Sing in the Fullness of the Spirit: A Live Lab on Ephesians 5:15–20

0:00 Ephesians chapter 5, verse 15 to 20. I was asked to work on this text, and you'll see why when we get to verse 18 and 19, 20. It's about music, it's about singing, but that's not all there is here. Look carefully, therefore, how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. therefore do not be foolish but understand what the will of the Lord is and do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery but be filled with the spirit addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ So, Father, I ask now for me and all of us that there would be granted the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

1:24 this is a great miracle it's a gift and it is a precious thing that we long for now and over and over again in our lives because we want to purchase the time in these evil days don't want anything to be wasted or slip by. We want every moment to count as we walk carefully. So come and by your word through faith fill us with the Holy Spirit. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Look carefully then, therefore. Therefore is pointing back to what went just before and what went just before is awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

2:31 So picturing people before conversion as sleeping and dead. Awake, O sleeper. It's like Lazarus, come forth from the dead. Christ will shine on you. And that relates to this drunkenness here. Sleeping, spiritual deadness is like being drunk.

3:03 So therefore, since you're awake now, you're not asleep anymore. Christian. You were sleepwalking before you were saved. You didn't see anything the way it ought to be seen. And now you're not. And therefore, look carefully. Because your eyes are open now. You're alive. And you're not going to be drunk either. You're alive. Your eyes are open. And walking, that's just a another way of saying live. I mean, can you imagine? No cars, no trains, no electricity, no motors.

3:37 Everybody's walking everywhere. That's how you live. You walk. Look carefully, therefore, how you walk. William Carey is one of my heroes, the missionary to India. And he's just a cobbler. You know what a cobbler is? He's a shoe repairman, a lay pastor. And he spent 40 years in India, translated the Bible into about 20 languages, 29 I think. I was like, what? And he said, attempt great things for God. I mean, expect great things from God. That was the order. Expect great things from God. Attempt great things from God. I would just love for you to do that. You won't do that if you just get up in the morning and just coast into the day. You just coast.

4:31 You live. You come home. You have to turn on the news. Go to bed. Get up. Coast. That's not walking carefully. That's not being awake. I would like you to I mean when you walk a few of you when you walked in here you were on the brink of attempting something amazing yes you were I don't know who you are but you were and I'm here to say do it just do something crazy for Jesus okay I'm pushing you over the edge that's why you're here look carefully therefore how you walk Now then there's the three not-but phrases, right? Well, before I go there, this redeem the time.

5:28 Now let's do it in the reverse order. The three phrases are, let me see if I can put them in different colors. So look carefully how you walk. Not as unwise, but as wise. So that's the first not but. And then the next one is redeeming the time because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And then the third one is do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery. But, be filled with the Spirit. Now when I see patterns like that, not but, not but, not but, what I do is jot down the pairs so it would look like this.

6:22 So wise is the, well let's put unwise here first, since that's mentioned first, unwise. And then do not, not unwise, but wise. And then the next one is not foolish and put foolish here. Not foolish but understand, so put understand here. and then not drunk, so I'm going to put drunk here, but rather full, be filled, filled with the Spirit. So I look at those lists now and I ask myself, any order there? anything from bottom to top or top to bottom how do they relate to each other that's the way I think about lists when I run into them and my answer here is I try to think about this is okay I'm going to go from the bottom to the top and think about the relationship between drunkenness and being being foolish and walking unwisely.

7:46 So you get drunk, be foolish, walk unwise. And I think that's the order. I think that's the order of reality. And Paul is saying the problem with spiritual drunkenness, and I think he has both real drunkenness and spiritual drunkenness in mind. Throughout the New Testament, drunkenness is used both ways. Often, you get these ringing in your ears of spiritual drunkenness. And the idea is you can't walk carefully. You can't act wisely. You can't act with understanding. Drunkenness throws off your perception. Makes people crazy on the airplane.

8:31 Don't you know I can hear every word you say from five rows back? Why are you talking like that? Because you're on your second beer. That's why you're talking like that. You're an idiot. He turned you into, become crazy. And they might think, no, no, I'm more in touch with reality. I'm more myself. I say, that's a lot of baloney. You're not more yourself.

8:59 You're out of touch. And that's the way you don't want to be. You don't want to walk through these evil days. out of touch. You need every fiber of your being awake these days. So drunkenness stands for perception that's all skewed, just crazy. You can't tell what's going on. You don't see the reality correctly, and therefore you're a fool. You're just crazy, foolish, and therefore you act in all kinds of unwise ways. And then you go to the other side of the list and you say, what's the antidote to that, Paul? And he says, be filled with the Holy Spirit.

9:46 Be full of the Holy Spirit. That's what you need to be. Now, if that's the remedy, we'll come back in a minute to talk about how do you get full of the Holy Spirit? Is there any steps I could take tonight? If I don't think I'm full of the Holy Spirit, what can I do? And I'll try to answer that before we're done. So the first thing is just to see the three not-but clauses. And now let's go into them a little bit more because we left out a bunch of words, right? We left out redeeming the time. because the days are evil. So let's talk about each of those phrases for just a minute. I translate it redeem.

10:39 I think the ESV has making the most of. The word exagorazomai means buy, like go to the store and buy, purchase. Purchase the time. There are two words for time in Greek, chronos and kairos. Chronos is a time that goes by like this. From morning to night is chronos. and a moment of opportunity is kairos. And that's the word here. So you get up in the morning, you look carefully how you walk, and you see three or four kairos moments, opportunities. Or if you don't see them, you make them. Because that's what you do. You redeem the opportunities. How many of us just amble through the day without any sense of there are golden opportunities here? For what?

11:37 here's an example this is Galatians so then as we have opportunity same word kairos as we have opportunity let us do good to everyone especially to those of the household of faith so one example would be purchase the opportunity means can you do some good here when you go home tonight on the way home is there something good you can do for anybody If your whole mindset is, I'm going to buy some opportunities before I go to bed tonight. I'm going to say a word to my wife or my son or daughter or phone call or an email that needs to be. I'm going to do something. I'm going to buy this night. The devil is not going to have this night. These evil days are not going to have this night. So that's the idea of redeeming the time.

12:30 It goes hand in hand with look carefully how you walk. I mean, you know, people have written all kinds of books about the Protestant work ethic for the last, say, since the Reformation. And it's sometimes scoffed at, like produces workaholics and all kinds of things like that. And it's incentivized with things that are not healthy. And all kinds of things are written badly about the Protestant work ethic for the last 500 years that happened to build a whole Western world. And I don't kind of give a rip about the Western world because the globe is my parish. Like John Wesley said, there are no borders to my kingdom because I belong to King Jesus and he has no borders and no nation except the church. However, the spin-off effect of this kind of living is where that comes from.

13:29 I mean, just read this. You can't say the Bible is just coming to your culture. Some tribe in Papua New Guinea never had any exposure to Western culture at all. Never has read before. Never has had the Bible before. And over 20 years, you're saturating yourself in, look carefully how you walk. Don't be foolish. Don't be drunk. Stay awake. Look for opportunities. Redeem the time. I mean, what does that do in a culture? Makes people productive. That's what it does. makes them crazy productive. And you go around the world. I go around the world and I think, you know, patriotism for me, I shouldn't go here, but... Patriotism for me is like an old sweater.

14:17 I get this from C.S. Lewis. And the four loves. There's a love called storge. And storge is the love you have for a sweater your wife wishes you would throw away. why do you wear that? I don't wear it outside. It's got holes in the elbow. It's just my favorite sweater. I wear it. I feel good in this sweater. That's why I feel when I come home to America from anywhere. Like, I'm at home here, right? It's my skin. It's my culture. It's not God. It's just a sweater. And if you're from somewhere else, that's the way you feel about, met a pastor from Ireland. He sure probably feels that way about Ireland. Says it kind of funny, you know. Why did I go there?

15:08 All that from redeem the time. I mean, really, you will become, you and your family will become a certain kind of family. Your church will become a kind of church. The mission-drivenness of your church will feel a certain way. If you live like that, if you look carefully, if you're wise, if you buy up every opportunity. Now, the days are evil. What does that mean?

15:36 Which days are evil? Now that's relevant today. I mean, big time relevant. Let me see if I can avoid not spending too much time on it. But that means, well, let me read you the text and you decide what it means first before I sum it up. So I'm just giving you a bunch of texts where I think shed light on the days are evil. Like, will tomorrow be evil? a hundred years from now would that still be an evil day or is there a day coming when you won't say the days are evil anymore like if you're a post-millennialist which I'm not and I think it's not a good thing to be but I love you anyway I have friends I mean I do I really do I think it's wrong on this like there's going to come a day when the nation will be Christianized and the world be Christianized and and then after there's a golden age of four or five hundred years of wonderful Christian permeation of all culture then Jesus can come back I think that's just wrong headed one of the reasons I think that's wrong-headed is this sequence of texts about the days are evil.

16:58 So here's Ephesians. You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the age of this world. It's translated course. The age of this world. What does that mean? The age of this world. There's a world and there's an age that goes with the world and it's pretty bleak. You were following it, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now. When's that? When is that? Now at work in the sons of disobedience. Or here's 2 Thessalonians. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, meaning that there's a lawless season coming. Jesus said, lawlessness will be multiplied and the love of many will grow cold. Lawlessness is creeping over the world. It's already at work in the first century, Paul says, only he who now restrains it will do so till he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord has called the man of lawlessness elsewhere, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with his breath, the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming.

18:08 That's when these days of evil end. Or 2 Corinthians 4, 4. In their case, the unbelievers, the God of this age, that's the devil, has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. So there's a God of this age. Jesus is Lord. And for reasons that we are puzzled by, he gives an amazing leash to the devil. this age. So the devil is the god of this age under the lordship of Jesus and therefore we will be in battle to the end. Two more texts on this, three more. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness. What's that? this present darkness. When's that end? Against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places, therefore take up the whole armor of God, etc. And then two more. Here they are, Galatians 1, Colossians 1. Christ gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age. The days are evil, present evil age.

19:27 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. Glorious miracle that has happened to most of you in this room. I thank God. Some of you not, probably, but that's what needs to happen. Namely, we need to be delivered from this evil age. Now back to the text here. Therefore, do not be foolish but understand what the will of the Lord is. Do you know what that refers to? The will of the Lord. So don't be foolish. Understand what the will of the Lord is. Be filled with the Holy Spirit. In order to understand what the will of the Lord is, we need the Holy Spirit. We need the Holy Spirit fullness in order to enable us to understand what the will of the Lord is. If you know what the will of the Lord means, and there are two meanings, This is going to be new to some of you, but old to many of you.

20:30 If you don't get this distinction, it will be very hard for you to make sense out of the Bible. What are the two uses of the term will of God in the Bible? Here's one. In Christ, this is Ephesians 1. in Christ we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. So what is the will of God? Everything is the will of God. Period. Whatever happens is the will of God. If it weren't the will of God, it would not happen. God is God. So this is called the will of decree or the sovereign will. it's used many times this way throughout the Bible. What is, is God's will because God is God.

21:24 He could stop it if he didn't want it to happen. You don't have to believe, you don't want to, that he causes everything, but you don't know how you can be a biblical Christian if you don't believe he couldn't stop it if he wanted to. He can stop anything he wants to. So when the plane flew into the tower on 9-11, all he had to do was go and that plane misses the tower by 60 feet and you save 2,000 people. You think he could not do that? He governs the wind and the waves, the Bible says. So he can stop anything he wants from happening. If he doesn't stop it, he wills it to happen. That's the will of God sovereignly. But here's another use of the word will. For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality. So if a student comes to me and asks me, what's the will of God for my life?

22:28 I know the will of God for your life. It's sanctification. That's the will of God for your life. Holiness. Stay out of bed with your girlfriend. That's the will of God for your life. And he can disobey that and break the will of God. Cancel the will of God in his life. So that's clearly not the same meaning as the will of God in the first case. So you've got two meanings of will of God, and that's utterly crucial as you come to that phrase over and over again. So what does it mean here? Don't be foolish. Understand what the will of the Lord is. You're not required to know the sovereign will of God. You don't know it. I don't know it. You're not held responsible to know it. But you are responsible to know the revealed will of God, like the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount or Romans 12. And that's what we're supposed to do.

23:25 And the reason you need the Holy Spirit is because in your day, just think of this. My guess is you have thought about it. Even if you haven't articulated it, you've experienced it. You read your Bible in the morning and you see maybe five or ten things it says you should do. and then you make about a thousand choices during the day. Like this left hand of mine is in the air. Like I did not think about that. It's just there.

23:56 So there are a thousand decisions that you make. Which of those should you make? 90, let me just guess. 98% of them are not stipulated in the Bible. Well, how do I know what to do? Kiss my wife goodbye when I go? Yeah. Not in the Bible. Well, it kind of is. You got any sense at all. and many, many such things. You need to be filled with the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit conforms you to Christ. He saturates you with the Word.

24:52 He exalts Jesus. He weaves together implications of texts. and you sense his leading into, yeah, kiss your wife for goodness sake. You love her. She would love that. Don't just walk out and go to Dallas. Now we're at the sing part. Don't get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. addressing one another. There are four participles.

25:41 So be filled with the Holy Spirit is the main verb here. And then you've got addressing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing, making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus. And it goes on submitting to one another, but I left that out because we can't do everything. So there really are five participles and we're only going to talk about the musical ones here.

26:16 Let's start with giving thanks. This is really amazing. You know, if I tried to, if I could write the list down here, I won't take the time to do it. My list again, put four things in the list. Addressing, singing, making melody, giving thanks. Giving thanks is the internal one here. Singing is out loud. It's what you do with your lips and voice. Making melody is addressing one another is. but it's giving thanks, or at least experiencing thanks. Being a thankful person is inside, and it says giving thanks always, amazing, always, and for everything. Doesn't it say in everything? It says in everything in 1 Thessalonians. It says for everything, which is simply wild and crazy and great. Really? I mean, You just heard a great message from David Mathis about the place of grief and sorrow.

27:28 Do you give thanks for all of those? In order for that to be true, eventually, if not in the moment emotionally, when the terrible, horrible, horrible news comes, in order for that to be true, you have to have a very, very high view of the wisdom of God and the goodness of God and the power of God. How else can you give thanks for the bad things that happen in your life? which is why I think it is foundational to all singing.

28:13 A belief in the sovereign wisdom and goodness and power of God is essential for all worship, at least worship in a real world of horror. I mean, my guess is that the world who's aware of the horror in the world looks at Christians singing on Sunday morning those people have their head in the sand. I mean, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. They sing like they're in paradise. No, we don't. We always have tears on our faces when we sing. Always. Because we always know somebody's in pain. We always have a kid we wish were different than he is. We always know the person down in the pew is walking through hell. We always know. We're not fools. We're not idiots. but we know God is good, and God is strong, and God is wise, and God has his purposes, and that's why we can sing. So I think, with Paul saying, giving thanks always and for everything is his way of saying, your Father is good to you. He doesn't give a stone to those who ask for bread.

29:32 he may not give the bread that you're asking for but he's not a father who's contemptuous towards his children he always has our good at his heart and he does so in the name of the Lord because Jesus Christ has died for us God designed it that way so that everything could work together for sinners like us then you back up to addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and singing and making melody. So you have three kinds of songs, namely psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. And you have two kinds of singing, singing, making melody. And I've read a lot of commentaries and nobody knows what this means. That is, I mean, everybody knows what it means, but nobody knows the precise distinctions between these three words.

30:39 Just go ahead, pick your commentary and read it, and they're all guessing. It might be that Psalms refers to the 150 Psalms in the Bible. Hymns refer to more or less formal songs about God. And spiritual songs, this being the very broad word for songs, would be spontaneous songs that have come to people's minds. I've had several people sing spontaneous songs over me. Like spirit-given, in-the-moment songs. Very moving. You wouldn't sing them in worship because they're usually not very melodic. it's just the way it is when you're spontaneously singing but in the moment it's very powerful very beautiful thing so we just don't know so what we do know is that's a lot of options meaning cover the ground cover the field with your singing do the psalms do the spiritual choruses do the hymns I mean, if we were to lay it on the contemporary scene, those present realities would not probably be far off from Paul saying, don't be stuck.

31:55 I think to be a Psalms-only church is probably a mistake. Don't want to offend anybody. I love singing the Psalms. The Trinity Hymn is great. The Psalter is great. Everything is great. It's Godward. Right? And that's why we have to be filled with the Holy Spirit. because I think the Holy Spirit gives the ground and the shaping and the goal to our singing so that it doesn't get off base. It doesn't go crazy theologically.

32:25 So psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and then singing and making melody. You know, I have somewhere in here. Where did I put it? There. Singing and making melody. Those are Greek words. That's for two or three of you anyway.

32:51 Same thing. These two words, this means singing and this means singing. and the and the translators mix it up because that would sound funny if you said spiritual songs singing and singing so they say singing and making because they are different words and if we knew more if we had more uses of the words we might be able to make clear distinctions between them but they're used throughout the rest of the new testament and as far as i can tell i'm looking them all up. There are no distinctions between them that I can make out, which means that I think it gives us permission to sing in various ways. There are all kinds of ways to sing. So here's what is special about these words that we need to pay attention to. Addressing one another. that's that's significant and making melody to the Lord well which is it addressing one another as we sing or singing to the Lord and then thirdly from your heart those three phrases are massively important to think about when you're planning how to sing with a group and the first one singing to one another is what we did in the first two songs when we sang tonight for example here's come Christians join to sing hallelujah amen loud praise to Christ our King hallelujah amen let all with heart and voice before his throne rejoice praise is his gracious choice hallelujah amen I'm saying that to you come on you weren't you didn't come you didn't you didn't come come Christians join to sing so that's to one another right? And then you have songs like, great is thy faithfulness, oh God my Father.

34:59 Singing it straight to him. I mean, I'm so biased in my own preference for that kind of singing that I'm changing words all the time while we're singing. Is he worthy? Are you worthy? Are you worthy? Yes, you are worthy. I can hardly let myself say he. I love that song. He or you, either way. But here's the thing. So if you're supposed to do both, is he saying, sometimes you do one, sometimes you do the other? I don't think so.

35:33 I think in a corporate setting with two or more people, you're always doing both. God is always listening to your songs, right? Always listening to your songs. So you are, if you have any awareness of that fact, singing before him, to him, even if you're singing to each other. And if you're singing to him, you know this person right here is listening to you. He's aware that you're singing to him, which means you're aware that he's aware of your singing to him, and therefore you're addressing him. I see this is just huge. In my life, I've stood as a Pastor for 33 years and now 12 years since then in corporate worship as just about the favorite hour of my week. I don't even think I need to say just about.

36:26 I love corporate worship. I love it. Something happens to me in corporate worship. Something happens when in our church maybe 500 people in the service lift their voices. The instruments don't drown them out. We'll talk about that later in the Q&A. The instruments don't drown them out because God loves corporate voices singing. And we sing. And the emotion of those people changes me. It does. And it's designed to. The spiritual affections rising. And you can tell that some of them are bored stiff. And you don't pay any attention to them. That's between them and God. they got issues and they need to be here too. But you're not looking at them. You're looking at that old lady that just lost her husband and you just came back from a year away and she's there with her little baggy skinny arm here. She's 80 years old and she's got her hand up like this, singing her husband's in the grave for 12 months and she's still singing and everything in you says yes, right? Yes. I mean, corporate worship is designed to be utterly transformative for a church. It's designed to draw people like me in. You've been crabby with your wife, right, on the way to church or the night before, and you're singing now of the sweet mercies of God and his patience towards you, and you are broken. And she's standing right here.

38:08 and you say, I'm an idiot. Why, why, in view of this glory, is that little niggling thing wrecking this relationship? And your whole world is fixed. It's just fixed in a moment, right? That's happened to me over and over again. And with Tom Stellar, my associate for 33 years, is down the road, and I'm thinking about my message, and am I ready and are the people going to like the message and all this self-absorbed stuff and I happen to glance down there and there's Tom in the third heaven. That is a total gift to me. It is a total rebuke to me and a gift. Come on, Piper.

39:01 Forget about yourself. Get into this. This is about God. It's not about you. So addressing one another in spiritual songs and doing it to the Lord are not alternatives. they're both happening all the time and and maybe the last thing to say would be from the heart I'm looking for my original slide where is it there it is from your heart, with your heart. Jesus said, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. So the job of a pastor and a worship leader is to do everything we can in prayer and design and the feast of the word to help people wake up. that their hearts come alive.

39:58 I don't think it's worship if it's just words or just hands in the air. You can put your hands in the air and sleep with your girlfriend that night. It happens. That's not worship. That stinks in God's nose. It says so in the Bible. So it really matters that we cultivate with your heart. So let me end with, okay, if fullness of the Holy Spirit, be filled with the Spirit is the key to that, all of that. How do you get filled with the Holy Spirit? And I'll give you just three steps that I think are biblical. Number one, pray for it. That's how I began tonight, right? I ask for it. I ask that God would fill us with the Holy Spirit. if you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children how much more will the heavenly father give the holy spirit to those who ask him that's christians it's not the unbeliever asking to get the holy spirit that's christians asking for a greater measure of the holy spirit just like here in ephesians i pray this is paul praying that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your heart through faith. So this greater indwelling, this greater empowering, this greater control, this greater experience of the Holy Spirit comes through faith. Just like it says here in Galatians, does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, no.

41:48 Or by hearing with faith, yes. Hearing with faith. Hearing what? And that's the last step. Faith comes from hearing and hearing through the Word of God. I don't know any other way to help you walk by the Spirit or be filled by the Spirit than to say, get up in the morning and say, God, please, I feel very dry, even guilty. I need to be cleansed. I need to be forgiven. And I pray that you wash me clean and that you'd come now and fill me with the Holy Spirit so when I go to the breakfast table, I can be of some use to my family. Fill me with the Holy Spirit. And then secondly, you turn to a word of God. I will help you.

42:39 I will strengthen you. I'll hold you up with my victorious right hand. And you believe it. Three steps. Pray, look at the word, and believe. And the Holy Spirit moves through the word by the belief. I think I'm going to save these because my time is up. I've got about eight controversial statements to make, but maybe in the Q&A. We'll see. Let me pray, and I'll let the powers that be make that call. Father, you have met us, you've helped us. And I pray that anything I have said that is out of sync with the spirit of this text or the truth of this text would be canceled out from these people's minds so that they're not hurt by it.

43:42 And if anything I have said is in accord with this text and this truth, that you would confirm it. And as I said at the beginning, with regard to purchasing the time and some people walking in here on the brink of doing something risky or crazy for Jesus, that they would feel empowered by the Holy Spirit to press on and look carefully how they walk and expect great things from you and attempt great things for you. Because they are snatching up every opportunity.