Exploring My Strange Bible - Ephesians Part 4: Be Filled with the Spirit

Episode Date: November 6, 2017

This teaching explores how Paul challenges the Christians to explore God’s spirit. The whole debate about God’s spirit and how he expresses God’s powers is very controversial conversations. However, the Apostle Paul actually intended the exact opposite - he wanted the spirit to be something that united Christians.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. All right, well, this is part four of a five-part series. We're doing exploring major themes in Paul's letter to the Ephesians in the New Testament. This is a teaching that explores Paul's challenge to the Christians reading this letter

to allow themselves to be influenced by God's Spirit, or as he says, to be filled with the Spirit. by God's Spirit, or as he says, to be filled with the Spirit. And that's not a controversial conversation in the history of Christianity, is it? The whole debate and the way Christians have divided over centuries about how the Spirit works and expresses what God is up to in the world, in a person's life or in church communities, the baptism of the Spirit, filling of the Spirit. These unfortunately have become controversial conversations and topics, divisive topics, when it seems that the Apostle Paul intended the exact opposite. He wanted the filling and empowering of the Spirit to be something that united

and carried Christians along as they bear witness to the good news of Jesus in the world. And so this teaching is just kind of one effort to help rethink from the ground up what Paul's getting at here and what it would mean for every follower of Jesus to be open to the influence and filling of the Spirit. And what does that even mean in the first place? So anyway, there we go. We're going to dive into Ephesians. This is in chapter 5, and let's learn together. Open your Bibles with me to Paul's letter to the Ephesians, chapter 5. And yes, I assigned myself the shortest passage in the whole series. And that wasn't really intentional, but maybe it was. I don't know. So just kind of to paint the flow here for where we've been going for months, months now. So Paul's been immersing these new Christians in their new identity,

right? This has been a big theme. And so Paul, in the first three chapters, remember he's retelling the story of what happened in Jesus, about God's decision, about screwed up, sinful, self-focused human beings to permanently commit himself to love us, to bind himself to us by becoming human, by creating a new reconciled family of Jesus people out of Jew and non-Jew, and where he takes up personal residence by means of his spirit. And so a big part of what we've been tracing is how Paul is just immersing these Christians in their identity. You used to be whoever you were before you heard the story about Jesus. But if you've put your trust in Jesus and have become a part of his people and have placed your faith in him,

think of all of the new types of identity that we've discovered here in Paul's letter to the Ephesians. You're new kinds of humans. He said this more than one time, two times. He said you're holy. You actually are distinct and set apart now from your previous identity. He said, you're holy. You actually are distinct and set apart now from your previous identity. He says that you're more loved than you can possibly imagine. You're beloved children. You're children of the light. You don't have to live in the dark anymore. And so as we moved into chapter four and then five, Paul's been really specific and clear, you'll remember, about laying out what we're calling parameters. And these parameters are indications of what living into this new identity looks like. What does sex and money and relationships and anger and work and generosity

and work ethic, and how does all of this look like in light of who we really are now in Jesus? And so he's been painting these parameters. And so there's just a little paragraph right here, chapter 5, verses 15 through 21. And he actually takes a new turn here because he doesn't really describe any parameters here. What he does want to do is show the immense amount of freedom that we have. And so I want to pick up an illustration that Josh used last week, and then we'll kind of dive into the text here. And Josh mentioned this, it really resonated with me, and I kind of thought through it, and I actually lived through it in this last week, because he talked about Paul as being like a loving parent who's trying to give these kids,

these new children, spiritual children of his freedom by giving them parameters. And that sounds paradoxical to us, or maybe even contradictory. What do you mean freedom? We think of freedom as having no parameters. I can do whatever I want. But that's not at least the gospel's version of freedom. Doing whatever you want leads to ruined human lives. And so it's actually in the freedom of having parameters. So I actually just lived it this week because I'm the parent of a small two-year-old caveman, otherwise known as a toddler. But toddlers and cavemen, really, they're about the same kind of mentality.

And so in love, we have to lay down parameters. One of my goals as a parent is to just burn into this little guy's psyche how loved and committed we are to him no matter what for the long haul. That's about his identity. But I also have as one of my goals as a parent to lay out parameters and keep him from killing himself, basically, which would happen almost every day, I'm certain, if I didn't intervene. Or Jessica didn't intervene because he's just into everything. And so we've laid out

parameters, like in our home, where we have a whole room that's off limits to him through the little door, you know, the little door, preventative door, that guy, that thing there. And then we have about three cupboards that are off limits to him because there's like knives in there and they're sewing needles up in the room and so on. And so like we've created these parameters and we pay attention as parameters that cramps my style or whatever. We tend to focus on parameters,

what I'm being told I can't do. But what we usually neglect and what Roman often neglects when he's obsessing over what's in that cupboard is the fact that the whole rest of the house is open to him. I mean, even my stuff that I leave in his presence is open to him, and he gets into it all of the time. I often have packs of chewing gum that I buy specifically for the purpose of putting in my mouth when I finish

teaching, because, you know, I've been talking for a long time. And so he just, he can't, he can't prevent himself from getting in my chewing gum. I don't know what it is. He just loves it. But whatever, you know, the whole house is open to him except these little spaces, this immense amount of freedom. And so what Paul's been doing is just kind of map this onto Ephesians then, is he's been laying out these parameters of what it means to live into our new identity. And there's really not that many. And what it does is it leaves open this whole part of our lives, our day-to-day lives, where there's just absolute freedom to live as these new kinds of people. And most of what we do in our day-to-day lives

doesn't cross those parameters. It involves just like work and family and finding some career path or providing for myself or others or doing something. I mean, just that stuff. And you search the Bible in vain for God telling you like where to move and where to get a job or something, you know? So like there's no parameters on that. There's just freedom. And so here's what Paul says to this community of his

spiritual children. He's laid out the parameters to protect the freedom of these new Christians. And here he's going to guide us into the arena of freedom. And what does Paul have to say as he guides people into areas of freedom? Read verse 15. He says, making the most of every opportunity because the days are evil, you know. Therefore, don't be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. Don't get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery, a word none of us used in the last month, I'm certain, debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from

the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. This all goes together. And actually, as we read that paragraph, it's kind of like reading a little top 10 bumper sticker verses that Christians like to put on their cars or something like that. You know, it's got a bunch of great little one-liners about the, oh yeah, wise and discern the Lord's will and be filled with the Spirit and Psalms and stuff. But how does all of this go together? This is all what Paul's doing. What are your guiding lights as you go out into your life? As a Christian, you know what the parameters are, but most of your life is just open there before you. Like, what are you supposed to

do? And how do you know how to make decisions in the areas of great freedom that we have as Christians? And Paul says, wisdom, discerning God's will, and being filled with the Spirit as your guiding lights, as you go into your freedom as a Christian. And you know that you're tapping into and using those when your life results in being connected with music, giving thanks, and submitting to other people. So do I need to say any more? I think I'll just kind of wrap it up right here. I mean, that was kind of long.

So no, no, there's a million things we could explore and we don't have time to do them all. I just want to, really what I want to focus in on is how these three, these three things, wisdom, discerning God's will, and being filled with the Spirit, because they go, they go together. Look down with me at verse 15. He begins by saying,

as you consider this arena of freedom in your life, he says, just be super intentional. Be super careful. Your decisions matter. What you do in your day-to-day life, it really matters. How you live matters. Be really intentional and careful. And then what he gives is these three pairs. There's three little contrasting pairs. And you may not have noticed them as you read through, but there's three pairs. He says, not this, but this. Not this, but this. Not this, but this. Three pairs. Did you see them here? What's the first pair? Do you see it? He says, not as unwise, but wise, making the most of every opportunity. Verse 17, therefore, not as unwise, but wise, making the most of every opportunity.

Verse 17, therefore, don't be foolish, but understand the Lord's will. Don't get hammered, but be filled with the Spirit. Do you see them there? These three pairs. Now let me kind of throw them up here. And they're not just a ragbag of topics. Like here, oh, Paul just thought of wisdom.

Oh, that's a good thing to talk about now. And oh, discerning God's will, you know, oh, it's good to put that in or something. No, he's really, he's really, he's really choosing his words carefully. And all of these, the three don'ts and the three do's are all connected. So in this area of freedom, as we approach our lives, there's no rules.

There's just go be a human being, right? So here's the parameters. Sex, that can really set you off, and money, and generosity, and relationships. So let's get the parameters there about what it means to be a new human. What are you going to do with your life now? These three pairs right here. Wisdom, discerning God's will, and being filled with the Spirit. And they're all connected. So somehow Paul's definition of what it means to be a wise person is waking up and having an intuition or learning as you're going through what God's will for that day is. And if you're going to be a wise person who knows how to discern God's will for what you're doing on any given day, what that means is you need to learn how to be influenced

by the Spirit. And there's going to be three behaviors that are constantly going to sabotage your ability to be a fully mature human being, and that's being stupid and getting drunk, because that's going to ruin everything. It's going to set you back strides from growing and maturing as a Christian. So let's dive into these real quick here, into these three,

and we'll see how they issue into the spirit-influenced life. So he says, be careful. Don't be unwise, but wise. And here's what's interesting. When you hear the English word wise, I think most of us, we think of something that happens in your head, right? We think of someone's wise. We think of someone who's smart, right? Or who has a lot of insight. And that's involved in what the Bible's trying to get at as it talks about wisdom. But there's a number of things going on. The Bible has a more robust, really different version of what wisdom is. The Bible talks about knowledge. It talks about understanding. But you notice it has different words for that. Wisdom,

and particularly Paul has one Old Testament passage in the back of his head here, and it's my joy to always point this out to you because I'm a geek, right? So it's from Exodus chapter 31, and let's just read the passage here, and you'll see how Paul's drawing on the language of this passage here. This is where the Israelites are at Mount Sinai. They've been redeemed out of slavery in Egypt. And God's designing his own personal dwelling place in the midst of his people that he's redeemed. And so the Lord said to Moses, he said, see, I've chosen Bezalel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, the son of Judah. And I have filled him with the spirit of God, with wisdom. Here's the Hebrew word for wisdom, right? Right there. Do you want

to take a crack at pronouncing it? It's a, yeah, right? You're like, what? Those are not sounds my mouth is used to making. So the K-H is the ch letter in Hebrew. Choch, right? Choch. Chochma. So why don't you say it with me? Chochma. Okay. I have filled him with my spirit, that is, with chokhmah, and understanding and knowledge with all kinds of skills. All kinds of skills. How do you know this guy is filled with the divine spirit and chokhmah? Well, look, he's going to make artistic designs for work in gold and silver and bronze and to cut and set stones and to work in wood

and engage in all kinds of crafts. The base vision of wisdom in the Bible is actually not necessarily your IQ or how smart you are. Do you have to have advanced degrees to be an artisan? No. You just have to be really good at doing this kind of thing, right? And how do you get good at doing this kind of thing? Well, you do a lot of it, right? You practice and so on. And then in this case, God is animating this skill set

that this guy has. So wisdom, at least in these passages and a lot of others like the Bible, wisdom is a skill that you cultivate about bringing potential out of something and making something awesome. It's about taking the raw materials. Here's like a whole bunch of gold earrings. Melt them down, Bethel out, and make something awesome that functions as a candle. Right? So make sure there's a place for seven candles, but just go for it.

It needs to have flowers on it. Okay, run. Just go, right? There's this freedom here. Take, bring the raw potential out of this material and make something awesome. That's chokhmah. And God apparently takes great joy

in investing his own personal presence in the lives of people to inspire them to make something. And so when Paul is saying, be careful how you live, not as unwise, but as wise, look how he defines it. Look back down here at verse 16. How does he define what it means to be wise? Not as smart or super intellectual or bookish. What does he say in verse 16? What is wisdom? He says it's making the most of every opportunity. So this isn't actually particularly religious. What Paul's saying is there's whole just swaths of our lives, our day-to-day lives, that's just relationships and work and bills and what you do with your time. And you can, as a Christian,

be really stupid and just not make the most of your life. And you're still a Christian. Jesus is utterly committed to you and he loves you, but you're just not, you're not being wise with your life. How then should we live in our new identity? He's going to urge us, every one of us, by the presence of God in our lives, has this presence that's urging us to become more and more capable of just making good decisions with our lives. You have people, you have relationships, you have your past, you have your history, you have whatever your story is, and you are absolutely loved and cherished by your creator. Jesus loved you and gave himself for you. Here's your life, go for it.

And be wise, make the most of it. It's just very practical. What are you getting at here? And there's this connection between being wise and just making wise decisions with my life and God's commitment to be personally present with me. So let's keep on going. So that was the first one. Don't be unwise, but be wise. Make the most of every opportunity. Look at the next pair. He says, so don't be foolish, but rather understand

what the Lord's will is. So if I'm wise, it means I'm cultivating this understanding that in any given day, I can make decisions that are more in line or less in line with God's will. And this is one that really throws a lot of us for a loop, I think. And because many of us have a conception of God's will as if it's like some secret hidden purpose that you need to figure out for your life or something, you know? And so is it God's will that I take this job or that I even look, should I try to get married? Should I ask her out? Do I want to, you know, this, is it God's will? And I think many of us, the way we talk about it, am I in God's will? Am I going against God's will? We think of God's will as if it's like some, like it's like a point on a map and I need to find out where the point is and then figure out how I'm supposed to get there.

And that's not how the Bible talks about God's will. Paul himself, he talks about God's will sometimes to talk about the parameters that God has set in place for our new life as new kinds of humans in Jesus. And so he says, for example, sexual integrity, sexual purity, having sex with someone

that I'm not in a marriage covenant with, that is just never God's will. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. This is God's will for your purity with regard to sex. It's just never God's will. And so, okay, that's one of the parameters there. That's a way to ruin my life real quick, is start having sex with someone I'm not married to. So that's one way you can refer to God's will. Most of the times that Paul and the other biblical authors refer to God's will, it has to do with discerning what's pleasing to God. So, for example, my little son Roman, you know, we've blocked off the door there and the three cupboards. Now, he has the whole house

available to him. What I'm not going to do is like when he has a free afternoon, it's like a day off for me and I'm home. And so he's got the whole afternoon. I'm not like in a hover, you know, and in the time of his freedom be like, play with your trucks now. Okay, now it's time to stop that. Now we're going to build a tower. Now, Roman, we're going to play with your teddy bear. Like that's obnoxious. That is, right? So I'm not going to do that. He's free. So just do whatever. And all of those would be my will, which is that he flourish as a little boy and be creative and have fun. It will never be my will, for example, that he pushes the stool up to the kitchen sink and throws silverware in the garbage disposal. That will never be my

will, even though he really thinks that is cool. He thinks that's cool. So there's another parameter we had to make around the garbage disposal. But so you guys see what I'm saying here? All kinds of things could be God's will. And in many passages in Paul, Paul talks about the renewal of your minds in Romans chapter 12. And he says when a Christian's mind is renewed, when your new identity in the gospel, he says, you will be able to cultivate the skill of discerning what God's will is. He says, it's good, pleasing, and perfect will. It's just, it's just, it's gaining the intuition.

Now, some of us might be easier said than done, you know? So I guess I'm supposed to be wise and I'm supposed to do what's pleasing to God. Okay. So how does that actually work? And that's what the third element of the contrast is. And this is where I want to focus. So Paul talks, this is the third contrast, verse 18. He says, don't get drunk with wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Okay, now there's a number of things. One is debauchery. Debauchery. I never say the word, so I actually don't even know how to pronounce it.

So debauchery. So whatever, I don't know where the word came from in English. None of us use it anymore. The word that Paul uses just means without restraint, without any boundaries, without any parameters. And so some people have thought at this point that actually Paul's making a comparison. Don't get drunk with wine. Rather, get hammered in the spirit. And so there's large traditions in which the idea is that if I'm a spirit-influenced human or spirit-filled human, it will lead to behavior that might be similar to, but just is not actually induced by alcohol,

it's induced by the spirit, but it's still very bizarre, strange behavior. And so this is one of those points, again, God bless Christianity, huge tent family, lots of different kinds of people, but I do think that's one of the places where Paul would be like, wow, wow, I didn't see that one. Didn't see that misunderstanding of what I was trying to say. So clearly it's a contrast. Don't be unwise, be wise. Don't be foolish, understand what the Lord's will is. They're contrasts, right? Don't get drunk. That's a whole kind of behavior that we'll talk about in a second. Be filled with the Spirit, that's a completely different kind of behavior. The only similarity between the two is that we're talking about some kind of outside influence now. You can be wise and unwise of your own accord,

but to get drunk or to be influenced by the Spirit means there's something outside yourself that's influencing you. That's the commonality here. And so he has this image here of not getting drunk with wine. And all of a sudden, the idea of making the most, being totally on point,

discerning, making good decisions, discerning whether this decision or what I'm doing with my day, if that's going to be something that's pleasing to the Lord, that involves you beginning to think about your life. And one way that you cannot think

about your life is to get drunk, right? And that in fact is one of the primary reasons why many people drink regularly is because they thinking about their life is too painful. And so Paul, in this new humanity, he's laying another parameter here. In this new humanity, there are all kinds of influences you want to avoid, especially influences that will in any way impair you from being able to make good decisions in the moment and discerning what God's will is. Now, there's this, here we go, alcohol and Christianity. That's not controversial at all, is it, right? And so I have three minutes to talk about it. So here's what's happening here. You will not find a prohibition anywhere in the Bible that says that drinking is

a sin or consumption of alcohol is a sin in some way. You guys with me on that one? Actually, I shouldn't say you're with me. That is the case. You will not find that verse in the Bible. What you will find is the exact opposite. So Psalm 104, for example, talks about celebrating the gift of human family, being able to cultivate the harvest out of the ground, and being able to enjoy oil and wine, which gladdens the heart of men. Psalm 104, verse 15. And Jesus, when he was celebrating the creation of this new family at the wedding in Cana, he turned the water into, not grape juice, so wine. So the Bible talks about,

when it does talk about alcohol, it talks about its potential to be something beautiful and always connected to celebration of good things in life. But there are just as many passages that while they don't prohibit drinking, they absolutely

warn about the abuses of alcohol. This is one of them. Proverbs chapter 31 is another really poignant, profound passage. And to me, there's no coincidence that Paul is talking about alcohol in the context of being wise or being foolish. Alcohol is one of those things that you have to be very wise with, isn't it? Because for some people, enjoying a bottle of wine at dinner with friends,

going out for a drink, is actually a way of celebrating their friendships. It's celebrating that Manhattans, when they're done well, taste really, really good. You know what I mean? Like the craft beer, it's part of the culture of Portland, right? Support the local economy, that kind of thing.

You know, so it's great. It's a way to enjoy the culture of our city. And for some people, the same exact behavior might be their way of just thanking Jesus for good taste and friendship here in Portland. And for another Christian, the same exact behavior might be utterly foolish. Utterly foolish and destructive. Because of that person's unique story. Because of alcoholism that runs in their family. Because they know that their temperament tends towards

addictive kinds of behavior. Or because I know that I'm in a tough season in life and there's a temptation right here to have another and then a third and then another because I don't want to think about my life right now. And this is exactly why Paul is focusing on this. It's an outside influence that not just deadens your mind, but actually what alcohol does is if you Google, I don't know why I'm smiling about this, but well, actually you'll see in a second. So if you Google alcohol and brain science,

which is just a really interesting experience, if you do that, what you'll find is Wikipedia pages that have all the summaries of research on how alcohol affects your brain. And how alcohol affects your brain, it affects a lot of things about your brain. One of the main parts of your brain

is called the prefrontal lobe. Now, I had already known about the prefrontal lobe because I learned not long ago that it develops much more slowly in males than in females. And your prefrontal lobe is the part of your brain that my son lacks right now. And it's the ability to be aware of and think through multiple sequences of consequences to your actions. So when he has this like big metal truck and he wants to throw it at the window, he's actually not thinking about what will happen to the window.

He's just like, that's cool, this, right? He's just thinking about this moment right here. And what alcohol impairs is exactly the part of your brain that allows you to wisely think through the consequences of your decisions, right? And so this is not rocket science, and we didn't need brain scans to tell us that getting drunk makes you stupid, you know? But it's really

interesting because this all fits together then. Paul's point is that if I'm a Christian, if I'm a new kind of human, if Jesus has taken up residence in my life, this whole freedom, the whole freedom has opened up to me of becoming a new and different kind of person that's actually saying no to influences that are going to dehumanize me, that are making me less of the human that God is calling me to be. And for some of us, that might be alcohol.

And so Paul, he doesn't say don't drink. He says know who you are. Don't get drunk. Don't get drunk. Don't get drunk. And if I had time, I would just say a whole long aside here that I'll try and wrap into 30 seconds. That'll probably be 45. Is that as your friendly neighborhood pastor,

and I know a ton of people around Door of Hope, I know a lot of you, not really well, but I do know a lot of you. And I do know that there are a lot of people around Door of Hope that are celebrating their freedom in Christ, because that's a big part of who we are, as Door of Hope is centered on grace

and avoiding legalism at all costs. And there's a lot of people around Door of Hope that just straight up drink too much. And you know, you know if you do. You know who you are. And so I just want to urge you as your pastor, it's not the way forward. And perhaps one of the most significant moments

you could have in your spiritual journey would not be to get all legalist and be like, no one's drinking and if you drink, you're sub-Christian or something. That's ridiculous, right? But at least like maybe you need to take a break for a while. Maybe you need to just say, you know, just out of deference to Jesus

and wanting to have him be the primary influence in my life, I'm just, I'm gonna call six months right here and take a break. I'm not gonna hold anybody else to it, but out of devotion to Jesus, I need to do this to make sure I'm not being influenced by alcohol in an unhealthy way. That is my minute in 45 aside to those of you who need to hear that. And the flip side of don't get drunk then

is be filled with the Spirit. Now, there's a lot that can be said about this. I'll just say a couple things. The New Testament uses the language of the Spirit, this image, be filled with the Spirit. And it might be a very common phrase to most of us. We have maybe even used it so many times we don't even know what it means anymore. So when Paul talks about being filled by the Spirit, he's not saying you need to somehow get the Spirit back into your life again because you've lost Jesus' presence with you. The Spirit is the Bible's way of talking about Jesus and God's personal presence being directly with you, within you, and in our midst as Christians.

And what the New Testament talks about is that when people wake up to the story of Jesus, when they hear the story of Jesus, and when it clicks, and they realize like, holy cow, Jesus is real and what he did for me, The Bible talks about that person making a conversion, making a confession of faith in Jesus, that that's a work of the Spirit. That's Jesus' direct presence, and I'm waking up to that. And there's a new awareness and a new sensitivity and a new reality of the presence of Jesus in my life. New Testament uses words like baptism, like being immersed in the presence of Jesus, or even look, just quickly turn across the page

to chapter four. Look at chapter four, verse 30. Here's another word Paul uses to talk about this. Paul says, don't grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were what? What does he say here? Not baptized. He says, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. So if I've made a profession of faith in Jesus, if I'm making every attempt to just grab onto him in trust and faith and giving my devotion to him, he said, if that was a three-month process, if that was a year-long

process, if that was a moment or an process, if that was a year-long process, if that was a moment or an evening, whatever your conversion process looks like, you were baptized, immersed in the Spirit, or to use another metaphor, it's as if God took a stamp and he just said, mine. Mine. Marked and sealed. And it's actually the presence of Jesus with you

that is part of that sealing. It's like you're marked, you're stamped. It's like your mark, your stamp. You can't do anything, you can't undo it. You know, he's got your number now from here on out, right? But what you can do, you can't unbaptize or unseal yourself, but what you can do is grieve the presence of Jesus. What you can do is what Paul says elsewhere is extinguish or put out the

flame of the Spirit in your life. Or to say it more positively, what he is inviting us into is newer and newer experiences of having the presence of Jesus influence and fill up more and more and then refill and fill up more of my life. And just when you thought like, wow, I'm actually getting some traction as a Christian, you discover this whole other area of your life where he's not filling up any part at all. And then you got to get, you know what I'm saying here? That's what he's saying. Be filled with the spirit. Now, how does that work? If it was simple, we wouldn't have to talk about it, but it's not simple. And so I'm going to both close and then also just kind of share

the one way that this has made most sense to me over the years. And it has to do, I shared about my children, now I'm going to share about my marriage, tread lightly here, right? So I, Tim Mackey, I am, without a doubt, I am the best version of myself as a human being when my wife is present in my life, without a doubt.

Getting married to her was the best possible thing I could have ever done. Believe me. Believe me. And so when, and I know this, I know that I'm the best version of myself when she's in my life is because when she goes away, she occasionally will take like the boys up to be with her parents a few hours away or something. And when she's gone for more than a day, I just revert back to these old ways, right? And these old ways for me involve staying up way too late, watching skateboard videos on thrasher.com. They involve eating way too much ramen or frozen pizza. And I just become

a disorganized, I'm actually not that organized of a person. I tend to procrastinate on things. And there you go. And it's just like, I just watch my life crumble when I don't live with my wife. There's something about her actual presence. I love you, sweetie, wherever you are in the room. In my life, she makes me a better human being. Now here's what, here, it raises an interesting question then, is, so her presence in my life, she, she, she, just by her presence compels me, inspires me to want to be more on point, more responsible, get better sleep patterns, you know, be more generous, just better in every way. And I know this is because that changes when she leaves. So because of her influence on my life,

I think back over the 12 years that we've been married, and I think of all of the ways that she's enhanced and made me grow as a human being. Now, the interesting question is this. Is that me? Is that me doing that and growing and changing as a human being? Is it me or is it her? Did you guys get my question here? In other words, I know for a fact that I've grown and changed as a human.

Is that just me making really good decisions and doing that or is it her? And see, that's the wrong question to ask because she has a high degree of influence on my life but i also allow her to have a high degree of influence in my life so sometimes she'll just like suggest things to me like why did you say that that way to that person you know or you know like or other times she'll be even more forceful like what were you thinking when you were doing that are you you know are you are you kidding me right now? That just happened? You know, so whatever, whether it's really nice or maybe a little more aggressive, whatever, she has a degree of influence. But at the end of the day, who has to make the decision to come under the influence of

her? I do. It's me. I have to make the decisions that will be difficult, that will be about setting new habits and new patterns of behavior. But there's no way I would ever be motivated to make those decisions if she weren't in my life in the first place. Do you see where I'm going with this here? And so I think this is exactly what Paul means.

If it weren't for the presence of Jesus in your life, speaking into your life, you wouldn't care. You would just be the human that you think is the right way to be a human being. Or you can open yourself up to this new person who's trying to speak into your life and whose presence will both convict and also speak new truth and point out ways like, yeah, that's totally like outside the parameters. That's just not wise. That's just stupid.

You know, like don't make that. It's about opening myself up to this new relational presence. And so look at what he says here. He says, don't get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery, but be filled with the spirit. Allow this new presence to so fill your life that you actually, it's like having a new person in your life. And that might seem weird to us because we're like,

well, Jesus is invisible. So like, how does he talk to me? So Jessica, she's just right there. But like Jesus, how is he there? And this is exactly what he goes on to say. What does, in the fruits of the spirit-filled life, one of which, let's just keep going. Let's finish reading the passage. He says, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the spirit, sing and make music from

your heart to the Lord. The book of Psalms was the songbook of the earliest Christians. The scriptures have always been the primary prayer book and songbook of both Jewish and Christian traditions. And so it's precisely through the scriptures, but also through each other, that we allow Jesus to begin to have input into our lives. And if especially, you know that a community of Jesus is alive with the presence of Jesus in its midst. When there's new poetry, there's new music, that when we sing, we're actually teaching each other, but we're also singing and giving thanks. He goes on, giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of Jesus. Worship is not just about singing songs. It's about new poetry

inspired by the scriptures where we're teaching each other and giving each other new language and ideas about what it means to be a Christian. And then as we go throughout our day, you're at 3 p.m., you had a hard morning at work, and then all of a sudden it's just the voice in your mind like, dude, what you said to that person, lame, lame. And when you made that decision last night, stupid, stupid. And you know, and you go, holy cow. And all of a sudden there's scripture, there's words from a song. And then you go out for your weekly or bi-weekly,

you know, cup of coffee with your friend to read the Bible together, pray for each other because it's part of what it means to be in a community. And then you're like, dang it, from them too, really? And then all of a sudden you have this outside influence speaking into your life that's compelling you to change and to grow. And then what it leads to in the last verse, verse 21, is then the last fruit or the outcome of the Spirit in our lives is submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. It's actually that we allow the community and the

scriptures to speak into my life and actually being open to submitting, humbling myself. Like if left to my own devices, I'm actually probably going to be pretty stupid and make dumb decisions. I need the input of others into my lives. And that, it seems to me, is the picture that Paul is painting right here. He lays out the parameters of what it means to be a new human. He gives us this huge area of freedom. And then he talks about influences, becoming a new kind of human, being wise, learning how to discern what God's will is on any given day. And how do you do that? You become open to the influence of Jesus, the presence of Jesus and the Spirit in your life.

And you submit to it because that's the way that we're going to grow. That might have been the shortest little sermonette I've given at Door of Hope, period. And I'm really proud of that. So I'm going to close in prayer. And what I want to do is just challenge you. There's so many different angles that this could connect and connect with our lives, but I would just,

like, just ask yourself the simple question. Are you even aware, or are you open to the presence of Jesus influencing your life? What if it's some part of your life that you don't want to change or you don't think needs to be changed? Like what if the Spirit, being filled with the Spirit, it's going to mean going there? Are you open to that? And that will tell you whether or not you are open to being filled with the Spirit or not.

All right, thanks for listening. This section of Ephesians chapter 5 is the lead up to the very next set of paragraphs that are some of the most well-known paragraphs from the letter where Paul talks about the outworking of this spirit-filled wisdom in marriages, families, and households of these Christians living in the first century city of Ephesus. So that's what we're going to explore next. Thanks for listening. I hope this has been helpful, and we'll see you next time. Thank you.