Tonight, would you open your Bible to the book of Ephesians
chapter 5? This is the third message in our
series focusing in on the Holy Spirit.
The title of tonight's message is What Does the Holy Spirit
Look Like? Our first message.
We asked the question and hopefully answered it.
Who is the Holy Spirit? We saw that he is a divine
person, often referred to as the forgotten member of the Trinity,
but He is God nonetheless. Last week we built on that and
considered what does the Holy Spirit do?
Tonight I want to ask the question and answer what does
the Holy Spirit look like out of Ephesians 5?
We'll start in verse 15 and probably unlikely that we'll get
into chapter 6, verse 9, but that's that's kind of the the
parameters of the, the passage that we'll look at and consider.
And I'm asking this question, what does the Holy Spirit look
like? Because you may have come out of
a church background where some bizarre things perhaps took
place as an apparent evidence of what's called Holy Spirit
feeling. Maybe you've seen a, a church
service where it's like there's an athletic running track in
there and people are running around.
Or if it's not that, then it's like they're trying out for, for
gymnastics and they're flipping and doing things or, or waving
banners or it's like a cheer club.
I don't know what your experience is.
Maybe you've not experienced that.
Maybe you've at least seen it or witnessed it on TV or certainly
on online on YouTube or the like.
And often in those type of scenarios when you would ask
somebody, what are you doing, what happened then why are you
doing those things? They would almost give a
response like, you know, don't dare question and challenge.
The Holy Spirit made me do it, you know, as if that's like a, a
get out of gaol free pass on why the behaviour that just took
place is justified. And it's a little difficult to
try and argue against that. At least that's what they
surmise. But I'm a very practical person.
I think many of you are practical people.
And so if the Spirit of God is to come upon me, is to come upon
you, is to fill you, then it begs the question, what would
that look like? That's really what we're
considering tonight. And the question is probably not
so much what it's a Holy Spirit look like, but what does a
spirit filled believer look like?
That's that's really what is before us as we consider this,
you know, if you're I say that the Spirit of God is in me and
that's what this message is all about tonight.
How can we witness that, observe that, see that in somebody's
life. So what does the Holy Spirit
look like in a person's life? Paul says, as we're going to
read this passage is that he says, here's what it looks like.
It looks like everyday transformation.
It looks like there's something different in you.
It's evident in a heart for the lost.
We'll see. It's evident in a heart that is
filled with worship unto God. It's evident in a life that is
thankful, grateful unto God for who He is and what He has done.
It's it's evident in how we love our spouse.
It's evident in how we raise our children.
It's evident in how we as children respond to our parents.
It's evident in how we conduct ourselves in the workplace.
These are all that's before us in Ephesians chapter 5, verse 15
on and through chapter 6, verse 9.
And this is what we would call the Spirit filled life.
This is what the Spirit looks like.
This is what's before us. Maybe you've heard that the
Christian life is a walk. You know, you ever ask somebody
and the men we went up on Friday to out in Victoria Park to grab
a bite to eat and part of the the point of the evening was in
the carpool right up having met here at the church was to
converse one with another, see what God is doing.
Maybe maybe you ask one another on on that night in the car.
How's your walk with the Lord going?
We use that terminology. You know, it's part of our
Christianese. It's built out of what the Bible
teaches us. Here we go all the way back to
the book of Genesis and we see in Genesis that Adam and Eve,
what walked with God, It says there in Genesis 3, and we come
across a fellow called Enoch whose life was marked by this
fact that he walked with God. And it says that he was not for
God took him home. It's a pretty cool story in
Enoch. And then God told Abraham also
in Genesis chapter 17, Abraham, walk before me and be blameless.
David said in Psalm 23, Yeah, though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil because you're with
me. And we love Micah.
Chapter 6, verse 8, it says that our lives were to be about this,
to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
So we can see that through the Scriptures Old Testament, New
Testament, that our, our life is described as a walk with God in
the New Testament, 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 7 says that we
walk by faith and not by sight. So the life lived with God is a
walk. And what this speaks of is, you
know, when you walk, you're in continuous movement, right?
There's there's action in a direction and it speaks
specifically in the Scriptures of our conduct of life.
What marks, what are the features, what are the
attributes of our life here on earth?
That's our walk. So now that we know what it
means to walk with God, the walk is to be the lifestyle, is to be
the action, is to be our conduct, is to be empowered by
the Holy Spirit, our lives as Christians, our walk with God is
to be spirit empowered. You see, we need the Holy Spirit
in us to live this life that we're called to live.
We can't do it in our own strength.
We need some supernatural empowerment to make possible
what we read of in the Scriptures to be those features,
those attributes, those marks, those characteristics of the
Christian life, the Christian walk.
We're about to see this now in Ephesians 5.
We're not reading it, but in in verse 2 and Paul, the writer to
the church at Ephesus, he asked them to walk in love in verse 2.
So all through this chapter, there's this idea of walk in
verse 8 there to walk in the light.
And verse 15 where we're going to start tells us he says, see
then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but
as wise. Now once again, walk, walk, he
starts with in verse 15, the Greek word.
There'll be a little, little bit of Greek language tonight
because it just helps to enhance the meaning of some of the
phrasing that Paul utilises here in our English, the word is
peripeteo. Peripeteo for walk.
And again, this speaks of conduct, of life.
So it's not just a a walk on a Sunday to church.
It's not just when we come back to church on a Wednesday
midweek. It's our whole conduct of life.
That's what's wrapped up in this Greek word, peripeteo, this
English word walk. See then that you walk.
It's the 24/7. It's the 365.
It's the every day of the week. Here is what your life is to be
marked by. Here is what your walk is to
look like. And so it says here, walk live.
May your conduct, may your action walk.
Live circumspectly, Circumspectly.
That's not a word that we typically use.
It's not part of my everyday vocabulary.
I don't know if it's a part of yours, but good luck to you.
If it is circumspectly, what does that mean?
Mean here? The Greek, again, the word
meaning to walk very carefully. Maybe your translation has that.
Maybe it's walk deliberately or with deliberation, walk with
focus, walk with discipline, walk with intentionality.
And so now we're starting to put it together that that my
Christian life, my Christian walk in the spirit is not just
this kind of haphazard bumbling about, you know, sometimes you
might go for an afternoon stroll.
We would say that physically and we've got no direction, no
purpose to it. It's just I'm going for a walk.
That's not what our Christian life is about.
We're not bumbling and fumbling our way through our days here.
Our walk, our our motion, our movement, our experience with
God, our life with God. There's some deliberation to it,
some intentionality, some focus, some deliberation.
There's a a purpose and a goal. It's careful.
That's what circumspectly means. So he says walk carefully, work
circumspectly. It's get this, it's watching
Jesus, watching Jesus. My wife and I, we've, you know,
dabbled with walking over the years.
And it's very, very tricky walking with her because she's
always about, you know, 5 to 10 steps ahead of me.
I'm like, I thought we were walking together.
Just slow down a bit. Oh, you're walking too slow.
And we have this and so I'm watching April in my walk to see
where we're going. It's just slow down a bit,
honey. And it's like, no, I'm not
walking with you if you're going to race.
So all of these sorts of conversations happen with us,
right? It's supposed to be a walk, but
our walk is with Jesus. And so our walk is that we're
watching, we're careful, we're focused, we're disciplined,
we're connected to Jesus. That's our our walk
circumspectly. And so Jesus told us to watch
and pray, to be focused in that way that, you know, enter into
temptation. That's what he said to his
disciples. So there's something to this.
And so the first mark of a spirit filled life, what does
the Holy Spirit look like? The spirit filled person.
So the spirit in US is that our lives are intentional that that
it's about wise God conscious living.
And Paul says that our walking should not be as fools, but as
wise, building on this in verse 15.
Now we know because we're we're good Bible students here that
the best commentary on the Bible is the Bible.
And so when we're looking at a term like fools, we go, what's
the Bible definition of what a fool is?
And the Bible tells us Psalm 14, verse one, Psalm 53, verse one,
this, that the fool has said in his heart that there is no God.
There's the definition of a fool.
And so the fools here are the unbelievers.
And so here he's starting to paint a contrast going on.
OK, the Spirit filled life, The Walking circumspectly with Jesus
is to be wise and not as foolish.
But the foolish, they're walking, they're living, they're
conducting their lives. There's action, there's certain
things going on, but there's to be a marked difference between
our lives as believers and the the fool, by definition, the
unbeliever in God. That's what he means here by
saying walk wisely, not as fools.
So the contract contrast is that our walk, our lifestyle, our
conduct is to be different to the world around us.
That's different. You know, you're here Sunday
night. For some of you, this is the
second time that you've been in church.
Probably your neighbours. No, that's not a part of their
walk, their experience. So there's something different
going on here and he continues and builds on.
So here's why our lives are to be marked with this difference.
Verse 16 now not as fools verse 15 but as wise redeeming the
time because the days are evil. The Greek word for the phrase
redeem there exaggerazo comes from 2 words Ek even though it's
EX in the the condensed form, the combined form which means
completely out of and agarazzo, the second part means to buy up
the opportunity. So here's why I highlight this.
It was used back then. So the audience they would hear
this, it's written in Greek and they would hear it and they
would immediately understand Paul's reference.
The reference was its use was in the buying of a slave out of off
the slave market. You know the 1st century Roman
Empire 10 Many speculate more like 20% of the population were
slaves. As Rome would conquer and defeat
various nations, those defeated peoples would become slaves of
the Romans. And so slavery was something
that was very well known and the people versed in the language
and terminology and the experience, particularly in this
time. And so this process of buying a
slave off the market is, is what Paul uses metaphorically here in
the language to describe how we need to buy up in our walking
the opportunities that we have for us in our lives as
believers. Making the most of the time,
buying out of slavery every minute, every hour is to be
focused on that which we're called to as believers.
Because the days are evil and we're walking amongst fools.
And man, you don't have to watch the news for very long to figure
out that the days are evil, right?
There's a whole heap of tomfoolery going on out there.
If there's anything needed right now in this chaotic world, it's
this. It's believers walking in the
light, empowered by the Holy Spirit, focused in on the
mission of Jesus. Right?
Because there is a messed up world out there of people
bumbling and chaotically walking in the dark.
But we're walking in the light with the Spirit guiding us,
taking and making the most of the time that we have in the
days in which we we live. OK, so to do what?
With that time, Paul gives us the answer.
Now you know, here tonight, we're here to worship God.
We've done that in song. The Bible tells us that we're
made to worship. Revelation 411 gives us an
indication of that, that we're that we're made to glorify God.
We're here tonight to study God's word and we need his daily
bread. Jesus said that man shall not
live by bread alone, but by every word that precedes mouth
of God. We're also called to the mission
that Jesus called his disciples to.
It's called the Great Commission that we're called to declare the
good news of Jesus Christ, the gospel.
Now here's what I want to say in that, you know, when we are in
eternity, we're going to be able to worship God, right?
We're going to join with all of those that have been washed by
the blood of the Lamb before us to worship Him and to sing and
to lift our voices in our resurrected bodies.
No, no restrictions in our voices.
To be able to praise him, to sing on key, to sing with all
that's within us, to not have, you know, emotions get the
better of us and be able to just declare how good and how
wonderful he is. We get to do that for eternity.
How awesome that will be. When we're in eternity, we're
going to be able to sit at the feet of Jesus.
John chapter 1 tells us in the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God, or is God.
And so we're going to be face to face with the very Word that we
devour and that we love and that we enjoy studying for all of
eternity. But you know what we cannot do
in eternity, that we can only do here now on earth, is to win
souls to Christ, is to share the good news of Jesus.
So that's what we buy out the opportunity to do now for the
days of evil to be about winning souls under Jesus, to make the
most of the time. A Holy Spirit filled life is one
that is burdened for the lost. This is what the Spirit filled
life looks like. Is is Paul's first port of call.
It's not wandering aimlessly through life.
It's knowing that your time matters, that your days are
short, and that your life is part of God's saving plan.
So what does that look like? Buying up the time with that as
a focus. Maybe it's instead of bingeing
Netflix and devouring the next series, it's going, you know,
I'm going to, I'm going to give my mate a call.
It's been a while since I spoke to him.
He's an unbeliever. He needs Jesus.
I might use that time to just catch up with him and just
continue to share the good news of Jesus.
Maybe instead of scrolling for 30 minutes through my social
media feed, it's maybe, yeah, I'm going to take 5 minutes to
pray for someone and redeem that time and commit them to the Lord
again. You see the the spirit filled
person sees time as precious because verse 17 he says,
therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the
Lord is. Oh, and they're the most popular
sermons, aren't they? What is the will of God for my
life? And people come and they go, oh,
they want to find out. It's a wonderful study.
God's will for my life. Absolutely.
And I'll connect it to these verses here tonight.
God's will is that souls get saved.
God's will is that souls get saved. 2 Peter 39 He says God
isn't willing that any should perish, but for all to come to
repentance. That's God's heart, that's God's
will. On Timothy 2 verses 4 to 5 it
says this God desires all men to be saved and come to the
knowledge of the truth. So the will of God, what God
desires is souls to be saved. And he has chosen us for
whatever reason. And the angels look at it and
go, they're just mind blown. Why has he chosen them?
But he has chosen you and I, spirit filled believers to be
about the business of connecting souls to Jesus, of redeeming the
time for the days of evil. Walking is wise, carefully,
circumspectly, for this is the will of God.
Verses 1516 and 17 and now verse 18, the power for this Christian
walking and really the verses that have come before that have
kind of been a little bit of the entree.
This is the main course now, right?
This is really the meat of the message.
Verse 18. Here it is.
Paul now shifts from describing how we walk to what empowers.
That walk and so this verse, think of it as as the engine of
everything that follows. You know, you're thinking,
hearing this. Yeah, I want to be wise.
I want to redeem the time. I want to walk circumspectly,
but I don't know how to do it. I can't do it in my own
strength, my own energy. I see it as important.
But help me God now, verse 18, here it is.
Do not be drunk with wine in which is dissipation, but be
filled with the spirit. It's what we've been focusing
on. This is what we've been teaching
through and studying. So the word dissipation in
English, again, probably not part of your regular vocabulary,
but in the Greek asotia, the A at the beginning means without.
And so Tia, the root of that word is where we get salvation
from. All right, so to put the 2 words
together, associa dissipation, it means without salvation, do
not be drunk with wine. Wherein is dissipation without
salvation, Not salvation as in the saving of our souls, but
without deliverance. So he said don't be drunk with
wine where you aren't like you look like you are anymore.
That's kind of the the point behind it.
And that really makes sense to us now when we hear it that way,
because we all know, we've all seen, we've all experienced
people, you know, a timid person.
Couple of drinks in, it's like, man, that's got the better of
them in a pretty powerful way. Wherein is dissipation.
But notice he says that we would be filled with the spirit.
Don't be drunk with wine where you aren't looking like who you
should be, where you're without salvation almost, but be filled
with the spirit. Now that word filled again.
The Greek play OO is how you pronounce that.
Even though it looks like Pleeru play OO, there's a few different
uses of it. And I think they're all kind of
helpful for us in understanding what it means to be filled by
the Spirit, because immediately our minds go to those kind of
hyper Pentecostal experiences of filled with the Spirit and out
of control, right? They would use it.
Back then sailors had a use for it, that Greek word play, to
describe how the winds filled the sails of a boat, carry that
boat on to its destination and so to the picture, The imagery
connected to the life of the Spirit, the walk of our lives,
our conduct is that we allow the Spirit of God to fill the sales
of our lives and carry us to the destination of becoming like
Christ. That sanctification process at
work in us. The second use of this word play
row OO was used by by bakers or or or cooks to describe often
their use of salt and it's permeation through through meat
in particular. You know, in the days of lack of
refrigeration back then, salt was a great preserver, but also
we enjoy it today and they would use it back then for the same
reason for flavouring. And so too, we should allow the
Spirit of God that the filling of the Spirit to permeate our
lives, to give our lives flavour, the flavour of Christ
in particular, so that when people come around us, they
should be kind of taste a bit but different, right?
There's is that salt in you? There's different to to you in
the way that you respond to situations, to circumstances.
Your colleagues at work, they notice that they sense that
your, your family, your loved ones, the people that you come
in contact with that there's something, I don't know, just it
tastes different about you. So they would use that.
You got a different flavour than everybody else has.
That's why Matthew 513, Jesus uses this language that we're to
be the salt of the earth. So that's the second use of the
word. Now the third use of the word is
really more what's used here and it spoke of total control.
Total control. The Spirit filled life is a life
that is totally controlled by the Holy Spirit, just as alcohol
controls an individual. So we should allow the Holy
Spirit to have total control of our lives.
So who's controlling your life today?
You know, as you're as you're looking at your life, as you're
examining your walk, thinking about the day to day, the 24/7,
the 365, what those hours look like circumspectly, carefully,
who's controlling it? And because what I'm about to
say to you in in verses and what's ahead, what's the flow
there and how far we get into these verses, time permitting,
is not even possible without the Holy Spirit play 00 filling you.
You have to be filled. You have to be empowered by the
Holy Spirit. If this is in any way possible,
you and I we need to be empowered and that word power
used in Acts chapter one verse 8.
Remember Jesus said to the disciples that they were to wait
in Jerusalem, He would ascend into heaven, that the Holy
Spirit would come upon them and he would fill them with power.
Again, the Greek word is dunamis, where we get in English
the words dynamite dynamic from. So you can really understand
that the power here that's utilised in that terminology is
that when the Holy Spirit would come upon them, there would be
this dynamic shift transformation in their lives
that would come from God, the Spirit in them.
And so to even do anything that we're about to read about, it's
impossible without the dynamic power of the Holy Spirit filling
our lives, controlling us. And So what does the Spirit look
like in the believer, You know, running around doing cartwheels,
flipping on the stage, me swinging off the the lights up
here at the front, no rolling on the floor and laughter.
Now it's all as we're about to read here from verse 19 in
chapter 5 through into verse 9 of chapter 6.
It's evident in our worship under God.
It's evident in our interactions one to another in the church.
It's evident not only in the church life, but in the home
life, in our marriages. It's evident in our parenting.
It's evident in our response to our parents.
It's evident in the family. It's evident in the workplace.
That's what's before us. So what does a spirit filled
person look like? What does the Holy Spirit look
like in our lives? Not something wild or strange,
but someone deeply stable, Worshipful, thankful, submitted,
loving, reflecting God in what they do, in what they say.
So let's look at as many verses as we can in the time that we
have left. Verses 19 through to 21 to begin
with speaking to one another. So verse 18, don't be filled.
So don't be drunk with wine, which is dissipation.
Be filled with the Spirit. Now here's what that will look
like speaking to one another. Verse 19 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. Verse 20 in the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of God.
Let's look at those verses. We want to know what does the
Spirit look like? What does the Holy Spirit look
like? We're we're really considering
what does the Spirit filled life look like?
Verse 19, it's Worshipful speaking in Psalms.
You know, the book of Psalms in the Old Testament was really the
hymn book for the nation of Israel.
These were the songs that they would sing as part of their
worship. These were songs that Jesus
himself sang with his disciples, with his family.
And hymns are those songs that you know, I, I handed down
through church history, those songs that that point to God
Almighty, that stir up within our hearts a passion for his
name. Spiritual songs are those songs
often birthed out of hurt, out of trial, out of tribulation in
our lives, our spirit crying out unto God, connecting our spirits
with with he's and saying, God, I need you, I need you in this
moment in this circumstance. And it's just that connection
that we're having bursting forth in song as as an expression of
emotion within us, singing and making melody in your heart to
the Lord, you know when you're Worshipful in this way.
And we know that worship is so much more than just songs,
right? But it's a whole attitude that
that all that we can do, it can be worship.
But there's something special in in singing in psalms and hymns
and making melody with our hearts unto the Lord.
There's something meaningful in that, right?
No matter what life throws at you, that capacity to be able to
worship in light of that in response to that ever found
times or experiences in your life where you go, man, I just
need to put on some worship music right now.
We'll we'll say I just need to steal and and quiet my heart in
the presence of God because man, there's just something that's
gone on at work or something going on in my family or in in
this relationship and I just need to connect with God and it
breaks out in worship within us and something happens within us.
There's something supernatural going on in that.
It's the spirit filled life at work.
And it's more than just, you know, because the world sings
songs too, doesn't it? But there's a difference in in
songs that we sing as worship to what the world sings as worship.
You can see what the world worships in the songs that they
sing. They're worshipping this
relationship, this experience and country music.
You know, my dog died, my pickup truck's broken down, and I don't
know what's going to happen, and woe is me and all of that.
But you and I, we worship. There's something different
going on in our songs. It's Lord.
I lift your name on high. Lord, I love to sing your
praises and worshipping songs. You know, like tonight.
It's not just a warm up for the message or just a thing where
you know, I can kind of arrive a little late.
No, it's there's something a little more significant.
There's intimacy and heartfelt expression going on connection
with God Almighty in worship, in psalms and hymns and spiritual
songs. Ever known someone?
Maybe you're it but and I just struggle to sing a song in key,
but boy, when I worship, tears streamed down my face because
there's a connection to the spirit.
Someone going through a difficulty illness, maybe it's
cancer, still lifting their hands in praise, worshipping
God. That's what the spirit filled
life looks like. Worship breaks forth and then
thankfulness. Verse 2020.
Now again a lot of people want to know what is God's will for
my life? God just direct me, guide me.
Here's 11 Thessalonians 5 verse 18 in everything give thanks.
And then Paul says, for this is the will of God, the will of God
to be thankful, to be grateful. God wants us so we are as spirit
filled people. One of the marks, one of the
attributes of us is to be Worshipful, yes, but is to be
thankful.