SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/14/2019
8:40 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-4 “The
Meaning of Being Filled”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Eph. 5:18b
Message of the
verse: “but
be filled with the Spirit,”
We gave a definition of the Greek
word “Pleroo” the word that meaning
filling, yet we said it means more than filling and gave way it was often used
and that was that it was often used of the wind filling a sail. We want to move onto the second way it was
used and that was that it carries the idea of permeation, as it speaks of how
salt was used to permeating meat in order to flavor and preserve it. I know
that sounds strange to me too. “ God wants His Holy Spirit to so permeate the
lives of His children that everything they think, say, and do will reflect His
divine presence” (John MacArthur).
MacArthur goes on: Third, Pleroo
has the connotation of total control.
The person who is filled with
sorrow (see John 16:6) is no longer under his own control but is totally under
the control of that emotion. In the same
way, someone who is filled with fear (Luke 5:26), anger (Luke 6:11), faith
(Acts 6:5), or even Satan (Acts 5:3) is no longer under his own control but
under the total of that which dominates him.
To be filled in this sense is to be totally dominated and controlled,
and it is the most important sense for believers. As we have already seen, to ‘be filled with
the Spirit’ is not to have Him somehow progressively added to our life until we
are full of Him. It is to be under His
total domination and control. This is in
direct contrast to the uncontrolled drunkenness and dissipation in the worship
of Dionysius that was alluded to in the first half of the verse.”
Now when Jesus was on earth we can
see from Matthew 4:1 that the Holy Spirit led Him, “into the wilderness to be
tempted by the devil.” In a parallel
passage from Luke we see that it was Jesus “full of the Holy Spirit” and this
prepared Him to be “led about by the Spirit in the wilderness (4:1). In Mark’s writing on this he used even
stronger language “the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness” as
seen in 1:12 of Mark. Why did Jesus do
this, did He have to be talked into it?
No Jesus wanted to do exactly what His Father wanted Him to do and so He
submitted Himself entirely to the Spirit’s control. Jesus was full of the Spirit and that is why
He was controlled by the Spirit.
Now because it is Sunday I will not
do too much more and then, Lord willing we will finish this section in our next
SD.
John MacArthur writes “The Christian
who is filled with the Holy Spirit can be compared to a glove. Until it is filled by a hand, a glove is
powerless and useless. It is designed to
do work, but it can do no work by itself.
It works only as the hand controls and uses it. The glove’s only work is the hand’s
work. It does not ask the hand to give
it an assignment and then try to complete the assignment without the hand. Nor does it gloat or brag about what it is
used to do, because it knows the hand deserves all the credit. A Christian can accomplish no more without
being filled with the Holy Spirit than a glove can accomplish without being
filled with a hand. Anything he manages
to do is but wood, hay, and straw that amounts to nothing and will eventually
be burned up (1 Cor. 3:12-15).
Functioning in the flesh produces absolutely nothing of spirit al value.”
The Bible verse
that goes along with yesterday’s unknown author’s quote is 1 Corinthians 16:13 “Watch,
stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong.”
7/14/2019 9:11
PM
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