Welcome! Today is a special day for our church – a little later we will recognize John Farmer as a pastor, as an elder, celebrating the work God has been doing and John has been allowing God to do over the past years to bring John to a point of maturity and leadership here at Clemson Community Church.First, I wanted to share some thoughts from Scripture about how this journey to maturity happens in believers’ lives. God desires that every believer grow to maturity in Christ. Not only does God desire this, but He provides us with exactly what we need for this to happen. And what has God provided us? His Holy Spirit.
I hope you enjoy the picture above. This is of course a fuel gauge for a gas tank in an automobile, and I cannot think of a more appropriate image to go with our title, Filling and Staying Filled. Now, how many of you have cars, or your families have cars, in which when the needle points on empty, you still have quite a bit of gas left? You are not quite sure how much, but it is still going to be a while before even the warning light will turn on.
Well, my car is not like that. For whatever reason, it is the opposite. After I fill my tank, the needle stays on full for a really long time. Finally, it begins to drop. When it gets to the half-a-tank mark, in reality it only has about a quarter of a tank left. And maybe it is my imagination, but as it gets closer and closer to empty, it seems like it actually accelerates towards being truly empty. My warning light comes on significantly before it hits the E mark, and once it gets down that low, I am convinced that you can actually watch the needle drop further in real time.
Now, it always seems like the present is a bad time to get gas, so I always seem to say “I’ll get it tomorrow” and then forget about it a few days until I happen to look down and see that warning light on. Suddenly, bad time or not, I make time to refill my tank. Suddenly, refilling my tank becomes a priority over all other priorities.
I am afraid this true story about my car is unfortunately also a true picture of many Christians’ lives. For many, regardless of what they say, based on how they live, it seems like there is never a really good time to spend quality time with God, except – at most – on Sunday mornings. And to make matters worse, many Christians do not actually fill their tanks, so to speak, but instead get just enough sips of gas to get that warning light to turn off. The result is that many believers are constantly driving on empty. What is the result? No spiritual growth. No growth in faith. No increasing measure of the fruit of the Holy Spirit in their lives.
For many believers, the Christian life consists of living a mostly secular life marked by repeated events of moral failure followed by prayers asking for forgiveness. Over time, even the prayers may stop, because the Christian feels defeated, feels as if it is hopeless to change. They may have short periods when things get better (after a conference, for example), but after a while they seem to fall back into their previous state.
Now, bear with me, but I want to ask you a question. Suppose that my car, or your car, was actually alive and could talk. What do you think your car might say as your warning light turns on once again? Might it say, “Hey, you! Yeah, you, the one driving me! You see that light? Do you know what it means? It means I’M THIRSTY! Get me some gas! I’m dying here!”
I would submit to you that we are really not much different from that talking car. God has made us as people who are regularly dependent on food and drink for physical survival. Most of the time, we will begin to feel hungry and thirsty only a handful of hours after the last time we were filled. That’s not much time, if you stop to think about it. God didn’t make us like the camel, who can store his water for how long? Does anyone know? The answer is about 10 days in a desert in the full heat of summer, and up to 3 months in the winter, even in the Sahara desert. God did not make us like that. Hunger we can ignore for quite a while, but thirst – if we do not satisfy our thirst in a few days, in most cases we will become extremely sick and die not much later.
God has also made us spiritually thirsty. Spiritually speaking, we have small gas tanks. Now what is this spiritual thirst? What does it feel like? It can take many forms of feeling. It can feel like loneliness, or restlessness, or boredom, or sadness, or emptiness, or anxiety, or one of any number of other emotions that don’t make you feel good. What is going on when this happens? God is turning on our warning light!
Now the problem is that the world is filled with things that temporarily alleviate these feelings. Some of these things are morally neutral, like eating, or reading a book, or calling up some friends. The problem is that none of these things actually fill your tank. As you continue to run on empty, eventually many people take the morally neutral things to excess. They watch too much TV or movies or play too many video games or spend too much time on the Internet. As these things still fail to fill your tank, many then look to things that are not morally neutral; they watch things they shouldn’t watch, or use substances they shouldn’t use, or take any of many actions they shouldn’t take.
Consider this passage from Galatians 5.
The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. – Galatians 5:19-21
Verse 21 warns people that if they are constantly living in this empty state, perhaps they have never been filled with the Spirit in the first place. That is, perhaps they were never truly saved. For as we saw in previous weeks in this series on the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit does indwell and “seal” people at salvation, when they first, out of a genuine faith in the saving work of Christ on the cross, sincerely turn over the lordship of their lives to Christ. There are other verses that talk of “testing” your salvation – if you are constantly living as described in Galatians 5:19-21 and you don’t feel remorse, you just feel numb, it is indeed possible that you have never been saved. One of the signs of salvation is that the Holy Spirit makes people who try to continue to live this way feel absolutely miserable.
Continuing on with the passage:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. – Galatians 5:22-25
We spent most of last week discussing the fruit of the Spirit, which I explained can be translated as the result of the Spirit, so I will not spend time on this today. But look at the passage as a whole. Yes, these wonderful things are things that the Spirit produces in us. Do we have a role? Yes! We are to keep in step with the Spirit. This is different analogy than the “being filled” analogy, but it is saying much the same thing. We need to fill our emptiness by the Spirit, in Christ, buy walking in step with Him, not in any other way.
Backing up a few verses in Galatians we have this:
So I say, live by [walk in] the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. – Galatians 5:16-18
What does verse 16 say? Walk in the Spirit, and you won’t fall into moral sin as often. Walk in the Spirit, and you will become a better fighter against your nature. Walk in the Spirit, and you will be able to try much harder than you had before. NO! I’m sorry, but those are sissy words, safe words, weasel words. That is not what this says. It says, walk in the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. There is going to be transformation in you – there is going to be a radical change to your life, to even who you really are. These are strong words. The Greek tense of the verbs implies a state of nature in which gratifying the desires of the sinful nature just doesn’t happen.
Does this mean you will never sin? No. But it means that if you walk in the Spirit, if you are continually filled and refilling yourself in the Spirit, there is going to be radical transformation. There will always continue to be new areas God opens up to you, new areas of sinful thinking or selfishness or pride that maybe you weren’t even aware of, and so you may actually feel more aware of just how sinful a being you are and were – but there will be growth, steady, cumulative growth in faith and in the fruit of the Spirit. This is how the Christian life is supposed to be.
In both this passage and the previous one, there is the mention of law. The whole book of Galatians largely deals with the law, and I don’t have time to really flesh out what is being meant here. But understand that no laws, civic laws, Old Testament laws, laws that a local body of believers sets for themselves, or even laws you make for yourself in your own heart, have any power to bring you to a place of righteousness. Yes, people in the world are able to do amazing things by their own willpower – I just think of all the incredible dedication of these Olympic athletes – but to see true lasting change in your moral life, to see the things described as the fruit of the Spirit in any lasting measure, to change who you are, no law, even your own, is going to get you there. Listen – lasting change, dramatic change, astonishing change in your life is possible! It is possible only through being transformed by Christ, being filled with His Spirit. I love this little verse from Acts 4:
When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. – Acts 4:13
People who really knew me, who knew Fred, who knew John before we were believers, or before we were really allowing God to work in our lives, would be astonished by what God has done. Not that we still have a long, long, long way to go – we do, but we are being changed because we have been with Jesus. People should look at your life and be astonished. They should take note that you have been with Jesus.
I mentioned that when we do not fill our spiritual gas tank, we often turn to other things that make us feel better for a little while, but actually only serve to deaden the pain. Perhaps the ultimate example of this is consuming alcohol in sufficient quantity to have “mood-altering effects.” It is no surprise to me that Scripture uses this very example to contrast life on empty with life in the Spirit. From Ephesians 5:
Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. – Ephesians 5:18-20
Let’s be clear about the comparison – they are meant to be compared! Don’t get drunk on wine, but get drunk on the Spirit! Be so filled with the Spirit that you experience mood-altering effects! Unlike getting drunk on wine, which removes your common sense and makes you do foolish and dangerous things that you regret later, getting filled with the Spirit will enable you no longer gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
Now, I am convinced these verses are meant to go together – these verses address part of the “how” to be filled with the Spirit. What is the answer to the question of how? Worship! I don’t know if I should point this out or not, but not uncommonly, drunk people do like to sing. Growing up, in our house we had a record player (yes I am old), and we had a genuine album containing nothing but German beer drinking songs. Yes, they were in German, but you didn’t need to know German to have some idea of what they were singing about. Yes, I am afraid there was some debauchery mixed in with those lyrics.
But if you understand even a little the depth of God’s love for us, if you understand that God rejoices over us (Zephaniah 3:17), how can we not rejoice, sing, and make merry? These verses are not ambiguous! Delight in God! Rejoice in Him! I believe this should both be done corporately – as it says, speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs – but also when you are alone. Have quiet times, as often as you can, daily if possible, in which you spend some time in the Word, some time reflecting on what you have read, some time worshiping God, praising Him – and this can be out loud or, as it says, in your heart – and some time in prayer. Don’t do this in your own strength, though – don’t make it a law! Always remember that the purpose of the time is to be transformed by Christ by getting to know God better through His word and by being filled with the Holy Spirit so that you are running on a full tank of gas. If you don’t have the want to, pray for it! Get together with other people! When I was a new believer, two of the people instrumental in leading me to the Lord got with me regularly, just for about 15 minutes at a time, and we would look at a few verses together, praise God together, and pray for one another together. Did it fill me with the Spirit? You bet!
I promise you that if you truly desire this, and you do all the kinds of things I have talked about, all of them not in your own strength, but dependent on the power of the Holy Spirit and on other believers around you, then God’s Word and the Spirit will transform your life, producing maturity and fruitfulness, so much so that people will be amazed.
It all starts with prayer. God, as manifest in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is not some distant creator who does not get involved with His creation. He is eager for you to come to Him. He is eager to fill you up and transform you.
My prayer for you is the same as that of the Apostle Paul, who wrote,
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom His whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. – Eph. 3:14-19
Do you remember my analogy of the talking car, saying, “Hey! I’m thirsty!” Listen to Jesus’ own answer to this cry:
On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." By this He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive. – John 7:37-39
Let us live not like the first picture, but like this last one. The only thing keeping you from living a transformed life, a life filled with the Spirit, is you. Don’t look to the world any longer, with its temporary feeling of escape. Turn to the Spirit, who is eager to give you love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Now, it always seems like the present is a bad time to get gas, so I always seem to say “I’ll get it tomorrow” and then forget about it a few days until I happen to look down and see that warning light on. Suddenly, bad time or not, I make time to refill my tank. Suddenly, refilling my tank becomes a priority over all other priorities.
I am afraid this true story about my car is unfortunately also a true picture of many Christians’ lives. For many, regardless of what they say, based on how they live, it seems like there is never a really good time to spend quality time with God, except – at most – on Sunday mornings. And to make matters worse, many Christians do not actually fill their tanks, so to speak, but instead get just enough sips of gas to get that warning light to turn off. The result is that many believers are constantly driving on empty. What is the result? No spiritual growth. No growth in faith. No increasing measure of the fruit of the Holy Spirit in their lives.
For many believers, the Christian life consists of living a mostly secular life marked by repeated events of moral failure followed by prayers asking for forgiveness. Over time, even the prayers may stop, because the Christian feels defeated, feels as if it is hopeless to change. They may have short periods when things get better (after a conference, for example), but after a while they seem to fall back into their previous state.
Now, bear with me, but I want to ask you a question. Suppose that my car, or your car, was actually alive and could talk. What do you think your car might say as your warning light turns on once again? Might it say, “Hey, you! Yeah, you, the one driving me! You see that light? Do you know what it means? It means I’M THIRSTY! Get me some gas! I’m dying here!”
I would submit to you that we are really not much different from that talking car. God has made us as people who are regularly dependent on food and drink for physical survival. Most of the time, we will begin to feel hungry and thirsty only a handful of hours after the last time we were filled. That’s not much time, if you stop to think about it. God didn’t make us like the camel, who can store his water for how long? Does anyone know? The answer is about 10 days in a desert in the full heat of summer, and up to 3 months in the winter, even in the Sahara desert. God did not make us like that. Hunger we can ignore for quite a while, but thirst – if we do not satisfy our thirst in a few days, in most cases we will become extremely sick and die not much later.
God has also made us spiritually thirsty. Spiritually speaking, we have small gas tanks. Now what is this spiritual thirst? What does it feel like? It can take many forms of feeling. It can feel like loneliness, or restlessness, or boredom, or sadness, or emptiness, or anxiety, or one of any number of other emotions that don’t make you feel good. What is going on when this happens? God is turning on our warning light!
Now the problem is that the world is filled with things that temporarily alleviate these feelings. Some of these things are morally neutral, like eating, or reading a book, or calling up some friends. The problem is that none of these things actually fill your tank. As you continue to run on empty, eventually many people take the morally neutral things to excess. They watch too much TV or movies or play too many video games or spend too much time on the Internet. As these things still fail to fill your tank, many then look to things that are not morally neutral; they watch things they shouldn’t watch, or use substances they shouldn’t use, or take any of many actions they shouldn’t take.
Consider this passage from Galatians 5.
The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. – Galatians 5:19-21
Verse 21 warns people that if they are constantly living in this empty state, perhaps they have never been filled with the Spirit in the first place. That is, perhaps they were never truly saved. For as we saw in previous weeks in this series on the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit does indwell and “seal” people at salvation, when they first, out of a genuine faith in the saving work of Christ on the cross, sincerely turn over the lordship of their lives to Christ. There are other verses that talk of “testing” your salvation – if you are constantly living as described in Galatians 5:19-21 and you don’t feel remorse, you just feel numb, it is indeed possible that you have never been saved. One of the signs of salvation is that the Holy Spirit makes people who try to continue to live this way feel absolutely miserable.
Continuing on with the passage:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. – Galatians 5:22-25
We spent most of last week discussing the fruit of the Spirit, which I explained can be translated as the result of the Spirit, so I will not spend time on this today. But look at the passage as a whole. Yes, these wonderful things are things that the Spirit produces in us. Do we have a role? Yes! We are to keep in step with the Spirit. This is different analogy than the “being filled” analogy, but it is saying much the same thing. We need to fill our emptiness by the Spirit, in Christ, buy walking in step with Him, not in any other way.
Backing up a few verses in Galatians we have this:
So I say, live by [walk in] the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. – Galatians 5:16-18
What does verse 16 say? Walk in the Spirit, and you won’t fall into moral sin as often. Walk in the Spirit, and you will become a better fighter against your nature. Walk in the Spirit, and you will be able to try much harder than you had before. NO! I’m sorry, but those are sissy words, safe words, weasel words. That is not what this says. It says, walk in the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. There is going to be transformation in you – there is going to be a radical change to your life, to even who you really are. These are strong words. The Greek tense of the verbs implies a state of nature in which gratifying the desires of the sinful nature just doesn’t happen.
Does this mean you will never sin? No. But it means that if you walk in the Spirit, if you are continually filled and refilling yourself in the Spirit, there is going to be radical transformation. There will always continue to be new areas God opens up to you, new areas of sinful thinking or selfishness or pride that maybe you weren’t even aware of, and so you may actually feel more aware of just how sinful a being you are and were – but there will be growth, steady, cumulative growth in faith and in the fruit of the Spirit. This is how the Christian life is supposed to be.
In both this passage and the previous one, there is the mention of law. The whole book of Galatians largely deals with the law, and I don’t have time to really flesh out what is being meant here. But understand that no laws, civic laws, Old Testament laws, laws that a local body of believers sets for themselves, or even laws you make for yourself in your own heart, have any power to bring you to a place of righteousness. Yes, people in the world are able to do amazing things by their own willpower – I just think of all the incredible dedication of these Olympic athletes – but to see true lasting change in your moral life, to see the things described as the fruit of the Spirit in any lasting measure, to change who you are, no law, even your own, is going to get you there. Listen – lasting change, dramatic change, astonishing change in your life is possible! It is possible only through being transformed by Christ, being filled with His Spirit. I love this little verse from Acts 4:
When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. – Acts 4:13
People who really knew me, who knew Fred, who knew John before we were believers, or before we were really allowing God to work in our lives, would be astonished by what God has done. Not that we still have a long, long, long way to go – we do, but we are being changed because we have been with Jesus. People should look at your life and be astonished. They should take note that you have been with Jesus.
I mentioned that when we do not fill our spiritual gas tank, we often turn to other things that make us feel better for a little while, but actually only serve to deaden the pain. Perhaps the ultimate example of this is consuming alcohol in sufficient quantity to have “mood-altering effects.” It is no surprise to me that Scripture uses this very example to contrast life on empty with life in the Spirit. From Ephesians 5:
Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. – Ephesians 5:18-20
Let’s be clear about the comparison – they are meant to be compared! Don’t get drunk on wine, but get drunk on the Spirit! Be so filled with the Spirit that you experience mood-altering effects! Unlike getting drunk on wine, which removes your common sense and makes you do foolish and dangerous things that you regret later, getting filled with the Spirit will enable you no longer gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
Now, I am convinced these verses are meant to go together – these verses address part of the “how” to be filled with the Spirit. What is the answer to the question of how? Worship! I don’t know if I should point this out or not, but not uncommonly, drunk people do like to sing. Growing up, in our house we had a record player (yes I am old), and we had a genuine album containing nothing but German beer drinking songs. Yes, they were in German, but you didn’t need to know German to have some idea of what they were singing about. Yes, I am afraid there was some debauchery mixed in with those lyrics.
But if you understand even a little the depth of God’s love for us, if you understand that God rejoices over us (Zephaniah 3:17), how can we not rejoice, sing, and make merry? These verses are not ambiguous! Delight in God! Rejoice in Him! I believe this should both be done corporately – as it says, speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs – but also when you are alone. Have quiet times, as often as you can, daily if possible, in which you spend some time in the Word, some time reflecting on what you have read, some time worshiping God, praising Him – and this can be out loud or, as it says, in your heart – and some time in prayer. Don’t do this in your own strength, though – don’t make it a law! Always remember that the purpose of the time is to be transformed by Christ by getting to know God better through His word and by being filled with the Holy Spirit so that you are running on a full tank of gas. If you don’t have the want to, pray for it! Get together with other people! When I was a new believer, two of the people instrumental in leading me to the Lord got with me regularly, just for about 15 minutes at a time, and we would look at a few verses together, praise God together, and pray for one another together. Did it fill me with the Spirit? You bet!
I promise you that if you truly desire this, and you do all the kinds of things I have talked about, all of them not in your own strength, but dependent on the power of the Holy Spirit and on other believers around you, then God’s Word and the Spirit will transform your life, producing maturity and fruitfulness, so much so that people will be amazed.
It all starts with prayer. God, as manifest in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is not some distant creator who does not get involved with His creation. He is eager for you to come to Him. He is eager to fill you up and transform you.
My prayer for you is the same as that of the Apostle Paul, who wrote,
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom His whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. – Eph. 3:14-19
Do you remember my analogy of the talking car, saying, “Hey! I’m thirsty!” Listen to Jesus’ own answer to this cry:
On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." By this He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive. – John 7:37-39
Let us live not like the first picture, but like this last one. The only thing keeping you from living a transformed life, a life filled with the Spirit, is you. Don’t look to the world any longer, with its temporary feeling of escape. Turn to the Spirit, who is eager to give you love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. – Ephesians 3:20-21
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