Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Desire the unadulterated milk of the word like a newborn baby that you may grow thereby. His divine power has given to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by glory and virtue by which have been given to us many great and precious promises, that through them we may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption of the world through lust. Jesus prayed to the Father, sanctify them by means of truth. Thy word is truth. Before we go to God's word this morning, let's bow our heads together and go to the Lord. Father, thank you for this time we have together to be refreshed, in your Word to be reminded of the importance of our walk by means of God, the Holy Spirit, who fills us with his Word and encourages us, motivates us, challenges us from within, reminds us of the truth of your Word, that we may apply it and continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. So Father, we are thankful that we have such clarity in your Word, though there is much confusion of it, around the world and through church history, but detailed analysis always brings things together. So we're thankful for a clear understanding of your truth and that we may apply it consistently, and we pray this in Christ's name, amen. All right, let's open our Bibles to Ephesians chapter 5, Ephesians chapter 5, and we are going to be looking today at the results of the filling by means of the Spirit. This will come at the end. We still have to understand what this means to be filled by means of the Spirit. Let me remind you that in broad segments of Christianity down through the centuries, they have thought this has something to do with getting more of the Holy Spirit, that it is the Holy Spirit who fills us. And that's not what the text is saying. It's what it appears to say in English translations and in some other translations, but it is not that. It is something different. And so we need to make sure we're clear on our understanding of this. So we started off by looking at the broad context, the emphasis in Ephesians 4, 1 down through This verse, 518, is about walking our Christian life, how we live our life. And living our life isn't just talking about external activities. Living our life has to do primarily and initially with how we think, because what comes out of our mouth and what comes out of our actions relates to what is going on in our thinking. Scripture says often it has to do with our heart, and that's the center of who we are, our thought processes. That's why over and over again, we have emphases on the Scripture on knowing something. Paul frequently says, because you know this, and that we are to learn this, we are to reshape our thinking according to Romans 12 too, we're to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. But if you go to many places today, the emphasis is so heavy on emotion that people have a difficult time ever learning anything because the emotion distracts and clouds out the thinking. And so we've gone through these walk commands, that we are to walk worthy of the calling with which we have been called. We are not to walk like the Gentiles. We're not to live our lives according to the thought processes of the Gentile world. By that he means the unbelieving world. It's comparable to what he says in Romans 12, 2, do not be conformed to the world. And so we're not to walk like the pagan world, we are to walk in truth, and we are to walk in the light. And now we are to walk as wise. So Ephesians 5.18 says that we are to walk circumspectly, and that describes that it's a thinking, it's a process of thought and care. So we are commanded in 5.18 to be filled by means of the Spirit, And then from there, it talks about the results, that there is an emphasis on worship through singing. Now, their qualification, so that we learn that it's not just any singing that qualifies as worship. And we will get into that as we get into verse 19, starting next week. We're to be thankful, grateful. We're to express gratitude to God, not just for the things that we like, not just for the things that benefit us, but for the things that we're having a difficult time being thankful for, knowing that God is in control. And even difficult things, hard things, bad things, evil, it comes into our life, God has a purpose. Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his loving brothers, being facetious, realized years later that they meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. Scripture in the New Testament says, for all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. So we see that even things that we are disappointed by, things that don't go right, things that are not what we think are good, God is working all things together for good. We are also to be mutually submissive to one another. And that passage is really talking about not being antagonistic or combative or disagreeable with one another. We are to be, as the chapter four begins, we are to maintain the unity in the body of Christ. And so this mutual submission applies to family life as we go into the rest of the section, hit that button too soon, down through 6-9, which will end the second major division of Ephesians before we get into the section on spiritual warfare. So let's look at our context again. Ephesians 5.15 says, see then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise. And how do we do that? Time management, by redeeming the time. And we have to plan, as I pointed out when we went through that, we need to plan how we use our time. And that includes recreation, that includes rest and sleep. as well as the things that we think of or that we positively need to be accomplishing in our life, whether it has to do with career, family, or our own personal walk with the Lord. And then he goes from that general basic command to, he says, as a conclusion in verse 17, therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. So there's this contrast. We're either walking like a fool or we're walking like a wise person. We're either walking in truth, walking in error. We're walking in the light, walking in darkness. These are mutually exclusive realities. There's no sort of neutral middle ground where we can just sort of take a break and get a breather. And somehow it's not related to our spiritual life. Everything is, we're either one or the other. So we come to our passage that I began looking at aspects of a couple of weeks ago, Ephesians 5, 18, with the negative command that we are to not be drunk with wine. Now, I've skipped over some of the aspects of that because we have to understand a little bit about where we're going before we understand all of what is being said previous to the main positive command. So do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit. And last time I went through how this is constructed grammatically because these English prepositions that are used to translate this and other similar but different phrases in the Greek often get blended together because in English we use the same preposition or in some cases They'll translate the same phrase in one context using the preposition with, in another context using the preposition of. And then as a result, people think those are two different things instead of the same thing because it clouds, obfuscates that the original is using the same exact verbiage. So some of the confusion is because of the way different men will translate different phrases. So we are to be filled with the Spirit. This is a, in the Greek, it's a prepositional phrase. It begins with the preposition in the Greek, in, pronounced just like our I-N, but it has a broader range, and it depends on the case of the noun following it. So if you're familiar with with languages that have cases and have different endings and inflected languages so that you can identify objectively by the forms of the words, whether it's a nominative, dative, genitive or accusative. And that makes a difference. And what we see here is that you have a command that is to be filled, plerao. And this is a present passive imperative. What we've seen with all these wall commands is that they're active voice imperatives. The difference is important. In an active voice construction, then the person addressed performs the action. In a passive voice construction, the person who does it receives the action. Okay? That's important. And I'll give you better examples of this, but what this means is we're receiving something from the Spirit. In contrast to the command to walk by the Spirit, we engage our volition to actively focus on our day-by-day dependence, moment-by-moment, hour-by-hour dependence upon the Holy Spirit. So these are very important distinctions. So we began looking at this a couple of weeks ago in terms of an introduction to the filling of the Spirit, and I have this quote from Lewis Barry Chafer, who's the founder of Dallas Theological Seminary and is the individual for whom Chafer Theological Seminary is named. And one of the reasons that we have named the seminary after Lewis Barry Chafer is for this particular distinctive related to the spiritual life. But even when I say that, I've pointed out a couple of times where Dr. Chaffer just didn't cross all of his T's and dot all of his I's, neither did Dr. Walvert, who was his successor as president of Dallas Seminary. And I think that by the time you get into the late 60s, there were men who taught at Dallas Seminary who did not hold to the even a general way of the same view of the spiritual life that was held by Dr. Chafer and Dr. Walvoord. And so that's very important to understand that within the scope of Christianity, broad Christianity, you have at least 11 different models of how we are to live our Christian life. Some of those are the sacramental model that you have in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. But even within those, there's some differences. Then you have the Reformed models. There's a Lutheran view. There is a, by Reformed, I mean that which is influenced by Calvinism. So that displays itself in different denominations down through the last three or four centuries, five centuries since the Protestant Reformation. And so then you have the Wesleyan tradition that brought forth Methodism. And in the various splits within the Methodist sort of the Methodist denomination, there are some different nuances, but it's a distinct view of the spiritual life. And then you have a movement that had a lot of roots in Wesleyanism called Holiness Theology, which was fundamentally motivated by a desire to return back to some of the emphases in Wesleyan theology. And out of that came another group, that had a lot more, it was more biblically sound, I think, called Keswick theology. There were these revival meetings started in Keswick, England, these conferences. And so that's very similar to what we have in our understanding. The major difference would be our view of the Holy Spirit. Then you had the whole holiness Pentecostal movement came along. So are you confused yet? That's why it's important to know history of Christianity, because all of these to one degree or another are in our back trail as evangelicals one way or the other. And people get really confused because you'll go to one church and they have this view and another church has that view, or you go to seminary and one professor has this view and one professor has another view, and you just get confused and come out with some sort of eclectic, Christian stew of spiritual life that doesn't really nourish or ground you in the Word. So these things are important. And so, as I pointed out last time, they're developed in this tradition of what I would say sort of the Wesleyan holiness to Keswick to dispensational theology for the spiritual life. And you say, well, wait a minute, we don't have a lot in common, but there are certain commonalities with some of those, but that's the back trail, these different influences. Because as you get to the end of the 19th century, they had a lot of Bible conferences. It's called the Bible Conference Movement, which is the creative name. And so the Keswick conferences were considered part of that. And a lot of the key speakers at these conferences were men like Dwight Moody, for whom Moody Bible Institute is named. You have others like C.I. Schofield, and most of you have had a Schofield reference Bible at one point in your life. Dr. Chaffer came up. He was a little bit younger than these others. And so you had men like Ruben A. Torrey, who was at Moody, and then later was president at Biola, the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. And so all of this matrix of views at the end of the 19th century and 20th century were very influential. We would trace our lineage back through Chafer and back through Schofield. But there were some things that they didn't get right. A lot of it is due to the fact that they did not really know the original languages. And so they would look at the English text because you had, as I pointed out last time, different phrases that, in English, that sounded like they were the same thing, weren't the same thing in the Greek. But they understood what this quote I have from Chafer, that you've heard me say much the similar thing, is that there are these two alternatives for the Christian in his life. You're either walking in the light or you're walking in darkness. You're either abiding in Christ or you're not abiding in Christ. You're either walking in the truth or not walking in the truth. All of these indicate there's only two options for us. One is walking in obedience to the Lord by means of the Holy Spirit, and the other one is not. But you can look at yourself or look at your friends, people you know, and their lives may not look a lot different. For example, you get up in the morning and you open your Bible, open your device, whatever, and you begin to read your Bible and you pray and you make up your plan for the day. And the next person does the same thing. But one is walking by the Spirit, the other is not. One has started the day confessing sins, making sure they're right relationship with the Lord, the other person hasn't. And so how do you know the difference? So that's what we're getting at, and so this passage is so crucial to understanding that. So in terms of a summary of what we saw last time, three different Greek phrases are used in the New Testament that are typically translated the same, full of the Spirit, filled of the Spirit, filled by the Spirit, but usually they're just full of the Spirit, filled of the Spirit, or full of the Spirit, filled with the Spirit. But they're different in the original. The second thing we saw that the only place where this verb, plerao, is used with the word Spirit, pneuma, in the entire New Testament Where the word spirit is in the dative case and not the genitive case is Ephesians 5.18. And that makes a difference. Because if it's in the genitive case, you would translate it full of the spirit or filled of the spirit. But if it's in the dative case, it indicates means or instrumentality. That it is the spirit who is the instrument by which we are filled with something else, not the spirit. full of the Spirit would indicate that we're filled more with the content, the person of the Holy Spirit. So, in my third point of review, there were other similar uses, and there were other similar uses which are descriptions of character, but they are not the same as what we have in Ephesians 5.18. Conclusion number four, thus the other uses describe unique situations and Ephesians 5.18 is not to be confused with anything said in the book of Acts or in the gospel of Luke. And so here's an example. Ephesians 5.18 translates plerao and the word pneumati, it's a genitive in this case, So you're filled by means of the Spirit, but it translates it as filled with the Spirit. In Acts 2.4, you have a different verb, pimplemi, and a genitive, pneuma, but it's still translated filled with the Holy Spirit. But those are two different Greek phrases, two different meanings, two different circumstances. So we have to understand these things. So the conclusion I reached was that these are two different ministries of God, the Holy Spirit. The first is the word pemplemi. It's a repeated experience, and it almost always is tied to something said or written. So that this describes an activity related, I think related to, it's not, maybe not the same as inspiration. It's more like what we have in the Old Testament with enduement. And the second is plerao, that's also repeated, but it describes the work of the Holy Spirit filling us with the content of God's Word and producing spiritual growth and spiritual maturity. So here's the chart we started with, and I pointed out that there's a similarity, the history of the development of the Word. has a similarity. This is called etymology, the history of a word and the development of meanings. You have pimplemi, pleirao, and pleires. They each have that root P in English, P-L-E. You have a P, lambda, and eta. But usage is what determines meaning, not etymology. Don Carson, who's a professor of Greek for many, many years at Trinity Seminary, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago, wrote a book where he committed some of his own fallacies, but it was called Exegetical Fallacies in the New Testament, one of which is the etymological fallacy. You'll see guys go back into the history of the word and pull out the meaning from some usage in the 5th century B.C. or 3rd century B.C. But that's not how the word was used later. That's like going back and reading your King James Version and imposing on the word charity in 1 Corinthians 13 a modern meaning of charity. But that's not what it meant then. So words change their meaning over time, so you have to look at usage. So we concluded that the verb pimplemi is almost always used With immediate speaking, there's about four or five verses that so-and-so was pimplamied filled of the Spirit and spoke. And then you have two other examples where the speaking follows within two or three verses in the immediate context. So the six uses of pimplamy with the Holy Spirit are all related to some degree to speaking. Then we saw that there's an adjectival word, play race, that is translated filled with or full of, and it's followed by genitives, which indicate content, and that's an idiom which describes character. It's used to describe those with negative characters, such as envy and deceit, and those are positive. They are full of wonder or amazement or full of faith in the Holy Spirit. They are related to describing character. It's an idiom. But number three, neither of those are used in Ephesians 5.18. So here's a conclusion, and I'm gonna quote Dan Wallace. Dan is one of the foremost Greek grammarians of our generation. We were classmates at Dallas Seminary together back when we were in school, and he has taught Greek at Dallas Seminary for many years. And he makes the point in his grammar, it is to be noted that neither the verb nor the case following the verb are the same as in Ephesians 5.18. He's talking with reference to Acts 2.4. And then he comments here, pimplemi, there pleirao, here the genitive, there in plus the dative. That's the same thing I've been telling you. Now, this grammar didn't come out till a long time after I understood what I've been teaching. But I'm doing this because there's such controversy, and I have a lot of pastors and a lot of students who listen, and they need to understand some of these things. And so this is just something to support what I'm saying, that this isn't something I came up with or some other pastors came up with, but this is clearly stated in a number of other grammars. I just quote these as representative. Dan goes on to say, he says, the Spirit filling with pemplemi in Acts is never commanded, nor is it related particularly to sanctification. Rather, it is a special imbuing of the Holy Spirit for a particular task, similar to the Spirit's ministry in the Old Testament. Furthermore, every time the case used to Furthermore, every time the case used to indicate the content of filling is the genitive, not the dative. And then he cites all those passages I went to last week. So today we're focusing on this middle word, plerao. So in Ephesians 5.18, he starts, and do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation. So we're just focusing on that half because there's a contrast between these two statements. So the word for drunk is a word that means drunk. It is a present passive imperative. Now, that's important because it's going to be contrasted with plerao, which is a present passive imperative. And so it means to be drunk or to be intoxicated. And then you have the word wine in the dative case, indicating that's the means by which a person gets inebriated. And so that's in the dative as well, an instrumental David. And as Harold Hohner, who is the chairman of the Greek department at Dallas, when I wrote, had taught Ephesians for probably 40 years at Dallas, as he wrote in his commentary, which came out early 2000s, said, this is an instrumental dative indicating the means of intoxication. So once again, I'm just quoting these because I'm not, that's just not my view of the grammar. There's lots of others and other grammars I could quote. And then Paul says, do not be drunk by means of wine in which is dissipation. Now this word is the Greek word, asotia, which means something that is in excess, incurable, unhealthy, or dissipation, which is something that is useless. Or a second meaning could be wild and disorderly conduct. And that was the definition of it by Cleon Rogers, who was the Greek prof at a European, German, European, German Evangelical seminary who did his sabbatical teaching at Dallas and wrote an article that I'll be quoting in just a minute. And that's his definition. Plato said that, and that's 5th century, but the word didn't change its meaning a whole lot from the 5th century to the 1st century AD. He said it means shamelessness, dissipation, profligacy, or debauchery. one who destroys himself through dissipation. So the instrumental case, by means of, indicates the use of wine to become spiritual. It had a religious impact, religious context in the ancient world, to become spiritual, but in fact leads to spiritual self-destruction. And the word used, or a form of the word is used in Titus 1.6, to describe the character quality expected of a pastor or elder that he is not accused of dissipation or insubordination. It's also used to describe the character of the prodigal son when he's off wallowing or the events that led to wallowing with the pigs. And 1 Peter 4, 4 in regard to these, they think it is strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation. So it refers to behavior that will lead to the ruin of some person in their spiritual life. Now, what I'm going to argue is that we have to understand the historical background that's going on here in Ephesus. But it wasn't just in Ephesus. It was throughout the Roman Empire, and that had to do with the worship of Dionysus, as he is stated in the Greek, or Bacchus, as it's stated in Latin. And you've heard phrases like a Bacchanal festival, and that's just another word for a rip-roaring orgy. And that's how they worship the god of wine. Now, one of the things I'm trying to demonstrate here is that this was a commonality throughout the ancient world. It wasn't just a problem in Ephesus. But apparently it was, along with other things, a problem in Ephesus. But we know that in many of the major cities of Rome, this was a problem that went back. Homer mentions it as early as 900 BC. And the cult of Dionysus was active up through at least the second or maybe third century AD. So this was an ongoing problem. We have examples of epigraphal, that's writings, statements, and historical evidence in Thessaloniki. They had a state priesthood there. There's a Latin inscription from Philippi. There's evidence from Athens and the marketplace in Corinth. The city of Ephesus was filled also with the worship of Dionysus and his cult. And that's from Cleon Rogers, who did an in-depth study of this in an article published in Dallas Seminary's journal, Bibliotheca Sacra. Plato mentions this. When Mark Antony entered the city of Ephesus, Plutarch wrote, women arrayed like bacchanals and men and boys like satyrs and pans led the way before him. And the city was full of ivy and thyrus wands and harps and pipes and flutes. the people hailing him as Dionysius, the giver of joy and beneficence." So it's party time. This is like Mardi Gras on steroids. The origin of the Dionysius worship is not Greek. It's variously understood to have originated either in Thrace, which is up into the area that would be close to Romania, Moldova today, Bulgaria, some of those regions, and Arlidia, which was the Greek name for the red province here, which is now Asia, or Phrygia, which would have been in Eastern areas of Asia. So all of the people that Paul is writing his epistles to would be very familiar with these ideas. Rogers continues to say another feature of the festivals was the wild frenzy dancing and uncontrolled ravings in connection with wine drinking. You're worshiping the God of wine. So how do you get close to the God of wine? How do you have fellowship with the God of wine? You drink a lot of wine and you get inebriated. So that's what he's describing. He says, later on, he says, the purpose of the intoxication by wine and also the chewing of ivy, as well as the eating of raw animal flesh, was to have Dionysus enter the body of the worshiper and fill him with enthusiasm, that is, emotion, and or the spirit of the God. Now, think about this in terms of what was going on in Corinth with the problem with Tom. See, it's this mystical approach to spirituality with the God that you get drunk and the Spirit of the God enters you, and you would also speak in ecstatic utterance. And so this was described of the oracle at Delphi, and some of the other false religions, they spoke in ecstatic utterance, not human languages. Rogers goes on to say, Dionysus was to possess and control such ones so that they were united with him and partook of his strength, wisdom, and abilities. This resulted in the person doing the will of the deity. Notice earlier, Paul is talking in this passage, and he says about walking in wisdom and see that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise. So in Dionysius' worship, you get drunk so you can be wise. So they would also speak in inspired prophecy. There's also another book called The Greeks and Their Gods by W. K. C. Guthrie, who goes into a lot of detail. and all of the worship and everything, and that's just what it was. It was just a big drunken orgy to get lined up with Dionysius, and he would take over and speak through you and all of these other things. So that's the contrast. Paul is saying, don't use wine to be spiritual, but instead be filled by means of the Holy Spirit. So this is the idea. Dr. Hohner says, in addition, the writer to Ephesians uses the term spirit 13 times. So when we're questioning the idea, what does it mean spirit here? Does this mean the Holy Spirit? Does this mean the human spirit? Does this mean like some disembodied spirit or an angel spirit? Because in the Greek, you don't have capitalization. You know, all the words run together, there's no capitals or punctuation, so you have to make an interpretation. Well, one of the interpretations is that this refers to the human spirit. I'm not a doctor, but Prof. Zane Hodges at Dallas, who's a Greek professor there, took that view. It's a very unusual view and a minor view. And we've even had a speaker here a few times that wrote his master's thesis on this and took this position. That's one reason I'm bringing this out. I'm not going to name a name. But he may say something about this, and you just have to be gracious and let him have his view, okay? He's not right. This is what Dr. Hohner says about that, which is how I would handle it. He says, the writer of Ephesians uses the term pneuma, or spirit, 13 other times in the epistle. And each time it refers to a spirit outside of a person. It's not the human spirit. Once it refers to the spirit of the devil or his emissaries in 2.2, but the other 12 times it refers to the spirit of God. And then he says in 1.17, 4.3, and 23 are disputed, but these have been discussed already in his commentary. Thus it's natural to assume that the spirit here refers to the Holy Spirit, just on the basis of usage. So We have another aspect with pleirao, when it says, what does it mean? It means to be filled up with something, like the filling with content. But the content would have to be expressed in a genitive phrase, not in an instrumental phrase. So you're not getting more of the Spirit. And another aspect of this is often people will use the word control. We're controlled by the Spirit or controlled by our sin nature. But control is a word that has nuances indicating the overriding of volition. If something controls me, it is in control of my will. But that's not a good way to express this. But we've all heard lots of different people use the word control. It's influence. In fact, we were at pastor's conference several years ago. And Jim Myers asked the pastor if a better word would not be influence rather than control, and his answer was, yes, that's true. Influence would be better than control. It's not control. So we have to be careful with the terms that we use here. So it seems best, as Hohner says, to translate enumity with the instrumental sense by the Spirit or by means of the Spirit. This is analogous to Ephesians 4.30, where the preposition with the relative pronoun in which, or in whom, is translated the spirit by whom you were sealed. It's instrumental. Dan Wallace, in his grammar, says, to see ennumity here, that's by the spirit, as indicating content is grammatically suspect, even though it is, in many circles, the predominant view. Only if the flow of argument and or the lack of other good possibilities strongly point in the direction of content would we be compelled to take it as such. There are no other examples in biblical Greek where you have this preposition in plus the dative following plerao that indicates content. So that you can't go to any kind of other example to demonstrate the case. That's what you do when you're doing Bible study. You say, well, I think it means this. Well, go find that kind of construction somewhere else where it means that. And if you can't find it, then it doesn't mean that. So Dan concludes as the parallel with Oino as well as the common A grammatical category of means suggests that the idea intended is that believers are to be filled by means of the Holy Spirit. How many times have you heard me say it that way? That's the correct way to articulate it. We're filled by means of the Spirit. You have the same kind of construction in Galatians 5.16, to walk by means of the Spirit. It emphasizes the means, not the content. So then this is going to take us to the results in Ephesians 5, 19 to 21. The first has to do with singing in worship, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of God. So you have three areas of results there. The first has to do with singing and worship. Second has to do with giving thanks. The third has to do with submitting to one another. So these are evidences or results of being filled by the Spirit. So if you're filled by the Spirit and you're standing in church with your mouth shut while everybody else is singing, that doesn't indicate good things. You say, oh, well, I can't sing. Well, you can make melody in your heart and sing, and everybody else will cover you up. But the purpose of quoting that is to help us understand what it is that the Holy Spirit is filling us with. If He's not the content, if we're not getting more of the Spirit, what is He filling us with? Okay? Well, we get that by looking at the parallel passage in Colossians 3.16. In that passage, we have the command to let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord." Now, what's that the result of in Ephesians 5? It's the result of being filled by means of the Spirit. But here it says, letting the Word of Christ richly dwell within you. Now, it goes on. The second thing we noticed in Ephesians 5 is that a result of being filled by the Spirit is gratitude. Here, a result of letting the Word of Christ dwell in you richly is whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. So the first and second results of letting the Word of Christ richly dwell within you are the same as the filling by means of the Holy Spirit. And then it goes to submission in Colossians 3.18, just as it goes to submission in Ephesians 5. So when we put these passages together, we see that the results of being filled by the Spirit in Ephesians 5.19-22 are the same as the results of letting the Word of God richly dwell within us. Do you think there's a correlation? Of course there is. If you have circumstances A that produce circumstances D, and then you have circumstances B that also produce D, then A and B have to be synonymous, roughly talking about the same thing. So being filled by the Spirit, putting these together, we're filled by the Spirit with the Word of God. And when the Word of God under the ministry of God the Holy Spirit richly dwells within us, it produces the same results, the same spiritual qualities. So Colossians 3.16 says, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. And I always like to point out, we'll get into this next time, that in the hymns, in the music ministry, the words that we sing should teach and admonish one another. But what we have in about 99.9% of anything written since about 1960 related to Christian music doesn't teach or admonish anyone anything. And that is just one quality we'll look at that is important for how we choose what we sing in preparation for worship, okay? That's an important phrase. This is not talking about Some other times that we may sing Christian songs, but they're not in preparation for worship. They may be used for teaching children certain things. They may be for a variety of other reasons, but what we sing as a prelude to focusing on the Word of God should be distinct. So we have the results of the filling by the Spirit in Ephesians 5 and the results of the Word of Christ dwelling richly in us. So what we see here is that when we trust in Christ, we get a new identity. We are in Christ. This happens because we are baptized by means of God the Holy Spirit. This is an eternal reality, our legal position in Christ. But we have temporal realities, and in those temporal realities, we are to be filled by means of the Spirit with His Word. And that is part of what it means to walk by means of the Spirit in Galatians 5.16. In positional truth, we have eternal life, and in our temporal reality, we are to walk in light of that eternal light, that new position. So when we sin, we're not walking by the Spirit, we're walking in darkness. And to recover, we use 1 John 1, 9, and we're restored to a place where we can walk by the Spirit. Confessing sin is not identical to being filled by the Spirit. It's what you do to get filled by the Spirit. If I say that in this room we had all the lights on and all the lights were off in the rest of the building, then outside you'd be in darkness, but in here you'd be in the light. But the door is where we confess sin. So if you sin, you're ejected out the door and you're out in darkness. But to come back in, you have to walk through the door of 1 John 1, 9, but that's not where the light is. The light is here. We walk in the light of life and not in darkness. John 15, 4 uses the command to abide. Abide in me, Jesus said, and I in you. And the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine. Abiding is a synonym of fellowship. We're having an intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. It's tantamount to walking by the Spirit, and that is where the filling by the Spirit takes place. The branch cannot bear fruit unless it abides in the vine, and you can't bear fruit unless you abide in me, is what Jesus is saying. In Galatians 5.16, the command that precedes the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5.19-22 is, I say then, walk by means of the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. So here we have the metaphor of walking just like we have in Ephesians 5. We walk by means of the Spirit, but here it's a present active imperative. Being filled is a present passive imperative. In a passive, you receive the action. In an active, you perform the action. So what we see here is that the active voice verb means we must be making responsible choices to walk by the Spirit. The passive imperative of Ephesians 5.18 indicates that while we are walking, we are to choose to receive what the Spirit is teaching us from the Word. Now, there are three key words in Galatians 5.16, the command to walk by means of the Spirit, and then we have the words fulfill and the words for flesh. So we are to walk by means of the Spirit, and you will not bring to completion, it's the word teleo, which means to finish something, to bring it to completion, in that sense to perfect it, not in the sense of flawlessness. And what's interesting is if you go back to Galatians 3.3, as Paul goes into the second part of Galatians, Galatians 1 and 2 talk about justification, Galatians 3 through 6 talk about our spiritual life, our sanctification. He introduces this sentence by reprimanding them by saying, are you so foolish? Which means they're not walking by the Spirit. Having begun by means of the Spirit, how did we begin by means of the Spirit? The Holy Spirit regenerates us. Having begun by the Spirit, Are you now being made perfect by the flesh? These three words, spirit, perfect, flesh in the Greek, don't occur again until Galatians 5.16. So everything Paul says from Galatians 3.4 to Galatians 5.15 are to prepare for his statement in Galatians 5.16. You think I go through long rabbit trails to develop the backgrounds of things. Paul goes through three chapters, three and a half chapters, just to make it clear so he can start talking about his main point, which is to walk by means of the Spirit. So that just gives us more of the context. And the result is it's always a battle. That's what's stated in Galatians 5.17, for the flesh, the sin nature struggles against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary to one another. and that you do not do the things that you wish. You see, those are the options. Walking by the Spirit, walking by the flesh. Walking according to the Spirit, walking according to the flesh. So you have both means and the standard, depending on the preposition, some one way in Romans 8, the other way in Galatians 5. So the conclusion is, I have a typo there, we are saved for the purpose of walking in good works. We're saved for the purpose of walking in good works. We're not saved so that we can have a happy and joyful life. If you mature, you will, even if the circumstances are negative. We are saved for the purpose of good works. Ephesians 2.10, immediately following those verses we quote all the time, Ephesians 2.8 and 9, for by grace you have been saved through faith. and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. So we're not saved by works, for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So Paul foreshadows in those first three chapters what he's going to be emphasizing in chapters four and five, and part of six, that we should walk by the Spirit. And we get into this worthy walk in Ephesians 4.1, walking worthy of our calling. Ephesians 4.17, not walking like the Gentiles around us, the unbelievers around us. Ephesians 5.2, walking in love. Ephesians 5.7, walking as children of light. Ephesians 5.15, walking circumspectly. and Galatians 5.16, walking by means of the Spirit, these are all talking about the same thing, walking in right relationship with the Holy Spirit. I tend to think that the one phrase that I think covers it all is walking by the Spirit. And when we're doing those three things, those things, which are basically synonyms, then God the Holy Spirit will be working to fill us with His Word, and we are to receive that. So in conclusion, as we walk by means of the Spirit, we are filled by the Spirit. When we stop walking by the Spirit, we shift to walking by the sin nature. And to recover, we admit our sins to God privately in prayer, and He cleanses and forgives us. And finally, we then resume our walk by means of the Holy Spirit. So understanding what I've covered these last three weeks is foundational to understand what the spiritual life is all about. You have different groups, they emphasize doing certain things, having certain spiritual disciplines. You have others that talk about the Spirit, and it's all about emotion and feeling. But we have to look at what the Word of God says and how we compare Scripture with Scripture to get to a clear understanding of what it means to walk by the Spirit and to be filled by means of the Spirit, with our heads bowed and our eyes closed. Father, we thank you for this opportunity to come together to study your Word, to be reminded that our spiritual life is energized in this dispensation by God the Holy Spirit. He is the one who was used by you or by Christ to identify us with his death, burial, and resurrection in Romans 6, 1-4. And it is God the Holy Spirit who indwells us And part of that ministry is that when we are walking in fellowship, that He fills us with Your Word. And so it is very important to make sure that we are walking in right relationship with You, that we may be in right relationship with the Holy Spirit, and that He will be teaching us Your Word and bringing it to memory and reminding us of how we are to make decisions. what is wise and what is foolish. So, Father, we pray that this will give us a new conscientiousness about our spiritual life. Father, we pray that if anyone is listening who's never trusted Christ as Savior, never recognized that they need to trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation, that they would understand that what we've been talking about is how we live after we're saved, not how we live to get saved. To get saved, Jesus Christ did it all. All we do is accept His death, burial, and resurrection on the cross as our substitute. We believe that He died for us in our place, took our punishment upon Him, and that He fully, completely, totally paid for our sins on the cross so that all we have to do is trust in Him to accept that free gift of eternal life. So Father, we pray these things, pray that we all may be refreshed and encouraged by our study this morning, that you may be glorified, and we pray this in Christ's name, amen.