Battle Ready: "What's Influencing You?" Ephesians 5: 15-17 Pastor Drew Webb

Well good morning. That was a good response. It feels like we're decently awake.

I like that. I like that. It was rough this morning. It was hard. Yeah, for me

personally, if we were just Friday and Saturday, we were in Des Moines for a

youth conference and we got back at something, I don't know, 8.15, 8.20,

which was like 9.20, but by the time I spent more time on my sermon and went to

bed, yeah, not a good time for time change Sunday, but that's okay. I got a

whole week to recover. So great to be sharing the word with you this

morning. Go ahead and turn to Ephesians chapter 5 if you have not already done

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

that. If you are using one of the Bibles there in front of you, I want to say it's

9.78. Maybe? Maybe it's 9.78? Yes. Okay. So while you do that, I'm going to grab

something real quick. So just hold tight. We had to hide it. Otherwise you would have

been like, why is there a bike on the stage? And you wouldn't have even paid

attention to anything that the worship team was doing. This is my bike. My bike

and I, we've spent a lot of time together, a lot of time. We have logged

thousands of miles over the years, literally thousands, and we've gone up

and down hills and mountains in the Bay Area. We've done some riding around the

Quad Cities as well, of course, so it's not nearly as good as the riding in the

Bay Area is. Just being honest. But we've descended some awesome descents on the

eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, topped 50 miles an hour on a

few occasions. Those are awesome. The not so awesome times are the few times, not

related to those times, when I have laid it down. Those are not enjoyable times,

but we've had some awesome times together. We've done a number of races. This

is one race, this was probably one of my last races before we moved from

California. That's me there in the middle in the green. Probably 20 pounds lighter.

You're like, what? How do you do that? Yeah, lots of Chipotle is required to

maintain that body during race season. It's hard. You just eat and eat and

eat in order to ride 150 miles a week. So, we've spent lots of time together. It's a

great bike. I like my bike. But you know what? Without me, my bike is useless. It

can't do anything. Like if I set it down, that's not helping my point. Now, if I ask

it to do something, what will it do? Nothing. It is not empowered and equipped

to be able to do anything at this point in time. But when I take it outside and I

get on the saddle and I put power to the pedals and I control where it goes with

the handlebars, I have empowered it to do what it was made to do. It was made to

get out on the road and go for rides. By itself, it can't do it. It needs somebody

to come along and to help it out. So, just like the bike is transformed, when I

take over the bike, when I allow the Holy Spirit to take over my life, to

control my life, to fill my life, then I am able to do what I'm intended to do.

Without being filled by the Holy Spirit, I'm not able to do the things that God

wants me to do to live in the power of the Holy Spirit and walk the Christian

life. I need to be filled by the Holy Spirit and then I'll be completely

changed. So, going now to Ephesians chapter 5, I'd like to ask Mr. Kellan to come on up.

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

I think this guy deserves a little round of applause. He was on the same trip and

he was here for first service on Time Change Sunday. That is pretty commendable.

I asked him, I was like, are you gonna be at first service? He's like, yeah,

first service is the service he comes to. I don't, he never comes to this service,

right? Yeah, so yeah, it's great to have Kellan here with us this morning. We'll be

reading from Ephesians chapter 5. Now, our focus is verses 18 through 21, but, like

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

we did last week, we're going to read in context. So, we're going to read Ephesians

Ephesians 5:15–21

chapter 5 verses 15 through 21. Look carefully. Then how you walk not as

unwise but as wise, making the best use of 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 for

everything to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to

one another out of reverence for Christ. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for

the opportunity to look into your word, your word which transforms us and changes

us. So this morning as we do that, God, I pray that you would open our hearts to

hear from you, that you would highlight any area of our lives where we need to

bring them into conformity to you so we can be more like Jesus Christ. It's in

His name we pray. Amen. You may be seated. Thank you, Kellen. Now, earlier in the

chapter, Paul's focus was on Christians walking appropriately. Christians putting

away the deeds of the darkness and rather walking as lights and when we live

the way Christians are supposed to live, we are said then to be the actual

lights. Now verse 18 says, do not get drunk with wine but be filled with the

Spirit. Now we can spend a lot of time trying to figure out what God's will is

at this youth conference that we were just at yesterday. There was there was

even a breakout session that was devoted to trying to determine what God's will

is and there were hundreds of students in that breakout session. We always want

to know that's one of those important questions when you're that age all the

time, not just that age but especially at that age you're like what am I

supposed to be doing in life? That's one of the important questions in life. What

is God's will for my life? Well, great thing right here. He tells us his will.

He says, do not get drunk with wine but be filled with the Spirit. So why is Paul

addressing this issue of drunkenness? It kind of seems a little maybe I don't know

out of place here in this moment. Was this was this an issue that the church

was dealing with or what was it? Well, we do know first of all the Roman culture,

we would not say that the Roman culture was one of restraint. The Roman culture,

the culture, the predominant culture of the day of the early church, the

predominant culture was the Roman culture and they were given to much excess

whether it be in food or in alcohol or in taking their sexuality outside of the

confines of marriage. So there was that but then there was also the Corinthian

church. You see the Corinthian church, they had some people who would when they

came together for their love feasts for to remember the Lord's sacrifice, they

would approach this time in a drunken state. So this was an egregious abuse of

the Lord's table. So these may be some of the things that that Paul has in the

back of his mind when he says this to not get drunk with wine but actually I

think what he's really getting at is bigger than those things. Those are

important. Yes, don't get drunk. The Bible says that numerous times but what he's

really getting out is what is influencing you? What is it that is

controlling your actions? You see the drunk person is controlled by the alcohol

that they've consumed. They are consumed by the drive to take in alcohol.

Then after they've had those drinks, they're controlled by the actual alcohol

that's in them and at that point we would say that they are under the

influence of that alcohol. Once they're under the influence of alcohol then

they will deal with issues such as muscle control and coordination and

speech issues and memory and their ability to make rights and good

decisions is drastically hindered by the alcohol that is impacting them. So Paul

says don't get drunk with wine because that is debauchery. That is something

that is that is excessive but be filled with the Spirit. So what is this being

filled with the Spirit? Is this something special that I'm supposed to seek after?

Well, sort of. Well see first of all when people hear about being filled with

their with the Spirit the first thought is they think that's the indwelling of

the Spirit and at the point where you acknowledge Jesus as your Savior and you

place your faith in Him the Holy Spirit comes into you and you are said to have

the Holy Spirit in you. He has indwelled you. Your salvation is sure and you are

sealed in Him as a child of God. So that's the indwelling of the Spirit. But

the feeling of the Spirit, the feeling of the Spirit is something different. It's

something that we have to seek after. It's special in that it's it's a state

that you may find on from moment to moment from hours, weeks, maybe even

seasons you may find that it's difficult to be filled with the Spirit and to live

under His influence and His control. When we live under the Spirit's influence and

control, our speech will be changed, our actions will be changed because He is the

one controlling and empowering us. Now just like my bike was transformed when

when I take it over, the person who is filled with the Spirit is completely

changed when the Holy Spirit takes over them. So what does it look like to be

filled with the Spirit? Well the the rest of this section actually gives us some

signs of what it looks like when we are filled with the Spirit. The first one is

songs from the heart to God. When we're filled with the Spirit we will have

songs from the heart to God. Scripture repeatedly calls us to sing to God.

Psalm 33 verses 1 and 3 said, Shout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous. Praise

Psalms 33:1

be fits the upright. Sing to Him a new song. Then Psalm 40 verse 3 says, He put a

Psalms 40:3

new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. So singing to God is part and

parcel to being filled with the Spirit. Now while we're on this topic of music, I

want to pause for for a few moments to just talk about music because music is

powerful. Music is a wonderful tool that God has given to us.

Music can have an impact on us. All the music that we take in will have an

impact on us. The question is, will that impact be for good or will it be for bad?

Does the music you listen to make you feel things in your soul that perhaps you

shouldn't feel? Does it make you feel angry, overly sad or depressed? Does it

make you have feelings of lust? So we need to take inventory of what we're

listening to to process that and see whether it's doing good things for our

soul, whether it's refreshing our soul or whether the music is tearing our soul

down in some sense and pulling us away from God. I'm not trying to cast

judgment on listening to secular music. I listen to secular music some as well,

but it's important for us to just be aware of what we're listening to and

consider its impact in our lives. Now I've said this many times, but when we sing

to the Lord, we're entering into battle. The battle is twofold. First of all,

there's a spiritual battle that's going on all around us and singing to God

pushes back the enemy. It declares where our allegiance is. It says that God is my

God. He's the one who deserves my full allegiance. No one and nothing else gets

that. He is God. And the second battle is a battle within. See the world tries to

get us down. Satan works through the world to try to cause us to give into

fears, to give into anxiety and worry, or to cause us to give in to the

temptations that we face. By worshiping God in song, we're declaring that He, He's

greater than all those things. He's greater than the worry, than the fear,

than the temptations. When we sing, we're placed, we sing to God, we're placing

our needs in his hands. And this gives us peace, no matter the season of life.

In the last couple months, I've shared how I've been through some difficult times

of fear. And there have been times where I just didn't know how to pray. And I would

ask myself, what is it that God wants of me right now in this situation? What am I

supposed to be learning here in the midst of this difficult trial? And as I

would listen to Christian music, and as I would listen to worship music, and try

to sing along to the words, the posture of my heart would be significantly

impacted so that I'm orienting the problems of my life around God. They

don't pale in comparison to who He is. And the worship music that I consume

helps remind myself that He's greater, He's bigger. So that's music. And it's

important for us to just keep that in mind as we go through our Christian life.

Now that passage said singing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and you may

look at that and think, well I think I know what that is and probably know what

that is, but what's that? Well, first of all, let's talk about Psalms. Psalms are

found in the book of Psalms. And there are a couple other places where there

are Psalms. But these are words of praise. The word Psalm means praise.

So the purpose of this book of Psalms is to actually express praise. Now this

happens all throughout the Psalms and it even happens in the Psalms that we

call Lament Psalms. And the Lament Psalms, they start with a deep

trial, a position of sorrow and hurt. But the thing about them, that may be where

they started. But when you get to the end of the of the Lament Psalms, it will say

something like, but yet I will put my hope in Him. There's a trust, there's a

hope, there's an understanding. This may be for right now, but I know that God is

greater than this thing. So the Psalms are just as relevant today as they were

for the ancient, ancient Hebrews who would read them. So they're a great way to

express our hearts to God. Then there are the hymns. The hymns actually aren't just

that, that book that you have heard of, that hymnal. Actually most of those

songs in there aren't actually hymns in the context of what we're talking about

here. Now hymns were songs that were differentiated from Psalms.

You see Psalms were actual Holy Spirit inspired scripture. So remember this is

here in this time. Their scripture is the Old Testament. And so they would take

the Psalms and they had those. But the hymns for the early church were

differentiated from Psalms, which is Holy Spirit inspired scripture. These hymns

actually had a specific purpose of teaching about God. They would sing songs

that would help them know who Jesus Christ was and understand who exactly He

was. There are a couple passages in scripture for sure that we have good

reason to believe were songs, were these hymns.

Philippians 2 verses 5 through 11, this passage says to let this mind, this

Philippians 2:5–11

attitude of humility that Jesus Christ had, let that attitude be in you. Because

He came to this earth and He thought more of us set aside His own rights as

God so that He could go to the cross and He's been exalted. So that's one song that

the early church sang. And then there's another one in Colossians 1 verses 15

Colossians 1:15–20

through 20. Jesus is the exact image of the invisible God. He's the one who has

preeminence. He has top priority in all of the world. So and it is He who

holds the world together. This is another song that they would sing. And

Paul has incorporated these into these books that he's written. Today, a modern

hymn, today would be songs like In Christ Alone or That Great Christmas Hymn,

Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Both of these songs, the purpose of these songs is to

teach about Jesus Christ. And we would say in theological terms, we say they

have a high Christology is what these songs have. So that's hymns and that

leads us to spiritual songs. The vast majority of the music that we sing here

at Cornerstone is spiritual songs. Spiritual songs are different in that

their purpose is not necessarily to teach you about God, but their purpose is to

tell us what He's done. They're much more personal, how God has worked in our lives.

That is what spiritual songs do. So songs to God in the company of other

believers is one of the signs of our fullness of the Spirit. Our hearts and

our spirits overflow and worship and praising and glorifying God is just a

logical reasonable outcome. So this is the first sign of being Spirit-filled.

The second sign of being filled with the Spirit is thankfulness to God. Verse 20

read, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the

name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now when we look at the events of life, there are

two ways to look at them. We can look at them through the eyes of the flesh or we

can look at them through the eyes of the spirits. When we look at the

eye, look at the events through the eyes of the flesh, we see every wrong thing

that was done to us, every place where we've experienced some sort of injustice,

every moment where we didn't get what we felt we deserved, what we were due. You

may recall that earlier in the chapter and verses 3 and 5 Paul mentioned

specifically covetousness and this covetousness when you take it out to

its extents, it turns into greed and envy and this covetousness is something

that can just completely take over your life. Covetousness and greed are never

satisfied, always looking out for its own self-interests and it becomes a

destructive force of nature that will undermine your life, it'll take your soul

and it'll destroy your happiness and joy and this unhappiness then shifts our

focus from the things in life that really matter and we start to lose all

sense of what reality is, we start to complain. Now I have to confess to you

that this is something I struggle with, actually maybe it's better to say no I

don't struggle with it, I'm actually good at it. At various points this

deficiency has been highlighted in certain situations whether in my work or at

home. In a few years back I came across a personality tool that labeled me as a

romantic and now what this means when when you're a romantic it means that you

idealize all the situations and all the moments in life, you romanticize them and

build them up to be this great wonderful thing. You want this event to go

perfectly, it's gonna be this great thing, this vacation is gonna go just

absolutely perfectly, everything is gonna go exactly the way it's supposed to go

but you all live life as well, you know those things don't happen right and our

expectations sometimes aren't met and so for the romantic the the tendency is to

fixates on the things that didn't go right and to complain. So I need to watch

out for this and I need to be grateful for the successes in life and in

ministry so that I don't come across as self-centered and ungrateful. When we look

at the world with the eyes of the flesh we'll lack gratitude, however when we look

at the world through the eyes of the spirit we'll adopt a patently different

perspective. We'll have gratitude in our hearts and this this attitude of

gratitude it serves as a weapon against greed, it serves as a weapon against

covetousness and we're able to find contentment. When we're when we're

grateful we're able to see all the blessings that God has poured into our

lives, the big things and the small things we find ourselves content with

what God has provided. We don't feel entitled and we see all of life as a

gift, the car I get to drive to the job that I get to go to, the house I get to

come home to, the family I have. When we look through the eyes of the spirit then

we're much more inclined to see all the blessings God has poured into our lives

and to see life as a gift. In her bestseller the hiding place, Corey Ten Boom

recounts how she and her sister Betsy arrived at Ravensbrook concentration

camp. The sisters found the conditions there of course to be deplorable. They

were overcrowded of course and to make matters worse there was also an infestation

of the fleas. Now one morning their scripture reading was from 1st Thessalonians

5 verses 16 through 18. It says rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks

in all circumstances for this is the will of God and Christ Jesus for you.

Betsy told Corey to stop and to thank God for everything about their sleeping

quarters and of course Corey's first response was no and Betsy continued to

drive at her and finally Corey relented and she started to give thanks for the

conditions that they lived in. Now she started to do this she began to realize

that she was able to grow a lot spiritually there at Ravensbrook. She

was able to spend time in the Word and praying and they were seldom interrupted

by the guards. Why? It's because they didn't want to be around the fleas. So when

Corey realized this her gratitude increased. She was able to see the good

in this situation. So the first evidence of being spirit filled was singing. The

second evidence of being spirit filled is gratefulness and third evidence of

being filled with the spirit is submission to one another. We submit to

one another out of reverence for Christ. Now our English word submission comes

from the Greek word houpotaso and houpotaso is a military term which

actually means to arrange troops under the control in the command of the leader.

And so I think we understand that well enough right? We understand that in

the military we need to have authority and there needs to be people who are

under that authority not everybody can be in authority or else they're not

going to be able to accomplish the mission and the purpose that they have

in the military. However when this word houpotaso is taken outside of the

military context then it means to voluntarily orient yourself under

someone else's authority. Voluntarily orienting yourself under someone else's

authority. It takes a lot of humility to place the welfare of others before our

own welfare and agendas.

Submission isn't easy. I'm selfish. Thank you for not saying amen. We are

selfish people. We want what we want and we struggle to give it up.

Submission is where I'm laying my will down and I'm lining up under someone

else's authority and preferences. The ultimate example of this of course was

Jesus when he went to the cross. Luke 22, 42. There he prayed, Father if you are

willing this is this is on the nights that he's he's arrested. He's about to

go to the cross the next day. If you are willing remove this cup from me.

Nevertheless not my will but yours be done. So that night when he prays in the

garden he knew what was coming to him. He knew the agony that would be coming

the type of death and how horrible that was to die upon a cross. He knew what

that it was going to be this horrible thing to take sin when he'd never

experienced sin before to take all of our sin on himself. So he didn't want to go

through this thing but he says, but Father if this is your will then not mine.

I'm submitting to your will and the reason he did that is because of his love

for us and he knew what was on the other side. So he thought more highly of us

than of his own desires. Now sometimes I wish that everyone could have a view of

what happens in our elder meetings. Now we get together each month in this room

full of men comes together and we pray and we press into God and we and we ask

God to reveal himself and to move in our midst and we say God not our will but

yours be done do what you want here and now you better believe that when we all

come together we all have our own ideas we all have our own preferences our own

ways that we want to do things here at Cornerstone but when we start to engage

in conversation and address whatever issues personal preferences and agendas

start to get laid aside we start to submit most importantly to God as we do

that we're submitting to each other and there's this unity that comes about only

because of the Holy Spirit's work and the Holy Spirit's filling that room in our

lives. Now as we continue this section here in a couple weeks you'll see that

submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ impacts how we live.

Wives will submit to their husbands, husbands will submit to the headship and

authority of Jesus Christ, members of the body of Christ will submit to others,

children submitting to their parents, employees submitting to their employers.

These are just some of the ways that we practice submission here in the body of

Christ. Now we want to be filled I hope that's your desire this morning to be

filled to be controlled to be empowered by the Holy Spirit. Without that feeling

we're useless in the in the Holy Spirit's work just like this bike is

powerless all by itself.

But our desire is to be filled daily with the Holy Spirit so that we can be

tools used for his purposes and his glory throughout each day of our lives.

Let's bow our heads and close our eyes.

As we've gone through these things this morning we've talked about what it looks

like to be filled with the Spirit. Perhaps there was something that resonated

with your heart. Are you inclined to sing songs from the heart to God? Are you

more inclined to pull back and not want to express songs of worship to God? Do

you need to take inventory of the music that you're even taking in? What about

thankfulness in your heart? Do you go through daily life feeling entitled or

are you content with what God has for you? You're able to see all the places he

has blessed you in life.

And then submission. Do you hold your will, your agenda, your your priorities

above everything and everyone else? Do you need to lay those down? Do you need to

say, God, I surrender my will, I surrender my desires to you? Would you

work in me? Would you change me? Would you shape me?

Father God, we thank you for your word that we can look at to help us know how

to live this life that you've called us to. This morning God our desire is to

live holy lives to eliminate sin from our lives to to live lives that are

passionately obedient to you.

May we be filled with the Holy Spirit each and every day as we start the day.

Ask you to fill us God. Fill us so that we can serve you so that we can live for

you. Jesus, then we pray. Amen.