TOPIC:‌“Floodtide Christianity”

                 by Rev. Dr. Reg Dunlap

 

TEXT:‌Ephesians 5:18

 

‌  ‌“And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit”

 

‌The Spirit-filled life is the greatest experience that any believer can have this side of Heaven. Now I believe that! But it also is the most misunderstood experience in the life of the Christian. As A. W. Tozer so well stated: “Satan has opposed the doctrine of the Spirit-filled life about as bitterly as any other doctrine there is. He has confused it, opposed it, surrounded it with false notions and fears.” How tragic!

 

‌I want us in this message to dip into the Bible to find out what it has to say about this wonderful experience.

 

I.

 

‌Consider, first of all, the NEED of Spirit-filled living. Notice the words, “be filled with the Spirit” (v. 18). Let it be plain to all that the fullness of the Holy Spirit which the New Testament speaks about is not a luxury to enjoy, but a command to experience. It is not some extra blessing for a selected few, but is the God-given birthright, privilege, blessing, and responsibility of every child of God. It is a spiritual necessity for every Christian no matter what their position in life.

 

‌Permit me to explain what I mean when I say that believers today are in need of a Pentecostal experience. I agree with the words of Paul S. Rees who wrote: “I do not believe in a repetition of Pentecost, but I do believe in a perpetuation of Pentecost, and there is a vast difference between the two.” And he goes on to say: “I believe that Pentecost did not come and go, but that Pentecost came and stayed. You and I are living in the midst of it, if we only knew it.”

 

‌The New Testament speaks of the necessity of being filled with the Spirit on many occasions. As a matter of fact, Christ spoke in advance of such fullness of the Spirit in the lives of all believers. He not only spoke about His disciples being filled, but Christ Himself was referred to as being filled with the Spirit. We read in Luke these words: “And Jesus being full of the Holy Spirit returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness” (4:1).

 

‌Not only that, but the Spirit-filled life was a normal and natural experience for those early disciples in the Book of Acts. The one hundred and twenty disciples on the day of Pentecost were filled with the Spirit (Acts 2:4). The five thousand disciples after Pentecost were filled with the Spirit (Acts 4:31). The deacons . . .