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February 23, 2020 Sermon Notes
Ephesians 5:8-21

God’s Empowering Presence (Review)
• The Spirit is a person [Ephesians 4:29]
• The Spirit in all of creation [Gen 1, Ex 31]
• The Spirit and our spirits—hand and glove [Ps 51]
• The Spirit anointing Jesus for… freedom! [Luke 4]
• The Spirit growing the character / fruit of Jesus [Gal 5]
• The Spirit working in our inner beings so that Christ might dwell there…

“The Word of God”
• The Christian faith is a faith movement about words, especially the Word of God
• But never the Word all by itself…

Word And Spirit
1. Word and Spirit in Creation (Genesis 1:1-2)

2. Jesus as the Word (John 1:1)

3. Jesus (the Word) and the Spirit—the Spirit empowered Jesus to work and speak [preaching, teaching, prophecy]

4. The Bible as the Word of God, breathed out by the Spirit (2 Timothy 3:16)—
• “theopneustos [Theo = God; pneu = Spirit, breath”; “breathed out”]

5. Christian life: we need both Word and Spirit [like we need both head and heart; truth and grace; etc.]
• The Word without the Spirit: dry up
• The Spirit without the Word: we blow up
• Spirit and Word together: we grow up

6. In our (Reformed) tradition, this preaching moment, when done faithfully [when it is correctly connected to the Word of God], is also meant to be a kind of Word of God for us

7. And there is also another level of the Word of God—we do not talk about this as much as we do the other things we just mentioned; found in Ephesians 5 (and other passages)

Focus: Ephesians 5:18-21
• General command: be filled by? / with? the Spirit
o Ephesians 3:16ff—the Spirit is filling us with Jesus Christ

Evidence Of The Spirit’s Filling:
“Instead, be filled by the Spirit
1. speaking to one another with psalms, hymns and songs from the Spirit
2. singing and making music from your heart to the Lord
3. always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ
4. submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ (Ephesians 5:18-21)

Focus: Speaking To Each Other
“speaking to one another with psalms, hymns and songs from the Spirit”

Some thing to note:
1. Why are we speaking to each other with songs?
2. The focus: speaking based on what the Spirit inspires

Other Examples:
“Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. (Colossians 3:16)

“Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers; prophecy, however, is not for unbelievers but for believers” (1 Corinthians 14:22)

Principles
1. There is a prompting—the Spirit is urging me to say something; I need to share this
2. This is more than simply encouragement
3. Caution: “I think God might be saying this to you”
4. Test #1: Testing by the Word
5. Test #2: Look for community discernment / testing
6. General direction: Words of life
o Not something I want to get off my chest

Examples of this among us…

Communion…