Now, please, if you would stand with me and read the Scripture reading from 1 Thessalonians 5, 12 through 28. We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, brothers, to admonish the idol, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God and Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophecies, but test everything. Hold fast what is good. It is staying from every form of evil. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely. And may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blainless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, who calls you as faithful. He will surely do it. Brothers, pray for us. Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you. This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please be seated. Father in heaven, we do thank you for your holy word. We thank you, Lord, for the men that you have called to the opposite of Deacon and Elder. We thank you, Lord, for your faithfulness to us as you are the head of this church and you are the king and universe. We pray that the Holy Spirit now would move in such a way that in the short time that we have to look at the end of this letter that Paul wrote to this small little church, that we would be fed and encouraged, challenged and would deeply reflect upon what Paul is calling us to. Ultimately you, calling us to you, calling us to be the people that you have called us to be. Bless us now, we pray, Lord, your Son's name. Amen. Since January we have been in this little letter called First Thessalonians. First Thessalonians begins with grace. Paul writes, grace to you and peace. And First Thessalonians ends, verse 28, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Throughout this small letter, a letter, the only letter that Paul said as he did in verse 27, I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers. This is Paul's first or second, probably second letter. He knew that he was being carried along by the Holy Spirit to write the things that the Spirit was leading him to write. The word of God, that 2000 plus years later, the same letter would be read and studied and applied to our lives. And that ultimately is the goal. Time and time again we see the word sanctification. That God is sanctifying us, making us more and more like Jesus. Those two words over and over again in this little letter, more and more. And so now Paul comes after speaking about the return of the Lord to the final verses. And you have this sense that as he is landing the plane, that there are many things that he wants to say. And it comes to us almost like bullets, just firing away. But truth is, it's just one more statement about a theme or themes that he is already unpacked. And then the context of it is grace and peace. Grace the bookends peace throughout. In these few short verses he's saying, have peace with the rulers, the leaders of the church. He speaks about having peace with the broken, the needy, the lazy in the body, people like all of us. And then he comes to talk about peace with God through the means of grace which is prayer. And so I want to focus on really three or four of these very short verses. If you've never memorized much scripture and you want to advance quickly, these are the verses you should memorize. Verse 16 is two words. Verse 17 is three words. Verse 18 about ten. And then verse 19. Do you not quench the spirit? Five words. You can have a lot done in a little bit of time. What does Paul mean? Rejoice always. Pray continually or without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances. I want to unpack these for just a few minutes. Verse 16. Rejoice always. The character in life of every Christian should be defined by joy. The joy of a Christian is a real joy. It is not an emotion that we simply turn the switch on and suddenly have the appearance of joy. The joy that leads to rejoicing is a deep, deep joy that is the byproduct of something else. It is the byproduct of a life that is abiding in Christ. The only way we can have the kind of joy that Paul is speaking about here is if it's the joy of the Holy Spirit. It is not a joy that you and I manipulate or manifest in our own strength and power. It is a joy that only comes through the channels of the Holy Spirit moving through us as we remain and abide in Christ Jesus. If you remember in the early parts of this letter, Paul talked about the gospel coming in word and with power and in the Holy Spirit. In in verse 6 of chapter 1 of 1 Thessalonians, Paul describes how this young church received the gospel. He says, you became imitators of us and of the Lord. For you received the word in much affliction. Remember, Acts 17, when Paul was proclaiming the word, these men and women believed the gospel. And when they did, they were greatly persecuted by the rabble of the city, the leaders of a different religion, non-Christ religion went and gathered these people and brought them to put pressure on those who were in the church that they would stop proclaiming Christ. Paul says, you received the word in affliction with, let's know what he says, the joy. He doesn't say you received it with joy, but you received it with the joy of the Holy Spirit. There is a difference between the appearance of man-made joy, a sense where you kind of just temper yourself to be in a good mood versus a joy that comes out of a deep understanding of what it means to abide in Jesus. It's only because of abiding in Jesus that we can have the kind of joy that Paul is speaking about. Again, it is a joy that comes through the Holy Spirit because it is a fruit of the Spirit. This kind of rejoicing is not a shallow spirituality where we say as a Christian, I got cancer, so I need to rejoice that I have cancer. I need to rejoice in cancer. I need to rejoice in a broken bone or in an illness or a broken relationship. That is not at all what Paul's saying. Those things happen and they will continue to happen until Christ returns because we live in a broken world. We're not to rejoice in evil, but we as Christians can rejoice in something greater than the evil. We can rejoice in the one who ultimately conquers evil. We can rejoice in the one who is the victor, our Savior, Jesus Christ. And so when those dark things happen to us and they will, the sight of heaven, when brokenness overwhelms us, we can rejoice. That's why James said in the second and third verse of chapter 1 of James, consider it, pure joy, my brothers. Whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance and perseverance must finish its work so that you can be made mature and complete, not lacking anything. And so it's in that abiding relationship with Jesus that only Christians have, only those who profess faith in Jesus, that we can have a joy that looks so different than the joy of the world. It is a joy knowing that this battle, this struggle, this affliction is not the end. Even if the affliction leads to my ultimate physical death, I have something greater to look forward to. This is why Christians, we mourn when our loved ones die, but those who are in Christ, we don't mourn as if there's no hope. We mourn, but we have hope, hope of the promise of what we will one day see face to face. So Paul says, rejoice always. Whatever the circumstances that you're facing today, whatever brokenness or hurt that is real in your life, rejoice in the victory that we have in Christ and in eternity. Paul then says, verse 17, this very famous verse, pray without ceasing. When I've quoted that verse before, once in a while, someone will come up to me and say, what does that really mean? I don't think I can pray without ceasing. Well, it doesn't mean that you're to wake up each day and simply start going through your list of prayers and don't do anything else. If you're a mother and you're caring for little ones and you need to get them food, it doesn't mean that you say, sorry, but I'm just going to pray without ceasing. You deal with the food. It's not like that. It's not like if you're an employer working somewhere and you have people that need to do something. They say, well, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that transaction. I'm just going to pray without ceasing. That's not what Paul is saying. And you know that. Paul is talking about an abiding presence in communion with God that exists without ceasing. In other words, we are in communion in fellowship with the father, son, and Holy Spirit. If you're a Christian, that's who you are. That's the fellowship that you now have. You are possessed by that. And so when Paul speaks about praying without ceasing, he's talking about living in the presence of God and his Chad said so beautifully a moment ago, bringing to God the desires of our life. This is who we are. This is who he is. And so indeed, when we wake up in the morning, we should be in prayer. As we go through the day, driving carpool, going through meetings, counseling with people, giving instruction, committing to our work, we do it in prayer without ceasing. When temptation comes your way and it does every day all day, we pray, Lord, lead me not into temptation. Lord, you told us that you yourself suffered when you were tempted, that you're able to help those who are being tempted. So we pray, Lord, help me with this temptation. Help my co-workers with their temptations. We pray all day. As you see people's faces physically or maybe they're brought into your mind, you pray for them. And what do you pray? One of the great benefits of having the Word of God is simply to pray the Word of God over and over again. Day after day, new verses for people in your life. And you go through the day and you come to the end of your day and you pray even as you go to sleep. That's what it means to pray without ceasing. In a little book called Prayer written many decades ago by a theologian from Europe, I believe, and he was Danish. His name's Oh, Howesby. And what he does at the beginning of the book is he says, I know a verse in the Bible that speaks more to prayer. And I'm telling you, right now I said, right down what verse in the Bible you know that speaks more to prayer, none of you would come up with the verse he selected. You know, and I'm not sure I'd even say it today, but his insight is interesting. The verse he uses is Revelation 320. You know the verse. Here I am. I stand at the door knock. If anyone hears my voice in the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me. Now why would this theologian who's very solid? Why would he pick that verse? Because he was helping us understand that prayer is communion with God. Prayer is initiated by God. You and I would never pray unless the Lord himself prompted us to pray, even if it's a prayer in a desperate time when suddenly you don't know where else to go. Even coming to faith and some might come to faith today, it's because of irresistible grace given to us by the Holy Spirit. And then we pray the sinner's prayer, we ask to be saved of our sins. It is God's initiation. And it is communion with God and communication with God that exists all day and will exist into all eternity. You see, sometimes we tend to think of prayer as simply bringing our list, or going through an acronym, and that's prayer. We've done that for 15 minutes or 20 minutes, or five minutes, or an hour, and then we go about our day. This is where we can learn something from brother Lawrence in a small little book called Practicing the Presence of God. It is a relationship with God that is not primarily defined like an electric car where you plug it in and it gets charged up and then you unplug it and you go about your day. That's not it. It is a relationship with God that is in constant communion. We pray without ceasing. And then Paul moves from that statement, that command, Diverse 18 saying, give thanks in all circumstances. I want to talk about thankfulness for a moment. Thankfulness is one of the greatest attributes of a trusting disciple of Jesus Christ. And here's what I mean by that. Throughout our life, living in a broken world, we are constantly tempted not to trust God for who He is and what He has done. You know that's true about yourself, and if you're a student of the Bible from the beginning of Genesis all the way through Revelation, that's the story. The story is people knew something of God, experienced something of his salvation, his incredible divine rescue and that over a period of time they what? For God. And in the midst of experienced darkness and fear they stopped trusting God and their eyes went away from the eternal King who's reigning and they turned to themselves. And their limited knowledge, their limited power, their limited resources, their limited control even as they seek control and they stop trusting. So how does thankfulness play into this? When we are a people who are rejoicing always, who are praying without ceasing in that great communion with God, and we are a people constantly thankful, remembering and rejoicing always, giving thanks at all circumstances, something happens. In the midst of the circumstances that we're frightened by, we show thanks. We thank God first for who He is, and then we thank God for His work, what He has done in the past, what has He done? The people of Israel, the chosen people were held as slaves in Egypt, and the Lord in His timing brought to them someone who would rescue them, Moses, and Moses listening to God's command led the people away. And as they went through the sea, that parted, and the enemy of Egypt followed them. The waters closed and engulfed them and all the people of Israel was safe on the other side, but it wasn't long after that incredible divine rescue that the people said what? We want to go back, we would rather be slaves again because this isn't working. They stopped trusting God, and when they stopped trusting God, the thankfulness was gone. We thank God for who He is, and in thanksgiving we remember what He has done. If you're a Christian, what is He done in your life? Think back, remember, remember the day of your salvation. Tomorrow, June 23, 1982, is when I celebrate the day that the Holy Spirit's irresistible grace captured me, and I prayed that first prayer for salvation. And it was the only prayer of salvation because once I'm saved, I'm always saved, I'm internally secure, but that relationship, that communion, it's starting. Though, from all eternity, God was moving, that's when it was revealed to me. What about you? What's your story? Remember what God has done in the past. Remember also what God has promised to do in the future. If you're a Christian, you are eternally secure. Nothing can take that away from you, so remember the past. Give thanks for the past, but also remember the future, but don't forget the present. You see, the present is where we're in danger. The present is when the profound reality of brokenness comes at us. And when we're confronted with the things that are life that give us anxiety, and we're confronted with the limits of our life to deal with it, instead of turning to God and seeing who He is and giving thanks. And remembering what He's done and what He will do and what He's doing, we turn to ourself. And when we turn to ourselves, we begin to meditate. But the meditation is not on the person of God and His greatness, on the work of God and its greatness. It's on us. It's on our limited abilities. What are we going to do? We'll pause and remember who He is. The meditation will move from anxiety to thanksgiving and to trust. I promise you, whatever you are facing right now, it might be a marriage that is in real trouble. It might be a decision in which you're on the verge of not obeying God's Word, even though the Word is clear and people have told you the truth of His Word, you can't imagine that that's the best thing for you. It might be a rebellious child. And instead of just saying, Lord, there's nothing you can learn. Lord, your will is good, pleasing and perfect. Instead of saying, I'm going to trust you and I will not fear, that's Isaiah 12-2. I will trust and I will not fear. Instead of saying that, we become very frightened and we don't trust. My friends, God is always worthy of our trust. His Word is perfect. He is perfect. His way is perfect. When you trust Him, in what His Spirit is prompting in you, you will experience the peace that can only come through Him. I want you to think for a moment. I want everyone to think for a moment. What are you experiencing right now that's tempting you to not trust God? Is it related to work? Is it related to your marriage? Is it related to some other relationship? Is it related to your children, your health, your financial future, or your financial present? What is it? We all have many things. Are you trusting God completely? My friends, by His grace, rejoice with where you are. Rejoice in who you are in Him. Pray without ceasing in that communion. Give thanks. Give thanks for who God is. Meditate on His greatness. Read the Psalms like Psalm 139 or Psalm 145. Remember His greatness. Remember that there's nothing that can exhaust God. There's nothing God can learn. His love for you could not be any better if it could it would but it can't because it's perfect. The small little verse, verse 19, do not quench the Spirit. What does that mean? To quench something means to put it out. A flame suddenly put out or maybe a hot piece of iron or steel that's just ready to be molded it is suddenly plunged into cool water. It's snuffed out. The way the Greek is written here, it implies that the quenching of the Spirit was happening in this church. Even though Paul was deeply encouraged by what was happening and said to the people of Thessalonica, you do love one another. You do love God. Do so more and more. There was still this temptation to quench the Spirit. What does it mean? Well, quenching the Spirit simply means this. When the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit Himself who is God, reveals to us through His Word and through the Spirit things in our life that are true about God and true about us. When those things are calling us to do something or to think differently or to act in a certain way and we refuse to do so, that's a quenching of the Spirit. The quenching of the Spirit could be any Sunday when you hear the truth of the gospel and you nod your head to it but you don't walk out of here expecting to be transformed by what you hear. You think it's kind of like entertainment. Yeah, it was a pretty good day. What do you think of it? Checkmark. That's not what this is about. Instead, we walk out wrestling, fighting, not each other but the enemy. And we say, God, change me. I don't have that kind of joy. I'm not praying without ceasing. I'm not giving thanks in all circumstances. And so in the Spirit reminds you of that. You beg for God's grace and mercy and you listen. You see, prayer is not just about us talking to God. It's also about us listening to God. I don't believe you're going to hear an audible voice but through the powerful work of the Holy Spirit who dwells in you, things will come to your mind through the Holy Word that you had not thought of before. And when they do and you say, yes, Lord, yes, by your grace, I will obey. You're not quenching the Spirit. But when you hear His Word and you have that prompting and you know what you ought to do and you don't do it, you're quenching the Spirit. We quench the Spirit with worry, all of us. Anxiety just snuffs it out. Instead of saying, God, I bring this to you and I cast all my anxiety on you because I believe what Paul said in Philippians. Don't be anxious about anything but in everything with prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, with thanksgiving, you hear it? With thanksgiving, I present my request to God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard my heart and my mind in Christ Jesus. If we don't live that way, it snifed out two or three other things. Legalism in religion quenches the Spirit, thinking it's all about our effort and our duty and our own acts. It will quickly reveal a dull, dry heart, liberalism and moving away from the truth of God's Word. So it's out the Spirit. It quenches the Spirit. Our denomination had its general assembly last week. Monday through Friday, some part of our church gathered together. By God's grace and for his glory, we still believe that the Word of God, every part of it, is the Word of God. Another denomination, one which we came from, also had their general assembly. The Spirit was quenched, some of those churches still proclaim Christ, some of those churches still believe in the truth of the gospel. But as a denomination, they don't. The Spirit is quenched and destruction follows, just like Romans 1. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the Creator, I mean the created rather than the Creator who is forever praised. Our preferences quenched the Spirit. When we allow extrabiblical views to inform us so strongly that we won't accept any others views about how to do certain things, that can quench the Spirit. It can make us judgmental or not accepting. It may not be your favorite song or your favorite instrument. Therefore, the Spirit is quenched because you won't worship. My brothers, we must be careful. In sisters, we've got to really seek the Lord's face. One more, presumption, quenches the Spirit. When we know what we ought to do because God's Word has told us. And we say, I'm going to do something else anyway, and then I'm going to ask forgiveness. It's presumption. It's presumption should so great that it might mean that you're truly not a believer. Brothers and sisters, we all are going to fall short the sight of heaven. And when we do, we have a Savior that says, that's why I died. And when we gaze upon the glory of the Savior and rejoice in Him always, pray to Him without ceasing. Give thanks constantly for who He is. It doesn't give us the appetite that says, I'll do what I want. And then I'll tell Jesus I'm sorry. My brothers and sisters, that quenches the Spirit. And instead, what we as a body need to do is fan the flame of the Spirit where we believe that He has given us the greatest promise of life. Life eternal, but also life now. So as you walk through even this day, remember who He is. Remember what He has done. And remember what He's going to do, but also remember this, what He is doing. You know what He's doing? He's calling you and me as His children to live in His presence, His presence in us. He's calling us to continue as soldiers this side of heaven, making known the name of Jesus all over the world. And as we do, He wants us to remember this. He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it. As we close in song, listen to the words of this hymn, and remember who you are, brother, who you are sister in Christ, and who He is as our victor. Let's stand and sing.