Greater is He that is in You! Part 2 - Ephesians: Born for War

Hey, I'm Steve Holt, the senior pastor of The Road at Chapel Hills.

This is the Road Podcast.

Thanks for joining us.

My heart is to empower you to change the world.

I hope this message impacts you.

So here's my thesis today.

Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.

I talked about that last week.

This is part two.

About being filled with the Holy Spirit.

You can't do the Christian life by yourself.

If you could do the Christian life without Christ, then Christ died needlessly.

Christ came to the cross, he lived a life, he gave you the power to live the life by leaving his Holy Spirit.

His Holy Spirit came at Pentecost.

And Peter, who couldn't even admit that he was a Jesus follower, a servant girl on the dark side of a night with a little campfire, suddenly preaches the gospel, and 3,000 people get saved and the church is born because the Holy Spirit did it through him.

And some of you, you wouldn't admit you're a Christian by campfire to a servant girl either.

But if you get filled with the Holy Spirit today and you start walking in the power of the Spirit, no telling what God can do through you.

Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.

Greater is the Christ in you than the demons that are in the world.

Greater is the Christ in you than the government that's in this world.

Greater is the Christ and the Holy Spirit that's within you than your limitations in this world.

And we all have limitations.

None of us here probably are on the level of a genius.

Maybe a few of you are, I don't know, but the reality is you have a bigger struggle than I do because I know I'm not a genius.

Now, some of you think you're a genius, and you may be.

But you'll have the bigger problem because sometimes it's harder for the most talented people to surrender to Jesus because they're so talented.

But listen, listen, if you surrender it all to him, look what he could do through you.

Look what you've already accomplished.

Look how much more God could take you if you walk in the power of the Holy Spirit.

So we were in Ephesians 5, 18 last week.

So everybody, let's go to Ephesians 5.

We're working our way through Ephesians.

And the rest of Ephesians is really cool because the rest of Ephesians really is built on verse 18 of chapter 5.

If we get 18, 19, 20, and 21 right today, then it's a setup for the rest of Ephesians, because the next part is about Christian marriage, it's about parenting, it's about being an employer and employees, and it's about spiritual warfare.

But in 18, we talked about it last week, and in a nutshell, this is what I said.

Do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Holy Spirit.

That's verse 18.

So, what I said last week is that Paul, in writing to the church at Ephesus, is comparing what they've come out of so that they understand what they've come into.

So, what they came out of was the temple of Artemis, the temple of Diana, where they would drink, intoxicating drink, get high, get drunk, and have these hallucinations and these religious experiences.

Just like you used to do that, quit doing that, now be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Because it's a control issue.

Who's in control?

And I've been drunk, never been high, but I've been drunk.

And a lot of you in this room have been drunk, and a lot of you in this room have been high, and you were not in control, right?

And if you were like me as an athlete, all it took was one time and away.

I'm not doing that.

I didn't like that feeling.

I it was fearful for me to think in terms of being out of control.

And so, and so Paul's saying, remember that feeling?

Remember that?

Now I want you to be, let the Spirit of God take control.

I want it like you are out of control, I want you to be out of control again, but out of control of you and in control by Jesus.

Let Him take over.

And so some of you are here today and you are in control of your life, and you're all worried, and you're all frustrated, and you're bummed out because something happened this week.

I want you to close your eyes.

Everybody, just close your eyes.

Close your eyes and just allow a moment of silence.

And I want you to surrender what you're worried about.

To yourself right now, just surrender your concerns to Christ.

And say, Lord, I surrender this.

I give it to you.

I'm all worried, I'm all twisted up.

I give it to you right now.

I give it to him right now.

I have to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Lord, fill me with your spirit.

I put you in control.

I put you in the driver's seat.

Now pray with me.

Lord, I give you my heart.

I put you on the throne of my heart.

Take control of my life.

Take my worries.

Take my concerns.

In the name of Jesus.

Fill me with your spirit.

Fill me with your perspective.

Teach me this morning.

Instruct me this morning.

In your name I pray.

Amen.

Now, the filling of the Holy Spirit is a conscious act by which you give control of everything in your life that you know of, because it'll change, because the more we surrender to Christ, the more he will show us where we're not surrendered to Christ.

As that begins to happen, you're going to become a happier person.

You're going to become a more joyful person because the pressure's off.

The pressure's off you and the pressure's on him.

We're letting him have control of our finances.

We're letting him have control of our future.

We're letting him have control of our relationships.

And you say, well, how do I do that?

Well, part of it is spending time, PB and J, prayer, Bible, and journal, in God's Word, knowing God's Word, because you know how to pray then.

Now, men and women, if you if we don't spend time in God's Word and we're not letting the Word of God be living and active in our heart, then we don't know what to do.

So we keep acting like the old habits before because we're not renewing our minds.

So the filling of the Holy Spirit is a partnership with Christ.

So does everybody understand what I'm saying?

At least in an elementary way, it's it is a control issue.

Now, what happens next in the next few verses are, I think, an example of what the spirit-filled life begins to look like in our lives, and I would call them, just to use a grammar, and it's for you that don't like English grammar, then this you'll go, ah, what's he talking about?

Don't worry about it.

It's participles.

There's these participles that follow the statement in verse 18, and these participles are there to show us, church, what it looks like to be spirit-filled.

So here's the first one.

Look at verse 19.

Speaking.

Speaking.

Speaking to one another.

So not just speaking to yourself, but speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.

Now, the most encouraging thing in this verse is making melody in your heart.

Because some of you can't, for the life of you, make a melody out loud.

And I'm one of them.

So I'm so glad that it says making melody in your heart to the Lord.

So we make a joyful sound, but we don't know how to do melody.

So speaking to one another.

So here's the first thing.

The first thing that the Spirit wants to get a hold of is seasoned speech.

Get a hold of our tongue.

When Pentecost occurred, they spoke in tongues.

And I think they spoke in tongues because they didn't know what the heck was going on.

And when the Spirit came upon them, he gave them a heavenly language.

They said they were worshiping and praising God in different tongues.

Okay, so God wants to get a hold of your tongue.

And isn't it the most dangerous thing?

Isn't it the hardest thing to control is your tongue?

And yet, he says that's the first thing.

The first thing the Spirit of God wants to take care of and begin to work on and continually work on, because it takes a lifetime, is our tongue.

And how we handle relationships with each other, speaking to one another, seasoned speech.

But then it says in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

If we took our Bible right now and we we closed it up like this, I can't give an example with a phone, but with the hard copy Bible, and you open it up in the middle, oh, almost always lands to Psalm 119.

Almost every time if you get it right.

Because the Psalms is the center post of God's Psalter or His hymn book to us.

And so, like today is the 31st.

Now, some would say that's Halloween.

But this is actually Reformation Day.

So in the church here, this is Reformation Day, not in the Catholic Church, but it's Reformation Day, in which Martin Luther in 1517 went to the Wittenberg, we say Wittenberg, but it's a Wittenberg door in Wittenberg, Germany, and he came there and he nailed up 95 statements or 95 theses, T-H-E-S-C-S, thesis, or statements or arguments against indulgences in the Catholic Church.

That began a movement called the Protestant Reformation.

Now we have people out there that want us to forget about the Protestant Reformation because if you begin to think about the Protestant Reformation, then you have to consider the Protestant work ethic.

The pilgrims came and they were, and we would say the Puritans and the Pilgrims, which we'll celebrate with Thanksgiving in a few weeks, brought us, among other things, one of the main things they brought us was the Protestant work ethic.

The idea that you can make it in America if you're willing to work hard.

Now that's not real popular today.

But guess what?

It still works.

And it's still true whether you like it or not.

So when the pilgrims could not find a home and a place of safety for their children, mainly through the educational system in Holland, they came to America.

And then a number of years later, because of what was happening in the Church of England, the Puritans decided to follow the pilgrims and they came.

But there was this underlying fabric that they believed in called the Protestant work ethic.

And the reason that was significant, men and women, is because when Martin Luther on the 31st of October, 1517, posted those 95 theses up, and he didn't even know it at the time, what would eventually come forth from that initial protest where we get the word Protestant, the protest was that everybody's a priest.

Not just Catholic priests, but everybody's a priest.

Everybody's a king and everybody's a priest if they have Christ in their heart.

Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.

So that blacksmith who makes the best horseshoes that he can and does the best blacksmithing he can do is a priest over his blacksmith shop.

He is, that is holy unto the Lord.

He's a wholehearted disciple as a blacksmith.

And he may not give the homily in the Catholic mass in his little town, but he worships the Lord by being the best blacksmith that he can be.

And in this room right here, I'm the senior pastor of the road.

But every one of you are priests and kings, and you're pastors over your family and over your home.

That's your first church.

Your first church is your own family.

Your second church is here.

And so when you go to work, you worship, you give everything you can.

If you're a military officer, if you're a mechanic, if you clean windows for a living, if you watch the kids at home, if you're a lawyer, whatever it is you do, be all in for the Lord.

That's the spirit-filled life.

The spirit-filled life is that you're all there.

And on that day, October 31st, 15, 17, that's when it started.

And so with seasoned speech is how it all begins.

We begin with how we speak.

And it's Psalms.

And so today is the 31st.

So when Liz and I woke up this morning, the first thing we did is we read Psalm 31.

And that's how you can get into the Psalms.

You can just go by the day and read that Psalm.

And then if you go five more Psalms and five more Psalms times five, you can go through all 150 Psalms in a month.

But Psalms.

And then it says hymns.

Hymns.

And we've had people come to the road and leave the road because we don't do enough of the traditional hymns.

And I've said, that's fantastic.

Because you have sacred memory of those hymns.

And if you want those every Sunday, you should go to a church where that's what they do every Sunday.

That's no problem.

But then it says hymns and spiritual songs.

So there's spiritual songs that we sing that are in combination with hymns.

And even today we'll have, we've got the doc, we're singing the doxology.

Do y'all know raise your hand if you know what I mean by the doxology?

Okay, most of you in the room.

But you see, for you young people who may not be familiar with hymns, you need to learn more about hymns.

Because those hymns are rich with theology and doctrine.

And for you that are older and don't know the spiritual songs, you become familiar with the spiritual psalms.

The point is, we can't speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs if we don't know them.

So as you go to work, listen to Christian music.

As you, you know, if you don't have a hymnal, I have I have like five hymnals, you know, that I have.

And I've got a Lutheran hymnal, a hymn hymnal.

I've got a Lutheran hymnal, I've got one that was given to me when I went on staff with Campus Crusade that a guy gave me that I've carried all over the world, a little red.

It's very small, but it's all those songs and everything.

And so I I love the hymns.

I actually love the hymns to sing to myself more than even most of the modern music because I've memorized so many.

So whatever, I mean, I can just rattle them off and they're in my heart.

But that's helpful because it seasons my speech because I'm thinking doctrinally.

I'm thinking theologically, I'm worshiping doctrinally.

You know, a lot of the music today can be a mile, a mile wide, and an inch deep.

We need worship that's a mile wide and a mile deep.

We need worship leaders that know systematic theology and doctrine.

Because we're that's what we're doing, that's what we're gonna do.

When I get close, when I close here and I walk off, we're gonna sing theology.

That's what worship is.

Worship is singing your theology.

I'll just say on some of the some of the lyrics that I see from time to time, I'm like, hello.

I mean, I don't know what that guy was smoking when he wrote that.

Okay?

So I don't like it all.

But there's also some hymns out there that I would probably choose not to sing because they're too religious-y.

You see, what we need is we need worship that is not just singing about God, but it's singing directly to God and our love for Him.

And so when we're singing, a lot of times your spiritual songs are better at that.

They're not just about who God is, they're about the God that we love.

So we need both.

There's a place for singing who God is.

Because sometimes you don't feel God's love, right?

But you know he's there because you're deep.

You're you you understand the sovereignty of God, you understand the omnipresence of God.

And then in our lives, there's times where we, I mean, when I was in graduate school, there were professors, I knew they, I mean, I think they loved the Lord.

I went to hear Greek and Hebrew from them.

I learned history from them, but I would have never gone to them for any kind of marriage counseling.

I mean, they were dry, they seemed to be spiritually dead, and they were full of head knowledge.

But we want hearts on fire and heads on fire.

Why not be a church where we have hearts and heads on fire so that we know who God is, but we all passionately go for Him, and they can call us a raving Pentecostal.

But we're smarter than everybody else.

Because we we study deeply the things of the Lord, but don't let it suffocate the fire of your heart.

Does that make sense?

Because sometimes you get, you know, these people got massive brains.

But you wouldn't go to them and ask them how to walk in the power of the Spirit because they're just a pool of knowledge, but they're not walking with fire in their heart.

So let's have fire in our steps, fire in our heart.

That's what Martin Luther was.

And then verse 20 giving thanks.

Always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So, secondly, he's talking about an attitude of gratitude.

So learning to be gracious and be thankful.

My 95-year-old grandmother, when she died 20 years ago, used to say that you can't be thankful and angry at the same time.

And I thought that was really good.

She had all these little sayings.

Um, but that was one that really resonated with me because angry people generally are not thankful.

And some of you are angry.

You're angry this morning.

You're angry at me because I said something you didn't like.

I'm used to that.

And don't come and tell me about it because I mean, I'm not, I don't care.

I mean, I don't.

I really don't.

Because listen, listen, this is why.

Because I get angry at me for things that I say.

So, so that's why we need to be gracious toward each other because we're all changing, we're all growing.

And I'm telling you, as we become more thankful, you'll become less angry.

And we're all angry sometimes.

Everybody here is angry sometimes.

But some of you are angry people.

You're an angry person.

And God wants you to learn to be thankful.

And if you'll just start to be a little bit more thankful as we go into Thanksgiving, you'll see some of that anger drop off.

All right?

You can do that.

And your spouse should remind you that I told you that.

That you know you need to listen to what Pastor Steve said and quit being so angry.

Why don't you be thankful for me instead of shouting at me?

I'll quit shouting as much if you'll quit shouting as much.

And if you can get one, if you can get one thankful day in out of seven, you might get two.

And then you might get three.

So start somewhere and just be thankful for that.

Be thankful for that crummy job you have.

Really?

That's a crummy job.

They don't appreciate me.

I'm smarter than the whole group.

Well, just be thankful you got a job.

And if you start being more thankful at work, they might recognize how smart you are.

So an attitude of gratitude.

You say, well, I can't do that.

Well, that's the point.

You can't.

If you could, then you don't need the power of the Holy Spirit.

But you can't, so that's a good thing because He can, and if you'll surrender to Him, He will, and you'll become a more thankful person.

And then when we're out there, you know, in the lobby, hanging out with each other, it'll start rubbing off on each other, and we'll all be more and more thankful.

Nobody likes an angry person.

Just remember that.

Nobody likes that.

Nobody likes an unthankful person.

So if you want to have some friends, be thankful.

And then start saying it.

Go back to verse 19.

You know, seasoned speech, attitude of gratitude, start speaking thankfulness, and people will gravitate towards you because nobody's thankful out there.

They're not that nobody, everybody's mad about something out there.

Why can't we be different and be set apart by being thankful for what we have and not be mean about the things we don't have?

Well, that's a supernatural work of the Spirit that he wants to do in the road.

He wants to do it in churches all over the city.

So an attitude of gratitude will begin to become pervasive, and we should have, in the years ahead, the most thankful, the most positive county in the world.

Because we take it over.

We take it over.

Remember that movie, Pollyanna?

I know that sounds like that's such a dumb movie, you know.

People make fun of Pollyanna.

But I like Pollyanna.

And I like that movie because that little girl, she just pushed through all the stuff around her and that mean old lady and everything, and she could see the good in things.

Why can't we do that better?

We can do that better.

So, first, season speech.

Second, attitude of gratitude.

And then thirdly, and really a lot hinges on verse 21, submitting to one another in the fear of God.

So, a humble heart, having a humble heart.

That was the attitude of Jesus.

Jesus had a humble heart.

Philippians 2, 3.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.

May your attitude be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who, being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grass, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant and being made in human likeness.

Jesus said, Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave.

Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but served, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

So let's outserve this world.

Let's outserve this world.

Let's outpray them, outserve them, outlove them, and be out there making a difference.

We can.

That's what a wholehearted disciple does.

Again, I can't do that.

Yes, right.

So we have to have the power of the Holy Spirit.

Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.

So you've got this greatness within you.

I don't think Luther had any idea when he posted up those 95 arguments on the Wittenberg door, what he was unleashing in the hearts of men and women all across Europe.

That you're a priest and a king, and greater is he that is in you.

That you have greatness within you.

And that through the power of the Spirit, you can tear down mountains that are in your way.

You can tear down walls that are in your way.

Through the power of the Spirit, God can do miracles through every one of you in this room if you'll just believe.

Just believe that.

Walk in the power of the Holy Spirit.

There's no disease he can't heal.

There's no problem he can't solve.

There's no mountain that's in your way that through faith in Christ and releasing your life to him and completely surrendering him, he can't work through you in a mighty and powerful way.

Thanks for listening to the Road Podcast.

It's been my joy to be a part of your life today.

And you know, that's part of what we do here at The Road, and this is what I do in having this Road Podcast is to empower people to change their world.

My passion and desire is that you would take God's word through the power of the Holy Spirit and make that relevant for your life.

You know, the reality is that God has placed your life here on this earth to make a difference.

And if you'd like more information about how to grow in Christ, if you need prayer, if you want more equipping in different areas of your life, go to theroad.org.

God bless you.