167 - One Another - Part 6 - Imitating God, Submitting to One Another [C]

Hebrews Lesson 167    July 30, 2009

^NKJ Isaiah 40:31 But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.

In the last several lessons we've been going through the Doctrine of One Another. Last time we got up to about the 14^th point so I'll just quickly review the last 4 for those of you who weren't here the last time. If I took time going all the way back to point 1 we'd never get to the end of this. 

We're to serve one another through love, Galatians 5:13. Now what's important as we look at all of these points - I keep coming back to this because it's just foundational to understand all of these are different facets of love, what it means to love one another as Christ loved us. 

John 13:34, 35, Jesus said:

^NKJ John 13:34 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

^NKJ John 13:35 "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

So the more we think about that model, that pattern that Jesus Christ gave us on the cross and in terms of His love for us, the more then that we can come to understand what it is that we are to do toward one another. That's not based on who the other person is. So often we are prone to react to people.  We're prone to treat them on the basis of how they've treated us. We need to rise above that and treat people on the basis of who God is and what Christ did on the cross. That's the pattern. 

Again and again we see as we do in so many of these passages that the pattern is Jesus Christ; to do it as Christ loved us. For example, we saw last time in the series of verses that deal with forgiveness – we're to be kind to one another, forgiving one another. Forgiveness is that act of kindness towards other believers. Just think how it is when we mess up. We know we've offended somebody. We know we've hurt someone's feelings. We know that we have done things that have irritated, angered them and what a relief that is when we know that we have forgiveness. Forgiveness is a two-way road. We need to be ready to forgive others just as we have been forgiven in Christ.

So we looked at key passages that emphasize this. The whole illustration that the Lord gave as He washed the disciples' feet wasn't to teach being a servant, but serving one another through forgiveness. 

Jesus said:

^NKJ John 13:14 "If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.

The point there was cleansing from sin. So we looked at John 13, also Ephesians 4:32.

^NKJ Ephesians 4:32 And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.

Now I want you to open your Bibles now to Ephesians 4:32. We have never (or I've never) taught through Ephesians. That's one of the things that we have to look forward to in the next ten years is to look at Ephesians and Colossians, to get into Acts, in Romans and probably Matthew. I just might have enough things figured out eventually to teach Matthew. Matthew is again one of the toughest books to teach because of the parables. There are a number of other things that relate to dispensational issues, issues between Israel and the church. So that's a tremendous challenge. 

But Ephesians is a rather simply structured book. If you look at it as a whole, you've got two sections; the first three chapters and the last three chapters.  The first three chapters are more instructive. They're didactic. They are unpacking all that God has done for us in Christ. So there's tremendous theology there that you have to understand before you can understand the application, which comes in the second half of the epistle.

We were laughing about this this morning. On Thursday mornings as I've told you before I meet with a group of pastor's. We usually have anywhere from 3 to 5 here locally and then via video conferencing using Skype or some other internet tool we can have sometimes as many as 4 or 5. We had 5 this morning from around the country, from Tucson, Maryland, Ohio, and Northern Virginia. So we had quite a group. We were talking about different things. One of the men that was here locally commented about the problem that you've heard me complain about before, i.e. the biblical and historical ignorance of Christians today. Not necessarily this congregation, but it's true for us, it's true for me, because we are the products of our glorious public education, government-sponsored education system. 

Our education has been so diluted over the last 100 years that we just don't know things. Those of you who managed to gut it out on Tuesday night when I spent an hour going through Middle Eastern history during the 3^rd and 4^th centuries BC that we were never taught in school at any time. Even though I had a history major in college no one ever talked about those things. You were more concerned about great empires. You are more concerned about Alexander the Great or the Egyptians or of course Rome. Nobody spends any time on many of these other things, not to mention the fact that don't ever study history related to India or China or Japan. There are these huge gaps in our knowledge. 

But when it comes to understanding the Bible there are so many areas Scriptures where a whole chapter is built on history. If you don't understand the details, all the nuts and bolts of the historical events that were occurring 300, 400 years before Christ or 1500 years before Christ; then you can never understand the application. You have to understand what is actually being said in the Scripture before you ever get to the point where you can answer the question - now that I understand the "what"; now I need to answer the question, how does this apply to me? That's just history. 

When you get into Romans and you get into Ephesians and Colossians and you have these tremendous chapters where Paul stacks clause upon clause upon clause using words he coins to put together these great Biblical theological doctrines (and he does this for example in Ephesians for 3 chapters) if you don't understand chapters 1 through 3 you can't really understand why he says what he says in chapters 4 through 6. 

But we live in a world today where people say, "Don't tell me all the stuff in 1 through 3, I just get all confused. I don't want to think about that kind of stuff.  I just want to know how to live so I can have a happy marriage and not be in debt. And I'll raise good kids and they'll do what I want them to do." 

And we don't understand that you can't get to that without understanding that it flows out of a framework of thinking. If we don't understand that framework of thinking about reality and as it is as God has defined it, then we won't understand how to make the nuts and bolts decisions that we all have to make as we live our lives. As a parent you are raising children. A situation occurs and they come to you with a question and there's a conflict. There's an issue related to discipline and children or teaching them. 

You can't call me up on the phone or send me a quick email and say, "Okay, what do I say?" 

That has to come from this reservoir of doctrine that is in your soul that you're able then through the Holy Spirit to put these things together that you have learned and then have wisdom to answer questions for your children or in a situation where you're witnessing to somebody to be able to address questions that they raised or just in terms of conflicts or problems that come up in your own life in work, in ethical conflicts that may arise or in dealing with people, personnel at work whatever that may be. Those decisions that you make really flow out of a way of thinking that gets built into our souls by a study of the Word. 

It doesn't just happen overnight. It doesn't just happen in an instant. We have to study these things. Well, we had a great example I think Tuesday night in hacking our way through the 8^th chapter of Daniel. Then there are a number of other chapters like that in the prophets where unless you really understand all of this ancient history and what was happening then, you never can get to the real application. 

The same thing happens when we get to Ephesians. We're going to be looking at several things from Ephesians 4 through 6 tonight as more of a global survey. But it helps to put things together. I think from our backgrounds so often we're used to looking at Scriptures through a microscopic analytical tool that we lose the broader perspective, the broader context, the connection that verses are a part of sentences, sentences are part of paragraphs, and those paragraphs fit within a thought structure. So we not only have to do the analysis, but we also have broader look from a synthetic point of view where you put things together. There are several of these "one another" passages that we studied that are found in Ephesians 4 and in Ephesians 5. 

So we're to be kind to one another, forgiving each other, Ephesians 4:32. Just so you see where I'm going while I'm here right now, if you look at Ephesians 4:32 it reads:

^NKJ Ephesians 4:32 And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.

Now the problem is that we tend to stop there. Because, what happens next? There is a chapter break. In most of our Bibles there is not only a chapter break, but the editors have put a chapter heading in there or some sort of summary or there's an outline heading that is placed in there, maybe a couple of different lines. I think the Ryrie Study Bible has an outline so you might have a Roman numeral break and then a sub-category break. But the way we read that, it looks like there's a break in Paul's thinking. But in the original none of that was there: no verse breaks, no chapter breaks. If you read it without chapter breaks it reads:

And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you. Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.

That next command in 5:1 "to be imitators of God" is often taken in isolation, right out of context. We start there. But being an imitator of God is connected to the act of forgiveness in verse 32, and then that is connected to verse 2, which is to walk in love How? We get that pattern again. 

^NKJ Ephesians 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.

 ² And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.

Then the text goes on. 

So being kind to one another and forgiving each other is a manifestation of God's character. That's what the Holy Spirit produces in us. Now of course the question is: how in the world does the Holy Spirit produce this character in us? I started on this last time and I want to come back to address it some more tonight.

So just skipping ahead here we get to another verse that we looked at: Colossians 3:13.

^NKJ Colossians 3:13 bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.

The 13^th point is we're to bear one another's burdens. "Bearing one another" is used metaphorically: the idea of lifting someone, carrying someone. It is part of loving your neighbor. It is part of helping them go through difficult times in life. You do that in different ways: prayer and comments that we make as we encourage one another.

Now I want to stop there a minute because we had another interesting conversation this morning talking about encouraging one another. We looked at those verses earlier in our study and we were talking. I was talking to 2 or 3 other pastors and we were just thinking about different ways in which we come together as a body of believers to encourage one another. 

One way we encourage people and we encourage one another in the body of Christ is just by being in Bible class. You never thought about it that way.  See, most of use think – I know I did – I'm going to go to Bible class because of what I'm going to learn tonight and I'm going to be able to grow spiritually. But by being physically present in Bible class, it is an encouragement – first of all towards a pastor. Now I'm not prone to this problem. I know some pastors are. Some pastors are in discouraging circumstances. 

I heard of a guy this last week whose congregation is down to about 16 people. I think they're all qualified for Social Security and ¾ of them are women. They're in a little church on the east side of Houston. They've been surrounded basically by a Hispanic community, and they've been isolated and left there.  In order to get the bills paid they rent the church out to two different Spanish-speaking churches, which is a great thing to do but it's just a struggle. This guy feels so defeated in his ministry because of what has happened to the congregation. 

We all know that we can have – pride and arrogance can enter into this. But that's not what I'm talking about. Those are the negative sides. As a pastor or as anybody who gets up in front of people and speaks, it's a lot more stimulating, it's a lot more encouraging to look out on a crowd of 100 or 200 or 500 or 1,000 than it is to look out on 15 or 20. 

But, there are dynamics that happen here. If we had 100 people showing up here every Tuesday night or Thursday night, it generates an unintended consequence of encouragement. It creates. There's an energy that happens (that takes place) when you have a full house of people. 

I've talked to people who have a background in theater. You look at somebody who's an actor who's going through rehearsal. They're rehearsing a play and there's no audience out there. There's one level of energy. Part of their inner makeup is to reach inside themselves and pull up that energy level. Some nights they can have a full house, but it's a negative crowd. They can just sense that.

"We've got a dead house out there. They just try everything."

If it's a comedy the jokes fall flat; things like that. Then other nights it's just a different crowd of people and there's an energy that comes out of the crowd that the players will work off of. It just sort of drives them to greater skill and greater heights in their own acting. 

The same thing can happen as a pastor. I never forget some of the first times that I spoke at a black church. Now I'm not saying all of you should be saying amen and creating dialogue because that's their culture. But after I got passed the fact that there's a dialogue going on and you're going to say something and you're going to hear several people respond and dealing with concentration issues, after awhile you realize that they're really paying attention to you. What they're saying is what you have just said and it is a way of repeating back. It is a way of learning and concentrating on what the pastor is saying. But it also creates an energy level that as a pastor you start feeding off of. When that energy level is pumping you, your brain's working faster. You're getting more into what you're talking about. They're getting more into what you're talking about. It just creates a great environment for communication. 

If you're standing up here you're talking to people who got up at 5 o'clock this morning, spent an hour in the gym or out jogging and then they had a 30 or 45 minute commute to work. They worked all day and dealt with all kinds of problems and barely made it to Bible class. They haven't even made it home yet. The first time they sit down all day long (And you know who I'm talking about; you know who you are) and the first time you sit down all day and just rest is at 8 o'clock at night at Bible class. By 8:10 you're taking a really good nap. 

I've done that too when I have sat out in the pew. That's just a normal, natural thing. I'm just glad finally you're having a little rest for the day and you can relax. But it makes it more difficult as a communicator to be upfront and try to pull everybody up and get everybody excited or interested or concentrating, especially when you're talking about Antiochus Epiphanes or something like that that's not really dealing with the Bible per se. But you have to spend so much time to get people to the point where you can talk about application that, "Wait a minute! We're out of time now. We'll get to the application next week." Next week it's a slightly different crowd. You've lost them. That's just what happens. 

So there's a different energy level that goes on, visual feedback. See one of the things that we're losing a little bit and I have no idea how much this is; but I know that there are people who live within 20 miles of West Houston Bible Church who could be here tonight; but they're not. Now some of them have legitimate reasons. Some of them can't drive at night. Some of them are more homebound. Others are sick or because of their work/job commitment they just can't do it all. I understand that when it's legitimate. But there are other people who yield to the temptation to say that it's just a lot easier to stay at home and catch it on live streaming. 

"So I'm going to do that." 

See if there were only 20 people here tonight, what would happen is we would kind of look around and go, "Wouldn't it be nice if there were 60?"

When there're more people here it seems like there is a little bit more of an energy going on and we're encouraged. 

"Look!  Other people like me who want to know the Word." 

Let's say that we have a visitor that comes in. The visitor comes in some night, especially during the summer. Sometimes the crowd can get little low. Let's say he came in and ten people were here. What goes through your mind when you go to a church that seats 200 people and you see ten people there? 

"I guess it's not very important. I guess I really don't need to be here. There are just a few people here so this must not be a good thing to be in." 

But, you walk in and there are 80 people, 100 people to 200 people depending on the size of the auditorium; you have a good group there. What you pick up is that this is something that's important. 

"I need to be here."

Now there may be 20 people here. We may have 500 people in Houston all listening on live streaming. We don't know that. I don't know that. I don't see them. So I don't get any feedback off of that. You don't see them. You don't get any feedback over that. So there's something that is important that's non-tangible just about being present in Bible class because it encourages other people because you're present. It encourages the pastor. So we can encourage one another just by our physical presence. 

Also, when we grow as believers we go through different stages of growth. I'll never forget the time I moved back to Houston in '91.  I'd already gone through my master's work at Dallas and gone through doctoral work at Dallas, published a book - all of these things. I moved back from Dallas sitting in the pew in Bible class one night and I thought, "You know I'm not really learning anything new. I've heard all this before. I've heard sometimes better people teach it better. I've heard this man teach it better."  

All these thoughts go on. You've said the same thing listening to me I'm sure. You've heard a tape from something I listened he was teaching the same doctrine so you just tune out. We all do that at times. There's a lot of repetition if you're a pastor because you're trying to remind people, encourage people. 

But when we go through growth stages, when you're a baby believer and if you're really hungry – think about this back when you first started getting excited about learning the Bible – what drove you to Bible class? (Not your car. Not your mother.) What drove you was something internal. You wanted to learn what the Bible said. You had specific questions. You might not have clarified them or focused on them so much, but you had specific questions you wanted answered about your life. What does God want me to do? Who does God want me to marry? What does God want me to do with my career, do with my life? Where should I live? How do I really know Jesus is God? How do I witness to people? What about the heathen? We have doctrinal questions, practical questions; all these kind of questions. You've been sitting in Bible class. Some of you have been sitting in Bible class for 1500 hours, 2000 hours, 3000 hours. A lot of those questions that you wanted to have answered got answered within the first ten or 15 years. 

What happens with a lot of people that you no longer see sitting in church is that they didn't make the transition in growth maturity because what happens is your motivation has to change. 

Initially, like a new-born you're driven more by "I want to get fed and I want to get fed now." You are screaming for milk and for nourishment. But as in the physical life when you hit those adolescent years, something is driving you other than just putting food in your mouth.  Some of you take still need to that by faith I'm sure, but something is driving you other than just putting food in your mouth. It has to do with: "Now I'm a little more concerned about putting good food in my mouth or just utilizing it better." 

You see adolescents and all of a sudden they start getting interested in exercise, sports, different things of that nature and utilizing what they have physically in a better way. 

The same kind of thing happens spiritually. You reach that stage where most of you questions are answered so it's not that you're saying you know it all, but when you come to Bible class it's not so much because you are hungering and thirsting to get answers and to learn more about the Bible because you feel like you are getting a pretty good handle on this. But you're coming because you are beginning to understand who God is and what He expects of you and motivation isn't "I want to get fed." The motivation is "I need to learn more about God." 

There's a shift that occurs there. You want to learn more about God and you want to learn how to live in order to maximize your spiritual life which means you realize you're here to serve God and that's what needs to be driving you and motivating you. A lot of people don't make that shift.

Another thing that happens as you reach that stage is you realize that you're not really there because you're trying to find out the answers to certain things as much as you need to be reminded of promises of God (that God cares.) No matter how bad things may appear in the world, no matter what kind of disasters or adversities you are going through you're reminded that God still has a plan. God still cares about you. God is still faithful to His Word and faithful to His promises and doctrine works. If you hear that every night you somehow make it through whatever it is that you are going through right now. 

So that motivation shifts. It's in that context that we encourage one another just by being in the Word, just by being there and we see other people grow and mature. Some of you have been around others in this congregation long enough to where you have seen tremendous spiritual growth in other people in this congregation. They see the same thing in you. That is a way in which we encourage one another. 

So we looked at 11, 12, 13. Fourteen was that we were to show tolerance for one another, Ephesians 4:2. To lead into where we are going I want you to turn to Ephesians 4:1. Ephesians 4:2 doesn't operate in a vacuum. 

The emphasis here is of course that we are to bear with one another which means to show tolerance or put up with one another's weaknesses. It's the Greek word there anecho, to endure patiently. It's used both in Ephesians 4:2 and Colossians 3:13 where it's stated:

^NKJ Colossians 3:13 bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.

But Ephesians 4:2 is out of the previous sentence, and it's part of a sentence that extends down through several verses. Verse 1 reads:

^NKJ Ephesians 4:1 I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called,

Which means he is begging them; he is challenging them. I think is a better word in our context. He is challenging them to walk worthy of the calling with which they were called. 

Now the main verb there is to walk. Now this word "to walk" is used 6 times in the next 2½ chapters: chapter 4, chapter 5 and the first part of chapter 6.  This word walking is repeated several times so that the theme of chapters 4 through 6 is talking about walking. You walk in chapter 4; you walk in chapter 5 until you get down to the armor of God. Then what do you do? Just stand. So there is an important shift there. You walk, you walk and you walk; and then you stand in Christ. The walking is talking about lifestyle. It was a metaphor for how a person lived their life and what characterized their life. So this governs everything that is said in these 3 chapters is a description of the Christian lifestyle and what is to characterize the Christian lifestyle. 

Now if we think about other passages that we've gone to, for example we are to walk by means of the Holy Spirit, Galatians 5:16. This idea of walking is a fundamental metaphor that Paul uses in order to communicate and to illustrate the Christian life. 

So I'm going to skip ahead through these next couple of slides here until we get to 16. Is that right? Did I skip one? What did I skip? Who's got 15?  Anybody? Did I just leave it out? See, numbers aren't my spiritual gift. Okay, I'll correct it for next time.

So this will be 15. We are to submit to one another. This is where I stopped last time because the command to submit to one another is part of that Christian walk in Ephesians 5:21. But 5:21 comes in a context. This is one of the most important sections I think of the New Testament. It really starts in the first part of chapter 4, but this subsection I think really begins in verse 17 where we read:

^NKJ Ephesians 4:17 This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should

That you should what? Three times we have the word walk. 

no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind,

So there's a negative there. It's not painting a positive picture; it's painting a negative picture. This is how the gentiles walk in the futility of their minds

^NKJ Ephesians 4:18 having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart;

¹⁹who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

²⁰ But you have not so learned Christ,

So the context is walking. Then we come to Ephesians 5:2 and we have another use of walk. We are to walk in love. Now on this slide what I've done is set up the verses from Ephesians 4:32 down through 5:2 and taking out the verse and chapter marks so we can read it in its original context and with the original flow.

And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.

Remember that word there for forgiving is charizomai meaning being gracious. But charizomai is frequently used not only as a synonym for apheimi which is the verb form for forgiveness; but it's even used in one of the parables that we looked at one time as a cancelling of debt. So charizomai and apheimi had a large overlap of meaning related to forgiveness, the cancelling of debt, removal of debt, removing of a past injury. 

And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.  Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.

Doing the same thing, in other words and:

And walk in love,

So we are to be imitators of God and walk in love. Now at the bottom of this screen I put a Greek term "en agape." The en is the Greek preposition plus the dative form of the verb for love. In these contexts it makes more sense to understand the en there in an instrumental sense rather than what grammarians call the locative sense. Those are the two basic meanings that you have for the preposition en.

Now if you look down to verse 5 it says:

^NKJ Ephesians 5:5 For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

Same preposition, en. But when I say "in the kingdom", we think of kingdom in terms of a location, don't we. You are in an environment. You are in a location. You're in the kingdom. You're in a time period so that has that idea that grammarians call locative. What happens is you get a certain number of scholars and theologians who will look at these passages: walking in the Spirit, being filled with the Spirit, (uses the same Greek phrase) baptized in the Spirit. They try to make that locative as well. But when I say, "walk in love", how do you walk in the location of love? Now what we hear is we hear the sense of that. 

We say, "Okay this has something to do with what you characterize the walk." 

But grammatically how would you understand walking in that sphere? How do you get out of that sphere? It's a mystical idea, and the same thing with walking in the Spirit.

"You are in the Spirit." 

I always say to myself, "Do you feel something?  How do you know that you're in the Spirit?  What does that mean?  How does that do anything?"

The Holy Spirit isn't a location. "Being in Christ", that's a location. You are in the body of Christ. Being in the Spirit or being in love (and this says walking in love) isn't a locative idea. It is a tool, an instrument for accomplishing something. We walk by means of the Spirit. The Spirit is the instrument or the means by which the lifestyle is accomplished. Love is viewed as the instrument of means my which this walk is accomplished so that we have a more concrete idea of what that phrase means. 

It doesn't get into this kind of loosy-goosy quasi-mystical sort of idea. In my mind it makes a tremendous amount of sense. Now that's a subjective call. You don't have anything in grammar that says it's this or it's this. The word can be used either way. You just have to analyze it in terms of thinking about its meaning and its sense of operation there for it to make sense.

So we walk by means of love as we live by means of implementing the commands to love, which is a mental attitude and not an emotion. It's patterned on Christ's behavior. Then maturity and spiritual growth take place. In doing that by walking by means of love, what are we doing? We are fulfilling the initial command in 5:1. We are being an imitator of Christ. Now I don't want you to loose the forest through the trees here or think I've just run off down some rabbit trail and I don't know where I'm going. 

Verse 32 says that we're to be forgiving one another. Then when we get down to verse 21, we're submitting to one another. Now what happens between those two "one another's" describes the crucial elements of the Christian life, the spiritual life of how we walk. That command to walk that's what governs this whole section of Ephesians. You have the word used, walking in Ephesians 4:1.

^NKJ Ephesians 4:1 I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called,

Twice in verse 4:17

^NKJ Ephesians 4:17 This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind,

It's used in 5:2.

^NKJ Ephesians 5:2 And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.

In 5:8:

^NKJ Ephesians 5:8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.

In 5:15 we have the command:

^NKJ Ephesians 5:15 See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise,

We are to walk as wise or with wisdom. That's the main idea that we have in these two chapters. So all these other commands, all the other characteristics and descriptions are there in order to flush out what this lifestyle looks like.

Now the key in all of this comes in verse 18, chapter 5, which is where I stopped last time.

The command there being:

^NKJ Ephesians 5:18 And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit,

Now in the Greek text "with wine" and "with the Holy Spirit" translate the same sort of instrumental clause. You have that phrase "en pneumati." 

Now this is where you get into some confusion in how Greek is translated into English. You have this preposition in the Greek "en" pronounced "in" just like the English preposition in. If you look it up in Greek dictionary, you'll see that you have options. You can translate it "in" which would have sort of a locative idea. You put your coffee in the cup. You have "with." That's an associative idea. "I went to the movies with my wife." So you have this association together. Or you can say, "I dug the hole with the shovel." The shovel is the instrument that you used to dig the hole. But in Greek you could express each of those ideas with the same preposition. In the English we have these three different prepositions that we use: in, with or by. As native English speakers when we hear that, our mind immediately without any conscious thought whatsoever, we discern the difference in the sense of those three different prepositions. 

Let me show you why this creates great confusion in the church. In the Gospels John the Baptist came along and said:

^NKJ John 1:31 "I did not know Him; but that He should be revealed to Israel, therefore I came baptizing with water."

En pneumati. Is he saying, "I'm baptizing you in the water?" Is he saying, "I'm baptizing you with, along with the water?" Is he saying "I'm baptizing you by using water?"

You have to factor that in.

He says:

^NKJ Matthew 3:11 "I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

So the "en" is translated with. That gives some people certain ideas of how they understand the baptism of the Spirit. 

Then you come along to 1 Corinthians 12:13 and Paul says:

^NKJ 1 Corinthians 12:13 For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body -- whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free -- and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.

That sounds different, doesn't it? By the Spirit versus with the Spirit. It sounds like two different things. But in Greek it's the exact same phrase. It's talking about the exact same thing because you had one translator translating in one area and you had another translator translating in another area. One guy preferred "with"; the other guy preferred "by". In English it looks like two different baptisms. 

So Pentecostals came along and said, "These are two different baptisms. One you get when you are saved, and one you get after you're saved."

You start doing the Christian two-step. You get part of the Spirit when you're saved and you get another part when you get dedicated, when you walk the aisle, when you speak in tongues. So you get Christian two-steppers. You thought that started with a Texas dance, didn't you? 

Now the reason that's important is when you look at Ephesians 5:18, you've got to decide what this means to be filled with the Spirit. Let me use the example of a coffee cup. You can fill the coffee cup with coffee or with orange juice or water, whatever. What are you talking about? You are talking about the content of what goes into the cup. Now some people have that idea of what it means to be filled with the Spirit: that somehow I get more of the Spirit and that's what we're to do. We're to get more of the Spirit. That's one approach. 

We can also understand that to mean an instrument. In other words, we're not talking about what goes into the cup. We are talking about what is used to fill the cup up with something else. So we would say, "Fill my coffee cup with what's in that pot. We want decaf and not the other, so fill it up with what's in that pot." So that would indicate the instrument that is used to fill it up. That's an important distinction. 

If you take the first view that this is content, you have another problem because in the Greek this is expressed with the dative case and content is never expressed by the dative. So you're not getting more of the Spirit. Some people think that way. When I confess my sins that somehow I'm getting more of the Spirit in me, that's not what this is saying. It's an operational verse; it's not a content verse. 

As I pointed out last time, another problem that I think has entered into the misunderstanding of this verse is the initial part, which says:

^NKJ Ephesians 5:18 And do not be drunk with wine,

Now if we understand that to be instrument and not content, then it changes the focus and we're not going to be as prone to think this is talking about control as influence or instrument, the tool that's used to become close to God. 

I pointed out last time that in the ancient world that Ephesus well as areas in Greece, but in Ephesus it was prominent. We often think of Artemis of the Ephesians the many-breasted goddess who was there because of the problem that occurred with the silversmiths as Paul and Timothy and others taught the gospel. People quit worshipping the false idol of Artemis there and that was big business for the silversmiths because they made all these little bitty statues as representatives of idol of Artemis or Diana of the Ephesians. Then the silversmiths were losing business. Christianity was bad for their business because people quit buying what they were making. So that was one religion that was there.

Another one that was prominent throughout this whole area was the worship of Dionysius. That was part of the mystery religions. The origin of the worship of Dionysius came out of that area of Turkey. Dionysius wasn't a Greek god. He was borrowed from those who lived over in Anatolia. So he got absorbed into the pantheon of the Greeks sometime way back there in the early stages of their development. 

In that mystical-mystery religion, the way that you entered into fellowship with the god was that you drank wine.  Hopefully the god would if you drank enough wine, the god would enter into you and he would speak through you. The maenads have these glossolalic utterances. So "tongues" is also an interesting background into all of this. But wine was the way you got close to god.  (Now some of you want to say amen there; I know it!) 

Wine was how you got close to god. It's an instrument. What Paul is saying here is wine isn't the way to get close to God, to grow spiritually. It's through the relationship by means of the Holy Spirit, the same thing he said over in Galatians 5:16 related to "walk by means of the Spirit." 

So when you look at this passage, he's talking about how the walk is going to be produced because when you go back to chapter 4 and you read through all of the different characteristics of the Christian life especially forgiveness, forgiving other people as Christ forgave us. 

We look at that and we say, "That's impossible. I can't do that."

You're right; you can't do that. You can do it through God the Holy Spirit, but you can't do it in the power of the flesh. There's got to be a supernatural way through the help, through the aid of the Holy Spirit to produce that. That's why love is the first part of the list of the fruit of the Holy Spirit. 

So he's describing that walk.  We are to be filled by the Spirit. 

Now Ephesians 4:17 he says

^NKJ Ephesians 4:17 This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind,

He's talking Christian life is going to differ. It's going to differ in the futility of their minds. 

The first place it's going to differ is it's going to make a difference in how you think. Christianity is about thinking. It's not about emoting. It's not about feeling good. It's not about experiencing worship on Sunday morning. It's not about all these things that our shallow, superficial simpering little Christian churches are doing today. It's about thought. It's about thinking in a way that changes the way you live. 

Paul says in 5:8:

^NKJ Ephesians 5:8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.

The trouble is they are still walking the old way. See walking in darkness is walking like the Gentiles walk, like the pagan cultures walk, living the same way where there's no discernable difference. But now you're light in the Lord positionally so you need to make your experience conform to your position. That's why he says:

Walk as children of light

Now what we have here in this part of Ephesians is a contrast between two different states of living. You're either walking in darkness or walking in the light. That's where John picks that up and uses that same imagery in 1 John 1. He says in 1 John 1:6:

^NKJ 1 John 1:6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

^NKJ 1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.

So walking in the light is related to fellowship. Walking in the darkness is not walking in fellowship. They're viewed as two mutually exclusive spheres, two mutually exclusive ways of living. 

You get down to verse 15:

^NKJ Ephesians 5:15 See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise,

You're not partially foolish and partially wise. It's one or the other. That continues down into verse 17.

^NKJ Ephesians 5:17 Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

So wisdom is understanding God's will which is understanding God's Word. So it's able to take the data from Scripture that you have internalized and absorbed into your soul and as you've taken that Scripture, God the Holy Spirit then is going to be able to take that and put it together in different ways to meet the necessities of different situations in life so that application flows from that. Application doesn't flow from a pastor coming up with 5 artificial examples of application and then building his sermon around it, which is what happens in many places. That just doesn't help. It creates a superficial approach to Christianity. In fact it divorces it from doctrine; and you end up with a moral ethical system where Christianity is do this, do this, do this, do this, don't do this, don't do this and don't do this. That's just another form of legalism, and there's no undergirding rationale or thought system that informs a person's whole decision-making process in life. 

So it's fools verses wise, unwise versus those who have understanding and those who try to get close to God through wine and those who get close to God by means of the Holy Spirit. 

So when we look at Ephesians 5:18 we're told:

^NKJ Ephesians 5:18 And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit,

That's how we should translate that. The results are then given in the next verses. It has to do with singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. It's singing praise to God, thankfulness in our souls to God, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and submitting to one another.

Now what does that actually mean, to "submit to one another"? Does that mean that we're going to take that as some hyper literal legalistic way and we're all going to run around and see how we're going to be submissive to one another, we're going to bow and scrape to one another. No, that's not what it's talking about. It's talking about using what we used to call common sense, but I think common sense is a product of wisdom of the soul so without doctrine, you don't have it. It has to do with the fact that you're not going to operate in arrogance toward people. You're going to operate in humility and you're not going to push your agenda and steamroll over other people just to get your way. 

When you contrast or compare Ephesians 5:18 with Colossians 3:16 which we did briefly right at the close last time in a very quick way, we see that the command in Colossians 3:16 is to let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom. Wisdom there is application of doctrine, teaching and admonishing one another a result in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

^NKJ Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

So you have the same results, different commands. So if doing this produces these results and doing this produces the same results; then your two commands to be filled by means of the Spirit, which is instrument, what do you use to grow spiritually? It's done by means of the Holy Spirit. 

Well, what fills you? What fills you is the content of the Word of God. So you see the connection between the two by comparing these verses. It's the Spirit of God with the Word of God. It's not the Spirit of God operating apart from the Word of God. That's mysticism. It's not the Word of God operating apart from the Spirit of God. That's legalism. It's the Spirit of God and the Word of God tied together. When you study the Word, learn the Word, while you're in fellowship the Holy Spirit uses that to challenge us to produce growth in our lives. 

You can use a gardening illustration. You go out in your garden and you water your plants that you water. They need nitrogen so you put manure on your plants or you put manmade fertilizer on your plants. So they have food and they have water. But something happens. You go out there. This happens to me a lot this time of year. I forget to water my potted plants, which I have to do every morning. I go out there and make sure everything gets soaked down. If I don't I come out there at 12 o'clock and they're all wilted and hanging over the side of the plant looking like they're about ready to give up whatever ghost they have. They're just short of dying. I water them. I come back an hour later and something has happened. They are all standing up looking happy and growing. But that has to do with whatever God built into the dynamics, the metabolism of the plants so that as they absorb the nutrition there's something God built in there that in turn produces certain chemical reactions that produce growth and eventually produce the seeds and the fruit of the plant. 

The same thing is what happens in each of us as believers. Volitionally we have the responsibility to take in the nourishment of the Word of God under the teaching ministry of God the Holy Spirit in fellowship. As that comes into our souls, it's at that point the Holy Spirit takes over. 

We don't know how it happens. We can't take out our magnifying glass and examine it that way. The Scriptures don't go into those details, but as the Word of God comes into the Spirit of God, He then takes that and produces and uses that to impact the way we think, to bring things to our minds, to produce spiritual growth over time. We can't volitionally produce the growth. We can only produce the feeding of our souls and that produces the growth through the Holy Spirit. He's the one who produces that. And as a result of that growth then what accumulates in our souls is this pool of data that becomes the foundation, the elements of wisdom as God the Holy Spirit takes that and puts it together. And what comes out as we apply that is the beauty and the skill of spiritual growth. 

Now I want to close with an illustration that is familiar to most of you. This used to be the top and bottom circle, but I became a heretic. Now we have a left and right circle. We have on the one side eternal realities and on the other side temporal realities. The eternal realities have to do with our position in Christ. How do we walk? As children of light. That's why it's a white circle on a dark background. Our position is children of light. So we have all of these things that are ours in Christ. We get identified with His death, burial, and resurrection and we are entered into Him by means of God the Holy Spirit. We have all of these things that are true. We're reconciled. We're redeemed. We're regenerated. We're adopted into God's royal family. All of these things: we're new creatures in Christ; we're freed from sin. This is all ours positionally. We have new life. We're sealed by means of God the Holy Spirit. We are indwelt by God the Holy Spirit. That is all true of is as our position in Christ. Paul explains most of that in the first part of Ephesians. 

But then we have an experiential reality – our day-to-day life. The white circle represents walking in the light experientially, and at the same time we're filled by the Spirit. They're just different ways of talking about the same thing. When we're first saved we're filled with the Spirit. We're walking in the light. We're walking by means of the Holy Spirit. But we can sin. As soon as we sin, we're out of that circle. We're no longer walking in the light. We're walking in darkness. The sin nature, the flesh is what energizes. 

Paul says:

^NKJ Galatians 5:16 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

But when you stop walking by the Spirit then the flesh takes over. That's our default position. So then we have to confess our sins, 1 John 1:9. We're back in fellowship. 

When we're walking in that circle that is when the Holy Spirit can produce growth. As part of that growth, it impacts the way we relate to other people in the body of Christ. We realize they're not any different than we are. We are both obnoxious sinners in the sight of God. But God has saved us, and He's transforming us by the Holy Spirit so then we have a code of conduct that is to characterize our relationship with other believers whether we know them or not. That's why we use the term sometimes, impersonal love. We don't even have to know who they are or what their name is. We know that they're another believer in Christ. So this defines and describes how we are to relate to them. 

So all of this is related to understanding the whole concept of submitting to one another in Ephesians 5:21 and this affects our most intimate relationships. 

Wives are to be submissive to husbands. Husbands are supposed to be submissive to the Lord. Children are submissive to parents, servants to masters.  This is the application Paul makes in the rest of Ephesians 5. All of it flows out of the command to be filled by the Spirit. 

1 Peter 5:5 says:

^NKJ 1 Peter 5:5 Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for "God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble."

That's the issue in submission. It's not to think more highly of yourself than you ought to think because God resists or stands against the proud or the arrogant, but He gives grace to the humble. Arrogance stops your Christian growth, but humility is essential to spiritual growth.

Now the 17^th point is one that comes out of the verse we studied to begin with. We'll start with that next time in Hebrews 10:24.Then we have one other great passage to get into and that deals with the passages in James 5, to confess our sins to one another, 

So everybody get ready – no, just kidding. You have to find out what that's about. Now that's a fun passage in James 5 – "confessing to one another and praying for one another". So we'll get into that next Thursday night. 

Let's close in prayer. 

Illustrations