WALKING UNDER THE INFLUENCE (Ephesians 5:18)

Colossians 3:12-17 as a Call to Worship and Gratitude

I say, beginning in verse 12, he says, put on then, saints, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgive each other, as the Lord has forgiven you.

So, you must also forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body.

Be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

That's why we gather today to give thanks to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God the Father, we give thanks to God the Holy Spirit. We are grateful and we long to be encouraged by one another to then further deepen our understanding and love for that triune God, amen?

Is that why you're here today? Amen, or are you just trying to get out of the cold? Well, well guys, let's bow our heads now, let's go to that great God in a prayer of adoration. Oh glorious God, oh it is the flame of our lives to worship you, the crown and glory of our souls to adore you, heavenly pleasure to approach you.

Oh give us power by your spirit to help us worship you today. That we may not forget the world, be brought into fullness of life, be refreshed, comforted, blessed. Give us the knowledge of your goodness that Lord we might not be overtaken by your greatness.

Give us Jesus, son of man, son of God, that we may not be terrified by your holiness, but be drawn near with your fatherly love and your holy boldness. Oh for Christ is our mediator, our elder brother, he is our interpreter, he is the branch, he is the lamb.

Him we glorify and him we set on high. Crowns to give we have none, but what we have been given we return. Content to feel that everything is ours when it is yours, and the more fully ours when we have yielded it to you.

Let us live holy to our savior. Let us be free from distractions and cares. Flee from hindrances to the pursuit of the narrow way that Christ has called us on to and set us on. For we are pardoned through the blood of Christ.

I ask this morning that you give us a new sense of it. Continued pardon that you have placed and given us. May we come today to be washed anew that we may worship you always in spirit and truth. Lord, as we begin this time of worship together as the saints today, we pray that you would be honored as we give you our first fruits.

Lord, as we worship you through a time of giving, and we would not give Lord begrudgingly or out of compulsion some set arbitrary amount or number, but Lord, that we would give as you have laid on each one of our hearts.

Be honored in our giving. You are worthy of all praise. You are worthy of all sacrifice. You are worthy of all glory, and we thank you for letting us participate in expressing that glory in Christ's name, amen.

As the guys come around with the offering plates, I just wanna welcome you to the Lord's Day gathering this morning. Our prayer is that each one of us would grow in the fear and knowledge of the triune God, the Father that has set his love upon us before the foundation of the world and has chosen us, the Son that has redeemed us by blood ransom, and the Holy Spirit who now seals us and works in and through us, that we may stand holy, preparing us for that great inheritance of that glorious adoption through Jesus Christ.

For we are truly a blessed people, aren't we? Are we not, amen? We are a blessed people. The lions have truly fallen in pleasant places for us. We may go through suffering. We may go through trials. I was speaking to a saint this week about the trials that we go through, and they may pale in comparison to some of the trials that some other saints all over the world are going through, but they're true trials that you're dealing with in the moment that God has called you to.

Oh, but he is good, because that is how he is molding us and growing us. And so I want to remind you, as you've experienced this world as we gather today, part of it is for the encouragement and challenge and to draw our attention back to Christ, you are loved.

If you are in Christ today, you are most certainly loved by that triune God, aren't you? Are you not? You forget that, don't you? Do you forget that great love of the triune God upon you when you get lost out in the sea of the world?

But then you come back in here and you know of it. For those of us who know Christ as our Savior and Lord, we are loved. You are loved by the people here. We are recipients of much grace. Grace on top of grace, right?

And I want you to know if you are not in Christ today, you are loved by the people here also. You are greatly loved, for we have been the recipients of such mercy and such love and such grace. We can't help but love all those around us.

So we welcome you. We're glad you're here. At the beginning of every one of our services every week, we seek to pray for another local church. Today, we want to pray for Finch Baptist. Finch Baptist, I believe Marty Easel is the pastor over there.

Let's just bow our heads and pray that their service this morning, their gathering would be God-honoring and that their people would grow in the fear and knowledge of the Lord together, amen? Let's pray.

Oh Lord, we come to you once again. We thank you for our brothers and sisters at Finch Baptist. Father, we pray for their people. We pray for those brothers and sisters. We pray that they would know the great love in which you have loved them.

Lord, we pray that they would know the great love that their brothers and sisters here have for them. Father, I long for them to grow in the fear and knowledge of the Lord just as we do here. Lord, we pray for brother Marty as he prepares to preach your word this morning.

I pray that he would rightly divide the word of truth, that he would declare what your word says and what your word says alone, and that you would do a mighty work in the hearts of those people. We thank you for them in Christ's name, amen.

Before we jump into our call to worship, I just wanna give one more announcement. You know, we are a family integrated church, right? This just simply means that we do not have nurseries or childcare for the Lord's Day gathering, but what we do is we know the nature of children.

So we offer a nursing room right back in that back corner. If you wanna know how to get over there, you just look right back there, you see the doors. The building's not that big, but somebody can help you get back there.

This is meant so that when children are fussy, when they're upset, we don't want to be a distraction to the other saints here in the truth, right? And so it's a great opportunity for you to be able to take your young ones back there if they just need to get it out of their system for a moment.

But I would encourage the mothers and even the fathers here, we don't want people to have to just be stuck back there the whole service and be separated from the body. Use it with discernment and wisdom so that you may not be a distraction and lead others from not being able to hear the truth and be able to focus their attention on the Lord, but also to be able to be a blessing to you to be able to utilize that space.

Well, let's go ahead and start our service off this morning. Let's stand in our call to worship. Our call to worship is this read and response from Psalm 96. Sometimes we just do a portion of some of the Psalms.

Today, we wanted to do the whole of the Psalm. And so I want you to really be thoughtful of what the psalmist is saying here when he says worship in the splendor of holiness. And as I read and then you respond with the next reading, I desire for each one of us to take this moment to be reminded by his word who he is.

He is worthy. And we will declare that together as a people. And the psalmist says, oh, sing to the Lord a new song. Sing to the Lord, bless his name. Declare his glory among the nations. For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.

He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods, the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before him. Ascribe to the Lord, oh, families of the peoples.

Ascribe to the Lord the glory, do his name. Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. Say among the nations, the Lord reigns. Earth rejoice, let the sea roar and all that fills it. Trees of the forest, sing for joy before the Lord, for he comes.

He will judge the world in righteousness.

Pass for more than I'm worthy.

How sweet. You took my, of your glory and your word. You took my, God, we thank you for that grace this morning. I just wanna read something to you this morning. This next song is Psalm 150. We try to be intentional with the songs we sing with the time here.

So this song comes from Psalm 150. It says, praise the Lord, praise God in his sanctuary. Praise him in his mighty heavens. Praise him for his mighty deeds. Praise him according to his excellent greatness.

Praise him with trumpet sound. Praise him with lute and harp. Praise him with tambourine and dance. We don't do that enough, do we? Praise him with strings and pipe. Praise him with sounding cymbals. Praise him with loud clashing cymbals.

Let everything that has breath praise him. Sing that with me. You trace the mountain peaks. You paint the evening skies with oil. You throne the sea. You test the fires for spring. Sing this with me, praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord.

Sing his name that has breath. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. I just think that's awesome to take your time and just worship God Almighty this morning with us.

God, we praise you for your goodness.

Thank you, Father. Thank you for each person you brought this morning to worship and honor your holy name.

Praise you, God.

In the shallows deep in it all I know it's not

In an assurance, how appropriate coming out of that declaration that Christ is mine forevermore. Gracious Heavenly Father, we sing of your merciful grace on top of grace, on top of grace. How we sing of your greatness in all of creation, declaring that your name and your name alone is to be praised.

But then we look around and we see the brokenness of sin. And we just remind ourselves that Christ is worthy. Christ is the only one that is worthy. We are not, because he is restoring that brokenness through the finished work of the cross.

And now he is ours, he is ours forevermore. And as we sing these truths, they remind us of our own unworthiness that creeps in. And in sin, it begins to condemn us because we know our wretchedness. We know the state of our heart and the flesh, how prone we are to wonder, to leave the God that we love and drawn away by our own desires, leading us to fail in walking in righteousness.

This is precisely, Lord, why we must keep singing these great truths. Such a reminder to ourselves and to each other that there is therefore now no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus, that we are held eternally secure by our glorious Savior, Jesus Christ, who declared, all that the Father has given me, I have not lost one, for we are his and he is ours forevermore.

Help us to rest in this glorious truth this morning. All God's people said, you may be seated, you may be seated. We'll go ahead and open up your copy of God's word to Ephesians chapter five as we make our way into our, I believe this is our 50th week of this study of this rich epistle that the apostle Paul addressed to the church at Ephesus, yet as we've seen previously, is meant for the surrounding churches and extended by the Holy Spirit to us today because if it was true then, it's true now.

That's because truth doesn't change. God's truth does not change and we are molded by that truth just as the early church was molded by it. I've titled today's message, Walking Under the Influence, and we're gonna primarily look at verse 18 there of Ephesians five, but let's read around for the context.

Let's start in verse 15 where Paul says, "'Look carefully then how you walk, "'not as unwise, but as wise. "'And making the best use of the time "'because the days are evil, therefore do not be foolish, "'but understand what the will of the Lord is "'and do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, "'but be filled with the Spirit.

"'Addressing one another in psalms and hymns "'and spiritual songs, singing and making melody "'to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always "'and for everything to God the Father "'in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, "'submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.'".

This is the reading of God's holy word. Last week, we made it through verse 17 where we saw Paul calling us to not be foolish, but to understand what the will of the Lord is, to comprehend, to look into, to want to know what God's will is.

But then at a cursory reading of the text, well, let's be honest, which is unfortunately how most of us today read the scriptures, essentially skimming through without really focusing in on much of the details, it can seem as though Paul then switches gears and just simply begins to denounce drunkenness there in verse 18.

He says, and do not get drunk with wine. And we read this as nothing more than a conscience-binding platitude, a moralistic prohibition. However, if we slow down just a bit, we will quickly see that what Paul is saying here is not only not a new train of thought, but a deeper understanding of what the will of the Lord truly is.

This should be obvious even without any theological framework, because Paul's conjunction there and tying in what he's just previously said, he says, know the will of the Lord and don't get drunk. Or walk in the will of the Lord by not getting drunk.

Scripture's clear, right? Being drunk is a sin. There is warning all throughout the scripture. And why is it? Well, he goes on, he says, for that is debauchery. The word that Paul uses here implies wastefulness.

Why not get drunk? That's wastefulness. Because it's one of the unfruitful works of darkness that he had told us to take no part in back in verse 11. But here in this text, Paul doesn't just give us this negative command.

You see, he follows it up with a positive. And I think this positive is what gives us some insight into what he means with this negative command of do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, that is wastefulness.

As he continues verse 18, and he says, but it's not enough to just not get drunk, saying that's typically where the Christian today stops this. We see not getting drunk as a means of, well, I'm good, I'm covered, right?

I get there and I say, okay, I know and I know what the will of the Lord is, don't get drunk. Okay, well, I don't get drunk. I must be in the will of the Lord. It's just moralism, right? It's just simply do good, be better type of theology.

And we often look at somebody and say, well, they don't drink to excess or they don't drink at all or whatever your paradigm is. And they go, well, that's a good upright person. And then we look at the drunkard and we go, well, they're the bad one, they're the good one.

That's the one that God hates. That's the one that God loves, but that's not how this functions, right? It's not enough to just not get drunk. He says, but with a positive be filled with the spirit. You see, Paul is not merely talking about parties where people are drinking in excess.

That's not what he's primarily focusing on. He's not talking about a dark, lonely bar where people are drinking away their cares. He's not talking about having a few too many drinks at dinnertime because you lack self-control.

That's not what Paul is talking about. Of course, all of these things are implied. All of them are debauchery. All of them are wastefulness. If you do not have the self-control, then you probably can't even categorize the positive command.

If you do not obey the first negative command, you probably, well, you can be guaranteed you're not looking to the second and the positive command. Okay, does that make sense? Everybody with me? You see, this is debauchery.

You are dishonoring King Jesus whenever you drink in excess. You drinking in excess is debauchery. Now, I wanna be clear here before I move on. I feel like we need to address this. Drinking is not a sin.

As a matter of fact, scripture lays alcohol, wine out as a great, glorious gift from God. It to be used within God's prescribed means it was Jesus' very first miracle, making wine for a wedding party.

And people who tell you that that was watered down in grape juice have no historical context, I promise you. There's no, there's nothing to that. The whole of it is that wine is a good gift from the Lord.

But drunkenness is a warning. Just as the sexual relationship within a marriage is a good gift prescribed by the Lord that we in our sinful flesh pervert. And guess what? Scripture talks about sexual perversion and sexual immorality time and time again as a warning, just as it talks about great warning against drunkenness.

It is wickedness. And if you are to be filled with the spirit, if you truly are in Christ, you will not long to dishonor King Jesus in drunkenness.

Okay?

That's just application. However, the immediate context here is something even deeper. And see, it has something to do with knowing what the will of God is. These Ephesian Christians that he's writing to, remember, that's how we study scripture, right?

We need to see what was the historical context and what is the grammar that he is using. We must do that in order to understand what Paul truly means, because he wrote this to the church in Ephesus, right?

That is specifically who he wrote to. So these people have grown up in and are surrounded by a Roman culture there in Ephesus. You see, in each Roman province, there's a Roman territory, you had temples.

You had places of worship for their gods. And in Ephesus was the location of the goddess Diana. And in order to be spoken to and to know the will of these pagan gods, it was believed and widely practiced that you must be drunk in order for these demonic pagan gods to communicate with you.

In other words, if you wanted to know what that god's plan and will for your life was, it could only be found out by partaking in a ritual of drunkenness. That was the means of communicating with the gods in that culture.

And on a side point, before you say, well, of course they did, they were a backward, superstitious, scientifically ignorant people. They were simply hallucinating and thinking it was a god speaking to them.

But I would like to propose something maybe a little more sinister into the mix, right? These are not stupid people. Historians are finding time and time again, oh man, these people were not dumb. They were more advanced than we give them credit for.

And in our day, I'm afraid that we try and explain things away, spiritual things, with a scientific answer that, by the way, we don't understand. We're just surmising some idea. I think that's a word, maybe I just made up a word.

We're surmising that we know what's actually happening biologically or scientifically, but it's just a wild guess. Remember, Paul tells us that we are in a physical battle. Testing you guys. Nobody said anything.

What kind of battle are we in, guys? A spiritual battle, right? This is a spiritual battle against principalities and against an evil, a spiritual war that is going on that we don't really see. You see, this world is under the sway of the wicked one.

And here's what I would like to present. When we are filled with a substance, alcohol in this case, your inhibitions are gone, aren't they? That's why we don't like people to drink and drive, right? Inhibitions are gone.

And you are fully controlled by that substance, leaving you vulnerable to spiritual influence. I point this out, for one, as a warning to guard yourself, right? To guard yourself from this type of influence by avoiding drunkenness.

If you cannot handle drinking just a little, then you shouldn't drink at all, right? Because you're opening yourself up to influence in your life by tearing down walls. You are not being filled with the Spirit.

But then, two, I share this with you to give us some insight into the perspective of the Christian worldview there in Ephesus. You see, these believers that now trust in the one true God through Jesus Christ were once pagan worshipers, partakers in those very traditions, and experience is a strong influencer, isn't it?

Experience is a very strong influencer. I say that because have any of you ever seen like hyper-charismatic churches where there's all types of experience and demons being casted out and seeming healings and all the things and prophecies that are being laid over you?

You experience that and that will influence your theology. It will affect how you see the one true God. You see it time and time again. I counsel people in these situations and I'm like, yeah, but was that truly the Spirit of God?

Or do you think possibly that was either a trick in most cases, or even another spirit trying to distract you from the task at hand, the truth of God? But when you experience it, it starts to change your theology.

What you intellectually see in scripture, you begin to see it through a lens of your own experience.

Do you not?

We all carry that weight. That's why we need each other.

I do it.

I bring my own experience to the text. And so I need you to keep me accountable that I do not see that text through that lens and you the same. We must do that. But these Christians here, they grew up experiencing miraculous signs, deep, dark secrets being exposed and what seems to be answers to their questions.

And this was all done, I would say, by dark spiritual forces.

Right?

They would build what they called ziggurats. And ziggurats were just stone statues or bronze statues or temples. And they would build this thing. And those people were not dumb. They didn't just bow down and worship some bronze statue or some concrete building.

They didn't worship it. They actually built it so that their deity could then indwell in that ziggurat. And they would then worship that deity. Why would they build that building? Because there was something they were receiving from that spirit.

And so these people in Ephesus have experienced through this. Don't you think that that would continue to influence you in your Christian life? Particularly before you know any better? Because remember, they're the first ones getting this letter.

They didn't have this letter from the Apostle Paul warning them to not get drunk and to be filled with the spirit. They may have understood some principles, but the scriptures had not yet been completely written and given.

This was coming to them as they were growing in the faith. Paul has told them to understand what the will of the Lord is. And then he has to inform them of how that is not done.

Right?

How knowing the will of the Lord is not done in case they are tempted to default to what they've always known, drunkenness. That's how the gods speak to us. You see, there's a deeper context going on here, isn't there?

Because it does seem arbitrary that he would pick drunkenness in this text when he's talking about the will of the Lord when we're reading it in our context. Well, then that's just moral. Like, I don't get drunk.

Like, that's the context. But it's more than that. It's something deeper because he wants to take our minds and then have them renewed by the word of God as to how we perceive the will of God and to not carry our previous experience to the table in how we know the will of God.

We're all guilty of it. And we must guard ourselves from this. So when you read this text, it says, do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery. You can actually place almost any element of what has influenced you in the past as to how you perceive the will of God into that and declare wastefulness, but be filled with the Spirit.

You see, even more than that, warning them with this negative command helps give them this great picture of what they are to do when he says there, the second part of verse 18, but be filled with the Spirit.

Do not be drunk with wine is to be filled with wine, is to be dominated by wine. Make no mistake, you drink too much, it is your controlling entity. And then whatever else spiritually wants to then come in and be an influence is capable.

This is wasteful. It's the unfruitful works of darkness. It's walking in darkness. So in contrast, walking in light is to be filled with the Spirit. And if you notice that Spirit is capitalized, what does that mean, Saint?

The Holy Spirit, right? We can see this word pneuma in scripture and we can say, well, it's the Spirit of this world or it's my spirit or whatever else, but oh, when it's capitalized, it's very intentionally about the third person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit.

And so as Paul says this, this leads to a lot of confusion about what Paul is saying here. A lot of people come to this text and they're not quite sure what this means. And here's why. Paul had already told us back in chapter one, right?

That we, if we're in Christ, we're sealed. We're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, meaning he indwells in us, right? That he is the guarantee of the inheritance is what he says. That inheritance that we've been granted through adoption, brought in by the blood of Christ, being purchased by that finished work.

And we've been guaranteed this inheritance with him all the way up until, he says, we acquire possession of that inheritance. There's no break in between. You've been sealed, you've been indwelt. The Spirit is already there.

You see where the confusion starts to lie? I'll further that. Paul is pointing to what Jesus has already said over in John 14. In John 14, verses 16 and 17, this is Jesus. He says, and it was before he leaves, he's telling the disciples, I'm gonna be leaving.

He says, and I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever. Guaranteed, right? He says, even the Spirit, the Holy Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him or knows him, you know him for he dwells with you and will be in you.

Those of us who are in Christ, who have believed that he lived the life that we could not live, that he perfectly fulfilled the law of God and that he died and the death that you and I deserve, taking our place under the very wrath of God and then rose from the grave, defeating death and purchasing victory, we are unequivocally, irreversibly sealed.

Make no mistake, you hold tightly to that, right? As Paul declares in Romans 8, he says, you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. So if the Holy Spirit is already within us and he never leaves us, and here Paul is telling us to be filled with the Spirit, then what is he talking about?

What's Paul getting at here? Is he referring to some second blessing, some extra outpouring of the Spirit? Is he saying that the sealing of the Spirit is not enough and that some of us can have more of it than others?

Because that sure seems to go against the unity of the Spirit that Paul's been pointing to throughout this whole letter. Is it? All of us have the very same Spirit within us, unified. There are those who would teach such things, that you need more, you need more of that, leading them to feel lesser than if they don't show some outward evidence of extra outpouring of the Spirit.

This is godless and thoroughly unbiblical. Do not fall prey to those ravenous wolves. Those who teach such things, make no mistake, they are ravenous wolves, or they're just blatantly ignorant of Scripture.

Either way, don't listen to them. They use verses like this out of context, but to help us better understand the context, we must look at the grammatical structure, right? We've already looked at the historical, now we must look at the grammatical structure.

Notice at the beginning of verse 18, he says, do not get drunk. You see, this, this is an inactive sense. Do not, you, don't go get drunk.

Your action.

But here, here in the second part of verse 18, he says, well, we have it translated, be filled. This is a single word in the Greek, and it's in the passive voice. You may not understand grammar very well, but you can, you can probably figure out what that means.

It's in the passive voice? Means it's passive on our end. This is important to note, because it's not something you do. The other, something you don't do. This one is not something you do. Those false teachers would tell you that you need to do this, you need to do that.

You need to speak in tongues, you need to sing louder, you need to do better, you need to be better. And then you will be given this second outpouring, more of a feeling of this, this spirit, so that God can really work in your life.

Acting as if Paul said to get filled, that you must achieve something here. That this feeling is dependent on you. Well, this is the very opposite of what Paul is saying. You see, but not only is it in the passive voice, it is something ongoing.

It's written in the present tense. It's in the passive voice, in the present tense. As a matter of fact, a literal transitional reading of this would probably be more something like, be being kept filled.

Be being kept filled. Another way of saying it would be, be being dominated. Be being overtaken. That's what the wine does, doesn't it? Dominates you. It controls you. It takes away everything about who you are and your ability to think straight, your ability to function straight, and it controls you.

But this, be being dominated. What's Paul saying here? Well, remember what he said back in chapter four, in verse 30. Actually, flip your page back and look at it or look at chapter four, verse 30. He says that, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. You're not voiding the seal, are you, when you grieve? You are simply grieving the one in whom seals you. But notice he doesn't leave. It's a guarantee, it's still there.

It's just like what Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 5. He says, do not quench the spirit. Do not quench the spirit. And how do we quench him? He goes on in that text there. He says, but test everything. You don't wanna quench the spirit?

Test everything, evaluate everything, compare everything, hold fast to what is good, abstain from every form of evil. That's the opposite of quenching the spirit, isn't it? Simply put, it's being sensitive to his prompting and it's walking in his guidance to not quench the spirit.

It is being dominated by him, controlled by him. You see, this word filled, the same Greek word that Paul used is used over in Luke chapter five. Luke chapter five, if you wanna write this down in your notes it's verse 26.