Ephesians, 4:7-10
Randy Peterman · May 10, 2009
Ephesians (2009), No. 19
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926133205618

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Jeremy got off the hook for what could potentially be a difficult passage because of a few sticky parts but Ephesians 4 7 through 10 is honestly one of the passages that I have less exposure to as far as Ephesians doctrine is concerned just as far as a passage goes.

So this was a good learning experience for myself. I always like it when I get to learn and study something that I haven't studied as much. So that's a benefit for me and hopefully you'll find what we go through here edifying. If you were in the main service, my dad taught through Colossians and Ephesians in 2003. This passage was taught 7 through 10 as well. I made sure I listened to that one because of the sticky parts in here. And that's available online as well. If for some reason you don't think I covered something well. Let's take a look at the passage and then we'll dig in. Ephesians 4, 7-10 says, But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.

Therefore it says, When he ascended on high, he led captive a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men. Now this expression, he ascended, what does it mean except that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is himself also he who ascended far above all the heavens so that he might fill all things. Alright, well, let's not get to the sticky part first, we'll go in order here.

Ephesians 4 again says, but to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. Paul is building on the theological building blocks that he put before. the prayer in chapter 3 verses 14 through 21 he builds on the nature of the family of God and how God wants us to love one another and explore God's love together and building on this concept of intimacy and then he builds from there in 1 through 6, 4, 1 through 6 on the concept of unity and oneness and sameness because of the work of God in ourselves. But then in 7 he switches directions just for a moment to say that to each one of us going back to the individual for uniqueness grace was given to us according to the measure of Christ's gift. There is a togetherness and a uniqueness in this. When when grace was given let's let's start there obviously at the beginning part of it to each one of us grace was given What are some bad teachings let's make sure that we can distinguish this what are some bad teachings on Salvation as far as grace is concerned.

I'm sure we've all been exposed to a variations on grace and variations on the gift of grace in our growing up. Carol? It probably has to do with the measure. Uh-huh. And that's definitely part of it. And that's when I was studying this, that's where I kept coming back around and meditating on how the measurement really matters. What are we measuring by?

The reason I'm concerned is that if we turn back to Ephesians chapter 2, looking at verses 8 and 9, it says, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. The problem comes, there are those who teach The doctrine, well works is a problem, but they teach a doctrine that faith is the gift, not grace.

And if faith is the gift from God, then you didn't do the believing. initially. God did the bleeding for you and then gave that to you. If grace is the gift, all you did was simply believe and then God gave you the gift of grace. So Paul has reiterated this concept of grace and it being a gift in chapter 2 and now here again in chapter 4 we see the same concept. So that grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. Grace was given. Now let's remind ourselves, what's our working definition of grace?

Love. Unlimited, unmerited blessings of God. Before I think about this, I've been thinking about it for three weeks, these very passages, and it just comes about from the Absolutely, they're so intertwined they cannot be separated. The nature of love and grace are so intertwined in Ephesians and so many other places that it's difficult to separate them.

Yes? You don't believe that faith is a gift or it has to be given unto you not only to suffer but to believe on his name? What they're saying is that you didn't do the believing. Do you understand the distinction? I'm not saying, well... Reformed theology says that faith is the gift. It's the antecedent in Ephesians 2, 8. So that you didn't have faith. You didn't believe. God believed for you. Did God believe or did you believe?

That's what I'm trying to point out. Well, um... We're chosen, but the thing is that they're removing your participation in the event of faith. Did you have faith or did you not have faith? That's the element I'm trying to point out. There are elements of... Oh man, this is what I was hoping we would not do. The problem is often that within the Reformed background of theology they make faith the antecedent of gift and not grace.

And so that's where I was trying to go with that. The thing is that we believe. We respond to the gospel and Paul says we believe. So that's really where I'm going. Yes? The grace is given. Yes. The grace is the gift. Grace can't come and we get it through belief in the Lord's sacrifice. Yes, in the personal work of Christ. I really didn't want to go into the reformed versus not reformed view on this, or the Calvinist versus non-Calvinist view on this. What happens is This becomes an issue of whether or not the human will is actively involved or not in faith. This would be like a massive rabbit trail.

Can we talk about it after class? It's not that I don't want to answer, it's that it's an entirely different direction for the class. I mean, if everybody's interested, we can go into it, but to be honest with you, I'm also not overly... It's not something that I spend a lot of time thinking about. I used to study it a lot because in seminary, this was a hot topic. But I haven't thought about it in a long time.

Yeah, well, but see the question that she's asking is not what the sentence says, but what's the application of the theology and that's really, or if I understand correctly, that's what I think you're asking is where's the application of the theology or the doctrine that's there. But if we can talk about that after class that will be good because then we can look at some other passages. Let's take a look at the second half of verse 7 here.

The grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. And here I've got some questions for discussion at the bottom of the section. How does our perspective on eternal security or assurance impact our view of the gift of Christ? What is the gift of Christ? Salvation. Salvation.

And when we work with our definition of grace, the unlimited, unmerited blessings of God due to the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross, we have unlimited and unmerited. We have these words that describe an infinite characteristic, or an infinite grace. The measure of Christ on the cross is really something that we When I think about what I understood grace to be, it was simply that God chose to ignore my sin. That's the way I used to define grace.

I operated under this idea that God ignores the sin. And then that's all that was happening. I didn't understand the fullness of grace. I didn't understand Christ's substitution. I didn't understand my identification or my position. And therefore, because I didn't have an accurate measure, I also didn't have an accurate definition of grace.

If the measure of Christ's gift is infinite, and the measure of Christ's gift is eternal life, and the measure of Christ's gift exceeds that which, like when we were looking at the love earlier, as Jack pointed out, grace and love are intimately intertwined. When you have a love that we're supposed to explore, and it is beyond our knowledge, but we're called to know it as best as we can, that's massive. That's your measuring tool. Your measuring stick is infinite. And so, when you have a bad perspective on the measuring tool, it affects your view on eternal security.

What's the worst sin you can commit before the work of Christ on the cross is inadequate? That's the question that I had to ask myself, because I'd heard about this unforgivable sin and I didn't want to commit it, but I needed to find out what it was so I could coordinate off so that I didn't lose my salvation. But then everything else was kind of free game, right? But the measuring stick is the work of Christ being adequate.

It affects our perspective on eternal security and assurance, and that subsequently affects our view of grace. They're intertwined there as well. So if you have a weak view of grace or a weak view of assurance, they're intertwined enough that you're going to have a tough time understanding why you would walk in grace.

Wait a minute. If I've got a grace measuring cup that is of finite volume, then I can only use so much. I can't have that. But the measuring rod, the Greek word there is actually a metron. You may be familiar with the metric system, in which case you have a familiarity there. But it carries with it the idea of a measuring rod or a ruler. So if you have a measuring stick or a measuring rod that is not big enough or adequate enough, then you come to grace and you have grace that's not big enough or adequate enough. And that's a real problem.

In my own walk, I remember feeling guilt all the time. Always guilty because I remember the last sin that I did, or maybe the last 20 sins, or whatever the number was. And I would constantly be thinking, well, God can't have forgiven me if I didn't ask for forgiveness.

My measure of grace was not the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross. It was the adequate work of Christ on the cross But I still needed to do my part so that he could make it totally adequate. I didn't understand the life of Christ working in me. It was not part of my concept of grace.

You know you've done enough as an abiding believer, you know you've done enough when the Lord takes you home. you know, death or the rapture, I guess he's done. We get it now, you know, but otherwise we're vessels. So we need to understand grace and the measure of Christ's gift there is being infinite, is being, exceeding in everything that we might possibly look for as a limit.

One of the things as humans that we like is the concept of boundaries. We like to have boundaries. It makes it easy. It's a list of rules. It's exactly where things fit. With my children, I need to set boundaries. This morning, I sat them down. I said, you have got to be on your best behavior this morning. Daddy's tired. Mommy's tired. You've got to be well-behaved. And I set the boundaries, and that was okay.

But God asks us to not look at the boundaries. He asks us to look at Him. And that's a pretty radical shift. It's not the way we're used to operating. When you drive your vehicles, everybody here I think is driving or has driven other than Finn. You're going to have to work on that, buddy. And because of that, we're used to the boundaries. And when somebody doesn't follow the boundaries, we get all upset. Or we get in an accident. Either one of those is not so good.

I often consider that an opportunity to coach somebody. I don't get road rage. I car coach. But that's what I call it. But the idea with grace is that the measure is infinite, and so the grace is infinite. And we cannot separate those two. And obviously if we look at Romans chapter 6, and there's no reason not to flip over there and take a moment to look at it. Romans 6, 1-4. Would somebody mind reading 6, 1-4 out loud? Shall we say then, are we to continue in sin, so that grace may increase?

May it never be. How shall we who die to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in new and Alright, so we have this concept of being able to walk in newness of life because of our identification or baptism into Christ's death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding.

That doctrine of ascension is what verses 8, 9, and 10 are going to talk about. So we're going to get to talk about ascension here, and this is where things get sticky. We have the measure of Christ's gift, which is our identification with Him. in part but now we have to take a look at at the rest of this this section here therefore it's in verse 8 therefore it says when he ascended on high he led captive a host of captives and he gave gifts to men this is a a summary of Psalm 68 it is it looks like a direct quote on the surface of Psalm 68 18 if you've got your Bibles and hopefully everybody does take a let's switch back to Psalm 68 and take a look at verse 18 because it looks very similar it says you have ascended on high you have led captive your captives you have received gifts among men even among the rebellious also that the Lord God may dwell there now this this uses the pronoun you and it says you have received gifts among men now how does Paul recite this back in in Ephesians 4 he says when he instead of you ascended on high He, instead of you, led a host of captives and He gave gifts to men.

Tom? Are we comparing the Septuagint to the Hebrew text? No, this is not a Septuagint versus Hebrew kind of a problem. Paul is summarizing the whole of Psalm 68. There are elements, and I've got it here in my notes, let me take a quick gander here. Look at verses 9 through 10, Psalm 68, 9 and 10.

You shed abroad a plentiful rain, O God. You confirmed your inheritance when it was parched. Your creatures settled in it. You provided in your goodness for the poor. His gifts, in that case, would reflect the rain. Paul does something here, and this is something that Again, I have to bring up the Reformed Theology stuff.

Paul does something that is apostolic in reapplying this text where it would be dangerous for us as lay people, as non-apostles, if you want an apostolic church, I think there's one down the street. Sorry, I'm not suggesting you go there. I actually went to one and that's a whole other story. It's a scary set of theology.

But Paul does something and he redefines it or reapplies the text in a different context and he changes some words through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. If we do this as human beings that are not inspired by the Holy Spirit as apostles to write letters to churches across the known world. What kind of things could we do? The Jehovah's Witnesses do that. The Mormons have a Joseph Smith reinterpreted and redefined version of their Bible. You can get into some very interesting theology when you take a passage and redefine it. Paul did this with Holy Spirit-inspired accuracy. But we are not called to do this in our studying of God's Word. If you start to redefine the text and reapply the text yourself, you're going to get into trouble.

When Paul does it, it doesn't nullify the original interpretation and application as it does with the Jehovah's Witnesses or with the Mormons, where they say, no, it doesn't mean that, it means this instead. Paul's saying, it does mean that, but I'm also going to give it a new life meaning in this age, right? So it's not a total re-interpretation or re-application, but it's rather a re-application or something. Yeah, well he doesn't nullify, like you said, he doesn't nullify the original intent.

Matthew, the book of Matthew, does the same thing in chapter two. Matthew says, the prophets said, and then he goes on to say something that you will not find a direct quote anywhere in any of the prophets saying, but it's a summarization of what the prophets said, just not literally what the prophets said. Yeah.

Could you say David's looking ahead to the prophets? There is some of that perspective, but Paul is summarizing, and I think by looking at this as Paul summarizing and taking on Psalm 68, if you had to do it all quickly, that's going to be a bit tough anyways, but what I was reading through Psalm 68, it's a very rich psalm describing the work of the Messiah, the work of God to redeem people.

I mean, when he's talking about captives, leading captives free, That's the next section we have to ask ourselves. What did the Jews understand as captivity? In the time of David, they would have understood that as Israel inside of Egypt. But later on, they're going to understand captivity again as they were taken from their land.

So David is looking forward, and actually I asked Jessica, I was talking with her, and I said, do you think maybe You know, how much do you think David knew? And the answer is, we don't know. He knew this because the Holy Spirit gave it to him. But his comprehension of what was going to take place as a fulfillment of these prophecies would have been necessarily limited. Yeah, well we still look forward and we think we kind of understand some of it. I mean, it's clear, but it's still not everything.

But Psalm 68 here, definitely read in your own time, please this week, read through Psalm 68. It's a rich, very poetic psalm, and there's a lot of repetition of concepts with beautiful language. So it's definitely worth reading. So when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives.

Do you feel like you were a captive or that you are still a captive in your own walk with the Lord? Is this positional or conditional? It's conditional, but it's very much there. You know, I kind of feel very trapped in this body that doesn't do what I want it to do or expect it to do. Whatever. It's more fun than I am. The concept of being a captive here, Paul, again this is a reapplication, but we were slaves to what? Before salvation sin, slaves to sin. And being a slave to sin, prior to this, he let us free from that captivity, having purchased us. Do you not believe that this refers to Sheol and Paradise? I'm sorry, I'm not fully... I guess there's some thought that when Christ descended, he descended into...

We're going to get into that in 9 and 10. And we're going to go into that. So yes, we'll talk about that in there. That is not the way that I understand this. But we'll get into that and we'll go into why. And if you disagree we'll have to go into that. And I'm going to call in the big guns because I'd have to go to my dad with further understandings of the language deeper than I would. But we'll keep going and if there's questions we can get into that.

I do not understand this to be a Sheol reference. Paul doesn't seem to go into that because he's talking about the body and the believers already there at the church in Ephesus. It would seem strange for him to redirect the focus of that. But we'll keep going here. host of captives and he gave gifts to men. When you talk about being a captive, for me this looks like sin. The captivity of the sin nature that I only had before being redeemed. And then I could no longer be captive to sin but be brought and have liberty in Christ. And having gifts to men, again the Christ's gift in verse 7, the measure of Christ's gift being a tie in there between 7 and 8. Paul is going to explain in 9 and 10 what he means by his reinterpretation of Psalm 68.

So let's take a look at that and maybe this will answer some of the questions there. He says, now this expression, he ascended, what does it mean? Except that he also had descended into the lower parts of the earth. And this is where I think the concept of Sheol came out. It's in the Apostles' Creed that that either Christ went into hell or Sheol or various things where you'll hear various interpretations. I grew up hearing that Christ went into hell on my behalf. I don't remember where I heard it first but on multiple occasions I was told that.

He ascended is because of that Paul draws some logical conclusions there and he said what it does mean or what does it mean except that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth and that's where it's sticky and that's where the question comes up what does this mean how do we deal with this into the lower parts of the earth the language here when you look at this in the Greek doesn't appear and this is where I'm not a Greek scholar my dad said that this is what it meant, and I went and used the best tools that I have, which are still not the same as understanding Greek comprehensively, and I couldn't come up with anything to disagree. It would be a better translation to say he descended to the lower parts, comma, the earth. But again, I'm going off, this is second-hand knowledge and not my own knowledge of Greek But the problem that we have is this concept of Sheol or Hell. What is it?

Oh, that's the place of the dead. After you die, it's where you go that's not Heaven. Well, some people in the Catholic Church would call that purgatory. The Hebrew concept of Sheol was the place where you'd go after you died that wasn't Heaven. You were going to go to Heaven.

It's not a concept that we're familiar with in a regular context of church. The thing that I look at is Christ on the cross. In Luke 23, 43. Luke 23, 43. He says, Well, let's step back just a minute. This is Christ on the cross with the thief on the cross next to him. And the thief says to him, and he was saying, Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom. And 43, Christ says, and he said to him, truly I say to you, today you shall be with me in paradise. not in Sheol, not in hell, you'll be with me in paradise. to understand this as Christ going below the earth in the sense of hell or purgatory or this non-heavenly place does not reflect Christ's statement to the thief on the cross.

You want to be careful not to force an interpretation but it seems that where there is ambiguity it's better to go to a clearer passage and I think that is one example of why that should not be the place. We can also take a look at Philippians 2 verses 5 through 8 if you want to put there with me. I'll go ahead and just read this out loud just because I've got it here. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus who although he existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped or taken, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men, being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."

There we have this concept that he came down to the earth, but not that he went below the earth. If you want to go and stretch it to below the earth, I'll grant you that he was buried. We can compromise in the sense and say, yeah, he's below the earth, he was buried. But I don't think that means that he went to Sheol.

Or hell, I should say. Luke 16, the rich man, the poor man, and so forth. Why is Abraham's bosom There are definite places where you go after you die at that time. Yes. You can look over, but you can't go back and forth. What we need to recognize is the identification with Christ. puts us in a different context than those of the other. OK. Oh yeah. It was basically it was a.

It's one of those things that I've tried to study it before and I always come up scratching my head because I honestly, it's hard for me to have a Jewish mindset on this. And so I'm going to claim, I'm going to be ignorant and not try to come up with some kind of answer that would not be useful because I don't want to just make something up so that everybody's pacified. I'm going to be honest with you and say I need to study that before I give you an answer where I feel like, oh, this is me having studied it and I'm ready to give you an answer. I'd rather own up to my own shortcomings than come up with some interesting theology.

That being said, there is an element to this where the lower parts of the earth would be better translated as to the lower parts, comma, the earth, rather than lower parts of the earth. When I looked at the use of the Greek word, and it's on page three here, I believe. Yeah, it's at the top of page three. The Greek word there is gay. It's not spelled like our word for happy or homosexual. But that's how you might pronounce it.

It's not used anywhere that I could see. There are some really great online tools. I use blueletterbible.org and basically it allows you to see every time that a word is used in the Bible. And nowhere was the word earth used in any sense for anything other than standing on, or for plowing, or for earth, or land, or dirt. So it would seem strange for it to be used in this context that way. That being said, Paul does a lot of things only once in the New Testament.

So there is that argument. Yes? How do you deal with the eyes? I'm going to have to not answer that one because of my Greek familiarity. I listened to my dad's teaching on this because I wanted to make sure I had heard what he had to say about it. And it was one of those things where I was like, man, I'm going to stand in front of this class and have to say, I don't know about some things. No, I'm not. I don't need a break. We need to know the answer and the truth about God's word. So I don't want to dock anything because we need to. This is God's word.

But you know, while he was dead physically, he was doing work spiritually. He wasn't dead. He was dead in separation. Yeah, separation. Yeah. And so he was doing a lot of things according to the Word of God. He was preaching to the spirits in prison according to 1 Peter. He descended. He was going back and forth from heaven to earth and descending again.

40 days, he wasn't sitting around, you know, buried and that was it. But I think that the book of Hebrews tells us quite a bit about those ascensions. And the thing about this is why Mary could not be touched. Mary couldn't touch him because he had not yet ascended. And then after, then later on, she touches him. Why?

Because he was doing things accomplishing many things during his burial and ascension are resurrection before he ascended and so I really think that that's why into the lower parts plural and the ice is very difficult you would have to change the Greek meaning quite a bit to just assume that he was buried and that's it But okay, and I'm not I will certainly not disagree with that.

I don't want to be changing Greek words meanings But but I don't I don't think it teaches hell, and I think that's probably the biggest thing That that I feel most comfortable saying with my lack of understanding Greek See hell was Hades Hades is a word for the Greek Hades in Hebrew is the word shield. But you have compartments within that.

There's no doubt about it. You have the abyss, you have the Tartarus, you have hell itself that separates the place of torment, you have the place of Abraham's bosom. I believe personally that Christ went down and removed paradise. I believe Abraham's bosom is like paradise and he removed it up. The Greek preposition in 2nd Corinthians chapter 12 it says up to the third heaven so today when people die they don't go into heaven they go to paradise because it's outside of heaven because we're not ready for heaven the rapture didn't take place our glorified body hasn't come and we're going to do it all together as a body but today Christians go to paradise but it's up to it's no longer see in the old testament if you got mad at somebody and you wanted to kill him, you told him to go to hell. He really did. Everybody did. But today, you don't tell people that because the Lord Jesus removed that possibility. That's why we go to paradise. Okay, actually that's very informative. Thank you for sharing that.

It's definitely an area where this is revelatory. It's kind of embarrassing to be in front of a Sunday school class teaching and not knowing everything. Well, not knowing everything, that's an overstatement. Not having everything about the text possible in your knowledge. So thank you very much, Bill, for sharing that with us. I think it's a blessing to go to paradise. Well, yeah, and that's the thing. To give that a broader context and understanding is useful.

The thing, and this is, there's a whole secondary aspect to this, and this is really where my mind went, and that is the concept of the hypostatic union, that Christ came down to the earth, not in a spiritual, purely spiritual form. He came down as man and God. He was born of a virgin in physical form. He was not just a spirit. And he wasn't just man and he wasn't just a god. That's where a lot of bad fear... I'm almost running out of time and I haven't even gotten to verse 10. Oh, it's fast? Oh, sweet. I'll slow down then.

The hypostatic union is another important doctrine here where the 100% God, 100% man nature of Christ is important. If Christ was not 100% God, then his work would not have been adequate. And if he was not 100% man, his work would not be adequate. And if you look at the Jehovah's Witnesses, they don't teach that Christ was God. They can't do that.

The Mormons teach that Christ was a God. So they redefine that there. But you start to have these various theologies where bad doctrine comes out. There was one guy at one of my former high school Sunday school students college in Texas who was teaching that Christ wasn't God. You can't have Christ be God. And so, I mean, weird theology comes out and that leads to all kinds of other issues.

The ascension and descension reflects the plan of God from eternity past to bring about that his sons work on the cross to deal with in a substitutionary way the sins of man. And that substitutionary nature of things is important. Ephesians 4.10 He who descended is himself also he who ascended far above all the heavens.

The Jews had three meanings for the word of heaven, the clouds, outer space, and the eternal heavens with God the Father. So we have three different uses of heavens there. So when Paul says, above all the heavens, I think it's safe to say that he's not referring to just the clouds. He's not referring to just outer space. I remember as a kid trying to figure out where heaven was and trying to figure out where in the galaxy or the solar system it was or the universe and I don't believe that's the way that things are created.

But he ascended to the heavenlies. Colossians 3, 1-3 tells us that. as well as probably many other places, but we'll go there. Therefore, if you've been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. In verse one there. We're to set our mind on those things. Our life is hidden there with Him. The ascension is part of this. The second half of this verse, since I'm running out of time, is so that He might fill all things.

And Paul talks about being filled by the Holy Spirit in Ephesians 1.23.3.19, this verse in 5.18. The concept here is that we would be filled fully or overflowing by the Holy Spirit, that He may fill all things. If we go back earlier in Ephesians 4, in verse 6, We see the work of God, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. So this concept of filling is repeated again, over and over again. He doesn't use the same word, but we have the work of God in us. It's the life of Christ in us and through us, and we're filled with the Holy Spirit. That's abiding.

When I was a teenager in the Charismatic Church that I went to, We didn't understand the filling of the Spirit at all. We didn't understand the Holy Spirit filling us and indwelling us and empowering us. We saw it as this mystical coming and going of God and He'd do something amazing and then take off. We didn't understand this concept of abiding and being filled by the Holy Spirit and that the Holy Spirit doesn't leave us.

We may not choose to listen to Him. We may not choose to abide. but he is there filling us. We are vessels, we are made vessels as part of our regeneration. So, aside from some of the questions that have already been asked here, I have a few other questions regarding this verse.

How do we perceive the filling of the Holy Spirit, or how do you perceive the filling of the Holy Spirit in your life? Do you recognize that as a regular, everyday occurrence that's part of the Holy Spirit in your life, or do you see it as a coming and going, or when I'm focused or not focused? How do you personally understand that, and how should you understand that? I believe you have to accept it as stable, continuous, always present and working or else you're putting yourself on a work space as though I'm especially worthy now so I get it or I'm especially needy so I get it or whatever.

Too many things depend on you. doesn't Paul, doesn't filled with Holy Spirit tend to be controlled by? Aren't there certain maybe points or situations in your life where you have a special feeling? Yeah, well I mean the supernatural work that is there, yes, you will have special instances where that will be the case, but we're called to understand his regular filling of us all the time. There will be unique supernatural instances that will be there and I need to make sure I don't ignore that.

But often there's the sense of the coming and going of the Holy Spirit rather than a sealing of the Holy Spirit. And I think that's the part where I didn't understand sealing. I didn't understand that the Holy Spirit indwells me and is part of me and who I am in Christ. Oh he's coming, I'm going to pray really hard and if I pray just the right prayer and I had to confess all my sins. I don't know if you guys grew up with any of that.

You got to confess all the sins that you knew you did and then pray a general prayer to close off the ones that you know you forgot but you're sure were there. And then the Holy Spirit might fill you. And then you might have a good Sunday service and have the goose bumps.

Rather than understanding the Holy Spirit fills us, because of who he is and what he has done in us, because of the adequate gift or the measure of Christ's gift and those things that are there. I sent Brad an email about this not too long ago. It's very easy for us to section off parts of our lives that we don't think the filling of the Holy Spirit belongs in. We don't, I mean, and that goes everywhere from, you know, the bathroom or the bedroom or places where you think, you know, you're in this private space. No, the Holy Spirit calls you to be filled or God, Paul tells us that we are filled with the Holy Spirit and we need to listen to that all the time. We need to, that, listen to Him all the time. The Holy Spirit is not an inanimate object or a generic being. It's a Him, a person. That's the second bell.

I'm sorry that I didn't have every answer possible, but I'm grateful for everyone's contributions when there are questions or answers that other people can give. Let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for your grace. Thank you that it is an amazing gift that comes with an infinite measure. Lord, I ask that you would continue to open our hearts and minds to the fullness of your ascension and descension and help us to understand your word more deeply so that we can take on a fuller knowledge of those things until we're with you, in which case you're still going to reveal to us a fuller knowledge of things. We praise you and we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.