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I. THE SOLEMN CAUTION. Those here addressed were the saints of God. Yet they needed this exhortation. The best of saints need to be cautioned against the worst of sins. There are the seeds of all evil in them. No previous consistency of walk, no deep experience, no holy acquaintance with God, no near walking with God, can give them the least security. But besides this, there are constitutional temptations. Some persons are constitutionally tempted to anger, some are tempted to vanity, some are tempted to worldliness in its excess of folly, some are tempted to untruthfulness, and oh! there are some who are tempted to drunkenness constitutionally. But besides this also, there are circumstances that oftentimes throw a man in danger here. Noah was, for aught I know, weary and tired as a husbandman; and by his inexperience, too, of the effects, he was overcome with drunkenness. We find in the case of Lot, in his secret retirement, there was in his circumstances that which exposed him to danger.

II. Observe now, secondly, THE EXHORTATION, the encouraging exhortation: "be filled with the Spirit." I conceive there is in the expression that which would imply the power of the Spirit to fill the soul of man. Or rather the expression is — "Seek to be filled in your understandings, in your memories, in your consciences, in your will, in your affections, seek to be 'filled with the Spirit.'" Now let me point out some few of the blessings that result from this communication of the "fulness of the Spirit," in all His holy influences, to our souls. First of all, let us look at Him as the Spirit of wisdom and revelation. So I read in the first of Ephesians, and the seventeenth verse. Look at the Apostle Peter before the day of Pentecost. How dark his perception of the Atonement, how little did he see of what Jesus came into the world for! I talk with some men, many of whom, I doubt not, are truly converted to God; yet Christ is in the background, I see so little of Him. They talk of God; there is something about their creed that is so Jewish; they speak so much more of God, than of God in Christ. There is so little of the great work of the incarnate One, so little of realizing the strength of the covenant "ordered in all things and sure." Oh! beloved, to be filled with the Spirit of wisdom is the highest wisdom. But let us look at the subject in another point of view. I find in the eleventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, and the twenty-fourth verse, it is said of Barnabas, "he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost, and of faith." So, when we are filled with the Holy Ghost, we are filled with faith. Ah! who can describe the blessing of being filled with faith? To see everything in the light of God's countenance; to see everything in the light of a Saviour's fulness.

(J. H. Evans, M. A.)

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KJV: And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;

WEB: Don't be drunken with wine, in which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit,