Being Filled With The Spirit

Acts 6.1-8

The passage that I just read was the text that we looked at during our last Bible study. As we worked through it, we dealt with the different questions that came up and had a good discussion. It was another look at what it meant – and what it means – to be the Church. But we didn’t get to look at the qualities of the men who were chosen: being full of the Spirit, full of wisdom, faith, grace and power. After some reflection, it seemed good to deal with those today. It occurred to me that considering these qualities fits with the last two sermons that I’ve preached. I could be wrong, but I think that we are in the midst of a series. Let me explain that. I don’t plan what I am going to preach. When I wake up on Monday mornings, I usually have no clue what the sermon for Sunday is going to be about. But by the time I get to Wednesday, the Spirit has made clear what I should be preaching. So, you see, I don’t plan series. But it does seem, from this vantage point, that these three sermons fit together. So, we’ll first examine this list of qualities, and then we’ll see what it has to say to you in the context of what the Spirit has already been telling you over the last couple of weeks.

Some of you will remember back to the ‘70’s – a few of you – when the charismatic movement was quite popular. It was an exciting time and a difficult time as some important questions were being raised, questions that the Church had to answer. Here’s one of them. ‘What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? (This was tied to the larger question of what the baptism of the Spirit is all about, but we’ll limit ourselves to just that first question.) Here’s a good illustration, from the Gospel of John, of what being filled by the Spirit is about. ‘Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.’ Anyone entering the house would have quickly been aware of the pleasant aroma of the ointment.. The house was filled with its fragrance. Being filled with the Spirit is having the aroma of the Spirit spread throughout your soul so that those who come in contact with you sense it. They may not be able to label it or understand it, but they are aware of the aroma and are usually drawn to it. This aroma of the Spirit shows in different ways. One classic text on this topic is found in Ephesians 5. Listen to how Paul describes its aroma. ‘…be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.’ Being filled with the Spirit affects relationships, with one another and with God. That’s the aroma of the Spirit. Another place you would find a description of this aroma is in Galatians 5, where we find Paul writing about the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience…. Paul doesn’t use the language ‘being filled with the Spirit’ here, but he’s talking about the same thing: the aroma of the Spirit in the life of a saint. Likewise, in our text. Here are some men in whom it is clear that the Spirit is at work. He has been dealing with them, changing their lives. They are filled with the Spirit. The aroma is unmistakable. In their case this aroma manifests itself by four qualities. So, let’s consider each of these.

The first is being filled with wisdom. Wisdom is the skill of having insight into life, other people and yourself. Someone has insight in these areas because he has insight into God. Who is God? What is He like? What is He doing? What’s important to Him? Proverbs is a book about wisdom, about gaining insight based on a knowledge of God. According to Proverbs, the opposite of wisdom is foolishness or folly. This isn’t being stupid or making stupid mistakes. Folly is rebellion. It is refusing to see things as God does. It is refusing the insight that He offers. It’s looking at life in Godless ways. And, as Proverbs reminds us, the rebellious end up being stupid and making stupid mistakes. There is, however, another alternative to wisdom. It’s important you see this because it is too often missed. The second alternative to being wise is being simple. Listen to the wise woman of Proverbs. ‘“Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” To him who lacks sense she says, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”’ This word, ‘simple’, may seem like an odd label to apply to someone. But understand what wisdom is saying. Life isn’t clear and straightforward. It isn’t simple. It’s complex. Things are not what they may seem at first glance. Proverbs goes to great pains to show us this. So, if a person is to succeed in this life, he must come to see the complexities of life lest, in his simplistic view of things, he does something stupid, and forfeit his soul. There is a certain skill required if one is going to make it, a certain ability to see beyond the superficial, a certain insight into life, into people and into yourself. This wisdom is something the Spirit gives. He gave it to the men of our text. And the people around them knew it.

Next, there’s being full of faith. Let’s first be clear on what faith is. Faith is not saying something like, ‘I believe God is going to bless me with a complete healing of my illness.’ Oh really? And why do you believe that? ‘I just do!’ That isn’t faith. That’s telling God what you think He should do next. Faith doesn’t order God around. But, of course, the comeback to this is for our friend to say, ‘But the Spirit has shown me that I will be healed!!’ And that, of course, is a claim that a wise person can evaluate. No, rather faith is responding to what God has already told you He is going to do. And so, being full of faith means that you actually expect God to keep His promises in specific ways, and thus, you act accordingly. So, for example, Jesus has told us that, though His kingdom starts small, it will fill the earth: the small seed will become a large tree, the leaven will permeate the whole loaf. [See Matthew 13.31ff.] The person who is full of faith, with this assurance from the Word, hears the Spirit saying, ‘Here’s one situation where the kingdom can take another step forward.’ And so, being full of faith, he prays. He prays confidently for this particular item that the Spirit pointed out to him. He believes God. In all of this faith responds to God and expects Him to do what He has said He will do – however outlandish such a request may seem to others who lack his faith. This kind of faith comes from being filled with the Spirit. And the aroma of the Spirit hovers over such people. I hope you can see that being full of faith is related to being full of wisdom. Having insight into God and His ways necessarily leads to believing God when He says He will do something. I might be wrong on this, but I don’t think that you can be full of faith without being full of wisdom. And I don’t think you can be full of wisdom without being full of faith.

Next, there is being full of grace. There are two parts to this. Let’s start by talking about someone who is so very gracious to others. He is patient and forgiving. There is a certain kind of gentleness associated with this person. Here is someone who cares, and it shows. In this way, he is full of grace in his relationships with others. But whence this gracious attitude? This person is able to be gracious to others because God has been gracious to him – and he knows that well. For someone to grasp what it means that his God has been gracious to him, he must first understand something of the ugliness of his own sin before that God. He needs to have a measure of insight into what God thinks about sin – his sin. Again, we’re back to the need of wisdom, insight. Here is someone for whom the Gospel is real. His sin is real, very real. It isn’t just a doctrine that he’s supposed to agree to. And as a result, God’s grace to him is also very real. And so, there is an aroma about this person, the aroma of grace, that spills over into the lives of those around him.

Last quality: full of power. What is this? Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound? (You may have to be over 30 to understand that.) Listen again to our text. ‘And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people.’ What is this? Are we to expect people to perform miracles? Well, there are some things that only an apostle can do. Paul calls them signs of an apostle. [See 2 Corinthians 12.] So nobody besides an apostle is going to be able to raise the dead. But consider. We’re talking about people who are full of the Spirit, that is, full of wisdom, faith and grace. How can a combination like this not result in some sort of works of power? We’re talking about someone who has insight into what’s going on in and around him, someone who believes, really believes, God’s promises, someone who deeply cares about other people. What do you suppose will happen when a person like this gets to praying? You will see amazing things happen, powerful things happen. How can they not?

We’ve been talking about being filled with the Spirit. We’ve looked at these qualities: wisdom, faith, grace and power. And then there are the other qualities like love, joy, peace and all the rest. What a glorious aroma. Who are we talking about? We’re talking about Jesus. In his Gospel, Luke described Jesus as someone who was full of the Holy Spirit. I’ve just described some of what Jesus is all about. Now, it’s important that you see this because it means that I’ve also described you. This is what you are in the process of becoming. The Spirit is now working at conforming you to the image of Jesus Himself. I’ve been describing who you are becoming. This shouldn’t be news. It’s just the Gospel. The point that I want to make from this isn’t complicated. I’d like you to become more and more like this, and sooner rather than later. I want more of the fullness of the Spirit for you now. I’d like more of the fragrance of the Spirit spreading from your life. And why is that? What the Church of Jesus needs more than anything else right now are people who are full of wisdom, faith, grace, power, love, joy, peace and all the rest. The problems that we are dealing with as the Church in America can be traced back to the scarcity of people who are filled with the Spirit. And so, the aroma of the Church today is not the aroma of those seven men in our text. And the world knows it. It is my great desire to see that change. The honor of Jesus is at stake.

I told you earlier that this sermon is tied to the previous two. In the first of those I raised two questions: What is God doing? What does God want you to do? Let me answer them. What is God doing? He is saving the world. He is in the process of making this world pure and beautiful once again. What does He want you to do? He wants you to do your part in accomplishing that task. He wants you to have more of the Spirit, to be filled with the Spirit. He wants you to have more of that aroma that is so alluring. He wants this so that He can save the world through you. And that leads to the second sermon. That’s where I talked about choices, big and little, that have such important consequences. Stephen and the others didn’t wake up one morning and say, ‘I think that I’ll be filled with the Spirit today.’ The filling of the Spirit is a blessing of grace that Jesus gives to those who work hard to get it. Stephen developed the aroma of the Spirit’s presence by making hard choices and following up those choices with the disciplined exertions of following Jesus. Such people who yearn for the Spirit’s power in their lives don’t wrestle with choosing between good and bad. Satan is far too shrewd and subtle for that. The battle for them is choosing between what is good and what is better. It takes wisdom to see beyond the obvious. The need of the day are people of the Spirit, people filled with the Spirit, people of wisdom, faith, grace and power. When such people are raised up, our world will be changed. But not before.

But, how does someone become that kind of person? Again, it’s not complicated. You just have to want it more than anything else. And if you have that yearning, it will show in your prayers. The person who wants to have the aroma of the Spirit needs to pursue it by prayer, by diligent, unceasing, honest-to-God prayer. That’s where it has to start. That’s the first choice.

And what’s the payoff? Why should anyone want to do all this hard work? Well, you get to save the world. You get to see people’s lives changed. You get to see them freed more and more from the slavery of their sins and from Satan’s games. You get to see them grow in their enjoyment of what it means to be one of God’s deeply-loved children. And then, at the end of it all, you get to see Jesus’ smile and hear Him say, ‘Nice work’ – and whatever other rewards He’s planning to give. And the wise know that that’s really worth it.