of the Holy Spirit.

30:54 And because ye are sons, the Spirit of His Son into our hearts hath a father. In whom does God place His Spirit? Thereby baptizing them into the body of Christ. Thereby engrafting them into that great living body of which He is head and we are members of that body.

31:09 In whom does He place His Spirit? Because ye are sons, He hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts. No man becomes a child of God until he is drawn by the Spirit of God to the Son of God. In whom does God place His Spirit?

31:26 To the Son of God in repentance. This is why Paul said he testified both to Jews and Jews repentance for God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Repentance involves seeing my sin as crying against God. Sorrowing for my sin is that which has bruised God and crucified the Lord of Glory.

31:51 A willingness to turn from sin and become living. Faith preceding in His favor and Lord. Not but a penitent heart can embrace the crucified Lord Jesus. The Spirit of God never gives saving faith to an impenitent heart.

32:16 The Spirit of God never gives saving faith to an impenitent heart. God breaks the heart in full retention into which He takes saving of the heart and makes the heart unbounded by the Spirit. The Spirit of God is the Word of God and the Word is the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God is the Word of God. If you are saved in faith you will not be saved in faith of the records in heaven is a terrible word. God doesn't do something to the records in heaven. He does something to the rebel on earth. Any man being Christ sees a new priesthood.

33:24 Yes, he has a new family. He has a new position. But he becomes a new priesthood. All things pass away and all things will become new and all things will be of God. There's a thing so marked that we know that only God can do. God does not enter a life without the mark of his entrance and some evidence of his presence. I would never want to give the impression that I deal with this matter being filled with the Spirit, that there is such a thing as a Christian in whom can be seen nothing but worldly and sin and nothing but continual carnality and all he needs is to be filled with the Spirit. I don't want to give that impression at all because it's not sufficient. Wherever the Spirit of God enters a life and there's a true experience of regeneration, there will be some marks of the entrance of God and some evidences of his presence. In the book of 1 John, this is what some of you have heard on the page by one of the brethren. I'm the tribal master of the Christian and I speak on the subject I call the first mark of a true Christian. And John uses again and again the term little children, little born ones, and he gives the first mark of a true Christian. He says if these first marks are not there, it's because you do not have

34:32 divine life. And he mentions him a desire to walk in the light, chapter 1, a basic submission to the authority of God's commandments, chapter 2, a basic severance from the world, chapter 2, a basic desire to walk in righteousness and holiness, chapter 3, a loss of everything, chapter 4, chapter 5, a living faith in Christ, these are the first marks of a true Christian. And John says again and again, if you say we know him and keep not his commandments, we lie and we do not the truth. If any man will love the world, another father is not in him. He that practices sin is of the devil, and the devil's sin is for you to sin. And he that is begotten of God does not practice sin as Christ. He who knows him and who cannot sin because he's born of God. I don't have time to go into these things. We must clearly understand that no man presents you with the Holy Spirit. We must clearly understand that

35:19 the Holy Spirit, without some marked evidence, is of a change in life and in character. If you browse for a Christian in whom there be seen nothing but worldliness and sin, is a monstrosity not recognized in the Word of God. And I believe that's the Christian that's a Christian. And now I move to the fourth staple statement I want to make. You see the progression? No man is a Christian unless he possesses the Holy Spirit. Many men have not the true disciples, none of whom. The Holy Spirit is the one who joins us with the Lord Jesus.

Foundational Truth 4: Indwelt But Not Filled

35:52 In whom does God place his spirit? In his sons. Who are his sons? Those who have been drawn to him in the pathway of repentance and faith. And if they have been drawn to him in the pathway of repentance and faith, they're the evidence that Jesus God has done a saving work in their life. And now this moves us to the fourth statement I want to mention. It's possible to be indwelled by the Holy Spirit and demonstrate some evidence of the new birth, and still not be filled with the Spirit. If this were not possible, Paul's command is utterly meaningless. For he tells believers, be not drunk with wine, but be ye ever filled with the Spirit. If this is something automatic, if this is something that comes as a general course, just like I believe, then there need be no command to God's people. Nowhere do we find Paul commanding believers to have all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. This is a fact. If they've been unwrapped into Jesus Christ

36:49 and been joined to him by the baptism of the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ, this is a fact. You cannot command something like that. You cannot command something like that. This is a fact. Paul does not command them to be completed in Christ. We are completing him. This is a fact. But he does command them to be filled with the Spirit. The very command itself is ample evidence that it's possible to be indwelled by the Spirit, to give evidence of that new life and the birthmark of a child of God, and still not be filled with the Spirit. We find this in the lives of different individuals in the Word of God.

37:24 It's obvious. Paul writes to those Corinthian believers. He says, what know you not that your body is filled with the Spirit? And he says, what know you not that your body is filled with the Spirit? And he says, what know you not that your body is filled with the Spirit? And he says, what know you not that your body is filled with the Spirit? And he says, what know you not that your body is filled with the Spirit? And he says, what know you not that your body is filled with the Spirit? And he says, what know you not that your body is filled with the Spirit? And he says, what know you not that your body is filled with the Spirit? And he says, what know you not that your body is filled with the Spirit? And he says, what know you not that your body is filled with the Spirit?

37:30 And he says, what know you not that your body is filled with the Spirit? And he says, what know you not that your body is filled with the Spirit? And he says, what know you Holy Spirit, that you have a God, and you are not your own. You are bought with a Christ.

37:33 Obvious that they were engulfed with the Spirit, but equally obvious that they were not killed with the Spirit, but killed with carnality and sensuality and sin. Those disciples and early believers, their news were in heaven. Jesus told them, The only judge of the game is the subject of you that remains in it in heaven. They had left all to follow Christ.

37:55 Their outward lives were clean. You are clean to the word that God has spoken to you. They had even had a measure of youthfulness. They had passed out dreams.

38:02 They had gone out and seen the powers of darkness subject to them as they went out into the entirety of their mortals. And yet they were not filled with the Spirit, because God rules in the record that we have in Acts chapter 3. In Acts chapter 6, we have the requirement for deacons, that they be men full of the Holy Spirit. This was a distinguishing refinement, definitely implying that there were some that did not meet the distinguishing, who were definitely saved men, but they were not good men and full of the Holy Spirit.

38:32 If I am called, I am called to the Galatians, which means my little children, Galatians 4, 19, of whom I sat there in birth again, till Christ was born in you.

38:44 This was a burden of the Christ, not that Christ might be for them at the right hand of the Father. They were his foreigners, my little children, of whom I sat there in birth again, till Christ was born in you. By drifting back into a legal concept, legalism always leads to a realm of fleshly existence. Law and grace, flesh and spirit.

39:10 You find those two things set before you in the book of the Galatians, the epistle to the Galatians. And Paul is praying for a new forming of Christ within them by the Holy Spirit, demonstrating again the possibility of being indwelt, and possessing God the Holy Spirit, and yet not being filled with the Spirit. And so there are these evidences in the word of God, but may I make it even a bit more personal. Does not the evidence of most of our lives bear witness that it's possible to be indwelt by this thing?

39:47 And by the grace of God, your humble faith, we have reason to believe God's been a saving work, and we can point to the evidences of the claims that he has wrought in us, and yet to be conscious, to be conscious that we live far short, if we believe that's in the description of a spiritual existence. Will you be honest enough to say that this is a possibility demonstrated by your own life? Will you?

40:18 You see, until we're willing to be honest with God, and confess that we are not living up to our privilege in Jesus Christ through the provision of the fullness of the Spirit, we will never know anything better than we are presently seeing. Do you hear me? If God is to lead through his word and by his Spirit into a measure of appropriation of the fullness of his own provision, the beginning place must be the conviction that though I have reason to believe that God has saved me and he has welled me, I am not a man or woman, full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. And that's where most of God's people get strung up, because it means the unsubmission of need, and God resists the pride. And those who say, I'm rich, mean faith is good, and have need of nothing. God resists that.

41:29 Possible to be unwell is not evidence he did not deserve. Evidence is a gift in the word, a litigant's gift. Evidence is in the hiding life of many of God's people. And then the last statement I want to make in closing.

Foundational Truth 5: Filling by Personal Appropriation

41:46 There is no filling of the Holy Spirit but by personal appropriation of God's provision. There is no filling of the Holy Spirit but by personal appropriation. When does a sinner convicted by the Holy Spirit, committed with a son to the Spirit, bow down to the gracious Spirit, perhaps more so than he describes in all of the literature outside the Word of God, by bumming into his children's pockets? When does the guilty spirit slip from sin or find relief?

42:30 Only when by faith he lays hold of the object of salvation in the crucified stage. Do you remember a pilgrim found to rest only when, at the foot of the cross, he rolled off the heavy burden upon his back? Do you remember? That's the reason he's there for children.

42:49 Never attained a sweet, gratifying portion of heart until there was a personal appropriation by faith. You know this. Conviction of sin never saves a man. The Holy Spirit of wounds must reveal a crucified Lord and we must embrace Him by faith.

43:11 And though Calvary is objective, whether men deny it, benefit, whether men deny that anything happened to live in Newport, there's the path. Christ died the just to the unjust. There's the objective fact of Christ. Now, when a sinner convicted of the Holy Spirit lays hold in Satan's cage, that which he gave to him is just an objective fact he can't make a personal living reality and he finds peace in his flippant conscience through the blood of the sinner.

43:53 Now, the cross is an objective reality. 1900 years ago in fulfillment of the promise of the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit came in His abiding fullness to the church and Jesus said, He came to be with you forever. An objective reality. I cannot ask, in that sense, there cannot be a repetition of tenderness.

44:16 May I say, dear child of God, until that which is an objective reality, the abiding presence of the fullness of the Spirit in the church, becomes to me that which I appropriate in personal experience to myself, I can merely aspire to the fullness of the penitence of God. God has given the spirit that He might abide in His church forever. He has given Him that He might know Him in His fullness. But until there is a living, rightness, appropriating, peace, most of us live as though He never changed. You read the lives of the disciples before Pentecost with their jockeying for position, with their blindness to truth, with their constant friction amongst themselves into the evidences of carnality and deceit and fleshly-mindedness, and you're reading the record of the, right there, you're reading the record of the abidance fundamentally by the believers. And I know some of the problem is that we are dealing with unhygienic processes. I know that.

45:40 And this is a great burden of my ministry and the constant emphasis of my ministry. But I also know that is not the only answer for there are many in whom there are some definite evidences that God has done a great deal of work but they have not done a great deal of work. Because they have not seen the provision of God in the person of the Holy Spirit who not only wants to indwell us and engraft us into Christ but to fill us with the new life and presence of Christ. Their lives are very, very dangerous.

46:13 And that is the sixth and fourth is the portion and provision for every child of Christ. And so I submit this fifth statement that there is no filling of the Holy Spirit but by personal appropriation. Because Peter was killed nineteen hundred years ago does not mean that I am automatically filled. Because Paul was killed nineteen hundred years ago does not mean that I am automatically filled.

46:38 There must be personal appropriation of that which God has given us. And I trust that this genre will be helpful as I move on from all of the Lord's willings and to that which I trust in God's command to be helpful in our practical Christian experience. God's command is do not drink of wine but be continually filled with the Holy Spirit. You dare not as a Christian train to love the Lord Jesus and live in this regard as His command for He said you are my friends if you do whatsoever I command you do as half my command if you speak to Christ do it in good levity.

47:21 This is not a suggestion but a promise to God. The great evils in the church today come not through the influence of wine but they come from the absence of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit ministering and serving in the lives of those in humility. So we pray. Now Father we ask that thou be pleased to take thy word and to inspire it upon our hearts enable us to receive it with our hearts Lord set our appetites give us true spirit of faith and hunger for we know that thou has promised to serve those with hunger and thirst after us to this end bless this world that our Lord Jesus might be glorified in lives which He has redeemed by His grace we ask in His name