You may remain standing for a work for our reading of the Scriptures. A trust you've already filled out your friendship pad and passed it down and done all that, so we'll continue. Paul is writing and concluding his letter to the church at Thessalonica here in chapter 5, the last verses beginning in verse 12. We ask your brothers to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonishing and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work be it peace among yourselves. And we urge you brothers, 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 every one. Rejoice always pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the spirit, do not despise prophecies but test everything, hold fast what is good, abstain from every form of evil. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely and make your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He 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 help this letter ran to all the brothers, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you, the Word of the Lord. You may be seated. Paul concludes his letter to the church at Thessalonica with a stagato list of imperatives. There are about 14 or 15 imperatives that are given by Paul in this last portion of the letter. I think the reason is this, and it's found there at the very next to the last verse he said, I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers. But Paul wanted and desired in this which may have been his very first letter to write that we now have, he wanted to make sure that everything he said to them was summarized and put before them in all the brothers. Certainly all the brothers in the church, and there were probably two or three or more house churches and groupings in Thessalonica and broader and wider reading of the Word of God. In fact, the reading of the Word of God was something that was done in the synagogue every Sunday. And the primitive church was founded upon the model of the synagogue. The synagogue was with that order that God gave his people in Babylonian captivity far away from the temple which had been substantially destroyed and far away from the land which God had given them as a promise to their fathers. And in Babylon, in Babylon, God gave them the model of the synagogue. The synagogue was a model where it really means Sunaugha gay means together together. It's the same word for Ecclesia and assembly. They're together together and in that gathering they are to do some things. They are to praise the Lord. They are to pray and they are to have the Word of God read to them. And there was always, of course, in the synagogue on old Testament reading. I was the only thing they could read. That was the Bible at that time. The Holy Scriptures in the Hebrew and then in the translated Greek, the Septuagint. So all of the Jews in Babylon learned that model. And it was always ordered with elder rule. Presbyterians will be glad to hear that. The model was that God would call men and raise up men in the congregation. Usually the heads of families and the heads of clans who would be the leaders, the elders. And there was a list of qualifications. God has always led his people and taken care of his people, shepherded his flock through elders. You'll find that in the very beginning with the patriarchs going all the way through the organization of the nation Israel with the 70 elders that met with Moses. And then all the way through the years. So the synagogue had elder leadership. And the synagogue had the reading of the Holy Scriptures, the Old Testament. Paul, being a rabbi, was thoroughly versed in synagogue reading and in the early missionary journeys that we read about in the book of Acts everywhere he went. He would read and then end up preaching Christ in him crucified in the synagogues of iconium, Listera, Derby, all those places that he traveled there in Galatia with those missionary journeys with Barnabas. And then later with Silas, which he still has Silas now is his partner in his missionary journeys and his travels. And so Paul knows that Scripture reading and the public reading is very, very important. So he's going to give them these injunctions, these imperatives, the short things that can be remembered and that can be practiced. And this particular order, when the New Testament came, the letters of Paul and the letters of the other apostles, began to be read in the assemblies, the synagogues of Christ. The Ecclesia, the assembly of Christians, and they would add a reading of the apostles and apostolic reading. It could have been the portion of the sayings of Jesus, it could have been one of the letters of Paul or Peter or James or any number of others. And that, of course, put into the liturgy of the church, the New Testament reading. And historically, the church has, through the years, had an Old Testament reading and a New Testament reading in its public worship. And that's a carryover from the nascent churches formation. And when Paul put together the church, this is the first letter, perhaps, it depends something. Galatians, is there some good arguments on both sides? But whether it is Galatians or First Thessalonians, the first letters that Paul wrote, it's his first letter that we have, his first extant letter, but it's not his first church to organize. Paul has been organizing churches for years and he organizes them around this order. The reading of the scripture, the prayer, the praise, and with elder rule and oversight. Now in the next two services, we will ordain elders and leadership of our church. And if you're able to, I would encourage you to come to one of those services to witness that service and to hear the questions read it, hear the oaths taken and the promises made in the importance that we place in leadership around the church. Now say all that to say that if you understand this broader context of ecclesiology, that is the study of the church that we find in this early development of the church, it'll make this whole passage easy for us to see. We have about 14 imperatives here. If I were a preacher at all, I could probably get a dozen servants out of this passage because all of these little short phrases need tremendous expansion and application. And that's what we don't have time to do that, but it makes sense if you think of it in the context. For example, take the very first verse there, verse 12, we ask your brothers to respect those who labor among you and are over you and admonish you and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. That is Paul's admonition to the church for them to follow and to respect and honor and even to love their leaders, their leaders are the elders of the church, the people who labor, who work, Paul uses this word over and over and over speaking of the Christian ministry, labor, work, toil. I've often said to young men, when we had interns here, I said, if you and the old days were working on the farm, you would labor with your body. I said, but if you'd move into a white collar environment, you'd mainly work with your mind, you'd be an accountant or a lawyer or something that would researcher or an administrator that would cause you to be responsible for lots of thinking and thought. I said, but when you labor in the ministry, you'll labor it with your heart. In fact, it's so much of a heart ministry that sometimes the body atrophies or the body goes to flamm. The preachers get way out of shape physically because they just don't do anything, they don't have to walk between a plow handle, they don't have to lift a bell and tow to barge. And same way intellectually, it's easy to be intellectually lazy in the ministry. Did you know that? You know why? Because the gospel is simple. The simple truths of the gospel are grasped by an eight-year-old child. And the great truths that we believe in, God is great, God is good. God loves us and we should love Him and we should love our neighbor. All these principles are simple. It does not take a genius to be a preacher. In fact, sometimes geniuses have a hard time in the ministry because they've got more gray matter than they have soul. So intellectually, while it is good to be kind of bright and to be a good student, to really minister to the hearts and souls of people, it doesn't take a genius. It doesn't take an incredibly bright and brilliant person. It takes someone it's willing to be with people, to sit with people. Some time ministers are impatient, they'd rather be somewhere else than sitting in a hospital room waiting for someone to die. So they could be there at that moment to hold a hand and to shed a tear with a family. It's not easy to do when there's good books to be read and when there's good meetings to go to. And when there's banquets and lunches, when there's a spotlight to get under, to stay in that place, and take a genius. You just take someone with soul, labor and toil among you. These are the ones that labor among you and says they're over you in the Lord. Oh, that's don't miss that. The Lord taught us about leadership. The Lord said, who is the one that's going to lead in my kingdom? The Gentile kingdom, the leader is the one who has the great force of personality and is able to lord over the people and hold them in subjection. And how some throw them upon them, whether it's the emotional or physical or financial or military, but he has some hold over the people and he dominates. Not so in my kingdom, the Lord said, in my kingdom, your leader, the one who leaves will be the servant of all and a foot washing Christ, put forth that model and that's the model of leadership. That's why it says they are over you and there's definitely an authoritative ranking that the elders have in the church, but they're over you in the Lord. Which means all of the love and everything that comes to it is to be of the Lord. And this says they're over you in the Lord and they admonish you. This is the word that we get a newthetic counseling from. It means admonition and it involves a little bit of harsh. It involves some rebuke, it involves some straightening out, it involves some telling it like it is, it calls for some speaking of the truth in love and some inconvenient truths, but timely truths that people need. And so when the elders rule over us, they rule over us in the Lord with love, they labor and toil in the ministry, spending a large amount of time and a lot of energy in order to minister to the whole flock that God has made them overseers, but they also have to strengthen us out. It's interesting to me that a young man, this is true with my son, he played baseball, he wouldn't listen to the thing I said, I told him to, don't do this, don't do that, don't chew to back and don't put an earring in all that stuff. He didn't listen to a thing I said, he wore that earring, but one day the baseball coach where he played in high school just walked by and said, I don't want you anywhere in earring, that earring disappeared. I told him, I'm your father, I love you, I take care of you, I support you in every way and I've been pleading with you forever to get that earring out of your ear. Didn't want you to put it in there in the first place, but he had that earring in. I said, all the world coach, you couldn't care less about you, you couldn't care whether you could liberalize long as you can play good shortstop and turn a double play. All he cares about is your next error in the field and your next at bat and he just mentions casually the earring disappeared. Well, that's kind of the way we are sometime. We'll put up with all kinds of stuff from everybody else, but the people that love us the most, care about us the most, that support us emotionally in every way, we won't listen to them and we get a little enmity. That's why he says here in concluding that particular thing, he said, be at peace among yourselves. There needs to be peace and gentleness. Our leaders, our elders need to rule over us in the Lord, but at the same time we need to listen to their admonitions, their rebukes, their corrections. Well, need to move on. And he says, and we urge you, brothers, admonish and the ear he lists a few classes of people that need pastoral care and ministry. He mentions the idol, he mentions the faint hearted or the timid and he mentions the weak and he says be patient with them all. Let's see who these people are and see if you find yourself in there anywhere. I hope you don't find yourself in the first group and this is the idol it's called. It literally means the unruly, it's a military term, it means the people that don't follow orders. There to be admonished. Those that tend to step out of line is literally what it means. Those that don't march straight, those that don't guide right and cover off in their marching. That is the ones that need to be admonished. They need to be told where they're out of bounds, where they're lifestyle and where they're viewpoint and where they're language and where they're conduct and where their relationships are outside the bounds of godly, holy living. They need to be admonished and he says then encourage the faint hearted. The word encourage here is the comfort. The Bible says that the Lord will not break a bruised read. One of the problems in preaching is that here's a preacher right here. Is this a problem in preaching? You got an audience out there and in this audience there are some hard headed stiff, necked people. I'm not going to call any names but you know who you are. And in order to get to you I've got a hammer down on the gospel and hammer down on the law of God and the judgment of God to make sure you hear that there's a reckoning coming. Meanwhile there are timid people out here, ins people insecure, people that are already brokenhearted that already know that they're sinners. They know they're condemned and they know and they don't need to hear that kind of talk. And don't need to hear that kind of language, that just hurts them more. What they need to hear is the tender invitations of coming to me, all you that labor, and they're having laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, it's easy, it's light, learn of me, find rest of your souls. Come you weary, come you broken, come you, and that's what it is here. Technically what the word means is those that are insecure, have you ever fought with an insecurity? Did you need to hear thunderings from Zion when you already felt like you were totally inadequate and totally worthless and unworthy? No, you need to hear the gospel message that says come as you are, just as I am without one plea. That I blood, the shed, or me. O Lamb of God I come, and you come to the Lord like that. So in ministering to a congregation, it's sometimes pretty tough because you've got people that need to hear. In this particular one he says, encourage, comfort those who are insecure. Speak words to them to let them know that whatever they are in and of themselves they can be something completely different in Christ. And that Christ has atoned for their sins, he has paid the price, he will bind up your wounds and broken heart. He will heal you of the sin sickness and the diseases of your soul. Well, it says, admonish the idol, encourage the faint hearted and help the weak. This means the morally weak, the morally weak. The people that just don't seem to be able to fight the battle of sin, they keep falling in this stomach. A few weeks ago we talked about one major moral difficulty and that was the problem of immorality, sexual immorality. And this term is used and it means those that just can't seem to help themselves in morals and we are to provide the kind of help that they need. Encouragement, rebuke and admonition generally, reminders and all the things that go in helping those that are morally weak. Not kicking them out for a first offense, not excommunicating them and throwing them to the wolves, but working with them. Notice here the very next thing he says, be patient with them all. By the way, that's how the Lord defined himself, Israel. He said, I'm your God with mercy and loving kindness, forgiving sins, forgiving iniquities, long suffering to many generations, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. That's the way we are to deal with him. And he says, see that no one repays evil for evil. That of course is the injunction about retaliation. Jesus spoke a lot about that especially in the sermon and the mount when he talked about paying evil for evil. Paul speaks of it in his other epistles as well. This is the way we're to treat one another but also projecting even out to the world. We always seek to do good for one another and one another is used over and over in scripture. That's the fellowship, that's the brothers and sisters, that's a hand to everyone. That's clear. Now, look at the next little verse there. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ for you. This is a word about worship. Worship should have joy, prayer and thanksgiving, joy, the jubilation, the rejoicing, the joy of the heart, the gift of the spirit that is given, that is joy, love, joy, peace, these are the three first mentioned in the listing of the fruit of the spirit. Prayer, intercessory prayer, and notice the, and of course our title of our sermon always continually in all circumstances come from these three things. Rejoice always pray without ceasing. Jesus said, me and not always to pray and faint not. Notice how many times in the middle of the letter Paul will break out into a prayer. He does it here, he does it in Ephesians, he does it in other places. Prayer is on the lips, but it is to be part of our worship service and give thanks in all circumstances. The living of the life of the Eucharist, the thanksgiving, the praise to God. God is inhabiting, he lives in the praises of his people. You want God to be here in our midst, start praising him, bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all his benefits, thanksgiving and praise. By the way, I think most of you know this, but you know the word Judah, the name Judah, that was given to the son of Jacob, that of course became the dominant tribe of Israel. Judah, that word means praise. People who are Jews are supposed to be the people that praise, that lift up, that magnify the one true in living God. And of course we as the true Jews, the true children of Abraham, the seed that has been Christ and we've been grafted into the olive tree and been brought into the covenant. All of us, even though we're Gentiles and speak foreign languages and other tongues, God speaks to his people and he brings them together in the assembly in the Ecclesia, we are to be people who praise God. We praise the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Moses and David and Jeremiah and the God of Paul and Peter, that is the praise is to be upon our lips, that has something to do with our liturgy. A couple of more things here we need to get to real quickly. In part of the worship service, he mentions the preaching. He says, do not quench the spirit. It means literally put out of fire and one of the symbols of the Holy Spirit in the Bible is fire and he says, don't quench, don't put out the fire of the spirit. In other words, the spirit of the Lord brings liberty and let the spirit lead and let the spirit enthuse and let the spirit guide and direct in your worship services and do not despise prophecies. It is the ecstatic speaking of the word of God. Prophets is a New Testament office. There were prophets in the New Testament. The Bible says God gave apostles, remember in Ephesians and prophets and pastors and teachers, evangelists. There were those that spoke the word of God. The prophet in the Old Testament was one who understood God's ways and God's will and God's law and he either spoke a fresh word concerning it, a new light on it, a new interpretation of it. Or he would speak a special application of it. That's why the prophets, some of the prophets said things that sounded mutually exclusive and contradictory. Isaiah said one thing, Jeremiah said another. What's going on there? Isaiah's preaching to a people that God's going to deliver from Sannacherib's army and spared Jerusalem in 722 BC. But God is speaking through now Jeremiah to a people that God's going to send into captivity and judge and going to bring to the house of bondage. And so they're preaching the same word from the Lord with two different applications. God's going to save and deliver Israel and Isaiah's day. He's going to punish and lead into captivity his people in Jeremiah's day. And so that is the spirit of prophecy that understands not just the interpretation and the application. And there was an element of course of fourth telling too, of predicting the future, but it was a minor element, but it's a very important element. But he says here's what you do. You test everything and literally that word test means the testing of a medal, the testing of medals, especially the testing of gold. You test it. You test to see is it really authentic? When the spirit moves and the prophet preaches, what kind of test can we apply? I love Dr. John Stottie. He brings things together. Let me just list a few tests that he mentions. First of all, does the spirit inspired prophet preach and teach something that is in accordance with plain scripture? Does the prophet preach something that is Christ centered? Does he lift up the name of Christ and honor him in his total person? Is the prophet saying something that has to do with the gospel of grace, or is he preaching another gospel, a gospel of law or a gospel of bondage or a gospel of self salvation? And fourthly, what about the prophet's character? Is he authentically a godly person and how about his veracity? Is he known to have told the truth? The test of the prophet and the Old Testament was, well, does his prophecy come to pass? That's how we know if you're a real prophet or not. You say something and we'll sit around and see if it comes to pass. It becomes to pass. You're a true prophet. The Old Testament is filled with rebukes of false prophets. And that's what Paul is doing here. He's telling the nascent church, the young primitive church, they get a test. And then finally, does the prophet, does the prophecy edify the believer? Does it build you up? Does it encourage you? Does it inform you and enlighten you? Does it soothe and heal your soul? Test everything. Don't take the preacher's word for it necessarily. Test everything. Just like the people did in Berea, these were more noble than those at Thessalonica, in that they search the scriptures to see if these things be so. Now, Paul sort of evening the score, he's going back and saying, you Thessalonikans need to become Bereans. Berea, by the way, was another town down the road from Thessalonica. You need to be Bereans in the way you understand. And whole fast, which is good. Embrace it, cling to it, hold to it. And then he concludes, abstain from every form of evil. And the word form here means the appearance. And he's translated in the Old Authorized Version, that's the way I memorized it. Abstain from every appearance of evil. And that's good advice. That's a good place to start. Does it look like evil? Abstain from it. Does it smell like evil? Does it seem to be evil? Abstain from it. But technically, and as a practical matter, what we're to abstain from is the evil itself, the evil itself. And that's what the admonition is. And then he has a benediction here and we're out of time, we don't have time to see it. He says, the God of peace sanctify you thoroughly through and through completely. How would you like to be sanctified through and through? I'm not even sanctified that much. If I could be sanctified from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet, I would just, you know, one day the Lord's going to present us blameless before the Father, before the throne. But right now, we're not sanctified thoroughly, completely. But that's Paul's prayer. Paul is going to hammer away, he's going to admonish, he's going to rebuke, he's going to travel, he's going to preach the gospel, he's going to heal and cure souls until everyone is completely sanctified. And then may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus. He who calls you as faithful, he will surely do it. That's a direct quote out of the Old Testament where I am the Lord. I say it, I will do it. I will accomplish it. And then Paul says pray for us. Why would you need to pray for Paul? I mean, Paul's got everything, he's Paul, he's the apostle Paul. What possibly? Well, for one thing, in another place in his letters, he asked that you would pray that God would give him boldness. Paul wanted more boldness as if he wasn't bold enough. So what I think is problem once, because I feel it a little bit myself, there's just a cowardice that arises in the heart of a preacher sometimes. We're just afraid to say certain things, to certain people, to really, truly speak the truth in love, or to speak the truth at all, because we're just, you know, it's just not worth it. Let it go, leave it alone. Paul wanted boldness and he wanted them to pray for him. He wanted strength, he wanted everything that any other mortal man needs in the ministry. And he says for us, and I'm just for him, but for the whole apostolic band, Silas and Timothy and others, greed all the brothers with a holy kiss. By the way, the ancient world had ways of greeting, but some study shows that what Paul had taught the church to do and his travels was a particular kind of embrace. And when you say you want someone to have the holy kiss, the holy embrace, it's because you're not there and you want them to be, you know, give them a hug for me. Well, there's no substitute for actually hugging somebody. There's no substitute for the embrace. And the best you can do is tell them to give you a hug for me. And that's really what Paul is saying, that they are to embrace one another. And then he concludes the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. You know, hope Paul never stopped talking about grace. God's goodness, mercy to an undeserving people. Did you know that everybody that was in the nascent church and in that first century that came to know the Lord was a wretched sinner? Jesus, I didn't come to call the righteous to repentance. I came to call sinners. The Lord built his church, gathered his church, and everybody in it in Corinth, in Thessalonica, in Ephesus, in Rome, in Jerusalem, in Cessaria, in Antioch. Every place there was a great, primate church. It was made up of a bunch of sinners, called and saved by faith alone, by grace alone. In Christ alone, according to the Holy Scriptures alone, for the glory of God alone.