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Sermons

"FILLED WITH THE FULLNESS OF GOD"
EPISTLE SCRIPTURE TEXT: EPHESIANS 3:14-21

DAVE RING, PASTOR
LOS ALAMOS 1ST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
PENTECOST SUNDAY MORNING, MAY 23, 2010

SCRIPTURE TEXT: 14For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19and to know this love that surpasses knowledge-that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
20Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

PRAYER: (Let us pause, as always, to affirm our link with our Lord in prayer prior to the sermon message.) "Father, your Word is truth. But Your truth may only be fully understood when we are taught not simply by human words, but by Your Holy Spirit. Teach us now, Holy Spirit, that we may discern spiritual truth. Amen."

MESSAGE: "And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all saints, to grasp how wide and high and long and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

God is Spirit. To be filled with the fullness of God is to be filled with the Spirit--the Holy Spirit. Today, on Pentecost Sunday 2010, I want to talk with you about being filled with the Holy Spirit.
I wonder if there is anyone here this morning who can provide the correct answer to this question: Who was the very first person in the Bible ever to be described as "filled with the Spirit?" (Pause for responses.) The first person recorded in the Old Testament as being filled with the Spirit of God was a man named Bezalel. In Exodus 31:3, the Word says, "Then the Lord said to Moses, `See, I have chosen Bezalel, son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability, and knowledge in all kinds of crafts--to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver, and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of craftsmanship.'" Bezalel was God's choice to be chief builder of the ancient Israelites' portable sanctuary, which they called the "tabernacle." God filled Bezalel with His Spirit to enable him to better do the work God wanted of him.

Filled with the Spirit of God. Filled with the Holy Spirit. Let's check our collective Bible knowledge one more time. Who was the first person in the New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Would anyone care to offer an answer? (Give time to respond.) The first person in the New Testament to be filled with the Holy Spirit was Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. This occurred when Mary, the mother of Jesus, herself pregnant with the Son of God, visited her cousin Elizabeth, who was six months farther along in her pregnancy with God's great prophet, John. Luke 1:41 records: "When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit." Elizabeth, cousin of Mary and mother of John the Baptist, was the first human in the New Testament to be filled with the Spirit of God.

These two instances of being filled with the Spirit in the Bible, Bezalel and Elizabeth, are probably not the most familiar to any of us. But I chose them deliberately to let you know that God's Holy Spirit was not absent from the earth prior to that special day of the Spirit many Christians are more familiar with-- the Day of Pentecost. Many of you are, I'm fairly sure, familiar with the account of Pentecost, found in the second chapter of the Book of Acts. Let's review it in our minds for a few moments. Ten days before this date the Risen Christ had ascended bodily into Heaven, leaving His disciples behind to carry on His work. They were confused and disorganized by His leaving. They were now leaderless. They had a task to carry out--our Lord had given them the Great Commission. But it was such a huge task--to win the entire world for Him! How should they start? Where? Who would take charge? Was it possible for a few ordinary men and women to undertake such an enormous, divine responsibility?

Unsure of how to begin their work, they didn't. They simply sat in the temple, reading the Scriptures, praying, seeking for a sign of God's will as to their next step. For nine days they sat, hoping things would somehow get sorted out so they could start their work for Jesus. On the tenth day, in the morning, they were all gathered together in a particular place, probably that same large upper room where they had celebrated the "last supper" with their Lord almost two months before. We don't know the reason for their assembly, but whatever its cause, God used it as an occasion to show them that, even though His Son was gone from human sight, He was still very much alive and active upon the earth! In a display of both power and love such as never before seen among men, God poured out His Holy Spirit upon all those present.

And what a Spirit it was! These timid, even at times cowardly folk--confused, leaderless, indecisive --suddenly became, almost in an instant, the great pillars of Christianity whom we still admire as the courageous "saints" of the first century. Shaky, sniveling, wishy-washy Simon became Peter, the "rock" upon which Christ's Holy Church was established for all time. In a single afternoon, Peter's bold witness for his Lord added 3,000 souls to the faith. Yesterday, they were a rag-tag band of half-hearted followers of an unusual teacher. But today, on Pentecost, they became God's triumphant Church, on the way to winning the world for Jesus Christ! The difference? They were filled with God's Holy Spirit.

The first Pentecost produced, according to the Biblical account found in Acts 2, some strange results among the followers of Jesus. They acted almost as if they were drunk, and they spoke in languages they had never learned. But something even more strange has happened to Christians since the Day of Pentecost. For a century or two, the Holy Spirit was paramount in the consciousness of God's Church--and it experienced an era of growth like no other. But then somehow, slowly but surely, the Spirit became dissociated from the everyday workings of the faith. Christians still worshipped the Father and the Son, but the Spirit became a stepchild--too strange, too exotic for most believers to be concerned with. And the power which drove the early church to nearly win the entire world in a single century drained away.

I now wish to share with you a personal story, a part of my own testimony of faith. As many of you already know, I did not start out to be a pastor when I finished college-my educational background was originally as an electrical engineer. And going back even farther, unlike many of you, I was not raised in a Christian home. I am a convert from paganism--from the godless secular world. As a young man I first truly heard and responded to the gospel when I was in college, at age 20. So I didn't have the childhood training in the Word of God and in the Church of Jesus Christ that many of you are privileged to enjoy.

But somehow, just a few years after I had begun my career in engineering, the Lord Jesus Christ decided that He wanted me to preach and teach His Word. Let me tell you honestly, I was scared to death when God first began calling me toward the ministry. I did everything I knew how to avoid it, to change God's mind, to make excuses. But He simply would not take "No" for an answer. So finally I agreed to do it His way, and launched out, with my wife Fran, into the uncharted waters of seminary education. We moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and I enrolled in Emory University's Candler School of Theology there.

The first semester I was in seminary, I was sure I had made the biggest mistake of my life. Fran and I were sorely pressed financially. Even though we thought we had budgeted well, we were barely able to survive. We were isolated socially, in a strange city where we knew no one. My faith was constantly tested by liberal-leaning professors who took God's Holy Word apart until it became mere scribbling on paper. We were attending an aristocratic church that seemed more interested in our clothing labels than our commitment to Christ. After three months, we were ready to pack it in, return to the Southwest, get back into engineering, and ignore God's callings from there on out.

But we did have one tiny oasis of relief in this seeming desert of destruction. We were part of a small prayer group of ten or twelve students and their spouses which met on Thursday nights to seek God's will. And there I shared my anguish. "Lord, I know I'm one of your children. I've repented of my sin; I'm saved; I've accepted Jesus as my Lord. I've been baptized with water; I've joined your Holy Church. And I've heard your call into the ministry. I believe in Your Word, and I trust your grace. But Lord, it's all going wrong. Why, Lord, why? Why do Fran and I feel so lost, so helpless, so weak?"

It was there, in that little prayer group, that some of our friends asked us the same question that the apostle Paul put to the disciples he met when he first arrived at Ephesus, as told in Acts 19. "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" And I suppose our answers sounded virtually the same as those given by those Ephesian disciples: "No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit!" We were Christians, yes. Believers, yes. Saved, yes! We sensed God's call to serve Him, and we truly wanted to respond. But we were so weak, so inconstant, so confused, so powerless.
We began to pray to receive this "Holy Spirit" our friends told us about. Only a few weeks later, God granted our prayer. I shall never forget the excitement, the joy, the raw power of God that I felt in those initial moments when, in late November 1973, I received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit! My life has never been the same since.

No, the problems didn't miraculously vanish; the way of the Cross didn't get any easier. But I knew, even as I know now, that I had the limitless power of God to draw upon--power to surmount, to overcome, any problem whatsoever. How do I know? I can only answer, as the recently-deceased controversial American Methodist preacher Oral Roberts often used to say, "I know...that I know...that I know!"

Now, what about the gifts of the Spirit? Everyone always wants to know: "Since you received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, do you speak in tongues?" Yes at times, but, for me, this gift has been manifested only in private or small group prayer. Back in 1973, the gift I most needed in order to overcome the obstacles to my faith was supernatural knowledge of Scripture itself. That I received. I had never really read and studied the Scriptures, so God gave me direct, untaught knowledge of His Word. Gradually, however, that gift has faded. I think it's because God now wants me to carry the burden myself--and actually apply my mind to learning His Word the hard way. But other gifts have been given to replace that one, usually when they are most needed.

Frankly, when people start talking about gifts of the Spirit, I usually find that they're looking for some kind of special blessing from God that they can call their own private possession--and maybe flaunt before other Christians. "Hah! I'm a superior Christian because I have received the gift of prophecy! And you're just a baby in the faith, because all you've got is salvation." I honestly don't believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are intended to be divisive to the Body of Christ--but rather that they are blessings to be shared throughout the family of God--to His glory.
Personally, I like to talk more about the "fruits" of the HolySpirit. You may know them--they're found in Galatians 5:22: "Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." You show me a Christian whose life produces those fruits, and I'll show you someone who is truly filled with the fullness of God, filled with the Holy Spirit.

Today I ask you to consider, if you've never before done so, asking God to take you a major step beyond salvation alone. Do you desire strength in your faith, instead of weakness? Do you want conviction and confidence for Christ, instead of timidity? Do you want a church that steps out boldly for its Lord, instead of fearing that the roof may fall in next week? Do you want to bless people with the Gospel, but you don't really know how?

All of those positive possibilities are manifestations of the Holy Spirit of God--which God will gladly grant you if you but ask. You simply need to ask God to fill you--with His Holy Spirit. When you are filled, as St. Paul terms it, with "the fullness of God," then you will be able to bear fruit--fruit that abides--to the glory of Your Lord. Amen.

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