Birthmarks of the Church: Stories from the Book of Acts
10/09/2005 - The Filling of the Holy Spirit
When I was attending seminary down in Texas it wasn't unusual to drive past churches that would often hold revival meetings. They'd have big banners outside advertising that revival starts Monday night at 7 o'clock and goes every night of the week. Has anybody here ever been to a revival meeting? Sometimes you even see them in churches up north. But in the south, at least at that time, way back in the 1900's, revival meetings were still pretty popular.
And during revival meetings churches would often bring in a guest speaker or an evangelist and after a time of worship there would be a fiery sermon followed by an altar call and a dozen stanzas of a hymn called "Just As I Am" as people were invited to come to Christ or perhaps rededicate their lives to the Lord.
In one of his books, Tony Campolo tells the story about a revival meeting that happened at a particular church. In fact, this church had lots of revival meetings. And at every one a certain man in that church could be counted on to walk down the aisle every single time an invitation was given to recommit his life to Christ.
And each time he would fall on his knees at the altar and make a bit of scene crying out, "Fill me, Lord Jesus. Fill me up, Lord Jesus." And after the meeting he'd get all fired up about his faith for about three weeks and then lose his excitement and go back to his old ways until another evangelist came to town and gave an altar call and the man would go through the same routine all over again.
And after seeing this happen over and over again, people in the church started to get a bit cynical of his behavior. And finally on one occasion after he walked the aisle for the umpteenth time and was up front crying out, "Fill me, Jesus. Fill me up, Lord." A lady stood up in the back of the church and yelled at the top of her lungs, "Don't do it Lord, he leaks!"
Don't do it Lord, he leaks! And we all laugh at that. But the truth of the matter is he's not the only one who leaks. We all leak, don't we. Not that way ... we'll that way too ... you know what I mean. We all leak. That's the great struggle of the spiritual life.
We can have some awesome worship experiences, listen to some inspiring talks, enjoy some incredible community, have some powerful times of prayer, go on mountain top retreats, but eventually those experiences fade because we can't live on Sundays alone or on Wednesday nights or whatever day of the week we get our spiritual tank filled up. We leak. Which is why the Bible says we need to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit.
This morning we continue our series in the book of Acts called Birthmarks of the Church. Together in this series we're learning what's at core of the church that Jesus died to create. What are the non-negotiables for God's people? What should we be devoted to at Valley View Community Church? Where should we be investing our energy? What is it that will transform our lives and make a difference in this world for Jesus Christ?
Last week we began by looking at the Holy Spirit. The coming of the Holy Spirit is what gave birth to the church on the Day of Pentecost. Without the Holy Spirit there would be no church. Jesus wouldn't allow it. "Wait," he said, "for the gift my Father promised. Don't attempt to follow me on your own. You can't do it. Wait for the Spirit." The gift of the Holy Spirit is the first birthmark of the church. We need his presence. We need his power in our lives. "Without him," Jesus said, "we can do nothing."
But now the waiting is over. The waiting ended ten days after Jesus made that statement. Ten days after Jesus ascended back into heaven, the Holy Spirit came down from heaven in an event known as the Day of Pentecost.
That event was the fulfillment of Jesus' promise in John 14:15-17, "If you love me, you will obey what I command. 16And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever-17the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you."
In Acts 2, we have the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It was a one- time, supernatural event. The Holy Spirit came just as Jesus promised and he now lives inside every single believer. But there's another phrase that is used again and again of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts and it's not the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It's the phrase "filled with the Holy Spirit or full of the Holy Spirit." Let me show it to you in a variety of passages.
First, look at Acts 4:8, Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: "Rulers and elders of the people!
Look at Acts 4:31, After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
Turn to Acts 6:3, Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them.
Look at verse 5, This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism.
Turn to Acts 7:55, But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
Look at Acts 11:24 speaking of Barnabas, He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.
Turn to Acts 13:9-10, Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas and said, "You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right!"
Time and time again throughout the book of Acts we read this phrase "filled with the Holy Spirit or full of the Holy Spirit." And some believers appear to be filled with the Holy Spirit at certain times while others do not. And the filling of the Spirit appears to be critical to accomplishing the mission of God's church to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost part of the world. It seems to be a non-negotiable when it comes to being a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ.
But what does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? And how can ordinary people like us, ordinary people like those in the book of Acts, be filled with the Holy Spirit? And when we are, what difference will it make in our everyday lives?
The phrase "to be filled with the Spirit" seems to have the idea of being under the control of Holy Spirit. The apostle Paul put it this way in Ephesians 5:18 (NLT), Don't be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, let the Holy Spirit fill and control you.
In this passage, Paul actually encourages believers, who already have the Holy Spirit living inside them, to be continually filled with the Spirit. Why would he need to say that? Because it's possible to have the Holy Spirit living inside us, our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, but not to be living under the Spirit's control. In other places, the Bible calls that grieving the Spirit or quenching the Spirit.
And we can quench and grieve the Spirit in all kinds of ways. I quench the Spirit when I fail to confess and come clean about some behavior I'm trying to hide from God or someone else. I grieve the Spirit of truth when I lie or deceive someone or speak harshly to my wife or my kids. We can quench the Spirit when we turn our lives over to the control of another substance like alcohol or drugs or some other addiction. Which is why Paul says, "Don't get drunk on wine, instead be controlled by the Spirit of God." We grieve the Spirit when we refuse to forgive someone who's hurt us and choose anger and bitterness instead because the Spirit wants to unite people not divide them.
I can remember the last time I taught on the Holy Spirit, a number of years ago, I received a letter from a man who shared a very sad story with me. He said that when he was 8 ½ years old his father died, leaving his mother to raise him and his brother. She was from Germany and didn't speak English very well so the best job she could get was doing housework, laundry, and cooking meals for some of the neighbors. She had a hard life.
During World War II, the man joined the Navy and left his mother in the care of his brother. But two weeks after he entered the service his brother got engaged and one month after that got married and left his mother all alone. Meanwhile, the man did the best he could to support his mom out of the $50 a month he received from the Navy. But it was a real struggle.
When he came out of the service he moved back home with his mom and wanted to claim her as a dependent on his tax return because he had supported her. But his brother wouldn't let him do that. Instead he declared the mother as a dependent on his tax return even though he hadn't helped her at all financially. And that started a feud between these two brothers that lasted over 50 years. And even though they lived in the same city, not far from each other, the only time they had ever seen each other since 1947 was 25 years ago at their mother's funeral.
And in the letter, the man who's a believer in Jesus Christ and has been for years, wrote that because of the rift with his brother he's never felt free to join a local church. He felt like he would be a hypocrite to do that. Because of the feud with his brother he's never felt completely at peace with God or with himself for over 50 years.
Then God spoke to him through a teaching he heard and shortly after he went to see his brother for the first time in 25 years and made things right. A few weeks later he joined the church he had a been attending for years and when he was given his certificate of membership he cried like a baby and said, "Now I have peace with God and with myself."
For years the anger and the bitterness that he had felt towards his brother had grieved the Holy Spirit, but the Spirit didn't quit and finally, 50 years later, the man submitted to the control of the Spirit and made things right with his brother and enjoyed a peace with God and himself that he had never known.
We can do things and say things and harbor attitudes that keep us from being filled with the Spirit, from experiencing the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. But we don't need to wait 50 years to make things right. We can be filled with the Holy Spirit today. To be filled with the Holy Spirit doesn't mean we get anymore of the Spirit than we already have. It just means that the Spirit gets more of us. You and I have as much of the Holy Spirit living in us as the apostle Paul had living in him or any other person has had living in them. The question is not how much of the Holy Spirit do we have, but how much of us does the Holy Spirit have.
So if being filled with the Spirit means being under the control of the Holy Spirit then how do we get filled and stay filled so we don't leak as much?
Believe me, I am no expert on this, I leak as much as anybody else. But I really do believe that the answer to that question is found in the life of Jesus. Jesus provides the best example I know of how to live life under the control of Holy Spirit. He was God, of course, but he was also a human being and was very open about the fact that the source of his power was the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit who lives inside his followers.
Jerry Hawthorne, a New Testament scholar from Wheaton writes, "If all this is so. If, indeed, Jesus was God having become truly human. If, indeed, Jesus really experienced the same kinds of things that all other human beings experience, suffered the same kind of pains they suffer, felt the same emotions they feel, knew the same lure of temptation they know and so on, and if indeed Jesus stood strong against all the kaleidoscopic adversities of human existence and resisted the many pressures to cave in, quit, give up the cause and go his own way and if indeed Jesus finally brought his God given mission to a triumphant completion and all of this because he was a person filled with the Spirit, then the followers of Jesus are faced with a stupendous fact. Not only is Jesus their Savior because of who he was and because of his own complete obedience to the Father's will. But he is the supreme example for them of what is possible in a human life because of his total dependence upon the Spirit of God. Jesus is living proof of how those who are his followers may exceed the limitations of their humanness in order that they, like him, might carry to completion against all odds their God given mission in life by the Holy Spirit. Jesus demonstrated clearly that God's intended way for human beings to live, the ideal way to live, the supremely successful way to live, is in conjunction with God, in harmony with God, in touch with the power of God, not apart from God, not independent of God, not without God. The Spirit was the presence and power of God in Jesus and fully so .... Jesus has become for us the model of what life is like when it's lived fully in the Spirit."
The key to living a Spirit filled life is to practice the things that Jesus practiced, to arrange our lives around the things that Jesus arranged his life around. After all that's what a Christ follower does. He follows Christ. That's what the original disciples did. They followed Jesus around and they watched how Jesus lived and they started to imitate and do the same things that he did so that they could receive the same kind power and enjoy the same kind of life. Of course, we're not the Messiah, but Jesus still is our model for what it means to live under the control of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus arranged his life around certain practices and relationships that were very important to him and that kept him filled with the Spirit. As we read through the gospels we find Jesus worshiping at the Temple and in the synagogue. Worship was very important to Jesus. Often we hear Jesus refer to the Scriptures and teach from the Scriptures. The Word of God was important to Jesus. We see him praying, with others and by himself at times, alone. Prayer and solitude were vital to him. But so was community, Jesus lived his life elbow deep in relationships with the Twelve and yet made time to enter into spiritual friendships with those outside of his group. Serving, giving, fasting, loving, all of these practices kept Jesus filled with the Holy Spirit. And he calls us to follow him.
And I know in my own life, when I get away from some of these practices I leak bad. But when I'm in a rhythm that includes some of these disciplines the Spirit God is able to produce his fruit in my life. I don't understand it all. Much of it is a mystery to me. But I do think it's the key to being filled with the Spirit. The Holy Spirit will always lead us to the kind of life that Jesus led.
In the past we've done teaching on the spiritual disciplines in a series called "This is the Life." You might want to listen to that series. Or come to our home when we offer "Walking with Jesus" and explore in more depth the practices that kept Jesus in tune with the Spirit.
I like the way Brian McLaren puts it in his book More Ready Than Your Realize when he says, "Often it is very hard being a disciple, being a follower of Jesus. And sometimes we are very tempted to give up. But Jesus promised we are never alone. Being a disciple means being a person in whom Christ's Spirit is alive and active. A good analogy can be made to breathing. God's Spirit is like breath. Air is all around us, but we also need air inside us. How do we get air inside us? By breathing ... by opening up and taking it in. Similarly, disciples develop practices that help them keep their lives filled with the fresh wind of God's Spirit. These practices include prayer, fasting, worship, contemplation, journaling, fellowship, solitude, serving, giving, and accountability. These practices are not merely ends in themselves. They are ways for us to stay full of the Spirit of Christ, who is with us always."
"Maybe you have imagined what it would be like to have lived in Jesus' day and to be one of the twelve original disciples, like Peter, James, or John. The fact is, Jesus is every bit as real and present to you now as he was to them then, because his Spirit - though invisible like the air we breathe or the wind that fills a sailboat's sails - is with us even now."
I want to be more filled with the Holy Spirit. And I sense that you do to. I don't want to be like the gentlemen that went 50 years before he made things right with this brother. I don't think you do either. The waiting is over. The time of the Spirit is now. This is the age of the Spirit. The future belongs to the Spirit. It begins in the life of Jesus and continues through the life of his church. Let's not miss it. Let's be a church that not only possesses the presence of the Spirit, but is fueled by the power of the Spirit in our lives.