That regeneration, the new birth, is exclusively the work of God the Holy Spirit, not human effort or outward ordinances. It explains that true regeneration involves a new nature and a new life imparted by the Spirit, resulting in a transformed attitude toward God and sin, rather than mere moral reformation or emotional excitement. The message contrasts the Spirit's work with counterfeits like external behavior patterns or enthusiastic raptures, highlighting that genuine transformation is an inner work of God that leads to a life lived for His glory. Ultimately, it calls believers to be continually filled with and controlled by the Holy Spirit, allowing God to have more of them rather than seeking more of God.
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This morning I'd like us to think together concerning the work of the Holy Spirit or the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the work of regeneration. You and I know that the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ was the great promise of the Old Testament. I wonder how well we realize that the coming of the Holy Spirit is the great promise of the Church Age for the believer and for the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ. I wonder how well we realize that the Holy Spirit is the foundation and the means of continuance of the Church and the believer in this world, and that the promise of the Holy Spirit is to the church and to the believer only.
I wonder to what extent this is a practical reality in your lives. I believe that the prayer we should most often pray as Christians is that we may be kept in a state of fullness of God the Holy Spirit. He is my greatest need. He is your greatest need. If we ignore the Holy Spirit, we are ignoring God the Father and God the Son. You see, the Holy Spirit represents the person of our Lord Jesus Christ in this world today.
He supplies the place of Christ. He does the will of Christ and He affects whatever Christ undertakes to do or to affect. We are utterly dependent. upon him. So often, you know, we think everything depends upon us. I expect you've heard the story. It's often told in missionary rallies at the end of a message, a sort of a vision of heaven. And the Lord Jesus Christ is supposed to be there, and the angels are gathered around him. And they say, now you have finished the work of redemption. Are you returning to the world yourself to tell the people of the world concerning salvation?
And in this supposed dream, the Lord Jesus says no. And then they ask again, well, are you going to send us the angels back? No. Well, then what is your plan? And then I've left a little company of men and women down there on earth, and I'm depending upon them. And what if they fail? I have no other plan. That's a lovely sentimental story, but it's a hundred percent wrong. The Lord Jesus Christ has not left the work of salvation to you and me. God has a purpose. God has a plan. And God himself is carrying out that plan.
God the Holy Spirit is at work today. The Acts of the Apostles may be better called the Acts of the Holy Spirit. God does not depend in that sense upon you and me, but rather we have the priceless privilege of cooperating with God in the work that He is doing. And all that we might realize this more and more. A few verses in Scripture. The first I shall just quote from Second Corinthians chapter five, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. All things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new.
For Christians are a new order of being, the new humanity. John chapter three, verse five, Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit. He cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Marble not that I said unto thee. Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof. But canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit. John chapter one, verse twelve, but as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become the children of God, even to them which believe on his name which were born.
Now listen, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Titus chapter three, verse four. But after that the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing or new birth of the Holy Ghost, which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ, our Savior. Regeneration alone makes possible the new humanity.
And this is the work of God the Holy Spirit. For God the Holy Spirit is the giver of spiritual life. Regeneration rests upon the finished work of Christ at Calvary. The cross of Christ is atonement for sin and makes salvation possible. The Holy Spirit makes salvation a reality to the individual by the new birth, by birth from above, by regeneration, which is the impartation of spiritual life.
This matter of being born again is not believing information alone. I think this Ruth Paxson put it well when she said, there is something to be believed, but there is someone to be received. We have the picture in Genesis one, two. The world was in chaos, and the Spirit of God is brooding over that chaos. And in this age of grace, The world is in spiritual chaos. And again the Spirit of God is brooding over this chaotic spiritual darkness and calling men and women into spiritual life.
What is the nature of regeneration? The work of the new birth is always, without exception, ascribed to the Holy Spirit. We are born again. We are born from above. We are born of the Spirit. Unfortunate today, we tend to depend too much upon natural, carnal means to effect salvation, not always remembering sufficiently that salvation is of the Lord. We are born not on the basis, are born again not on the basis of natural things, the things of flesh and blood.
People are born again not as the result of human effort, not of the will of man. The will of man, the ways of man, the methods of man are rejected as any effective means of regeneration. For salvation, one hundred percent is of the Lord. It is God's work from start to finish. It's all of grace. I believe today, We are in the midst of a desperate decline in which we are turning away from utter dependence upon God the Holy Spirit. And we are depending more and more upon modern means of communication, the mass media of communication.
We are depending upon human techniques. We are taking the methods of salesmanship of Madison Avenue, New York. I've heard Christian workers today say that we believe in the American way and that's the way people get saved or they're going to use the way of American free enterprise system competition salesmanship to affect salvation I can think of one organization that has a staff of workers and everyone has to memorize a certain message it's called the clincher because it gets results and it always does And so all the workers have to memorize perfectly the clincher, a message that lasts about twelve minutes.
And that message is cleverly developed with argument and presentation to get results. And they get results. But I spoke to one such worker who'd spoken about having such large numbers of converts on the campus. And he said, do you know not one of my converts will speak to me now? Well, it was perfectly obvious because their minds had been manipulated and against their better judgments they'd said, yes, I'll take Christ. And the next day they were ashamed of themselves. They'd be made fools of themselves in front of others. Oh, yes, we can get results. I was talking to one worker in Southern California the other day.
who is bewildered somewhat because of the fact that on certain occasions there are large numbers of professions of conversion, perhaps from some camp or something like that. But afterwards we never see them. You can get results. But are they men's results or God's results? Regeneration, true regeneration, is always consistent in character and nature. even though the situations may vary as to when and how and where God the Holy Spirit touches a man. The work of the Holy Spirit is uniform. It is always consistent.
Generally speaking, men and women are born again as the Word of God, that incorruptible seed is declared. as men and women are exposed to the Word of God, the truth of God. The Holy Spirit quickens into life in the person who hears that incorruptible seed of the Word and is born again. The state of all men when they are unregenerate is the same. The state of all men when they are saved actually is the same in Christ.
You see, regeneration does not consist in any particular outward ordinances. It isn't a matter of joining a church. There are so many people who think that if they join a church, then that is what is needed. And as I heard someone once say, if I went into a stable and started a week there, that wouldn't make me a horse. Just because people go into a church, it doesn't make them Christians. And yet I hear all sorts of people say today, well, the main thing is to get people into the church, get them to join the church, and then maybe they'll get saved. And so there's this great effort to build up numbers, to get people baptized.
I know one church that keeps the baptistry full, full of water all the while, and as soon as they can get someone coming forward, they dunk them immediately into the water. Extraordinary, but this is a fact. It doesn't depend upon outward ordinances, church membership. It doesn't even depend upon correct doctrine because you can believe the correct doctrine and be lost. Many shall say, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name and in thy name done many mighty works from the Lord shall say, depart from me. I never, never knew you. Regeneration does not consist in moral reformation.
It is possible today to condition men and women so that their lives are different. But just because a person's life is different, it doesn't mean he's born again. It is only the secret, mysterious work of God the Holy Spirit on the soul of man that results in regeneration. It is the infusion of a new spiritual principle that relates man to God. You see, the new creature is a moral man, but a moral man is not necessarily a new creature.
You see, the essence of regeneration is we have a new attitude toward God, a new attitude toward sin in relation to God. It isn't merely a different external behavior pattern. You know, we're doing all kinds of things with behavior today. You can give people drugs and calm them down quite a lot, and they behave very, very nicely. In a certain state in the United States, they're using some of the things that Huxley and the Brave New World prophesied, and with these juveniles delinquently of little microphones under their pillows at night that all night long are... getting moral precepts till finally a pattern seems to be worked into the brain of these delinquents so that they begin to think that to live properly is the best way.
And we are faced with a situation today of a thousand and one counterfeits of regeneration. External behavior pattern is not regeneration. That is the reason why I question the whole principle of Christian education with their rules and pledges, as though Christian character can be produced by an external environment. It isn't by external restraint, but the inner constraint of the Holy Ghost. And I fear we're in danger today of substituting rules and regulations and external behavior patterns. whereby you can get nice little people with their teeth clean and their hair combed, never going to movies and never smoking a cigarette, and going to church twice on Sunday, and they think they're Christians.
But remove them from that environment, and they go to their own place because water finds its own level. One of the great problems today is that people are being sustained by external environmental pressure rather than by the inner working of God the Holy Ghost. You see, the Christian man is not other-directed, if I may use terms of sociology, but he's an inner-directed man. He has a Holy Spirit within him. He has a desire to please God. He has a sense of right and wrong and a responsibility to God. He is not living his life before men to try to be accepted in a certain group by a certain set of do's and don'ts. He's not interested in the group primarily.
He's interested in God. It's a vertical relationship. That is regeneration. So regeneration does not consist in moral reformation and a particular behavior pattern. It doesn't just consist in a new course of action. You see, it's possible today by means of eloquence and oratory and persuasion and preaching to get a man to make a decision, to get a man to join a church, to get a man to give up drink. to persuade a man to do this and that and the other thing.
Because he has a sense of imperative that he's got to behave in a certain moral way. And he can go on thinking that this new pattern of behavior is a new birth. But it is not. The new birth will result in a pattern of behavior pleasing to God. But an external behavior pattern is not the new birth itself. You see, the new birth regeneration produces fruit, spiritual fruit, to the glory of God, not a moral life to the glory of man. May I repeat that? A man who is truly regenerated will have the Holy Spirit within him, and the fruit of the Spirit, which is the grace and character of the Lord Jesus, will be produced to the praise of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But man produces a moral life to the praise of man, not to the glory of God. And you see, the same thing is so true in so much of our preaching about sin today. It is not sin so much in relation to God as sin is an unaccepted behavior pattern in society. And so we are getting all sorts of conforming people. But I wonder how many I wonder how many in our churches, even in our assemblies, are regenerated, are truly born again. Again, regeneration doesn't consist in enthusiastic raptures.
All sorts of excitement and joy and thrills and bubbling and all that kind of thing. Anyone who think that becoming a Christian was a kind of a spiritual Coca-Cola or something? It's nothing of the kind. incidentally the Holy Spirit always works in a way that is consistent with our human nature so that if a man happens to be or a woman happens to be an extrovert and a sort of an enthusiastic individual he'll express his Christian faith in that way but if another individual happens to be quiet and rather more introverted and within himself he'll have a calm a quieter expression of the Christian faith So it's utterly wrong to think there's got to be some burst of enthusiasm.
I remember one of our intervarsity staff some years ago meeting one of the athletes who'd been converted and was being toted around on aeroplanes to give his testimony at the youth circuit of rallies. And this was in USC. And my friend met him, and he's like, oh, it's terrific to be a Christian. And so I said, what's it mean? I said, I can't describe it. It's marvelous. It's tremendous. I'm just so happy. I'm just as happy as can be. And so he went on talking like this. And finally, my friend said, well, tell me, what does the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ mean to you? He sort of paused and stretched and said, he said, well, I know Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. and that boy had no idea of the cross work of Christ on the sin question, yet he was going around the country, giving his testimony in enthusiastic raptures.
And so we've got to be aware of the danger of that which is counterfeit. You see, do we realize the obstacles there are to regeneration? We can do no more than touch upon these things. What is the condition of man, fallen man, outside of Christ? First of all, he is in a state of darkness and blindness toward God. He is absolutely blind to spiritual truth. And only the Holy Spirit can dispel that blindness, not argument, not information, but only God the Holy Spirit. It's possible for a blind man spiritually to be taught by memory, the way of salvation.
and yet to be in spiritual darkness. It's only the Holy Spirit who can come in and lighten that darkness. For a blind man cannot discern or spiritually understand spiritual things. An unconverted man is in a state of depravity that affects his will, it affects his mind, it affects his affections, it affects his desires. The Word of God teaches us in Corinthians that the natural man cannot understand the things of God and the natural man is incapable of receiving the things of God. He can respond to human pressure and eloquence, but it's only by the Holy Ghost.
His mind can be opened up to understand Christ crucified for him. It's only by the Holy Spirit. He can act upon it. He can receive the Lord Jesus Christ. See, the natural man is a natural moral impotence to put his trust in Christ. There's a theological seminary in California that's very famous and it is a denominational seminary. And there's a professor there that teaches, wrongly I believe and heretically, that man retains sufficient of the divine image that he can, unaided by the Holy Ghost, repent of his sins and believe on Christ. That's only a nice way of the old-fashioned modernism of talking about the divine spark within every man.
This isn't palatable. We don't like the doctrine of total depravity whereby we are so corrupted that we are incapable of ourselves of putting our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Again, man is spiritually dead. and he cannot resurrect himself in the spiritual life. He is cut off from the life of God. He is inert and incapable of spiritual action. He is incapable in himself of even responding to the gospel apart from the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God must come upon him to convict of sin, to open his eyes to understand and to believe and to receive Christ.
And if all he does is to respond to human eloquence or oratory or emotion, It will be an emotional reaction that will not last. He will be born of human eloquence. He will not be born of the Spirit. How is a man born again? Personally, I believe it is comparatively seldom that a man hears the gospel for the first time and is converted. I think mostly salvation or regeneration is a process. that ends in a crisis. Often there are people praying for an individual.
Often he's brought under the sound of the Word of God. Often he begins to respond to the Word of God and then finally there comes that time when he puts his trust in Christ. I think we need to study the conditions under which we live when we speak about evangelism today. If you study the preaching in the Acts of the Apostles, particularly to the Jews, you understand the Apostles were preaching out of the context of the knowledge of those Jews of the Old Testament. If you understand the preaching of Moody, he was preaching to a people who were not biblically illiterate. They had a knowledge of things.
But I do not believe that is true of people today. And I am convinced more and more in our assemblies we ought to rethink our gospel presentation. I believe our hackneyed Sunday night gospel meeting needs to be revamped from beginning to end. The seed of the word needs to be sown. We need to understand that the gospel is the entire New Testament revelation, not just the plan of salvation. And I believe if more and more, as we've brought unconverted people into our places of meeting, if we could little by little expound the Word of God and not expect them to believe the first time, there'd be more result.
May I say this, that in our university work around the world without exception, almost every person who gives evidence of true regeneration has been in a Bible class. and has been exposed for three or six months to the word of God and the Spirit of God. And little by little they begin to understand. And little by little they begin to respond. And then suddenly God the Holy Ghost steps in and they're converted. But God the Holy Spirit normally is not working in a vacuum. And I think we need to understand that the people with whom we're dealing today are ignorant.
if you were going to be a missionary in a foreign land. I doubt very much if you'd go to pure pagans and present a gospel message for the first time and accept them to believe. But you teach them. You teach them the truth concerning God. You teach them the truth concerning man. You teach them the truth concerning sin and redemption. And this is a process and it ends in a crisis. And so usually the seed of the word of God is sown. And then there is the watering, and God gives the increase as the seed falls into good soil. There is the illumination by the Holy Spirit. There is the conviction of sin. Sometimes there's even reformation of life.
But none of this is necessarily regeneration. You see, it's possible for the mind to begin to be changed. And yet, by the Holy Spirit, short of regeneration. It's possible for the conscience to be touched and life to be changed short of regeneration. It's possible for the affections to be changed. It's possible for the life to be altered. And I believe all of this is suggested in Hebrews six where we have the picture of the Holy Spirit working in a man. His mind starts to change. His conscience is awakened. His affections are changed. And finally he turns back. It isn't until God, the Holy Spirit, operates upon the will of man, as well as the mind and conscience of man, and until that man wills to turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and cast himself upon the Lord.
And because of the corrupted will, it's only as that will is enlivened and changed by the Holy Spirit, there will be true regeneration. You see, the new humanity needs a new nature and needs a new life. There's very, very much more that we could say. I'm afraid we must leave it at that. But the thing I do want to emphasize is this, that regeneration is God's work, not man's work. We are fellow laborers together with Him. What then is true of a man who does respond with his will and his total self to the Lord Jesus Christ? First of all, he repents.
of his sin, which means he is no longer indifferent to sin, and he considers sin now in relation to God, and he takes sides with God against sin. He has a new attitude toward sin in relation, not to himself and society, but in relation to God. He converts. He's been walking in one direction, and by God's grace he turns around, and now he's walking toward God. It isn't so much that he is converted, that he himself, quickened by the Holy Spirit, himself turns around. He commits himself to God and to his grace.
There is the act of committal, not to an idea, not to a plan of salvation, but to a person who is God, the Lord Jesus Christ. And then there is confession. And personally I believe that the confession spoken of in the work of salvation is a confession I make to the Lord Jesus. There is a place where I confess Christ before men, and that is necessary. But I believe it's absolutely essential that I as the individual have dealings with the Lord Jesus Himself. That's the reason when in dealing with people, most often I say to them, if you understand God's gracious provision, if you're taking sides with God against sin, if you're going to convert and turn toward the Lord Jesus, then it's necessary to you, to the Lord Jesus, say, Thou art my Lord.
It isn't merely repeating the words of John three, sixteen after a person, a parrot can do that. I don't even like to say, do you repeat these words of prayer after me, because that can easily be parroted. Rather, mostly in dealing with students, we say, if you know the plan of salvation, if God is working in your heart, then you get alone and have dealings with God yourself. Because in the final analysis, you must be confronted by God. You must have dealings with God. For salvation is a relationship between God and men as a man is quickened by the Holy Spirit and responds to God. It isn't response merely to doctrine.
It isn't response to a plan of salvation. It's a response to a person whereby I stand naked before the Lord Jesus and I cast myself upon him, confessing him to be my Lord and my God. And unless there is that dealing with the living God, And if it's only a matter of dealing with religious or doctrinal ideas, I think it often falls short of regeneration. Now this will only take place as God the Holy Spirit is working in our hearts. What is the point of all this this morning? It's just to re-emphasize something we already know very, very well. And the subject we've not done any more than just scratch the surface of the subject.
that we are absolutely helpless. We cannot save ourselves, nor can we save anybody else. Salvation is of the Lord. And regeneration is that mysterious work of God, the Holy Spirit, whereby He makes me become aware that I am a sinner and of the fact of sin, not in relation to men and society, but in relation to God. He opens my eyes to understand that when Christ died on the cross he was my sin-bearer who died for me. He quickens my spirit.
He opens my blind eyes. He moves my heart and he gives me that faith whereby I can appropriate the Lord Jesus Christ. And as I appropriate the Lord Jesus Christ, even as God the Holy Spirit came upon the Virgin Mary, so God the Holy Spirit comes upon you and me. And divine life, divine nature is engrafted and imparted to you and me. So we are no longer ordinary human beings who believe certain information. But more than that, with our relationship with the living God, We are members of the family of God we share in the life of God.
Yes. Regeneration is the work of God the Holy Spirit. It is not man's work. This is true of ourselves, and this must be uppermost in our thinking when we consider the matter of evangelization in the world today. this morning and tomorrow and as long as it may take while we are together, I would like us to think through the implications of four commands that we find in the New Testament with relation to ourselves as Christians and God the Holy Spirit.
Perhaps we do not always realize that now that we've been brought into this wonderful relationship with the Lord Jesus, whereby He is our Lord and Savior, God is our Father, we are His children, that on the basis of this relationship, God being God, the New Testament is literally packed full of commandments. not commandments that we must fulfill in order to obtain a standing with God, not commandments that we must obey in order to be accepted by God, but because we are now members of God's family, because we recognize God as God in our lives, the expression of this recognition is found most particularly in obedience.
We must remember that the commands of God to the believer are not optional. They are not suggestions. We cannot come to God's word on a take it or leave it basis. God's word is to be obeyed. These commands we speak of are addressed to believers who already have the Holy Spirit. For when you and I put our trust in Christ, God the Holy Spirit comes to abide with us forever.
I think it is important that we understand what kind of people we really are when we put our trust in Christ. When Stacey Woods was born again, He did not cease to be Stacey Woods. But all that I am naturally with weakness, failure, tendency to sin, self-centeredness, all of that continues. But God has implanted within a new life, a new nature. And because we've already got habits, and a way of life and the general orientation toward the things of this life, the relationship of this new thing that God has imparted to the old self is that we have spoken of as babes in Christ.
For our spiritual life in relation to natural life at the beginning, comparatively speaking, is a kind of a weak, feeble thing. But we are commanded as Christians to grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, this business of making a decision for Christ is only a beginning. In one sense it is final, in another sense it's only a first step of a walk from time into eternity. And so we are babes in Christ, and we are to grow up to be children, to be young men, even to be fathers in the faith.
There is nothing more pitiful in a home than a baby who does not grow up. That child who is unadulterated joy is grief too deep for tears if the child does not develop physically, mentally. I was in such a home, and all that day-by-day brokenness, the baby now eight or nine years of age, but essentially still only a few months old. And if that is tragedy, how infinitely greater a tragedy if you and I have been on the Christian path five, ten, fifteen years, and there's been little progress.
May I ask you a question? Many of you have been to this conference before. Many of you were here last year. Now you're listening to me. In the last twelve months, you've probably paid off more on the mortgage of your home. You've got a greater equity in your business. You've paid off more in your life insurance. your savings may have increased or your goods may have increased. That's natural, that's normal in the way of life in which the average person lives. How much spiritual progress has there been?
How much more of God's Word do you really know? How much treasure have you laid up in heaven? What has been the increase in your eternal investment? Are you more like the Lord Jesus in your thought life, in your desire, in your habits of life? Has sin left dominion than it had twelve months ago? Brothers and sisters in Christ, these are questions of vital and eternal importance.
And the awful tragedy is so few of us are even concerned about them. And yet if we mean business with God, these things should be pressing in upon us. When you look at me, if we should see one another in the goodness of God, in twelve months or two years' time, If we are thinking spiritually, you shouldn't look to see if I'm grayer or have a larger porch or have more wrinkles. You should look at me first of all with spiritual concern. Is there more of the Lord Jesus about that man?
Some Christians are described as being in a state of carnality. What does that mean? It means that they're babes in Christ. They really don't know very much about the Word of God. Their understanding of God Himself and their experiences not a very great thing. They tend to be quarrelsome and divisive. They're self-centered and egotistical. Their reaction is, when they hear of something, how will this affect me? What will this mean to me? What will this do to me? They're concerned about their position, where the people recognize them and give them a place of honor.
They are people who are occupied in their thinking and working more about the things of this life rather than the things of eternity. But it is God's will that we should be in a state of spirituality, for God does not ever regard it as normal and proper and acceptable that there be two kinds of Christians, spiritual Christians and carnal Christians. Carnality is a state of disgrace and reproach. Carnality is a state of sin and we are to go on into our spiritual life. The Apostle John speaks of some Christians who walk in darkness.
They are out of fellowship with the Lord and they are deceived. and others who are walking in the light. We are going to consider four commands in the New Testament with relation to the Holy Spirit. And I really believe that as increasingly these are fulfilled according to God's will in your life and mine, we shall grow in grace, we shall become like the Lord Jesus. In speaking about these matters, there are some people who have based their doctrine upon their experience. That is a very, very dangerous thing to do.
They have some experience and then they build a kind of a truth or a system of truth or a sequence of events. You do this and do that and do the other thing and bingo, you get the result. That's very dangerous. We base our doctrine upon God's Word and we interpret our experience by God's Word, never God's Word by our experience. So some people have been led to talk about a second blessing or a second work of grace. I think in a sense we should be sympathetic with them in their spiritual desire. But what they have done is they have taken the experience of certain Christians. And they've tried to make that normative for all Christians.
And they've built a doctrine on it. There is a subtle danger in testimony and in talking about God's working in people's lives. If we take as normative that way in which God has worked and said God has got to work in that way in everybody's life, God is sovereign. The principles of Scripture are unchanging, but the way in which God applies those principles in your life and my life may differ. And so what we are talking about this morning is not a second blessing. But it is true that sometimes when we enter into a realization of what God has for us, the flood of the glory of God's presence is such that sometimes it almost seems to like a new work of grace and after all in one sense that's always true because he compounds grace upon grace as we go on with him and there should be a fresh blessing in your life and my life every day.
Now will you turn to the epistle to the Ephesians verse eighteen of chapter five and be not drunk with wine wherein is excess but be filled with a spirit. Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with a spirit. Please don't be afraid of this verse. Please do not be afraid of God's command that you and I should be filled with God the Holy Spirit, just because some people have gone off into the wide blue yonder. There's no need for us to be afraid of what God's Word says and what God has provided for us.
Now the real meaning of the expression be filled with the Spirit is this. It does not suggest a once-for-all, final, complete filling. The thought is that we are to be filled and to be maintained in a state of being filled. We are to be constantly being replenished with God the Holy Spirit. It's just like a cup of water under a tap that is always kept filled as the water is pouring in and flowing over. We are to be maintained in a state of fullness with God the Holy Spirit.
A spiritual Christian must be filled with the Holy Spirit, must be kept filled with the Holy Spirit. as he grows in grace. Now the experience of being filled may be a wonderful, almost ecstatic thing in one person's life. In another person's life it may be a very quiet thing. The great mistake has been where people have taken perhaps the circumstances and the emotions surrounding such a thing and built them into the doctrine and that of course is utterly wrong. we are to be maintained in the state of fullness so far as God the Holy Spirit is concerned.
Now there's a very strange reference at the beginning of this verse. Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. And the word used in the case of being filled isn't quite the same, but it almost suggests something like this. Now don't be shocked. Don't be drunk with wine, but be intoxicated with the Holy Spirit. Oh, you say that's excessive. Well, let's see what it really means. On several occasions in the New Testament, we find a reference to the coming of the Holy Spirit in his fullness compared to drunkenness.
Isn't that an extraordinary thing? You remember in the day of Pentecost when the apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit and everyone says why they're drunk. Something's wrong. Why is the analogy used? Well, what happens when a man drinks to excess? What happens when a man is drunk? You see, strong drink as it were takes over and takes control. People drink because they feel weary and they want to get a lift. People drink because they feel self-conscious and unsure of themselves and they want a form of temporary security.
Drinking is often the confession that there's something missing, something lacking, and you want to try to make up what you want by means of something that's artificial. What happens when a man is drunk? There you see him reeling down the street. He's babbling at the mouth. He can't walk in a straight line. He can't think clearly. He's no longer self-controlled. Alcohol has come in and alcohol is now controlling the man. He has not controlled himself. Now what is God saying? We are not to be dominated and controlled by alcohol. We are to be dominated and controlled by God the Holy Spirit.
We are not to find our strength in alcohol. We are to find our strength and sufficiency in God Himself through the Holy Spirit. But please remember this. The biblical ideal is not self-control. May I repeat that? God's will for you and for me is not that we should be self-controlled. It certainly isn't that we should be alcohol controlled. What is it? That we should be spirit dominated, spirit controlled. That just as alcohol takes over and controls a man, no, no, that's not to be true of the Christian.
But God, the Holy Spirit, is to come upon me and to come upon you, and he is to take over, and he is to be in control. But listen, the ideal for your Christian life is not that you'll be a self-controlled man or woman. It is not. It is that you and I should be controlled and dominated and motivated by God Himself. that God comes upon us, that God takes over, that you and I are no longer living ordinary lives. Ordinary lives doing this and doing that according to the ways and thinking and standards of this world. But God has come upon us, even as he came upon Saul of old. And Saul became another man.
God gave him a new heart. He became altogether a different being. No, no, no, our Christian life is not to be lived on the basis of our mental understanding, on the basis of the strengths and talents that God gives us. But God is to fill us with the Holy Spirit so that we become different men and different women. That is God's will. To be filled with God the Holy Spirit means that God the Holy Spirit is fulfilling in you and me all that Christ intended that he should. Remember, Christ sends the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus sends the Holy Spirit into your heart and life and mind.
Christ takes the initiative. The Holy Spirit is Christ's advocate, speaking on behalf of Christ, reminding us of the Lord Jesus, drawing to our attention the will of the Lord Jesus. God, the Holy Spirit, is the regent of the Lord Jesus. And as the Holy Spirit reigns and rules in your life and my life, Christ is reigning and ruling. The Lord Jesus is a purpose for you and for me. He has a will for our lives. He wants to make us a certain kind of men and women. And God the Holy Spirit comes into our hearts and lives to fulfill all that Christ intends.
There is no dissonance, there is no difference in a sense between Christ and God the Holy Spirit. Truly Christ as God incarnate is the man and the glory. For in the person of the Holy Spirit Christ lives in our hearts and His will is fulfilled in our lives. Therefore when you and I are yielded to the Holy Spirit and are filled with the Holy Spirit, we are yielded to the Lord Jesus, and we are filled with all the fullness of the Lord Jesus Christ." Some people make the mistake by thinking that this matter of being filled with God the Holy Spirit is that we get more of God the Holy Spirit.
That is not the thought at all. When you have the Holy Spirit at your birth, you have the Holy Spirit. You can't get more of the Holy Spirit. The thought is that the Holy Spirit can have more of you and me. I remember reading the story about a minister in England, and it had a difficult, discouraging Sunday. And Monday morning, which for some people is the minister's holiday, he hadn't got up quite sufficiently early for breakfast. And downstairs mother had prepared the breakfast, and in that family there were a couple of little girls. One was about three or four years of age, and the other seven or eight.
And mother said to the two girls, run upstairs and see if daddy's ready for breakfast and bring him down. So the youngsters had a race upstairs to see who'd get there first. And naturally the elder girl got to the top of the stairs first, and broke into her father's door, into her father's room, and threw himself into her arms for a hug. And by that time the younger one had toddled upstairs. And the elder girl turned round to her and said, You see, I've got all of Daddy. Kind of a sisterly rivalry. The father put her down and picked up the younger one in his arms. And the little one turned to her sister and said, Well, maybe you've got all of Daddy, but Daddy's got all of me.
That's only a silly little family story. But it... conveys a tremendous truth. In this matter of the fullness of the Holy Spirit in your life and my life, it is not that we carry and plead and pray that God will fill us with more of Himself. We get more of God, that we get more of God's power. No, no, no, no, no. It is that God has more of me. that God has more of my thought life, more of my time, more of my affections, more of my purse, more of my home, that God is filling me.
But you see, as we said the other day, the difficulty is that we don't have room for God in our lives. We treat God as a kind of a guest, a guest, I'm a guest in people's homes very, very often, and they're most gracious. And they say, now we want you to make yourself at home, and they give me a room to sleep in. But while they, in a sense, mean what they say, I know they don't really mean what they say. They'd be very much concerned if I started to walk into their bedrooms and pull open the drawers of their bureaus. They might be a little surprised if I went into the kitchen and opened the ice box and helped myself.
No, I'm a guest in the home. And while they say, be at home, I'm comfortable and at ease. But there's only one house in which I'm at home. And there I can go into any room and open any drawer and go into the ice box and do whatever I want to. It's my home. But you see, we treat the Holy Spirit as a kind of a special guest. We treat God and we have a little place for him in our homes. We may have a text that's speaking about Christ as the head of the home, but it's easy to tack a text up, but for it to be true is another matter. And then we are like that. We have a little time to read the Bible every day, and we set aside so many hours of Sunday to read the Sunday newspaper and look at television.