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[0:00] Just to maybe bring us a little bit up to speed, you have your notes there.

[0:16] I don't know if some of you brought back with you what you had last week. So we're not going to fill in all the blanks we filled in last week again, except for maybe just a few. Just by way of review, so we keep these fresh in our minds, we're talking about, of course, seeking and finding God so that we can know Him and love Him.

[0:34] And when we seek God, we're promised that we'll find Him. God promises that. We'll find Him if we seek Him with all of our hearts. And we'll find Him, and when we find Him, we will know Him and continue to know Him more and more and better and better.

[0:53] And when we know Him, the more we know Him, the more we love Him. And I have mentioned this a number of times, loving Him is the whole show. That's the whole thing. That's all of it.

[1:07] That's what we want. And our journeying toward. And one day when we leave this world, and God either, the Lord Jesus either comes and we're caught up to be with Him in the air, or we die and we're resurrected, we're going to be with Him forever and ever, and all faith then will be rendered unnecessary.

[1:32] because, you know, everything will be, we won't need faith, and hope will become reality, but love will continue. So we really ought to not just get used to the idea of loving Him here, but we ought to desire to love Him more and more and more.

[1:54] Because when we get to heaven, we're going to be loving Him in such a pure way, it's beyond even our comprehension. So loving Him, I'm saying, that's the end game in that sense.

[2:07] Though it's not something we're waiting to do, it's something we do now, but we want to love Him more. And so this is the scheme. Scheme, that's not a very good word.

[2:17] This is the... I don't know what word I want to use. This is God's design. How about that one? Alright? I like that one.

[2:29] And that's true. This is God's design for us, that we would seek Him, to find Him, to know Him, to love Him. And we have mentioned a number of things already, and discussed them.

[2:41] Well, I've taught them. We haven't really discussed them. A number of things concerning how to seek Him the right way. If seeking Him leads to finding Him, then we need to know how to seek Him.

[2:55] And there are ways to seek God. And we've covered a few of those. And so by way of review, number one, seek His what? Seek His face and not His hands only.

[3:09] Number two, seek Him with an obedient spirit. How ridiculous. How absurd. How wicked. To approach God with a question mark.

[3:23] To approach God without your mind and heart already made up that I'm going to say yes to Him. Even before I know what He wants and what He wants to do. So, we seek Him with an obedient heart, obedient spirit.

[3:35] Third, seek Him with a heart that is pure. And I've defined that as this, a heart that wants one thing. And that one thing is, of course, God.

[3:50] Number four, seek Him with the language of praise. Of praise. And we discussed praise and worship. And now, number five, and we got kind of halfway through this.

[4:03] Again, covering some ground that we've already covered. number five is, seek Him, what? Filled with the Holy Spirit. Seek Him filled with the Holy Spirit.

[4:18] And so, that's kind of what we started last time. And after covering a few things about the person of the Holy Spirit, that He's not only a person, but He is also God, the deity of the Holy Spirit.

[4:35] We covered that ground again. And then made this statement, we are completely dependent upon the Holy Spirit when it comes to the subject we're talking about here.

[4:48] Seeking and finding and knowing and loving God. We are utterly dependent upon the Holy Spirit for all that. And so, if that be the case, and it would be pretty hard to argue against it, then we need to know what that means.

[5:06] Just how are we dependent upon the Holy Spirit? We've covered a couple of those. In fact, I think we really got halfway through the second one. But we're dependent upon Him for the power to live the Christian life, but the power to seek Him the right way.

[5:22] We need His power. I mentioned Philippians 2.13, For it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure. Acts 1.8, But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.

[5:37] And then we need Him for purity. Purity. Galatians 5.16, I say then, walk in the Spirit. We know what the word walk means, what the Bible means when it uses that word walk.

[5:51] It's a metaphor for living our lives, how we conduct our lives. so conduct your life, your daily life, everything you do, everywhere you go, every decision you make, in the Spirit, and what?

[6:06] You shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. So, the idea is purity. And then, kind of, started to look at, oh, I don't know what I would call this either.

[6:19] I seem to have trouble coming up with words here tonight. but kind of a little footnote, let's call it a footnote, about the difference between the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the filling of the Holy Spirit.

[6:35] Now, what we're getting at here in this, this being dependent upon Him to seek God, find God, know God, love God, pertains to the filling of the Holy Spirit.

[6:46] Now, it all starts with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. We wouldn't even want to seek Him or know Him if we had not already been baptized in the Holy Spirit because the baptism of the Holy Spirit takes place when?

[7:01] At conversion. It's not something that you ask for, not something you take steps to experience.

[7:12] I mean, you don't do it. It is an act of God. He literally immerses us in Himself. The Bible expresses it also being immersed in Christ.

[7:25] That's the same idea. That's what baptism means. Now, I know that there's a lot of debate about the word baptism itself. And really, I have to be honest with you, if our Bible translators from the King James to all those who've come since, if they were really honest, they would have not used the word baptism.

[7:45] They would have translated it immersion because that's exactly what it means. And that would have cut away all of the confusion about the mode of baptism.

[7:56] The word means to immerse, whether you're talking about the ordinance of baptism or you're talking about, in this case, the spiritual application of the word baptism.

[8:08] It all means the same. It means to be immersed when you are taking part or being obedient in the act of baptism, the mode of baptism, being dunked under the water, immersed in water.

[8:22] You're surrounded by the water. In the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we are immersed in God. We are inside Him, immersed in Him. And so, the baptism of the Holy Spirit takes place at conversion.

[8:36] In fact, Jesus said, if you don't have the Spirit, you're not His. Alright? But what about the filling of the Holy Spirit? And there's confusion between these two.

[8:48] The filling of the Holy Spirit is something different. And when does it take place? Daily. Hopefully. Hopefully. a daily thing.

[9:00] Multiple times throughout the believer's life. Alright? And so, here's where the confusion usually takes place. And it's, I think, with some anyway, it's a confusion of terms.

[9:13] Because they've not really looked into the Bible, into the scriptural teachings on baptism, the filling of the Holy Spirit. They just know the terms and apart from looking into the Scriptures, the terms can be confusing.

[9:32] And so, you know, what's the difference between the two? Not only is there a difference between when they take place, but there's a difference between the two in what is actually taking place.

[9:43] What happens. Alright? So, now, again, I'd say to you that if you're a born-again believer right now, then what you need so that you can see God, find God, know God, love God, what you need is not the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

[9:59] That's already happened to you. What you need now and every day and multiple times throughout the day, by the way, for your daily Christian life is the filling of the Holy Spirit.

[10:11] Alright, so, then, now we're up to speed. What does it mean to be filled by the Holy Spirit or with the Holy Spirit? And, we have, again, some of this is going to be reviewed.

[10:26] It wasn't that long ago that we did our study on the Holy Spirit and so some of this will be repeat, but that's okay. So, let's consider here and we're going to do a little grammar, a little Greek grammar.

[10:40] Alright? In fact, really, I'm going to give you four points here and isn't it amazing that really I could present a four point sermon on one word in the Scripture.

[10:54] Just one word. That's the amazing thing about Scripture. And that one word is this word filled because it all hinges on that. Our understanding of what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit is dependent upon our understanding of that one word.

[11:10] filled or the filling. It's plerao in the Greek. I gave you that word there. And it's a very significant word, a biblical word.

[11:23] And the word means to come under the control of something. We may have mentioned this last week. Did I get that far? I didn't. Alright. Plerao means to come under the control of something.

[11:40] to be possessed by something. And this something, of course, in the context of this particular something, this possession is a good thing. Alright.

[11:51] Not some wicked thing. For example, we might, you know, maybe we're walking downtown some city, maybe Pelsa, or maybe even here in Bartlesville.

[12:02] And we're walking along the sidewalk and we look across there and we see some guy walking and stumbling and right off, what do we think? I think he's probably drunk.

[12:14] Though we wouldn't necessarily say it this way, we would say the man, that man, is full of alcohol. He's full of it. That's why he's acting the way he's acting.

[12:28] And that's the idea. That's why I think that Paul compares the two. Be not drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit.

[12:39] Because the idea of the filling is the relinquishing of control. Be so full of something that it controls you. Whether it be alcohol, in the first case, or the Holy Spirit of God.

[12:55] And so, when we look at that person that is stumbling and obviously inebriated, then we say he's full of alcohol. But what we mean is that the alcohol in his body explains the way he's behaving.

[13:10] It's controlling him. That's important for us to understand about this word plerao, just in the bare definition of the word. So to be filled with the Holy Spirit means that the Holy Spirit is in control of your life.

[13:24] Right? Pretty simple. Pretty straightforward. And yet, it's amazing how many people misunderstand this point of Scripture.

[13:36] Now, in the Greek language, the word here in... Where is it? Did I put that on there for you, Galatians?

[13:50] No, not Galatians, Ephesians. 18. I meant to read the Scripture first. Do not be drunk with wine in which is dissipation.

[14:04] That's the word in New King James. Remember I said last week, I think I said that dissipation is a translation of the Greek word that means unsavingly.

[14:17] Asotia. Asotia. And it's negative. Negative salvation. Unsavingly. Do not be drunk with wine in which is unsavingly.

[14:29] Or cause you to act unsavingly. But be filled with the Spirit. Alright, now, the word filled, I said it's plerao, but it's spelled a little differently here in Ephesians 5.18.

[14:45] I don't know why I want to keep calling it Galatians. It's spelled a little bit differently and that's the way it is with the Greek language and to some extent it's the way it is in the English language as well.

[14:57] The spelling somewhat changes whether it's on the front end or the back end and it changes somewhat the meaning of the word or better defines the meaning of the word.

[15:09] Greek language even more so. In fact, in some cases nearly every letter can change and it's still the same word, same root word, but there's all kinds of things going on and so it's important for those who have learned it to analyze the words because when we understand the word itself, how it's spelled and what effect that has on its meaning, then we'll understand better the particular scripture that we're studying.

[15:43] And so that's the case here. Plerao suddenly turns into pleruste and it's the form of the word. And there are at least four maybe five things that we can say or identify about that spelling of the word that will help us understand the meaning.

[16:03] In the first place, to be filled is an imperative, imperative verb. That's its mood.

[16:14] That's the grammatical, the technical grammatical term. Every Greek verb has a mood, a mood, and this one is imperative. Now what does it mean when I say it's imperative?

[16:27] It's an order. That's right. That's a good way to put it. It's a command. And so, we're not, this isn't a kind of a casual suggestion from the Apostle Paul.

[16:39] It's a command. Command to do what? Be filled. Be filled with the Holy Spirit. Alright, so it is an imperative and I might just throw this out to you.

[16:52] It's interesting to note that nowhere in Scripture are we ever commanded to be baptized by the Holy Spirit. Not because somehow it's not important and maybe, you know, it would be alright if you didn't have it.

[17:09] It is that you can't be commanded to do something you can't do on your own. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is completely, absolutely, uniquely a work of God.

[17:22] So we're not commanded to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. So the next time you have one of your charismatic brothers and sisters say, you know, you're just missing that. You're missing out. You know, you Baptists, you just need to get the baptism so that you, you know, you'll know what it really means to be a Christian.

[17:43] You know, you're missing out. You're lacking something. This baptism. And you can say, well, I already have that. You can say that. Besides that, the Bible never tells me to be baptized with the Holy Spirit.

[17:57] It's something God does. So we're not commanded, but we are commanded to be filled with the Holy Spirit. So, pleruste is an imperative. Imperative mood, imperative verb, it's a command.

[18:11] Second, to be filled is a present tense verb. It's present tense. Every verb has tense.

[18:25] Mood, imperative, tense. The tense of the verb is present tense. Present tense. Now, what does that mean? It means it's continuous.

[18:38] It's ongoing. Like we've already said, you know, the filling of the Holy Spirit is not a one-time event. It should happen at conversion, but it should happen after conversion.

[18:56] It should happen multiple times. It's a continuous event. That's the idea. Pleruste is a continuous, ongoing. In fact, you probably have heard me say this.

[19:07] We could translate this. We wanted to translate this very literally. It would be like this. Be being filled. Be being filled.

[19:18] We want to write that way in English. It would be silly. It would sound funny. But that is, that does bring out the fuller meaning of it. To be, be filled. If we want to write maybe in a better grammar, better English grammar, we might say, keep on being filled with the Holy Spirit.

[19:35] That would be a little bit awkward. That's the idea. Behind the present tense verb. And, pleruste is present tense. Be, or keep on being, filled with the Holy Spirit.

[19:49] It's a continuous thing. Alright? So that, you know, that also maybe answers something you might typically hear from some of our charismatic brethren.

[20:04] they talk a lot about the second blessing. Have you ever had anybody mention the second blessing? Have you had the second blessing? And, I usually say, yeah, I have.

[20:17] And a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. I'm not looking for the second blessing. I'm looking for the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, you know, ongoing. Alright? So, keep on continuously being filled with the Holy Spirit.

[20:31] That's the idea behind this word pleruste. Then third, to be filled is plural. Plural in number.

[20:41] Every verb has number. It's plural as opposed to singular. And, I guess we could add to that, I don't know if I put this in your notes, but it's first person.

[20:54] First person plural. Every verb has not only number, but person. Alright? So, we're learning some grammar here, aren't we? Mood, tense, number, person.

[21:09] Alright? So, it's plural in number, first, person, plural. So, what would that be? Some of you grammarians out there, teachers, I won't call on anybody.

[21:25] It means you. Not you singular, but you all. I mean, Paul could really be a good southerner here. In some places in Scripture, he is.

[21:35] You all. And they don't spell it y'all like we would pronounce it. But that's the idea. And so, what does this do to the meaning of the verb, pleruste?

[21:47] Well, among other things, I think it tells us that this command is for every one of us. And not just some spiritually elite in the body of Christ.

[22:03] You know, that's a sad thing in some denominations that there, you know, appears to be kind of a, it's kind of built into the theology. It may not be a desire or premeditated, but kind of a spiritual elitism.

[22:19] You've got it and I don't have it. And then some have it and, you know, God intends some to have it and others not. But the command is given to all, all of us, all of us, and not just a few select super-duper Christians.

[22:34] And then finally, to be filled is a verb in the passive voice. Every verb has voice.

[22:48] It's voice. That's the grammatical term. And in this case, it's passive. I think I've taken the occasion to explain sometimes the difference between these Greek voices.

[23:03] there's active voice, middle voice, and passive voice. This is passive. Now, you know, you kind of can understand the word passive, what that might do to the meaning.

[23:19] So the idea is, as opposed to active, it's not something you do yourself. Now, you know, I thought you said, Pastor, that this is a command.

[23:33] It's something we're to do. Well, there is a doing here, but the filling is not something you do. It's passive. It's something done to you. And so, since you couple that with the command, command suggests there must be some kind of action, and yet, the verb itself is passive, then the idea is that we are to yield ourselves.

[23:57] That's the command. To yield yourself to the control of the Holy Spirit of God in your life.

[24:08] Daily yield. Or we can put it this way, it's something you allow to be done to yourself. Allow to be done.

[24:19] The Holy Spirit does the filling. Your pastor doesn't. Your elders don't do that. None of the church leaders here fill you with the Holy Spirit.

[24:35] It's not something that you come to church and get on Sunday like you would gas up your car at the gas station in the sense that somehow the church fills you.

[24:48] It's God that does it. The Holy Spirit fills you. What's our part then? To yield. To yield to His filling.

[24:59] You say, well, anytime He wants to do it, okay. Just yield. That in itself might be a little confusing. And I guess we could define this this way that primarily yielding or that takes place, what that looks like, is obedience.

[25:19] obedience. Obedience to Him. Obedience to God's Word, to God's will, which is not a separate thing from His Word, but daily and all throughout the day in prayer, in life, as we allow ourselves to keep our focus on the Lord and desire to obey Him and honor Him, we are yielding to Him.

[25:49] Yielding to His right to rule in every aspect of our lives. And that's what it means to yield to the Holy Spirit.

[26:02] He fills you. We yield to His filling. Alright? So, put it all together, we're commanded to be consciously, continuously, knowingly. It's not some mystical thing.

[26:15] knowingly, willingly, yielding to the controlling presence of the Holy Spirit in glad obedience to God. And it's not just something that we wake up in the morning and do.

[26:31] It's something we redo and recommit to all throughout our day. Alright, so that's the footnote or rabbit that I chased there.

[26:42] But it's important we understand it. Getting back to the point, we need the filling of the Holy Spirit for power, yes. We need the Holy Spirit for purity, for purity.

[26:54] And let me use an illustration here and use a car as an illustration. I heard this illustration years ago. I think it's a good one. What's a car made for?

[27:05] A car is made not just for cruising around. You know, when I was a kid I thought that's what it was made for so I could just cruise around town, you know, not really go anywhere, just go out there.

[27:16] But actually a car is made to transport people from one place to another. And so when a car gets in a wreck, then you take it to one of two places.

[27:30] If you take it to the junkyard, that's one of two places you can take your car. Sometimes they end up there. If you take it to the junkyard, what are you saying? you're saying that its purpose, the old clunker, cannot transport people from one place to the other anymore.

[27:49] Just can't do it. Its purpose is wrecked beyond repair. So you haul it off or have somebody haul it off to the junkyard. But if you take it to the garage, you're saying that it can be fixed so that it can once again fulfill its purpose.

[28:06] Now that's the illustration here is the application of that. When mankind got in the wreck called sin, I'm not trying to be humorous, that's a very serious thing, plunged into sin, hopelessly into sin.

[28:26] When mankind got in the wreck called sin, mankind could no longer glorify God. And that's the reason for which we were created.

[28:40] To glorify God. But we're wrecked in sin, so we cannot fulfill our purpose. Glorify God, and so God sent Jesus to save us, and Jesus pulled us into the garage, put a mechanic to work on us.

[28:57] His name is the Holy Spirit. I know this is a little common sounding. And so He goes to work on us, and He's working on us, and He's working in us, so that we can be what God made us to be.

[29:14] That's the filling of the Holy Spirit for purity. I tell you, one of the best ways to prove that you're filled with the Holy Spirit is that you're experiencing the Holy Spirit getting all the dents out of your life, and it hurts sometimes.

[29:31] and that's what God does. Power, purity, and then number three, we're dependent upon the Holy Spirit for performance. Performance, I hesitate to use that word because of the connotation attached to it.

[29:49] I'm not talking about performing like on a stage or something. But the performance of our work, the work we've been called to and equipped to do, or maybe our effectiveness as a child of God.

[30:04] Paul said in Philippians 2-3, and again we go back to that verse, it is God that works in you to will and to do of His pleasure.

[30:19] Or we could literally take that word do or perform and translate it work works. Work works.

[30:30] To will, that is to have the desire to do His works, but also to do, actually do, to perform, to work works.

[30:42] That's the Holy Spirit that does that. We don't have it in us to do that on our own. I read a story one time written by, well it wasn't written by A.J.

[30:52] Gordon, it was told by him, written by somebody else. But Dr. Gordon was going cross country. I don't remember in the story just where he was headed, but he was walking down a country road, headed somewhere, probably a church or something, or to somebody's house, and he looked off in the distance to the farmhouse and up the road a ways, and he looked and he could just barely see this fella out in the front yard pumping the handle on a well, a pump, you know, whatever you call those things.

[31:29] And he's pumping that thing, and he could see him from a distance, and he got closer, he noticed he just kept pumping that handle, and he was pumping it rigorously and rapidly, and he got closer and closer, and that guy never let up, he just kept pumping that thing, you know.

[31:46] And when he got close enough to see, he realized that it wasn't a guy, it was a wooden cutout of a man, and who is attached to the handle, and it was part of a windmill or something like that, and so the guy wasn't pumping the handle, the handle was pumping him.

[32:09] And he thought this is a great illustration for the Holy Spirit. We're not filling ourselves. We're not doing the work ourselves as if we have any resource within us to do, not even to desire, but even to do what would please God.

[32:30] It's the Holy Spirit. And all we have to do is keep our hand on the handle. Keep close to him, and yield to him. And that's how we're dependent upon the Holy Spirit, the purpose of the Holy Spirit.

[32:47] Some people think that they have been given the Holy Spirit so that they can always be on some kind of spiritual cloud nine. There's a whole world of people who think that's what the Holy Spirit's for.

[32:58] Always on some kind of emotional high. Praise the Lord. It's so good to be a Christian. It's so great to be a Christian. I like what Adrian Rogers said a number of years ago.

[33:12] Did I give you this quote? He said, God did not give you the Holy Spirit so you could toot your whistle, but to get on down the track. He just had a way of putting things. That is, get to work.

[33:24] To do what God has called you to do. That's why we have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit guides us in truth. And the Holy Spirit certainly has other ministries to convict us of sin and so forth.

[33:37] But He empowers us. The Holy Spirit empowers us so that we can do all that God has created us to do. Chief among those would be to worship Him. We can't worship Him without the Holy Spirit, apart from the Holy Spirit.

[33:51] Alright, so, He fills us so we can worship God, serve God, speak to God, pray apart from the Holy Spirit, hear God, obey God.

[34:11] I don't know if I added these, seek, find, know, and love God. All those, we're utterly dependent upon Him for these things. one more and we're finished. Number four, there's power, purity, performance, and presence.

[34:26] This is what all comes down to, presence, presence, as a reward for seeking Him. Seek Him, find Him. And I don't know about you, actually I do know about you, but you're just like me.

[34:44] I need His presence. I need His presence. I need to know that presence with me. And I want it to be said of me what was said to Joseph in Genesis chapter 39 verse 2.

[34:58] And the Lord was with Joseph. You know, I'll do a study sometime and I'm going to list several here, but there are a number of them in Scripture. a study of the word with in relation to God and man.

[35:13] And here's an example. Genesis 39 verse 2. And the Lord was with Joseph and he was a prosperous man. Moses, also in Exodus 3.12, he said, certainly I will be with thee, with you.

[35:29] I'll be with you. And it was said of Moses protege. his successor leader of Israel, Joshua.

[35:40] In Joshua 1.5, as I was with Moses, I will be with you. With you, I will never leave you or forsake you.

[35:50] That's Joshua chapter 1 verse 5 and we have that of course brought over into the New Testament, Hebrews 13. I will never leave you nor forsake you.

[36:03] That's what he said to Joseph. And that's what he says to us. We need his presence. The presence of God. And you're going to have a hard time realizing that, even that need, or that desire, without the inner working of the Holy Spirit.

[36:22] A couple of verses that we'll close with. Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 18. Let me read that to you. For through him we both have access by one spirit to the Father.

[36:42] Someone has, in fact, I don't remember who it was. I put the quote down here. You'll just have to trust me. He said it this way in the explanation of that verse.

[36:55] Christ is the gate, as it were, by whom we come to the Father. And the Holy Spirit, as it were, our guiding man who leads us.

[37:11] You see how God, the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, all work in concert. They're one and their work is unified in bringing us to God.

[37:24] 1 Corinthians chapter 2 and verse 9. Let me read that one real quickly. I thought I had a marker in there, but it doesn't.

[37:40] 2 9. But as it is written, I have not seen, nor heard, nor have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for those who love him.

[37:53] But, there's one of those but God, a prime example, but God has revealed them to us. The things that the eye has not seen or the ear has heard.

[38:05] God has revealed them to us through His Spirit, through the Holy Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the Spirit of man which is in him?

[38:20] Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now, we have received, not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.

[38:35] These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

[38:46] Alright, so, we are utterly dependent upon the Holy Spirit. there's no way we're going to be able to seek and find so that we can know and love God apart from the filling of the Holy Spirit.

[38:59] Amen and amen. Alright, there will be one more and I'll be going next Wednesday. Jonathan's going to be teaching next Wednesday and so when we get back, we'll get the last one and I'll go ahead and tell you what it is.

[39:16]  seek Him where He likes to be.