"Being Filled with the Holy Spirit" – Romans 15:13 I impose nothing; I teach what I have learned in the Holy Scripture. When a person is converted and repents of all his sins, something happens in our life: the coming of the Holy Spirit. He is the one who guides us, who teaches us, who reproves us. And the one sin that will never be forgiven is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. That is why today's subject is the fullness: it is not enough to know that He came; we must be filled with Him, because it is by His power that we abound in hope and see God's promises fulfilled.
I. Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing (Romans 15:13).
A. The first step of the converted is baptism.
1. In baptism we tell God by the act itself that we want to die so that He may grow in our life.
2. When we go into the waters, there we leave all our sin and all our evil; by faith we receive Jesus.
3. Baptism is an act of faith that confirms that the old creature is buried.
4. The Holy Spirit does not come through the waters: the waters confirm. The Spirit comes with conversion.
B. When we repent the Holy Spirit comes, the third person of the Godhead.
1. He is the one who guides us, who teaches us and who reproves us.
2. If we fall and do what does not please God, the Holy Spirit does not remain: He leaves. We weep, we repent, and He returns.
3. For that reason we must have a life of prayer every single day.
4. The one sin that will never be forgiven is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit; it is the only sin on earth that will never be pardoned.
5. There are two outcomes: pardon or rejection. The Scriptures do not record when one is forgiven and when one is cast off; heaven does record it, but that knowledge is not given to us here. Hence the care.
C. We serve a God of joy and of peace, and that is activated in believing.
1. When we believe, we are filled with joy and we have much peace; and that peace comes through the Scriptures.
2. They tell you the child is sick and you answer: let us pray for him. There is faith there, there is joy and there is peace.
3. But if one answers in anguish, what are we going to do now, what is wrong with him now, one loses all sense.
4. When we give the Holy Spirit His place, our lives truly change.
5. And if one holds back and resists Him, the spirit is grieved violently; that is why some contend when they hear the word.
II. Our hope is not founded upon circumstances.
A. Living only by what we see produces anguish.
1. If we live only in our own thinking and in what we see day by day, we will live anxious, sad, full of lament and complaint, at war with all humanity.
2. That is to be without the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and that fullness is what we ought to have upon our life.
B. Circumstance is not hope.
1. Circumstance is what is lived, what we suffer, what comes; hope is something else.
2. What we live through, God permitted, and from everything we live through we learn.
3. One says: I did not deserve this. We deserve far more.
4. Whoever has loved being filled with the Holy Spirit knows that He is the one who will sustain him and carry him to everything he needs in order to live on this earth.
5. We cannot live in a cloud or in the ideas of our mind: we must live according to what the Holy Spirit leads us to from the day of our conversion.
C. Biblical hope is settled confidence, not a wish.
1. Many people say I wish, may God allow it, so be it; those are sayings of our mouths.
2. In the Bible, hope is settled confidence in what God has promised and that we have not yet seen fulfilled.
3. Being filled with the Holy Spirit is when we will be able to see it all fulfilled.
4. You ask what you were born for: God set you apart and chose you; but we swallow the insults thrown at us more readily than the knowledge of the Scriptures.
5. Filled with the Holy Spirit we will be united to do His holy will, and heaven no longer sees us as common, but as righteous who have guarded their lives so the Spirit would never depart.
III. That ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.
A. Abounding in hope is not achieved by our strength.
1. Ask yourself what you abound in; some abound in cunning. Instead of that, abound in hope.
2. Stop striving on your own: alone we cannot.
3. It is the Holy Spirit who produces that living hope within us.
4. Your life is not by what you see around you, but by the Spirit, who strengthens you and fills you within.
B. The Holy Spirit unveils the Scripture.
1. You say you have learned much from the Bible; but you come to know the Bible when He unveils it to you.
2. He removes the mantle, He takes away the veil, and there is the Scripture, there is the understanding, there is the knowing.
3. People say: I read the Bible and I do not understand it. When the Holy Spirit has made covenant with us, He unveils.
4. We ought to be teachers by now: we have not been at this three days nor three years, and the word is always active for that purpose.
5. Teachers taught by the word, not by the world nor by sayings, because you teach your children, your spouse, your grandchildren and whoever is around you.
C. The Holy Spirit transforms what we care about.
1. There lies the great problem of our life: that we go on being carnal.
2. The man or woman filled with the Holy Spirit is led by Him, who works in us both to will and to do of the will of God.
3. You say: I already have my own plans. Step down, because if the Holy Spirit is not there, there is no work to be done.
4. Whether a person is sanctified depends on whether he has the Holy Spirit; it does not rest on the minister, it rests on your own acts.
5. If our feet were soiled with the dust of the earth, it is not that we went back: we must go to God in humiliation and ask forgiveness. That is the doctrine.
IV. What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost? For ye are bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
A. Bought with a price.
1. Whoever is bought with a price is a slave; we were slaves of our trespasses and our sins.
2. That price was paid by Jesus, and not with money: the gold and the silver are His, everything is His.
3. No one can count the stars, and every one of them is called by its name.
B. The believer's body is a temple.
1. If the blood of Christ is in your life, you are a temple, because the blood has been shed there.
2. That is why the Holy Spirit is in you: because you are a temple, because the blood covers you.
3. It is not merely a physical body, but a place where the Holy Spirit dwells, in your night as in your day.
4. That is why the good thing in the morning is to rise and find a corner to pray; it is not a discipline, it is a delight.
5. That gives the body dignity: the worth God gives us as His children and the price He paid for our life.
6. The minister has no worth because of the office; the worth is what the Holy Spirit gives through the blood of Christ.
C. Therefore glorify God in your body.
1. We are not our own: we belong to God because we were bought by the blood of Christ.
2. We must live so that our actions, our decisions and even the care of our body reflect that we are His.
3. Guard your life, church; let us take care even of our body.
4. When sickness comes, one submits at once to whatever discipline must be kept, and keeps it; one does not sit with folded arms out of laziness to care for what God commanded us to care for.
5. My body belongs to the Holy Spirit, and the Bible says that we are to care for our body.
V. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, he shall teach you all things (John 14:26).
A. Jesus announces the one who would come after Him.
1. Jesus tells the disciples: I am going away, but the Comforter will come upon you.
2. After His death Jesus spent that time reconciling and uniting the disciples, coming and going, showing Himself to whomever He wished to speak to.
3. On the road to Emmaus the two disciples were saying that they had killed the Master and that now they would be killed too; they were exceedingly troubled.
4. Jesus did not let Himself be seen until He drew near, and then they knew Him. But He was very clear: here I am, but one is coming, the Holy Spirit.
B. The Comforter: helper, counsellor and consoler.
1. The Father will send Him; we are not alone.
2. He is a gift of the Father to accompany believers; He goes with us and delivers us from all evil.
3. He comes in the name of Jesus, with the very authority of Christ, continuing His work.
C. He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance.
1. The Holy Spirit guides us into the truth, gives us understanding and lights up the word for us.
2. If you say you do not understand the word: be filled with the Holy Spirit, seek Him, and whatever must be cleansed, cleanse it.
3. Through the Holy Spirit you will come to recognize the Scriptures.
4. He helps us keep the thoughts and the promises of Christ alive in our mind and in our heart.
VI. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes (Ezekiel 36:27).
A. God promises to dwell within His people.
1. God does not promise merely to be near, for God is in every place.
2. He promises to dwell within His people by His Spirit, the third person of the Godhead, in our body.
3. If only we learned to love Him.
B. The Spirit enables us to obey.
1. I will cause you to walk in my statutes: the Holy Spirit is the only one who enables us to obey; it is not merely human effort.
2. But it is all in your hand: do you want to or not?
3. It is not enough to know the word; the Spirit helps us live it daily.
4. Obedience is born of the Spirit, not only of discipline.
5. In church you may feel blessing from the atmosphere, but the matter is with you personally: the Holy Spirit in your life.
C. The promise is fulfilled completely in Christ.
1. Christ is the one who gives us the Holy Spirit as a seal, because He went to the cross and washes us with His blood.
2. Because His blood washes us, the Holy Spirit sees that He may come.
3. So we receive Him through the death of Christ, by His blood. This is simply doctrine.
VII. And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption (Ephesians 4:30).
A. To grieve Him is to sadden and quench His work.
1. Do not make Him sad with our attitudes.
2. Which attitudes? Lying, speaking with deceit, holding a grudge, anger, bitterness and disobedience.
3. Whoever grieves Him has quenched the Spirit, and then in the assembly of the saints there is a sadness that comes by the Holy Spirit.
4. If the Holy Spirit departs from us, we are all condemned: children, young people, adolescents and the aged.
5. That is what we have a church for. This is not for having a good time: the church is to meet with God, to have the Holy Spirit.
6. Think about it: are we going to sin and do harm to others? It were better not to have been born.
B. Sealed: the mark of belonging to God.
1. The Holy Spirit is the permanent mark that shows you are a son.
2. He is the guarantee that we are His.
3. Everyone talks religion, back and forth; but it is the Holy Spirit who seals and who bears witness.
C. Unto the day of redemption.
1. It is the day when we will be rescued and set free, when Christ completes our salvation, redeeming our body also.
2. Let us watch what we do; let us live with gratitude and holiness.
3. The seal of the Spirit is the guarantee that God will keep His promise, and the promises are kept to the one who is sealed.
VIII. And so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him (Acts 5:32).
A. Two witnesses of the same message.
1. The apostles speak with authority because they had seen and lived the work of Christ.
2. And the Holy Spirit Himself also bears witness with power and signs that He is the one we must have.
3. Nothing here is free: all of this has been paid for. Value that blood.
B. Eternity is decided here.
1. It were better not to have been born, because the punishment will be in eternity; you decide where you want to go.
2. The final feast will be in flames of fire, where the worm never dies.
3. In hell every feeling will be active, because what is created never dies.
4. You live for this earth, but however long you live, eternity is forever.
5. In heaven there are mansions, and they are for the one who builds them: with his deeds, with his manner of life, living in the order of the Holy Spirit.
C. Given to them that obey him.
1. The Holy Spirit is a gift given to whoever believes and yields in obedience to Christ.
2. What the Spirit seeks is that you honour Christ and be obedient.
3. What enters your heart, only you know what you allow into your conscience.
4. For you to have the Holy Spirit the blood of Christ must be there, and for that you must have died to the old life.
IX. This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you (Luke 22:20).
A. The Lord's Supper closes the teaching.
1. This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.
2. He went to the cross, shed His blood and suffered what we did not deserve.
3. He went to prepare a dwelling place for us, and the Holy Spirit came into our life.
B. What came and went in ancient times now abides.
1. In ancient times the Spirit would come and go; under grace, thanks to the blood of Jesus, He abides permanently with us.
2. Let us take heed that we are never capable of blasphemy, and let there be in us a reverent fear.
3. In His blessed blood we can say today that we enjoy the fullness of the Spirit.
4. From a small town, from a tiny island, He has given to us according to His riches in glory. And let no one steal the word that has been given.
Christian Church Mega Zoé · Pastor Edermira Cruz
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