Under the Influence

Ephesians 5: 1-21
st
Sunday, August 1 , 2010

Years ago in Brandon, I used to work with a guy, and for the sake of the story, lets call him Joe, although that was
not really his name. In those days, he and I spent the better part of every working day driving from one call to the
next, diagnosing and repairing electrical problems in neon and other types of illuminated signage. And he was a
pretty good worker as far as that goes. He showed up most every day and often on time. He worked hard when
there was a need and generally maintained a pretty good attitude about his work. He was reasonably friendly and
for the most part, I enjoyed the time that we spent together.
But almost every day, shortly after leaving work, Joe would get into the booze, and once he got started, he had a
hard time stopping. And the more he drank, the more he changed. He would go from a relatively quiet, almost
shy kind of person to being aggressively friendly, and then aggressively aggressive. He was kind of a mean drunk.
And not a very smart one either. On a couple of occasions, he would decide that for one reason or another, he
needed to be somewhere else and he would never hesitate to get behind the wheel of a car, even after he had
been drinking. On one occasion, after a relatively small binge, he was making his way home from the party when
a policeman noticed that he was driving a little erratically and decided to pull him over. Of course it wasn't his first
offense, and he knew that if he was caught again, he would lose his license and without a license he might also
lose his job. So, with the clear reasoning of an alcohol soaked brain, what do you do if you don't want to get
caught? You run.
The car chase was relatively short and thankfully, no one was hurt. But Joe did end up in jail, and he did lose his
license in addition to a heavy fine that he really was in no position to pay.
Now the reason I tell this story is to make a point; not about drunkenness, but about control; because under
normal conditions in the working environment, Joe was actually a pretty decent guy. He was a good driver and he
never would have dreamed of trying to run away from the police if they had pulled him over for some reason. But
all that changed when he was drunk. It wasn't that he was a different person, it was just that when he was filled
with alcohol, the inhibitions and restraints that made him behave well in normal circumstances seemed to melt
away and he found himself saying and doing things in a completely different way.
Which is what our text means when it says,
Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery.
And the word debauchery here, translated dissipation in some other versions is actually the same word that is
used to describe the life of the prodigal son when he was in the far country. It denotes riotous, excessive, wild
living with reckless abandon to sensuality.
And the thought here is that when a person is drunk on wine or anything else for that matter, they have lost the
ability to effectively control themselves. Not that they are totally out of control, at least not up to the point where
they pass out. They are not possessed. They have not lost the use of their limbs or senses, but the alcohol they
have consumed influences and effects everything that they do. In fact, we sometimes refer to drunkenness as
being under the influence and that's a pretty good way of describing the condition that Paul is referring to here.
In fact, Paul may actually have been thinking of the worship of Dionysus in the world of his day, where people
drank wine until they reached that state where any semblance of rationality was gone and they abandoned
themselves completely to drink, dance and sexuality. This is dissipation, the fragmenting of the person.
Someone who in rational moments recognizes the danger of driving drunk and condemns the practice suddenly
thinks, "I'm OK. I only had a couple. I can handle it." Or Biblically, just think of the tragedy of drunkenness in the
lives of Lot or Noah. Both of them are described as righteous men and singled out for their faith at various points
in their lives, and yet both, under the influence of alcohol got pulled down into illicit sexual behavior that nearly
destroyed them and their families. In all these cases, drunkenness, the state of being under the influence of
alcohol, is the catalyst that leads to other sinful behavior.
As Matthew Henry once said,

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 Drunkenness is a sin that seldom goes alone, but often involves men in other instances of guilt...
But really, this is not a sermon or even a text that is primarily about the evils of drink. I think that there is a more
important reason why Paul frames the contrast in these terms, because when you stop to think about it, he really
could have set any sin in opposition to being filled with the Spirit. He might just as easily have said, do not be
angry, instead, be filled with the Spirit or do not be filled with bitterness, instead, be filled with the Spirit: you get
the idea. But Paul, writing under the influence of the Spirit chooses drunkenness to set a point of contrast
because the parallel explains the proposition. The point of contrast becomes a point of comparison and that gives
us the key to understanding this command.
And make no mistake; there is a very important command for us here in this text. It is the summit of the series of
exhortations that began in chapter 4 and the foundation for Paul's radical vision of living in mutual submission
that continues on into chapter 6. And the grammar itself makes this a commandment not to be ignored. "Be
filled with the Spirit" is spoken in the imperative mood and is no less a command than any other commands in this
passage. In other words, if it's a sin to be drunk with wine, or angry, or impure, or sexually immoral, because
Ephesians says it is, then it's equally a sin to not be filled with the Spirit. To be filled with the Spirit is not optional.
It's imperative and important, and as one author has said, commanded just as much for the kitchen sink, office
desk and drill press as it is for the pulpit.
But another interesting feature of the command is that it is a passive imperative. It is not, "fill yourself with the
Spirit," but be filled. That means that it is not something that we can do to ourselves; it is something that is done
to us. Now at first glance, the idea of a passive imperative may sound almost self-contradictory, but it's not. It
just means that in this matter of being filled with the Spirit, all that we can do is to be sure that we come to God
empty and ready to be filled. The image is that the Spirit stands ready to fill us as soon as and as often as we
stand ready to be filled. But if we grieve the Spirit and quench his work in our lives, then we will not experience
what God stands ready to do. This is where the praying continually and groaning inwardly spoken of by the
Heidelberg Catechism comes in—it is the waiting and praying of the believers in Acts chapter 4. It's not that we
need to persuade God to do something that he's not really ready and willing to do, it's just that we have to prepare
ourselves, to turn away from sin and those other things which tend to fill our lives and come to him, empty and
ready.
But there's one more feature to the grammar of this passage that is not at all evident in our English texts. In the
original, this passive imperative, "Be filled with the Spirit," is stated in the present continuous tense. Now the
truth is, the reason that this is not evident in English is because English does not really have an equivalent tense to
use so the translation ends up being awkward. Something like "be being filled," or "keep on being filled with the
Spirit." It doesn't make for particularly smooth reading, but it's an important point, because we see in the tense of
the command that not only is being filled not equivalent to the baptism of the Spirit, that once and for all event
that takes place whenever we come to trust in Christ alone, it's also not a one time event that takes place later.
It's not a second baptism or a second blessing. It's a state of being continuously renewed and revived by an on-
going work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and lives. And again, we have to keep in mind that the Spirit is ready to
do that work. The Spirit is ready and more than able to fill us completely at any given time.
But as one person has pointed out. We're leaky cups and we always need more. It’s like one of the games that
they occasionally play on Survivor, where the participant has to take a small container, carry water from the river
and fill a bucket. The Bucket is attached to one end of a pole so that as it grew fuller and heavier, the balance
would shift and it would lift a fire up to the point where it could ignite a signal flare. Now it sounds relatively easy.
A few trips from the river to the bucket and pretty soon it would be filled. The thing is, the bucket has a pretty
good sized hole right in the bottom so by the time the players make a second trip to the river and back, if they’re
not pretty quick about it, all the water that they poured in the first time will have spilled out and they'll be right
back to square one. To accomplish the task, the bucket has to keep on being filled. There has to be a continuous
process of filling until the goal has been achieved.
And I think that's a pretty good illustration to help us understand the way that this command is phrased in the
book of Ephesians. We're like the bucket and the Spirit is the water, but because of the holes that sin has left in
our lives, the filling process will never be complete until the goal is achieved and we are made like Christ at the
resurrection. Until that day, we need to keep on being filled. We need to continuously offer ourselves to the Lord
as empty buckets or cups, ready to be filled with the Spirit on an ongoing basis.

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And this is so important. Because there is nothing static about this. We're either being filled with the Spirit or
we're gradually becoming empty, defeated and dry. And the farther we go in that direction, the less we'll know of
the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit being evident in our lives.
So what are we to do? Well, the command is to keep on being filled with the Spirit. Keep on presenting yourself
to God as an empty vessel ready to be filled. Keep on praying. Keep on seeking. Keep on knocking.
That's what Jesus said. In fact, in Luke’s rendering of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus specifically connected the
gift of the Spirit with that command.
(Luke 11:9-13 NIV) "So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and
the door will be opened to you.
And it's worth noting that the tense of the verbs here is the same as what we saw over in Ephesians. In effect
Jesus is saying, "keep on asking and it will be given to you; keep on seeking and you will find; keep on knocking
and the door will be opened."
{10} For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be
opened. {11} "Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? {12} Or if
he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? {13} If you then, though you are evil, know how to give
good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to
those who ask him!"
So keep on asking, keep on seeking, and keep on being filled with the Spirit of God.
And what will it be like--what will it feel like when that happens? Well, this is another of those areas that I
mentioned last week where the Spirit will not be contained in the little boxes of our human reason. There is no
biography of John Q. Christian that presents us with the definitive version of what will happen when people are
filled with the Spirit of God. The truth is, different things happen to different people. In Acts chapter 2, they were
filled with the Spirit and they spoke with other languages.
In Acts chapter 4, they were filled with the Spirit and they proclaimed the Gospel with boldness.
In Acts chapter 6, the church was instructed to choose deacons who were full of the Spirit and of wisdom, and in
order for that to be a search criterion, it had to be something that was evident to those who were looking.
In Acts 13 they were filled with the Holy Spirit and experienced an inexplicable joy in the midst of persecution.
And so it goes. And every time the Spirit comes, he comes in ways that are evident both to those who are being
filled and often even to those around them.
The one thing that is common to all is the fact that when the Spirit came, they knew. It was evident to themselves
and to others that God was working in a supernatural way. He never came in secret. He never came to move
God's people to silence. He always came to stir them up to ministry that would result in the building up of the
body.
And in our text in Ephesians, the structure of the passage gives us yet another clue, and another common element
to all of those occasions when people were filled with the Spirit in New Testament times. There, in verses 18 - 20,
the apostle writes this, and this is why I read earlier from a translation that actually picks up the sense of what Paul
was saying.
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And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing
one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with
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your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord
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Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Be filled with the Spirit, speaking...singing...giving thanks [and] submitting.
So again, the Spirit comes in a way that is evident. He comes in a way that truly changes us from the inside out.
The idea is that as we keep on being filled, that state of being will be evident in our behavior. And this is what I
said at the beginning about being under the influence of alcohol giving us the key to understanding what it means
to be filled with the Spirit. Because none of the behaviors described here are exclusive to those who are filled. We
all speak, most of us sing, many of us give thanks and there are even a few who submit after a fashion but when
we do those things under the influence of the Spirit, they will be done differently than they are when we do them
in our own strength.

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Go back to the analogy. A person can drive a car drunk or sober, but if they are drunk, if they are under the
influence of alcohol, they will drive differently. They'll drive in a manner consistent with the dissipation that
characterizes those who are drunk.
In the same way, as human beings, we will naturally communicate and interact with others, it's just that under the
influence of the Spirit, our speech and our actions will take on the character of Christ.
Filled with the Spirit, our will, that which drives our activity from moment to moment becomes submissive to the
will of God.
Filled with the Spirit, our passions are drawn from heaven's spring instead of the world's sewer.
Filled with the Spirit, we can love what God loves, and grieve over the things which grieve him.
Filled with the Spirit, our emotions--our hearts--begin to resonate in tune with the heart of God. In short, as we
come to be filled with the Spirit and continue to be filled with the Spirit, then we are renewed day by day after the
image of Christ himself.
So you can see just how important this is. Spirit filled living is nothing more or less than true Christian living. It is
living everyday in the grace and the power of God. No wonder the apostle presents it not as an option; not as an
upgrade to the Christian life, but as a command and an indispensable quality.
So the question as we conclude this morning is this. If we are not filled with the Spirit, why not? What is it that
fills our lives? It might be sin, or it might be just a sinful preoccupation with self or with family or with business.
The thing is, to be filled with anything other than the Spirit is to experience less than God's best.
So may God graciously cleanse us of all those things which grieve and quench the Spirit, and may we keep on
asking, keep on seeking, and keep on knocking until we are filled with the Spirit and with power, transformed and
renewed after the image of Jesus Christ.