The Command For A Spirit Filled Life

As my brother was talking about being a weeper and a worshiper and a warrior, I thought of that other W, worker. But what can make all of those things really happen with God's power and grace? It's possible to be just a weeper and not have any power at all because you're emotionally wrought and you want God's help.

You just weep. It's possible to be a warrior, going out and shadow boxing and fighting in your own strength. It's possible to be a worshiper, but you're worshipping what you know not, ignorantly, not according to the Word of God.

It's possible to be a worker, just going out like the Peace Corps to help people, and it's a good thing. But you see, God has a specific thing. I was just thinking about the account of what I feel God would do here at your church.

Bangor's Prayer Watch and the Missionary Legacy

You have an unusual calling on your assembly here. Did you know that in 555 A .D., a couple hundred years after the Lord made His appearance, in Bangor, Ireland, there was a community there. Some say that Joseph of Arimathea went to Ireland and the Iconian coast there and set up churches up in Ireland as all the disciples went to all the world, and they all died on those mission fields.

I saw where Thomas, the ex-doubter, died in India. They said they put hot plates on him years ago, and Matthew dragged through the streets with ropes. You read these accounts of how all the apostles died.

For the glory of God, living sacrifices, it'll change your life. In Ireland, the Gospel was planted on that northern coast there, and they sent missionaries to all of what is now Europe. You can read these old stories.

They're lost, however, to the church of our day. Let me tell you what happened in Bangor, Ireland, in 555 A .D. There was a community of 2 ,000 or 3 ,000 that set up worship in their community and their church, much, they modeled it, after the temple in the Scripture.

Here's what they said, these 2 ,000 or 3 ,000 people who loved Jesus. Let the many keep awake in community a third of all the nights in the year in order to read aloud from the Bible, the book of God, and to expound his judgment, and to sing blessings together and to pray.

Alternating each 24-hour period, one-third of the community, one-third of them, would be praying, reading Scripture, and worshiping in shifts and praying, and this went on around the clock for 300 years.

Did you know that? Until 855 A .D. They prayed for all of Europe, and they sent missionaries to all of Europe. Well, some of those missionaries that went to Europe saw God's seed planted there, and there was a German man in Bavaria named Count Zinzendorf, you might have heard of him.

The Moravian Prayer Movement and John Wesley

He was a young man, he was wealthy, and he had an estate in Bavaria there, and he was looking in Germany, you can see the painting still in the museum there, at a picture of Jesus on the cross, and it said, Ese Homo, this is the man, and there he heard the Holy Spirit saying, this is what I've done for you, what have you done for me?

And he was so moved, and he went back to his estate, and there at his estate, he said, I want to serve you, and what happened was, about that time, persecution broke out on the church in Europe, and there were fragmentation of churches, and people began to seek refuge, and so he opened up his great estate to a group of Christians, and these were different people.

They didn't all believe just exactly the same, they had differences, like today, but they found refuge in this place, and they named this place Hernhut. Have you ever heard of that? You know what it means?

The Lord's Watch. And there, this group began to farm, and be a fellowship together, but there was a lot of fighting, and not much unity, and the way that the first miracle of Pentecost was the supernatural unity, and that was really the first miracle of all, and God made them one there in that upper room.

But here, they didn't have unity, so they decided they must have prayer together, a real prayer meeting. And so in Hernhut, it was in the year 1500's, in the 1700's, they're actually in the area of North Germany, in Czechoslovakia, 300 people came to this place at Hernhut, and they began to have a Wednesday morning prayer meeting.

And they prayed, and they prayed, and one morning in August of 1727, the Lord's Spirit fell upon them. They had been worshipping, but the Lord's Spirit fell upon them, and the Moravian Church was born.

And they began a prayer meeting that went 24 hours a day, and you know how long it lasted? For the next 125 years. And out of this prayer meeting, they sent missionaries. You can go to Alaska and see back in the frozen tundra, an abandoned building, and you say, what is that?

And they say, oh, that's a church that one of the Moravians started a couple of hundred years ago. You can go up in the areas around. They sent more missionaries out of that place in Moravia there, in Bavaria, than all of Europe sent out in the next 125 years.

They sent out more missionaries than all of Europe put together. People would go and lay their lives down because they were birthed out of real prayer. And their theme was that God would send, like, you've seen that word, may the lamb who was slain receive the reward of his suffering.

You've seen that? You've heard that ever? That was their motto as they went. One of the men that was affected by that was a man named Peter Bowler, and he had a tremendous influence on someone you know, named John Wesley.

And Peter Bowler preached and he said to Wesley, preach faith until you have faith, and then you'll preach it because you have faith. And Wesley had been on missionary work, and he had been to America a couple of times, but he did it in his own strength, a lot of it.

And then one day he was on a ship coming to America, and he saw the Moravians there. And they had peace. They had peace, and they weren't afraid of the storm that was about to sink the ship. And he realized that what he had wasn't deep enough.

And when he got back to a place called Aldersgate, he heard that word that Habakkuk got in the watchtower years before, the just shall live by faith. And Wesley's heart was strangely warmed. I wonder what the warmth was.

It was the presence of the Holy Spirit. So this morning, what I want to talk to you, you know, how, how, what's the greatest need of the church in America? What is it? What will make it work when we worship, when we weep, when we war, when we actually are together?

The Church's Need for a Spirit-Filled Life

And what's, what is the world waiting to see from the church in America? Is it just to hear more radio? I'm not criticizing your radio. I mean, just to hear messages. I mean, that slipped out, but I didn't mean it the wrong way, brother.

But I'm saying, you know, we've had 75 years in America of the most expensive evangelism and gimmicks and trying to draw the world into what we call our version of worship and Christianity. And yet the church in America today, they say that 40 now of America are what we call nunners, N-O-N-E-R-S, nunners.

They don't have anything. They don't believe anything. And 80 of the kids that are in churches that grow up, they go off to college and it says 80 of them turn away now. They grew up in conservative and real Bible believing churches.

They're leaving and turning away and turning into a snowflake. What do we need? What's wrong? What's wrong with, it's not that we're not sincere. You see, what's the world waiting to see and what's the great need of my family?

What's the greatest need of my family through me? What does my wife need from me more than anything else? And my children as a father, what do they need to see? This is what I feel the Lord wants me to talk about this morning.

Let me read some scripture and then I want to pray with you. Listen to these. Just listen. Exodus 15, 11. Who is like to Thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like to Thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?

And in 1 Chronicles 16, give to the Lord the glory, do His name. Bring yourself as an offering and come before Him. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Psalm 47, verse 8, God reigns over the nations.

God sits upon the throne of His holiness. Psalm 48, verse 1, excuse me. Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, the song says, in the city of our God and the mountain of His holiness. Psalm 60, verse 6, God has spoken in His holiness.

Psalm 145, verse 17, God is righteous in all His ways and holy in all of His works. Psalm 93, verse 5, Thy testimonies are very sure. Holiness is becoming to your house forever, O Lord. Leviticus 27, sanctify yourselves therefore and be ye holy.

It says, become ye holy for I am holy, saith the Lord. And so Peter says, become holy for I am holy. He picks up that same verse and in that stirring verse in Hebrews 12 when it says, pursue peace with all men and holiness without which no man will see God.

Holiness as the Essential Character of God's People

So what is this great essential? What does it really mean? You see, because everyone is holy by their own standards. What we hear and what we've heard all along, it's easy to think that I'm holy and right by my own standards, but he says, become holy as I am holy.

In that same measure and character, you see, every way of man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord tests the spirits, it says in Proverbs. A lot of very unholy people have a great familiarity with the things of God.

Look through history and you see the war between those who think they're righteous or holy and they persecute and kill those who really are. They don't like it. You see, service is no substitute for a clean heart.

And singing is no substitute for consecration. And religious feelings have very little to do with real holiness. One of the symptoms of the last days is unholiness. Men will be unthankful, unholy, lovers of self more than lovers of God.

And you listen to so much that's being talked about and sung, and it's all about man. It's what God can do for us and for me, for me, all working together for my good. And very seldom is the self broken and gone, especially in the community like it was in Hernhut and Bangor where they did that kind of thing for hundreds of years.

When God moves, it is always in holiness. If you see something that looks like a miracle and it goes on and it may be supernatural, but if it's not holy and doesn't have his character in it, then you can know this.

It's some other spirit than the Holy Spirit. Just because a person does something that's supernatural and gets the attention of people doesn't mean that it's really of God. So the Bible says we're called unto holiness.

We're to have our fruit unto holiness. We're to be established unblameable in his holiness. We're to abound in all holy way of life and godliness. Those are scriptures I'm quoting. We're to have a holy priesthood.

We're holy in all manner of conversation. We're to be called to a holy calling. We're holy without blame that his presence and souls and bodies presented to him a holy sacrifice to prove the holy will of God, a temple of the Holy Ghost.

You think it's almost redundant because it's the message, you see, perfecting holiness in the fear of God, it says right here. Without holiness, God cannot be pleased with our lives. It's his command to us.

And so what I want to talk about this morning is see prayer like we heard last night and the warning to America that we heard last night and the warning to any nation that forgets God, any country, any church, any family is the same, that God will let us have what we think we want and we'll begin to sing our songs louder trying to convince ourself that no matter what we do, God is always with us.

But there is a time when God says, have it your way. And it's a deadly time. It's one of his two words for wrath. One of them means to come in flaming fire. And the other one means like to fold your arms like in Romans one and let you have what you think you want and stop having an appetite for the word of God and stop wanting to pray.

That is a judgment when we said no to his spirit. And so the gospel of our salvation is much more than the forgiveness of sins. It's this. The gospel is the restoration of the very life of God into the spirit and the soul of man based upon the forgiveness of sins, based upon what you've done.

Now, Lord, restore me, reconcile me, put me back in your plan and your purposes, you see. And when I receive eternal life, I receive not a thing. It's not a thing God gives. It's a person who comes to live his life inside of me and he will be himself and he will fulfill his nature.

And to the degree that we allow him to be himself and fulfill his nature is the degree to which I'm abiding in him. As it says back in that youth room, Ignite, John 15, remain in him. I loved it. I was back there praying for us.

So the moment that I dare to become a true believer and receive forgiveness of sins based upon the blood of Jesus, the Lord God says he by his spirit seals me in my spirit with his spirit and I become a receptacle, a container of the life of God and he comes to inhabit my humanity with his very own life.

And at that moment, whether I understand it fully or not, I cease to be my own property. I've been bought with a price. The blood of Jesus and the only person who really has a right now to live in me is him.

Now I'm going to understand that. There's a time of growing. God is gracious and he doesn't scold us for our stupidity so much. But you see, we sang this song, though our sins are many, your grace is greater.

And that's true. But he doesn't say when we sin, he said, if we sin, we have an advocate with the father. He wants us to come into a relationship where sin happens to us all. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, but it's not the norm.

We are seeking to walk in the beauty of his will and his purposes and his character and to please him no matter what. We become a suit of clothes for him to put on. And this kind of relationship that he calls with him, it's called holiness.

That's what it is in his mind. You see, it is holiness. Now, what do you think of when you hear that word holy? Maybe you think it means that somebody carries a big black Bible and walks around and say, praise the Lord, hallelujah, all the time.

Is that what holiness means? Maybe it's somebody that sort of sissy and has lace cuffs, maybe, you know, is always kind of genteel. I think, is that what it means to be holy? To do all that? Or maybe a little weird or vague or having kind of a, say, dude, glory to God, you know, is that holy?

Kind of other worldly and kind of a prune face act like you always been baptized in pickle juice, pickle juice. Or you just think you're always hopping around praising God and always happy like Paul and Silas in prison.

They're in stocks with their backs bleeding and Silas looks over and Paul says, hey dude, you got a song? No, he didn't say that. They began to sing praises at midnight and God shook the place. There's so many misconceptions about what it means to be holy today, you see.

But the Bible says, the meaning of that word is it does mean a separated life. It does mean that, but it means more than that. It doesn't mean that you just don't smoke, you don't chew, you don't do the things you used to do.

It means a whole lot more than what you don't do. Holiness has something to do with what you do do. And it does mean separation from evil, but it means this, it means not just separated from, it means separated unto, separated unto him.

Our bodies become a temple and our eyes and our ears and our hands and our lips are reserved for him. That's what it means. It's like my shoe is holy unto me. It means reserved for the exclusive use of.

Nobody can use your hands, but Jesus. Nobody can use my mind anymore. I can't just use it the way I used to, the way I want to, just whatever, but I've got to have it changed to where it's honoring and pleasing to him.

That's what he means when he says holiness. And it's not just the absence of sin that makes a person holy. It's the presence of God. The presence of God. You see, Jesus is given to me in his fullness and who he is and to the degree I understand that and walk in that is the degree to which I'm holy.

So the trumpet call of scripture is to holiness, don't let anybody talk you out of it. He's not calling you to be an old self-righteous, prune-faced, starchy kind of person that's always walking around wagging their finger, but he's calling you to be a living sacrifice so that you don't let things in your mind that aren't going to be in his mind.

And so that you don't listen to music that won't make it through the filter of that throne room in heaven. Don't listen to what won't be in that atmosphere. If it's not in that atmosphere, don't put it in this heart of yours.

God has two throne rooms, one in the highest heaven and one in the humble heart of man that trembles at his word. And he wants the atmosphere in here to be in harmony. Like that old song, we don't sing it because we don't understand it.

Come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy praise. Let it be matching your courts above. Show me how to honor you in all things. So the Bible said holiness is God's will for me. I'm called unto holiness.

It's the very word for ecclesia. It means assembly, but it also means called out. Called out of darkness, called out of the power of the pressure of this world, called out of individualism and pride and living by the life of the son of God.

This is life eternal that we might know thee. And the life is a person. Whoever has the son has life, and whoever doesn't have the son will never even see life, you see. The first work that God ever does in a man when he brings him to himself is convict him of unholiness.

That's what he does. And where there's not that conviction, you can think that it's probably not God. Yes, he calls him to the love of God. Yes, he loves him. But that man begins to feel like something is wrong with me.

And God says, my child, that's why I came to erase that wrong with you, to erase that pride, your own wayness. I want you to come to my way. I'm the way. I'm the truth. I'm the life. And you can't come to the Father but by me.

So it's absolutely critical in these last days that the church be seen by the world as holy. So here's what happens. Excuse me. I need to get a Kleenex. If somebody has one, here's one right here. Excuse me.

How do you blow your nose without having it sound terrible on the mic? And the Lord's faithful to humble us. We have the privilege. When the new birth takes place, holiness is not automatic in its practical sense.

It's of God that he places us in Christ and he's made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. But God wants to forge your heart and your mind on the anvil of his person, a holy life that's a fearful weapon, as the Scottishman said, in the hand of God.

He wants to turn you into a weapon in the hand of God. You see, it's not automatic that you become an Olympic runner just because you run high school track. You have to absolutely give yourself to it with all your heart.

And it's not automatic that you become a weeper or a warrior or a worker or a worshiper in spirit and in truth. It's not automatic but it takes continual diligently seeking of his face and walking with him.

And he wants you to because it's the exercise yourself unto godliness that makes you grow. And so the Bible says you can grieve the Holy Spirit. He may live in you but you can grieve him. You can go through your day and do thing after thing that you just don't pay attention.

Ephesians 430 says, grieve not the Holy Spirit of God by whom you've been sealed for that coming day. You can also resist the Holy Spirit. He can be speaking to you and you can push him away and you can say like Stephen said to them, you always resist the Holy Spirit.

You always continue your own way. You can quench the Holy Spirit, it says in Thessalonians, quench not the Spirit. He's like a fire in your bones and you're in a group of people and the Holy Spirit begins to burn and say, stand up and say something.

And you pour water on that. It's too dangerous. You wouldn't be kind. They would think I don't care about them and you quench that. It's not just standing and making a fool of yourself or just blowing them away.

It's being led by the Spirit of God and you can't do that unless you're filled with the Holy Spirit. You can insult the Holy Spirit. I've done that. Have you done that? Have you ever done that? And when afterwards you felt, you said, Lord, I know I grieved you, I insulted you and he'll forgive you, he'll restore you.

The Command in Ephesians 5: Be Filled With the Spirit

I want to take you to the book of Ephesians chapter 5 for what is often called the most important command in the New Testament. That's a big statement because you see the reason it is, not because that this difference in what God says is one being more important than the other.

But if you obey this command, you will find in the obeying of it, other commands flowing inside of you. And they'll be easier to honor with all your life. In the book of Ephesians chapter 5, I want to read first of all then verse 14, wherefore he says, awake you who are asleep and rise up from the dead, meaning like a group of dead people.

And Christ will give you the light, the understanding. See that you walk wisely, circumspectly, not as a fool. And a fool, he doesn't have to say there's no God, he can just act like there's no God in his heart.

He says in his heart, there's no God. He acts like, he can be a professing Christian and live like God's dead. Don't be like a fool, but be a wise person. The wisdom in the Bible is the practical implementation of spiritual truth that he shows you.

It's how to make it work. So he says here, don't be drunk with wine wherein is excess. Wine affects your faculties. It takes over slowly and it begins to make you feel happy when you might not be. It begins to make you feel generous when you might not be.

It begins to make you have courage, stand up in a bar and start a fight when you know you're going to get your rear end kicked. It gives you all those false feelings of everything's all right. Don't be drunk with wine where it is excess, but be filled with the Spirit.

And then it talks about speaking and singing and giving and saying. And it talks about how that works out in wisdom. It talks about wives. Submit yourself. If you're filled with the Spirit, here's what will happen.

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husband, to the Lord. Husbands, love your wives sacrificially. Lay your life down for her. Children, obey your parents and the Lord. Servants, obey your masters. Be the best servant in the universe.

Don't walk around picketing saying you shouldn't be a servant. Be the best servant. And then it talks about the devil. Resist the devil. It's how the Christian behaves and acts and works out the filling of the Spirit of God, you see.

So, this is sometimes called that important command. He's contrasting the intoxication with the world and what it offers with the things of God and what it offers to us and who He is. You see, what does it mean to be filled with the Spirit of God?

The Meaning of Spirit-Filled Living

I want to talk about that for a moment, you see. Because you see, this command, this command is given to a group of people. It's a plural. All of you who read this or hear this do this. It's also in the passive tense.

It's a passive. It means this is something done to you. It's not something you can work out just singing a little louder. It's something that God must do and He will do it. All of you, each one specifically, present tense, be being filled with the Spirit of God.

It's an imperative. And so, what does it mean, you see? And the question is, have you done this? Are we doing this? The greatest need on earth is a Spirit-filled church. The greatest need of my family is a Spirit-filled daddy.

That's what they need. Not just truth, knowledge coming to them. They need to also see it. Like that's why Jesus, the Word became flesh. He dwelt among us. We beheld His glory, full of grace, truth. But He put His hands where other people wouldn't put them, on lepers.

He did this. So what does it mean to be Spirit-filled church? You want to bless your family? You want to bless your church? You want to be a blessing, a warrior, a weeper, a worker, a worshiper? You want to be that?

There's only one way. Only one way. Well, first of all, it means to be Holy Spirit-filled. I call church sometimes, hello, this is Spirit-filled Second Baptist Church. And I say, I have no doubt you're full of Spirit.

But is it Holy Spirit? Because it's the Holy Spirit of God. And what it means then, Holy Spirit, is to be filled with the personality of God. It's not just a feeling. It's not just a something. God is light.

So to be filled with who God is, is to be filled with light. He is, God is truth. God is consuming fire. God is love. So it's to be having who He is in those dimensions come and fill me, to be filled with the very personality of God.

The Holy Spirit is a He, not an it. Well, I just didn't feel it today, the Holy Spirit. No. No. He is a He, just as much as Jesus is a He. And He is the one that gives you the power to even worship Jesus by one Spirit.

We have access to the Father in His name. That's the Trinity in action right there. So to be Spirit-filled is to be self-empty. It won't work any other way. There's only one room for one person to run my life.

He's a gentleman. He'll back up and let you do it. Like your kid wants to put this square peg in a round hole and those little things they used to have and you hit. You let them do it. You try to help them.

No. And you let them just try to do that until they get exhausted and finally they say like, and you help them. God will wait on you. He'll wait on me to come to the end of my own feeble efforts. That's what's happening.

So many sides of us, you see, is to be emptying of ourself. Thy kingdom come. But to say that, you've got to say, my kingdom's got to go. What does it mean to be Spirit-filled? It means to be Spirit-controlled.

It's a synonym. It's a synonym which means to say this question to you or me, who or what controls you? Is it your job? Is it your man-made priorities or is it the Word of God or the Spirit making that real and saying, this is the way, walk ye in it.

That's how a person lives in this. See, God designed the real Christian life to be impossible. But the impossible is Him possible. He makes it real. He, you see, it's receiving His life, not my life for Him.

It's His life in me. And the more that I understand this and let Him be God, the more true the witness is of who He is in me. There's human explanations fail for this. You see, not by power, not by might, but by my Spirit, says the Lord.

So let's answer this question, am I filled with Him? Each one of us. Have I obeyed this command? It's easy to think we have and when we really haven't done this. Now, could I get you to come up here for just a second?

I'm going to baptize you. No, I'm kidding. Not really. Stand right here. Thank you. Okay. She's very, I didn't tell her about this, so she's real, you know, real, real nervous. What's this in my hand?

Glass of water. That's good. Okay. I want you to grab my arm. Now shake it. Shake it. There you go. That's good. That's good. Okay. Now, what came out? What, what, what, what happened when you shook my arm?

You poured out lots of water. Okay. I poured out lots of water. But, and what happened? You got wet. I got wet. Okay. Why did water come out of here when you shook it? Simple question. Why did water come out when you shook it?

See, it's so simple, it tricks us. You know, she might say, because you shook it like crazy. That's right. But why did water come out when you shook it like crazy? You can sit down. That's good. Thank you.

The reason that water came out of it is because water was in it. So I've got to ask myself, what came out of me the last time I was shaken? Well, I'll tell you what comes out. Whatever comes out, it's what's in you.

No matter what you say, no matter how you advertise. You see, God wants our life to be like this. We are easily, put this outside, the wind will sweep it away, carry it away, insignificant, it'll blow and sit in the curb, nobody will ever notice it.

But when God puts his hand on the inside, this glove can do all things that the hand in it can do. And it's possible, it's possible that I could try to put this on like this. And it's limited because it's not a full expression of the hand that's on the inside.

So I want to ask you what happened when you were shaken last time? This is painful for us, but it's necessary. I wrestled with bringing this word this morning because I know you love the Lord and I know that you have a vision, but the Lord wants us, I said to Shane, he wants to temper this thing, he wants to bring it into this weeping and worshiping and warring and working discipline, this mold of the Spirit of God and the Word of God that is only possible as you pray and allow this to become a reality where you're filled with the very Spirit of God.

Are you filled with him? Are you? Are you? I'm not speaking of being born of his Spirit. You have the Spirit in you because he sealed you, but I'm not saying, do you have the Holy Spirit? I'm saying, does the Holy Spirit have you?

Does he have you? And does he possess you? And the question is, do you want him to? Do you really want him to? A lot of people have a vague hope for years. They see all the things around them and they admire in others what's happening, but you see there are things that can't really, that blocks it.

Every true believer is indwelt by the Spirit, but not every true believer is being filled with the Spirit. That's why he gave this command to the church he was at more than any other church. He says, to the holy in Christ Jesus, to the faithful in Christ Jesus, at the first very verse of Ephesians, he says that, to the faithful and the holy brothers and sisters in Christ, and then he commands them in chapter five, be being filled with the Holy Spirit of God.

All these things won't happen any other way. It's just got to happen this way. So, if you're not filled with the Spirit, what'll happen is, you'll come in here each week and you'll sing louder, and that'll make you do better.

And you'll do a lot more things on a tangible level, maybe volunteer for children's nursery or mow the yard, and do all these things to help Shane and his, I mean, it's a studly conquest. I'm telling you, I admire your pastor.

But just because you help him does not mean you're filled with the Spirit of God, personally. So, if you don't let him fill you, you'll have no power in living, and the world will be amazed and offended by the weakness they see in a church that goes by his name.

You'll have no power over sin. You'll make promises and resolutions, and you'll go right back to the same hog trough. But you'll come and weep at the altar and say, I did it again, Lord. Thank you for your mercy.