| CHAPEL MESSAGE |
Chapel Message
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary September 22, 1972
Reverend : Ron Dunn, Pastor
MacArthur
(This copy has been prepared from a tape recording of the chapel service
and has
not boon edited by Reverend Dunn. Therefore, he is not responsible for any errors that may occur.)
They
tell me that it is impolite to ask personal questions. I'm going to be
impolite for a few minutes, because I want to ask you a very personal
question. And the question is simply this, “Is the Holy Spirit filling
you
right now?" Now the question isn’t, “Is the Holy Spirit indwelling
you right now,” because if you are saved, then that is true. Nor is the
question; “Do you believe in the filling of the Holy Spirit?’ Nor is
the question, “Have you ever been filled with the Holy Spirit?” The
question ~ “Right
now, at this moment, is the Spirit of
God filling you?” Now there are
three possible answers to that question: “Yes,” “No, “
“I don’t know."
But
I want you to know this morning that
the filling of the Holy Spirit is available and, more than
that, it is the obligation of every child of God.
And I realize that this is an issue around which gathers a lot of
misunderstanding today. One of our young
men this past summer went to serve as youth director in a West Texas
church and this pastor said, “now there’s only one thing I want to
caution you about.. .don’t say anything about the spirit-filled life,
because we've had so much problem in our area with
tongues.”
Are
we so foolish as to believe that you can cure error by covering up the
truth? I’m convinced the reason that so many people are having trouble
with extremes concerning the Holy Spirit is because we have failed to
preach and to teach the truth. And all of this extremism that we’re
having today is, in my opinion, nothing more than the hunger pangs of a
spiritually starved people. They’ve asked for the fish of spiritual
reality, and we’ve given them the stones of promotion and organization.
I think pastors are discovering that no longer are people going to be
stirred and excited by another attendance goal.
Man
is a spiritual being and he must have supernatural experiences. That is a
very part of his nature. And man is going to have a supernatural
experience. If he cannot find it inside the church, he will find it
outside the church. If he cannot have an experience with the Holy Spirit,
he will have one with an unholy spirit. And I’m talking to more and more
pastors today who stand bewildered before a people they can no longer move
nor bless. The solution and the greatest need is for men and women,
be filled with the Spirit of God.
And it’s my prayer that every Christian will claim that for him right
now, because you can know Jesus is real in your life~ you can know the
peace that passes all understanding and the joy unspeakable and full of
glory. Available to you right now is a life in which even the valleys are
higher ground. Maybe you have personal weaknesses that have haunted and
humiliated you even before you were saved. They can be overcome today as
the Spirit of God moves into your life in new force and new power.
What
does it moan to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Paul says in Ephesians
5:l8, “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the
Spirit.” Now I want to share with you three simple things concerning the
filling of the Spirit from that verse of scripture. First of all, the
filling of the Holy
You
know I’ve discovered in my own life a basic precept essential to spiritual
success. And that precept is this: My total
inability to do anything for myself in the spiritual realm.
And if you happen to forget everything else I say today, I wish you
would remember this one fact, because until you come to the place where
you’re willing to acknowledge this, God cannot use you to the fullest.
My total inability to do anything for myself in the spiritual realm. One
of my favorite characters is Elijah; one of the greatest exhortations ever
made was made by that prophet on Mt. Carmel. You read that sometime. If you
ever come that close to preaching, you’ll be doing fine. But the amazing
thing is after Elijah delivered that tremendous message was: “They
answered him not a word.” Brother, I’ve preached there before. I’ve
pastored that congregation many a
time. “They answered him not a word.” But the Bible says, “When the
fire fell, they fell on their faces and said, ‘The Lord, He is God. The
Lord, He is God.’” And when the fire of God falls in the lives of men
and women, the people will fall on their faces acknowledging that the
Lord, He is God, and beside Him there is none else.
You
cannot do what God has called you to do unless the Spirit of God is
filling you. Jesus said, speaking of the fullness of the Holy Spirit,
“If you come to me and drink, out of your innermost being shall flow
rivers of living water.” You see, it’s so simple; Jesus says,
"You
supply the riverbed, I’ll supply the river.” I don’t know of anybody
that is blessed by a riverbed. And the tragedy is that so many of us today
are nothing more than dried-up, crusty riverbeds that can
quench no one’s thirst. Jesus says, “You make yourself available; you’re
nothing but a riverbed, you come to me and
drink and appropriate what I am and out of your innermost being shall flow
rivers of living water.
A
young
preacher came to me some time ago and said, “In your consideration, in
your opinion, what is your primary obligation as the pastor of this
church?” And I didn’t have to think about that. I said, “My primary
responsibility as pastor of this church is to make certain that Ron Dunn
is filled with the Holy Spirit.” My primary responsibility is not to be
an administrator, not to be a promoter, not to be a planner, not to visit
in hospitals, not to bury and marry, my
primary responsibility is not even to the people over whom I shepherd. My primary responsibility is to be filled with the Spirit, to have the
rivers of living water flowing out of me and the people will be blessed by
the overflow from my 1ife.
Elisha
was a man that we could well pattern ourselves after. He was known as
Elisha, then he was known as Elisha, the man of God, and then he was
simply known as the man of God. If you were around that neck of the woods,
and spoke the words, “Man of God,” they all knew who you were talking
about. Your primary responsibility is first of all to be a man or a woman
of God. And when the Spirit of God is filling you, those rivers of living
water will pour forth from your being, from your
life, and the people in that
way will be blessed and ministered to. It will be Jesus himself
ministering to the people through your availability.
And the
interesting thing about that passage in John, chapter 7, is that you start
out thirsty and then you end up a fountain. Has that ever occurred to you?
“If ANY man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.” And the fellow
who starts out thirsty, will end up quenching the thirst of others. It is
a command of God, because you cannot do what God has called you to do
without it.
But
not only is it a command of God, it is a command to be controlled by God.
I like the way the New English Bible translates that verse, because it is a passive
verb. “Let the Holy Spirit fill you.” Now I must confess to you that
for a great many years I thought that God was reluctant to fill me with
his Spirit. I read every book I could get my hands on. I more than
anything else wanted to be all that God wanted
me to be. I wanted to be useable, and I had the idea., that somehow when I
reached a certain spiritual plateau as a reward of my ‘spiritual growth,
God would grant me to be filled with the Spirit. So I looked upon God
as reluctant and hesitating and I had to somehow beg my way into the
fullness of the Spirit. But the Bible teaches the exact opposite of that.
He said, “Let the Holy Spirit fill you.” He wants to fill you. The
only thing he’s waiting for is your consent, your submission.
And
to be filled with the Spirit is, as one man has translated that verse,
“Let the Holy Spirit possess you completely.” It simply means that he
comes in and no longer is he simply
the owner of your life, but he is the operator of your life. We pulled
into a filling station the other day and I noticed over the door these
words, ‘So-and-so, Owner and Operator.” Now that’s what Jesus Christ
wants to be. And for all of us he’s the owner this morning, but for many
of us he’s not the operator. Life under new management. A new person has
taken over and expresses himself through our human personality. To be
filled with the Spirit simply means to let the Spirit of God control every
area of my life.
Now
that causes me to pause for just a moment because some of us just want the
“thrill of the fill.’ Some of us just want an ecstatic experience. You
want to be filled with the Spirit today. You mean to tell me that you want
someone who will not tolerate any selfishness controlling you. Do you mean
to tell me today that you want someone who will never allow you to think
of yourself first controlling you. Do you mean to say that you want
someone controlling you today who will not tolerate even the slightest
sin. Do you mean to say that you want to be controlled today by someone
who is going to demand absolute obedience, unquestioning obedience to
every command. That’s exactly what it is.
I’ve
found in my own life that the Holy Spirit cannot really fill me and control me until two
things happen in my life. Number one, until I do what Jesus said to do in
Luke, chapter 9, “deny myself.” Jesus said, “If any man will come
after me, let him take up his cross and deny himself." Williams
translates that, “Let him say no
to self.” Now that’s tremendous, for
you see my self is always talking to
me.. .always making suggestions. When a lady runs out in front of
me at a four-way stop, you know what my self says? My self says, “You lay
down on your horn; don’t let her get away with that.” When I do
something and somebody else gets the credit for it, you know what self
whispers to me. “Now listen, you’ve got to watch out for yourself. You
let everybody know who did that. You take the credit for it.” My self is
always talking to me.. .always making suggestions.. .always telling me
that I’m wonderful, that I’m great, that I’m right, that everybody
else is wrong and I need to look out for myself. Jesus said, "If
you are going to follow me, you say
“No’ to self, you just tell self to be quiet. You refuse to listen to
self." That’s what it means to deny yourself.
And
that’s the other thing.. .not only must there be a dethroning of self
but there must be ~ enthroning of Jesus as Lord. Wesley, after his .Aldersgate
experience, said he woke up the next
morning with Jesus Master in his life. And that’s what it’s all
about. It’s Jesus coming into his throne rights in my life. It is, by an
act of my will, my enthroning Jesus as rightful Lord in my life. And that
simply means that Jesus now is able to do anything that he wants to with
me. Is Jesus absolute total Lord in
your life?
Really,
the filling of the Holy Spirit is just the
other side of the coin. If
a person is filled with the Spirit of God, it is
because Jesus is Lord in his life; and if Jesus is Lord in his life, then
he is filled with the Spirit, because the
Spirit of God himself doesn’t want any glory. And by the way, one way
you can tell if a spiritual movement is of God or not is the position it
places the Spirit. And if the Spirit has center stage, if it’s leading
the parade, it is not of God. The Holy Spirit always retires to the
background and pushes Jesus to the front of the parade, and the man who is
filled with the Spirit will become a “Jesus Person" if you don’t
mind. For Jesus said, “When He is come He shall (what?), He shall
testify of me. He shall glorify me.”
It
is a command, it is a command to be controlled and it is a command to be
continually controlled. That’s a present tense verb. Be ye being filled
with the Spirit. I’m not advocating today a spasmodic, occasional high.
I’m talking about an every day experience. I read in Acts Chapter 6
where those deacons were men, not filled with the Spirit, but full of the
Spirit. There has to be a difference. Men whose lives should be
characterized by fullness, a habitual continual experience, every day. A
Spirit-filled experience. I think there are two ways you can be filled
with the Spirit every day, that the initial filling can extend into a
continual walk. Number one by immediate obedience to every command.
Immediate obedience the moment the Spirit of God says, “Apologize.”
The moment the Spirit of God says, “Witness.” The moment the Spirit of
God says, “Give.” Immediate obedience. The second is instant
confession
of sin. Being filled with the Spirit doesn’t mean you no longer sin, but
it means that now you acknowledge your sin and you confess it to Him.
Instant confessions, getting every barrier out of the way, a continual
experience. This is where God intends us to live. This is what Jesus meant
when he said, “I am come that you might have life and have it more
abundantly.” Is the Holy Spirit filling you right now?
©Ron Dunn, LifeStyle Ministries, 2003