speaking in tongues is not scrip tural. Did Jesus Christ, the perfect example for all time, ever do any thing of these things? Cod's Word very plainly and distinctly affirms that the fruit of the Spirit is self- control. The Bible must always be the infallible standard rather than some temperamental experience. Before the day of Pentecost the filling of the Spirit is referred to four different times. In Luke 1:15 we find it in connection with John the Baptist. In Luke 1:41, Elizabeth is said to have been filled with the Spirit. Luke 1:67 reads that Zacha- rias was filled with the Spirit for prophecy. Then, Luke 4:1 speaks of Jesus Christ as being filled with the Spirit for His messianic ministry to Israel. The Gospels show us truth still on Old Testament grounds. The Saviour had not yet gone to the cross. In the book of Acts the word "filled" in reference to the Holy Spirit occurs eight different times. The same men were filled again and again, not once and for all. This was the norm of spiritual liv ing. On the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit came to indwell God's people and they were all filled (Acts 2). You see, the moment one is regenerated by the Spirit he be comes a child of God, and is bap tized and filled with the Holy Spir it. Later on, through carnality or slipshod Christian living, he may slip away into inferior experience, losing the joy and glory of that first transaction. Bishop Hanley Moule was a man mighty in the Bible. He points out that the difference between a soul who is filled with the Spirit and one who is not is the difference between the well, in which there
is a spring of water choked, and a well from which the obstacle has been removed. The problem is that the filling of the Spirit should never be confused with the bap tism of the Holy Spirit. These are two different operations. Baptism is never repeated again (I Corin thians 12:13). This is the same as Jesus' going to the cross. It was a once-for-all transaction. How may you be filled with the Holy Spirit? First, look at it from a negative viewpoint. What keeps the Christian from being filled? The best answer is found in the verses surrounding our text. Start at 4:17 and go through 5:21. All of this deals with the walk of the Chris tian day-by-day. Here the believer is told to do two things: not to grieve Him and to be filled with God's Spirit. Around these two ex hortations are listed such sins as impurity, corrupt speech, lying, anger, stealing, unwillingness to work, wrath, bitterness, revenge, and the unfruitful works of dark ness. These things are all opposed to the Holy Spirit. To be filled with the Holy Spirit will keep us from all such unfortunate experi ences. All unholiness robs the life of the Spirit's fulness. Every known sin must be confessed and put away. You cannot possibly fool the Lord. A Spirit-filled life is the re sult of yielding one's self fully to the One who lives within. It is a fact that that to which one yields will receive the place of control. If a man yields to liquor, then al cohol will fill and control him. In such a drunken stupor he lives un der the power of this foreign sub stance taken into his body. He cannot enjoy self-control, but rath er is liquor-controlled. Page 65
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