Ephesians 5:18: Be Filled with the Spirit: Part Two
When I say ‘be filled with the Spirit,’ what comes to mind? You might think of power to do miracles, you might think of having a mystical experience, you might think of the Toronto Blessing. The problem with these conceptions and those like them is that they are extraordinary events that are reserved for the few where the command to be filled with the Spirit is something that is for all Christians to grasp. We continue then this week looking at what Paul means to be filled with the Spirit.
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Ephesians 5:18: Be filled with the Holy Spirit
Christians are very divided today over the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Sadly most Christians do not know the difference between the sealing of the Spirit, the baptism of the Spirit and being filled with the Spirit. Today we come to Paul’s command to be filled with the Spirit and to not be drunk with wine. We want to spend some time in deep bible study to understand exactly what it is that required by this. We will being looking at the call to put away drunkenness as a counterfeit spirit, then we will look at...
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Ephesian 4:30: Do Not Grieve the Holy Spirit
If I were to ask you ‘why shouldn’t the Christian sin?’, ‘what makes a sin wrong?’ we would likely hear a number of different arguments. Today many feel that a certain action is inappropriate because it is not culturally acceptable, it is a taboo, it is not a societal norm and this is what makes an action wrong. This betrays a more post-modern way of thinking where we are trying to live with the premise that everyone has their own truth and that our morality is a societal construct. You will also hear the more pragmatic view that says...
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Ephesians 1:1-14: Our Eternal Salvation
Ephesus, the 5th largest town in the world when Paul wrote this letter. A town that would have been a difficult place to be a Christian, and so the church there was in need of encouragement. Ephesus, was the capital of the Roman province of Asia and a bastion of the Emperor Cult, where deifying the Roman Caesar was a badge of patriotism. A clash between those who thought the Caesar was Lord and Jesus is Lord is inevitable. It was also the centre for Diana/Artemis worship, the temple of this goddess of fertility was one of the seven...
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The Bible: Part 1: Authority
Introduction: We are continuing to put forward positive reasons for faith, and today we start a mini-series looking at the bible as a ground for believing. The 1689 chapter 1 paragraph 5 reads, ‘We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church of God to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scriptures; and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, and the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of...
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Romans 12:8: The Gift of Exhortation
Outline Models of encouragement Words of encouragement Introduction Today we are going to be looking at one of the more underappreciated gifts, the gift of encouragement/exhortation. Romans 12:8 reads, ‘the one who exhorts, in his exhortation.’ The Greek word here occurs 107 times in the NT and has been translated in various ways, beseech, comfort, desire, pray, entreat, console. The word for exhortation in this text is literally paraklese, this may sound familiar to you because when Jesus promises the Holy Spirit He promises the Parakletos. This means the one called alongside. The Latin translation of this is cum...
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The Spirit Filled Marriage 1: The Spirit Filled Foundation for Marriage
Outline What Spirit filled is not How to be Spirit filled Introduction How can sinners make a marriage work? We can make cars that can reach 0-100 in 3 seconds but our flesh cannot produce pure compassion. We can produce a perfect image in a photograph but we cannot of ourselves produce the image of Christ in us. Here are some American statistics which are often representative of the western world situation. ‘In a little more than three decades, the marriage rate (defined as the number of married adults per thousand) has declined by a third; the divorce rate...
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