Being Filled With the Holy Spirit
preached by Pastor Steve Tompkins | 5.10.09

What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Who is the Holy Spirit? What are errors we must avoid in regards to the Holy Spirit? Could we as Christians be grieving the Holy Spirit and be too asleep to know it? Is it possible that we might be so comfortable with our lives, that we have lost a hunger for more of Jesus? Pastor Steve walks us through God’s word to us regarding what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit, starting in 1Peter 4:14 and focusing mostly on Acts 1 & Acts 4 as the church is filled with the Holy Spirit.

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You can follow along with Pastor Steve’s sermon using the text’s below.

1 Peter 4:14
¹⁴If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.

Ephesians 3:14-19
¹⁴For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith-that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 5:17-18
¹⁷Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. ¹⁸And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit,

Luke 24:49
⁴⁹And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

Acts 1:4-5
⁴And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; ⁵for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

Acts 1:14
¹⁴All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.

Acts 2:1-4
¹When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. ²And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. ⁴And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Acts 4:23-31
²³When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. ²⁴And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, ²⁵who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, “ ‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? ²⁶The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed’- ²⁷for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, ²⁸to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. ²⁹And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, ³⁰while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” ³¹And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.

1 Corinthians 12:13
¹³For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body-Jews or Greeks, slaves or free-and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones sounded a warning in 1959:

But, then, there are others, who . . . seem to me to be equally guilty of quenching the Spirit, because they argue like this. They say, ‘Baptism of the Holy Spirit is something which is non-experimental. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is that which happens to every man when he is born again, when he is regenerated. So we are all baptised with the Spirit, we have all received this baptism.’ Now, remember, they are talking about the thing which is described in the second chapter of Acts. And they say, ‘Yes, that was the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But we all get that now, and it is unconscious, we are not aware of it, it happens to us the moment we believe and we are regenerated. It is just that act of God which incorporates us into the Body of Christ. That’s the baptism of the Spirit. So it is no use your praying for some other baptism of the Spirit, or asking God to pour out his Spirit upon the Church, or to baptise the Church afresh with his Holy Spirit, a baptism of power. This is non-experimental, and as it has happened to all of us, we must not ask for it.’^[1]

John 3:34
³⁴For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure.

Jonathan Edwards
Once as I rode out into the woods for my health in 1737, having alighted from my horse, in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view, that for me was extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God as mediator between God and man, and His wonderful, great full, pure, sweet grace and love, and meek and gentle condescension. This grace, that appeared so calm and sweet, appeared also great above the heavens. The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent, with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception, which continued as near as I can judge about an hour, which kept me, the greater part of the time, in a flood of tears and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be, what I know not otherwise to express, emptied and annihilated, to lie in the dust and to be filled with Christ alone, to love Him with a holy and a pure love. To trust in Him, to look upon Him, to serve, and to follow Him, and to be perfectly sanctified and made pure with a divine and heavenly purity. I have several other times had views very much of the same nature, and which have had the same effect.^[1]

Abuses to avoid

1.    Mystical Authority

2.    Paganism

3.    Religion

4.    Fear

5.    Passivity (unbelief)

6.    Focusing on the Holy Spirit alone

7.    Creating two classes of Christians

8.    Sinning against the Holy Spirit

a.    Resisting the Holy Spirit (Acts 7:51)

b.    Quenching the Holy Spirit (1 Thess 5:19)

c.    Grieving the Holy Spirit (Eph 4:30)

d.    Outraging the Holy Spirit (Hebrews 10:29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?)

e.    Blaspheming the Holy Spirit (Matt 12:31-32)

Acts 4:23-31
²³When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. ²⁴And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, ²⁵who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, “ ‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? ²⁶The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed’- ²⁷for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, ²⁸to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. ²⁹And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, ³⁰while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” ³¹And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.

Dr. Isaac Watts wrote in the Preface to A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God by Jonathon Edwards (Edwards’ account of the conversion of many hundreds of souls beginning in Northhamption, New Hampshire):

Certainly it becomes us, who profess the religion of Christ, to take notice of such astonishing exercises of his power and mercy, and give him the glory which is due, when he begins to accomplish any of his promises concerning the latter days: and it gives us further encouragement to pray, and wait, and hope for the like display of his power in the midst of us. The hand of God is not shortened that it cannot save, but we have reason to fear that our iniquities, our coldness in religion, and the general carnality of our spirits, have raised a wall of separation between God and us: and . . . seem to have provoked the Spirit of Christ to absent himself much from our nation. “Return, O Lord, and visit thy churches, and revive thine own work in the midst of us.”^[2]

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^[1]Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Revival (Westchester, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1987), 51.

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^[2]Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 1, Originally Published in 1834, p344.