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So what Paul is saying here is that there are two types of believers, aren’t there? We are one of those two types at any point and time. There are those who are controlled by their sinful nature and those that are led by the Spirit. That time when each of us are led by our sinful nature, we are living that life of defeat. When we’re living by the Spirit, we’re living a life of victory. We can divide believers into two types. Those led, and those not led by the Spirit. Ephesians 5:18 says, “Be filled with the Spirit.” (View Diagram) So it implies that not all believers are filled. Let’s use an example. Let’s say I drop my kids off at someone else’s house. I say to the kids, “Be good.” When I say “Be good,” that implies that they can be bad. So, a lot of people in the church think that all believers are filled with the Spirit. Paul would not say “Be filled,” if every believer (and he was talking to the church of Ephesus). He would not say, “Be filled,” if all believers were filled. Not all believers are filled with the spirit.
Let me use another example. Let us say that……What color are your eyes? They’re brown. So if I say to you, “Be brown, eyed” You’d say, “That is silly; that is all I can be.” Apart from some strange surgery or contacts, all I can be is ‘brown eyed.’ So, Paul would not say, “Be filled with the Spirit,” if that is all they can be. We obviously have a choice to not be filled. There are believers who are not filled. I’ve met people who have sat there and told me that they are scholars in the Greek of the Bible, and that they believe all believers are filled with the Spirit all the time. “Be filled with the Spirit,” actually means be being continuously filled, or be always being filled. It is a continuous process that we as believers need to seek to be filled. We are not always filled. As many believers have been led to believe, or have concluded. So then we can conclude that there are actually three levels of life.
- Unbelievers who have no Holy Spirit
- Believers indwelt, but not filled with the Spirit
- Believers who are filled with the Holy Spirit as we just described in Ephesians 18.
(View Diagram)
As we repented and believed to become believers, so too, do we repent and believe, plus surrender and abide to be filled with the Spirit.
(View Repentance) (View Faith Definition) (View Faith in Matthew 17:20) (View Surrender Definition) (View Gethsemane Verses)
So here we have our believers who have come through this door {video note: speaker points at the two glasses of milk with chocolate in them representing ‘Believers not filled with the Spirit’} and have the Holy Spirit with chocolate syrup. Let us take this believer {video note: picks up one of the glasses representing a Believer not filled with the Spirit and passes it through the second door} who now repents and believes, and this door swings open and he goes through this door, which we will call the Door of the Filling. He is/or she is FILLED with the Spirit. {video note: speaker then stirs-up the glass thoroughly mixing the chocolate in the milk representing being Filled}
How do we go through this door? We repented and believed. How do we go through this door? We continually repent and believe, and surrender and abide in Christ, and are filled with the Holy Spirit. Now the world then is divided into these people. So, when I look at these two (an unbeliever and a believer), {video note: Holding up two glasses of milk, one pure milk representing the unbeliever, the other with some chocolate in the bottom but not stirred up so that the top 80% is still white representing the Believer not filled.} I look at them and say, “They look pretty much the same, aren’t they? They look pretty much the same. {video note: pointing at chocolate in bottom of the glass representing the ‘Believer Not Led by the Spirt’}I mean I can see a little Bible study in here. I can see a little hard work trying and striving, some religious studies, but when I interact with these two people, they’re pretty much the same. They look pretty much the same, but when I interact with them, {video note: takes a sip of both glasses, first the one representing the ‘unbeliever’, and then the one representing the ‘Believer Not Led by the Spirt’}they are pretty much the same.
When I interact and look at this person filled with the Spirit, {video note: Picks up the third glass representing the ‘Believer FILLED with the SPIRIT’ and takes a sip} it’s very sweet, completely different. That’s why when we run into believers they seem different. Right now most of the church looks at this situation of these different believers,……Bruce Wilkinson, author of Prayer of Jabez, believes that out of 100 Christians, there’s only five percent that are filled with the Spirit. He got that from talking to a lot of believers around the world. I did a little poll of some really smart guys around here and I said: “What if we took 1,000 people, and we just picked people off of the street around America and said: “How many people in America are unbelievers, believers who are really not led and filled with the Spirit, and those that who are pretty consistently led and filled with the Spirit, what would the numbers be? It came back like this: We took the average of what they said. If we took 1,000 people, 900 are unsaved, 10% are saved, and of that, only 5% of this 100 people that are believers are consistently walking in the Spirit.
Being a financial planner, and getting to look at people’s tax returns, and knowing how they give, and seeing studies by Barna, less than 10% of people in America give more than 10% after the tithe. The Holy Spirit is not interested in saving for retirement, so the numbers they give also matches up. So, a very small percentage of believers are here: filled and led by the spirit, most of the time.
