First Thessalonians, 5:12-28

Well, this is the last lesson. That's why it says the end is near. In less than 45 minutes, the end will be here. We're going to take a look at First Thessalonians 5. But we request of you, brethren, that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you, and have charge over you in the Lord, and give you instructions, and that you esteem them very highly in love because of their work.

Live in peace with one another. We urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone, see that no one repays another without ceasing, and everything give thanks, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophetic utterances, but examine everything carefully, hold fast to that which is good, abstain from every form of evil. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved to all the brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Alright, so that is a whole lot of inspired, Holy Spirit directed text to go over in a short amount of time. But we'll be diligent. We're going to be looking at sheep in the first part of this. That's an interesting conjoined sheep thing. Put on your bucking shoes. So sheep are known to make messes. All right, let's take a look at 12 and 13a.

I always like that. But we request of you, brethren, that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you, and have charge over you in the Lord, and give you instruction, and that you esteem them very highly in love because of their work. All righty. Who are those that are above you in this context, or those who are over you?

OK. Pastors and teachers or elders. OK. The elders are busy. but they're not too busy for you, okay? If you need time with the elders, don't hesitate. Roger's here, or not here, so he can't say that I'm speaking for him and that I'm wrong. I'm just kidding. Roger and Mike and my dad have all, at different times, made time to spend with me and I know that each one of us in the body here is important to them. But the elders are busy. They're busy teaching God's Word.

Acts 2.42 says that this is the very first church. The apostles are just past the day of Pentecost there and they spent their time teaching God's Word. And the people were growing in amazement and awe because of the miraculous and wonderful things that were going on.

Later on in Acts 6.2 The Jews are complaining that there's not equal distribution of things. And what do the apostles tell the people to do? They say, pick seven men among you who can come and do this labor-intensive work because we need to be focused on teaching God's Word. The apostles set the stage.

The elders come later on in the scriptures in different places. Paul and Timothy go out and set elders in place. What does Paul tell Timothy to be instructing the elders to do? He tells them make sure that they're faithfully teaching the things that I have taught you and make sure that the elders are faithfully teaching. If we take a look at 1 Timothy Chapter 3, if you'll turn there with me, starting in verse 1. It is a trustworthy statement if any man aspires to the office of overseer or elder. It is a fine work he desires to do.

An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money. He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity. But if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God? And not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil. And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.

All right, when we talk about elders here, that's a list of requirements for elders or overseers. And what's interesting about that is that they have to be able to teach, and they have to be able to have good households that are organized. Because, if you recall, the next set of things that he goes over are ways that believers are supposed to be treating one another.

Hopefully, so that the elders are not doing this child disciplinary action sort of stuff within the body of Christ. But I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. The work of deacons is more focused on physical needs of the body. We mentioned that out of Acts chapter 6 that that was put in place.

So the elders are there. We're supposed to be respecting them and loving them and having a good attitude towards the elders in the church so that they can do their job of teaching us and instructing us. How many of you think about all of the elements of the role of an elder and think about what they're doing when they're not teaching you. Is that part of when you think of, ah, Roger and Mike and Vern, I bet you they spend all their time doing lesson preparation. Well, that's not quite true. But they spend a lot of time going over God's Word together as a group of elders, as overseers, to have a united mind so that when they come and teach on Sunday mornings, whatever class they're in, it's with unity and they can accurately exposit God's word for our growth. So, that's part of why we should have a loving and positive attitude and respectful attitude towards the elders.

Okay, the next part here, sheep shepherding, verses 14 and 15. Live in peace with one another. We urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone. See that no one repays another with evil for evil, but always seek after that which is good for one another and for all people. All right. A question that we need to ask ourselves here. is why is Paul writing this to the body about the body? It's each individual believer writing how the individual believer should be interacting with other individual believers. Why is Paul doing that?

In the context of what he just talked about with the overseers or the shepherds. The peace is good. It's going to reduce the labor that the elders are taking on that would be dealing with quarrelsome things. When we looked in this first Timothy passage, it was quite clear that if the elder can't parent their own children right, they're going to have a difficult time shepherding the flock. So that's coming along there.

He says live in peace with one another. The important question is how or why? We asked why. How will we live in peace with one another? Keeping our eyes on the Lord, I guess. As we abide in Christ, Those things are there. That's how we're going to be at peace with one another.

On several occasions, I have been arguing with my wife. I know that you probably think I never do that. Everybody thinks our marriage is just so flawless. I'm sorry, I exaggerate. But I'll argue with my wife and I'll think, oh my gosh, I'm walking in the flesh. And so I will think, I better help Jessica realize that she might be walking in the flesh too. Living in peace with one another there involves abiding in the first place and secondly being gracious when you realize that you're not and coming about there.

The next thing he's got on the list there is admonish the unruly. Okay, how many of you use the word unruly on a regular basis? It's not very common on CNN or the news. or pretty much anywhere in modern presentation because it's not one of the 10 to 12 celebrities that they're tracking most of the time. They may be unruly, they just didn't use that word. Okay, so admonish the unruly.

If we take a look at 2 Thessalonians 3, 6 and 7 and verse 11, could I have somebody please kindly read out 2 Thessalonians 3, 6 and 7 and then also jump to verse 11. Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which you received of us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow us. For we behave not ourselves disorderly among you. And 11 is, for we hear that there are some who walk among you disorderly, working not at all but are busybodies. All right.

Now, here's an interesting thing. In the first letter he says to admonish the unruly, in the second letter he says don't associate with him. Now given that Paul is writing a letter, a first and a second letter, I'm going to take the liberty of assuming that the admonition that he suggested in the first letter was not effective. Alright? He says admonish one another, admonish the unruly there. Now as a believer, if I see somebody being unruly and they're a believer, I know they're under grace. Is it a good idea for me to just ignore that they're being unruly or walking in disobedience?

Or should I come alongside and lovingly encourage them towards a Christ-focused life? I'll take the head nodding that I should probably do the latter of the two and encourage them. Now, if somebody does not take that encouragement to be focused on Christ, Paul's later admonition is that as a believer we say, you know, I think we need to part ways for the time being. Sometimes that is the shocking event that causes somebody to actually turn back and refocus on the Lord. Sometimes they have to get a little further down that pathway, but the Lord uses all of these details in our lives for our growth. But he says for us in this letter to admonish the unruly, to grow alongside and encourage the unruly to be refocused on the Lord.

Next he says encourage the faint-hearted. The word for encourage there in the Greek has the implication of coming alongside. to encourage or to come alongside the faint-hearted. Now how many of you have ever been faint-hearted? All right. Yesterday I went sledding and after running up the hill I was feeling faint in the head, but that's different. That just means I sit behind my computer too often. But encourage the faint-hearted. Come alongside the faint-hearted.

In our own lives, I know that we have all experienced this point of feeling fainthearted, of feeling discouraged, of feeling frustrated. Have you ever done that alone? Have you felt discouraged and frustrated alone? When somebody comes alongside and encourages you, comes alongside and lifts you up, Even if it means sometimes just simply saying, you know what, I don't have anything to offer you but the hope of Christ, and that I'll be praying for him to work through this.

He says to encourage the fainthearted. If you're doing it, and the elders are doing it, and everybody else is doing it, and that relationship is growing, that's going to be edifying for the body. The whole body's going to grow. And it's going to be really, really cool to see how that works out.

The last time I taught, I taught on the rapture, and the church was concerned that what happens if people die before the rapture? Are they going to be raptured first? Well, the following day, on Monday, we got a phone call, and my stepbrother-in-law was found dead in his bathroom. It was the day after the lesson that I got a really practical illustration of, okay, this believer's going to beat me to heaven by a split second.

That's right there. Well, my stepfather-in-law, whom I love dearly, is a neat guy. This breaks his heart. He's lost his son. And you know what? I'm not in a position of knowing what that's like. I can't just come along and say, been there, done that. But I can say, you know what?

I'm praying for him. and we really love you and we can discuss and enjoy God's Word and we can encourage one another. As he's been fainthearted I can as a brother in Christ encourage him. So that was an illustration out of real life that the Lord has put in my life recently but each one of us has had that time of being fainthearted and when we see that in one another it's an opportunity to come alongside. Now of course this begs the question, do we have the relationship in the body to where we know when those things are happening? If it doesn't show up on the prayer request or the prayer chain, do we see it and know it? It's good to have intimate relationships in the body.

The next thing he's got on the list there is help the weak. Now that's an interesting one because We just talked about our prayer request. We have Lily and Kurt Green. Alright, this is a new situation. Are there opportunities for us to help? Maybe. It sounds like most definitely there are. When various things go down in the body, help the weak is there. Now, how about this? Are there people who are weak sometimes merely by volume?

One of the things that has blown me away at Holly Hills is that when I moved here, On April 16th of 2004 when I moved here, there was a group of people that I had really never met that came to help me move. And I was shocked. Now I wasn't physically weak, although I was by the end of the day. I was not physically weak in my youth, but it was overwhelming to think about unloading that truck with all of our possessions in that time. and the body came together and made that move quick.

I think it took us less than two hours to get everything moved. That's pretty impressive on my watch. It took us a lot longer to fill up the whole truck. In fact, it took us pretty much all day long to fill up the whole truck when we left Texas because we didn't have a group of people.

So Help the Weak has a lot of applications, but it's part of the mindset of a believer identifying the relationship or in their relationship with other believers that these opportunities exist. Paul's reasoning is more than just because the elders could really use a hand in you guys taking care of one another.

Why else would he write these things? Any guesses? Well, he's called us his brothers. Okay, you're brothers. You're related to one another. Fortunately, it's not all genetic. That'd be a little weird. Although in this church, pretty large groups of families. But there is that value in the body for the growth of the believer. He continues on, be patient with people besides doctors. Be patient with everyone.

Be patient. Is this something that you get to experience in life before or after the fact when you need to be patient? You don't get patience, you are patient. You don't get some measure of patience, you get to be patient or you're not, you're impatient. Alright, so be patient with one another. Now, I know for a fact that I stretch people in ways and cause them to be patient because I make mistakes and I can be a jerk and I can say things and I stick my foot in my mouth and I can do all kinds of things. I'm astonished at how patient my wife is with me. My daughters cause me to have to be patient. He said earlier that we need to encourage one another. Have you ever had to encourage somebody for a long time? You ever think, okay, come on, here's these positional truths, you ought to be really excited and back up on your feet and ready to go already. Because, you know, you're united with Christ.

And they don't get it? They want to argue with you and tell you how they need to be under the law some more? Then you've got to be patient with them. You've got to come alongside. Here we go again. We're going down the law path. Alright, I'm going to be patient with you. Or they're being unruly for slightly longer than they ought, but they're not being so unruly that you shouldn't get together with them or be with them at all. Be patient. Be diligent in your patience.

See that no one repays evil for evil. Now that's one that we like to call the golden rule often. Do unto others as you'd like to be treated. But if somebody has committed the first evil against you, then they've made it clear that they want you to be evil back, right? No. Make sure that nobody repays evil for evil. When I've caused people to grow and stretch because I've screwed up, it's also neat to see that a lot of people have not repaid evil for evil. When I was a young kid with my brother, we would repay evil with evil. Let me tell you, the stories we have are embarrassing. The believer should not be doing that. Shouldn't be repaying evil for evil.

The implications of that are really, really wide and broad. Everything from lawsuits, everything from accidentally saying something bad that was, even if you didn't do it willfully to be malicious, was malicious. It was something that you said that you thought was maybe being sharing information ended up being gossipy or something. Whatever it is.

Not repaying evil for evil is part of that. Your response as a believer, being gracious, being encouraging, coming along saying, you know, hey, that hurt me, but you know, I really love you and I could give a rip. I don't care. Not repaying evil for evil. How about seek good for one another? That goes beyond not repaying evil for evil, but seek good for one another. Do you see opportunities regularly to seek out good for your other brothers and sisters in Christ. This is something that I was thinking about as I was looking at this. I don't always think that way, but I often do.

If I know somebody's in need, I happen to have contacts all over the place. If I see somebody in need, I like to be able to say, hey, God's got a provision here He's going to fulfill that need. If anybody needs some old shelves that I wrecked, they're in my garage. I'm kidding.

But if there's a need, if there's good or something there, if I can encourage somebody, if I can love somebody, if I can hand off things to them, that's the way I should behave. That's the way we, as a body, what are the impacts of that? They're huge. Has anybody ever been helped by somebody? I mean I gave an example of being moved. If you've been helped by somebody, when that happens, what is your emotional experience? That's an encouraging thing. You said encourage one another. That's an encouraging thing when somebody sees a need and fills it.

But he says also seek good for all people. He steps outside the bounds of the church body and he says seek good for all people. Now, this last week I saw on the news that Will Smith made some comment about how everybody has some good in them, including Adolf Hitler. And then of course people took that out of context and said, Oh, he's saying that Adolf Hitler was good. No, he's just saying that I think all people are good.

Now the Bible tells us that's not the case. Instead, the Bible tells us that if we're not believers, we're suppressing the knowledge of God and we love what is evil and we pursue that which is evil. Alright, so Is that the kind of person that you want to seek good for? Paul says yes, absolutely. It's an opportunity to evangelize. It's an opportunity to reflect the life of Christ. Seeking good for all people. Is that easy for us to do? Not always. Most of the time, probably not.

I saw some pretty interesting driving this morning. On the way here, there was a blue vehicle pulling right up alongside a Dodge Stratus. I can't remember. I think it was a Ford Focus or something. Pulled up against a Dodge Stratus, crossed the lines to get into the lane right next to the Dodge Stratus, and then just stayed parallel with the Dodge Stratus, waiting for the Stratus to move out of their way.

I was commenting to Jessica that I don't believe that's the way that the driver's manual describes appropriately merging in between lanes. But the thing is, is that seeking good for all people means that when somebody does something gnarly like that, maybe your opportunity is to not respond by, you know, swerving back and seeing if you can knock them back in their lane. I'm pretty sure nobody here would do that, but you know, I actually in high school had somebody suggest that once. I was like, wow, you went through driver's ed, right? So seek good for all people.

Now the next passage here includes what was one of my life verses growing up as a teenager. Verse 17 says, pray without ceasing. It's only two words in the Greek. We've got three in the English. It's a short verse that has a lot of implications. 16-18 says, Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and everything give thanks, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Starting out, Rejoice always. Now here is an interesting concept Rejoicing always is quite contrary to being in a state of needing encouragement. He says, encourage one another.

This person needs encouragement. They're not rejoicing. Probably shouldn't encourage that person to rejoice always and tell them they're doing it wrong. Again, that would be probably the wrong way to approach things. But rejoice always. As a believer in a normal situation without the trials and sufferings that sometimes come that bring us emotionally down, What on earth isn't worth rejoicing over? What isn't worth rejoicing over? Concentration camp. There are things in life that are not worth rejoicing over. But there's a whole lot that's the rest of life that we can rejoice over.

Now let me ask you a trick question. Well, it's not really that tricky, but should you rejoice over having to do the dishes? Let me tell you that that is a stumbling block for me. I do not rejoice over doing the dishes. However, I have discovered that if I put the mp3s on an mp3 player device from the church lessons, I can do the dishes while I'm listening, and so there's a little bit better stuff that comes from that. But what on earth isn't worth rejoicing over? There's a lot of negative things in life, but there's a lot of things that we could rejoice over that maybe we take for granted. That for me is probably one of my downfalls, is I take a lot of stuff for granted.

It's just the way I operate. Oh, I'm just going through my day. Of course this works. Of course that's going to happen this way. But the Lord gives us a lot of blessings in our lives, even with the consistency of the mundane, that should cause us to rejoice. If we're rejoicing, how's that going to impact the rest of the body of Christ? That's going to encourage them. When you go into a place and you see a lot of rejoicing people, that's encouraging. It also says something's different, especially if you're not a believer. What's up with these people? They're all happy. They're all rejoicing. They're enjoying the mundane things of life. That's weird.

Next question I've got on here is, what on earth should cause us to always rejoice? Is there anything on earth that should cause us to always rejoice? It's the heavenly things. If we're setting our minds on things above where Christ is seated in the heavenlies, that's something to rejoice about. Colossians 3, 1-3 talks about that. Romans 8, 28, all things work to the good.

When you have a life like mine that's had past sins in it, that you thought, man, this is the wickedest, nastiest thing. What have I done? Why am I doing this? This could never be used for anything good. And the Lord, in His mercy and His graciousness and His wonderfulness, turns that into something that is a ministry opportunity, it's pretty shocking.

It's hard to rejoice over sin, isn't it? Do you rejoice over sin? That's a roughly worded question. Are you glad that you have had a life with sin in it? There are several reasons why you should actually be glad about that. I know that sounds weird. One, if you didn't have sin, you wouldn't necessarily have recognized the need for salvation. Alright? If you didn't identify your sin. But you did. And you said, wow, I really need to be saved from this junk. It's pretty filthy. And when you sin, is God glorified? because of his graciousness, his grace is shown and he's glorified for being gracious. It's not that your sin was good, it's that he was better.

Romans 8.28, all things. If you look at all things in context there, we have more to rejoice about than we sometimes think of on the surface.

Then the next one, pray without ceasing. This one, like I said, was one of my life verses, but I really wrestled with it for a while. How many of you pray while you're sleeping? I have to say that while I'm sleeping, I don't know what I'm doing. My brain is really not engaged with what I would consider to be fruitful things, although I have fixed a few bugs encoded in my sleep.

Praying without ceasing, this is in keeping with a lifestyle of relationship. Prayer should not be viewed as singular acts, but instead of an ongoing conversation with the Lord. Pray without ceasing doesn't mean that you're constantly on your knees, but instead that you're constantly in communication with the Lord.

What's the opportunity that's come up to pray right now? Hey, this person has a need. That person just cut me off. Whatever it is. Pray for that person, Lord I pray you'd bring somebody in their life who would help them find glasses. Because obviously they don't know how to drive. Or whatever it is that you're praying, you're focused on how can the Lord be involved with this situation right now.

I know in my own life I used to say, well I've got to get up 45 minutes earlier than I normally would so I can have time praying and in God's word. Because I had this mindset that God had a slot in my schedule. Now that doesn't mean you shouldn't have a time of prayer and sending God's word. That means that you shouldn't think of that as a duty that's done once you're done with your little time. Okay, I've had my time with God, now it's time for me to have my me time.

Instead, it's this constant lifestyle of prayer and relationship. How many of you have read this passage before and asked yourself, how does pray without ceasing work? How can I pray without ceasing? Is that something you've asked yourself or was it just me and my youth and ignorance? I wanted to fulfill that. It's God's Word. It says don't stop praying. Don't stop. Oh man!

But I've got to take this test and I have to focus on the test. Whatever it is, I came up with reasons why I would have to stop praying praying. And that wasn't the way it was supposed to operate. It's not that you should make time to pray, but it's that you should make time to pray all of the time.

Everything goes before the Lord. There's nothing in life that isn't worth praying about. Everything can go before the Lord. And everything give thanks. everything, all things, everything give thanks. When the crummy stuff is happening, having a thankful attitude.

We have Thanksgiving, I mean it was a little over a month ago, and we were all thankful on our one day of the year where we're supposed to be thankful, the rest of the year we're not, right? An attitude of thankfulness recognizes the giver of life's experiences and lessons. Okay? God gave you those experiences and those lessons and we're thankful for them, even if some of them came with some bruises and scrapes because we weren't quite sure how to handle it.

This fits in the context there of, again, recognizing that there's a lot to rejoice about and a lot to be thankful for. Whatever you're not thankful or rejoicing about, you can be praying about, and when you're rejoicing and thankful, you can be praying with thanks and rejoicing in your prayer. Then he goes on to say, because this is God's will.

And that's one of those things that as a young teenager I skipped over. I read 17, pray without ceasing, but then I didn't get the this is God's will part. I thought God's will was kind of like a maze. I thought of a mouse in a maze and I got to find God's will. Oh man, a dead end. Gotta go back to the beginning and start over again, because I don't know what God's will is. Jeez, I hope I find out what it is.

Instead of rejoicing always, praying without ceasing, and being thankful for everything. That's God's will. You want to know God's will for your wife? Unless you are a wife and then it's your husband. God's will is that we would have this attitude, this mindset, It's contagious.

I don't know if you ever noticed that, but when you get around people who are rejoicing, you start to think about things to rejoice about. When you get around people who are praying, if you've ever been in a prayer group, you have lots of opportunity to pray. When you have people who are thankful, you start to think about what you have. Sometimes you're thankful for what you have because you see what other people don't have. My company that I do a lot of work for in Texas actually did a helpful thing over this this last December, a family's house burned down and that we were getting status reports of things that people in the company were volunteering their time to help get their house put back into shape and it really brought to my attention, boy I have a lot to be thankful for. Also this morning I got to church a little later than I expected because Jessica wasn't sure if she turned off the stove so I went home to make sure it was off, it was. But you become thankful when you're around people who are thankful. It's part of the relationships that we have together impacting our lives towards the Lord.

Go ahead, Roy. That's pretty impressive. It's a great practical representation of what we're supposed to be doing in our lives. That's a really good... Christ's life. Exactly, yeah. All of these things that Paul is presenting here are, as we've stated before in past lessons, logical imperatives. Because you're a believer, this is the logical way that you would react. It's the life of Christ working in you that all of these things would be part of the way you're operating. He continues on. I'm not going to be able to finish everything in this lesson, but we'll just keep going.

Do not quench the spirit. Do not despise prophetic utterances. Now this one right here has some sticky theology in it, so we're going to go through it here, and if you've got questions or thoughts, just go ahead and ask. We may not get to answer everything, but we'll go with it. Do not quench the Spirit. The Holy Spirit's work in your life is ongoing and ever-present, but that doesn't mean that you are listening. When he says, do not quench the Spirit, he's saying, listen, you're taking the opportunity to be carnal and fleshly. Don't do that. That's preventing the Holy Spirit from really working in your life as powerfully as could be.

Does this mean that Ephesians 2.10, that God has got good works prepared for you to do, that you're going to go do, is nullified by your quenching the Holy Spirit? Can you do that? Can you nullify God's good works? No. But it does mean that your relationship is going to be out of kilter with the Lord, and you need to refocus.

Don't get distracted. Then he goes on, and here's where the tricky part is, he says, do not despise prophecies. Now the reason this is tricky is because at Holly Hills our theology is called cessationism, and the idea is that the miraculous gifts that were common during the time of Acts are not normative for the church today. And so we don't have prophecy. Do we have a prophecy time every Sunday morning?

Where somebody stands up and says, OK, God gave me a word for you. I used to go to church that did that, by the way. So I'm speaking from experience. I had somebody prophesy over me once that I would have broad shoulders. And I didn't know what that meant. And he didn't know what it meant. But it was his prophecy. And so I spent a long time looking for what broad shoulders meant. And I still haven't figured it out yet. But I'll let you know if I do. But the thing is that he says, do not despise prophecies. Why were prophecies so critical for the daily operation of the church at the time of this writing? Exactly.

It was new. They didn't have the written word. They didn't have all of God's word compiled into the canon of scriptures that we conveniently carry around. I mean, I have tons of Bibles at my house. Various translations. I've got various elements that I have access to. They were lucky to get a letter from the Apostle. And it was a letter and they didn't just go run down and photocopy it. They had their proverbial lined paper and you got to hand copy it if you're going to make copies. And that's expensive.

But God would reveal prophecies at the time of the writing prophecy was given. God in 1 Corinthians 14 3-4 it says, so that God, it would allow God to speak to all men. The prophecies would be there to speak to all men, believers and unbelievers. Here's this prophecy that was given to clarify something or to reveal something about God's nature.

That's going to be pretty shocking if you're a non-believer, in a good way. It's also an element that not everyone could read. We take reading for granted. Literacy is part of our culture. That was not so common back in the early church days. It validated also, and as you were saying, it validated the Christian faith to the Jews.

If you're a Jew and you're thinking this crazy sect of religious nuts over here are doing wacky stuff, but they're getting these prophecies that are clarifying things and things are being accurately dealt with, and it validates God's work in that group, that's going to be a little shocking. The accuracy that God provides, which of course is a hundred percent, is going to be something that's there that's going to be pretty shocking. The other thing is by despising prophecy the believer was putting himself or herself above God's revelation.

These people were Apparently being negative about it, and he's saying don't be negative about it, this is God's revelation through somebody at your local body. It's edifying for the body. It would absolutely be quenching the Holy Spirit in one specific facet, one being broader than the other, but definitely would be quenching the Holy Spirit. Alright, I'm going to not go over that. The end is nearer. We're getting closer to the end.

He says, but examine everything carefully. If there's prophecies, you want to examine them carefully. Make sure they're right. Hold fast to that which is good and abstain from every form of evil. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he who calls you, and he also will bring it to pass. This little boy is examining some grass here. I thought it was a very cute picture. Examine everything. He wants you to discover that which is good and that which is evil. Have discernment. Examine it.

If this prophecy is coming, if this thing is coming and it's the work of the Lord, is it really the work of the Lord? Can you examine it and identify the source? Most of the time, I think the answer is going to be yes. You're going to be able to identify, yep, that's pretty wicked. Or, nope, that's something that the Holy Spirit is doing. That's pretty cool.

Examine it. Evaluate it. May the God of peace sanctify you completely, preserving you until the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. God will bring it to pass. That's pretty cool. God is going to be doing the preserving. That means you don't have to worry about it and I don't have to worry about it. God will bring it to pass.

I used to beat myself up like nobody's business because I thought I was responsible for those things. I was going to make myself blameless. Can you make yourself blameless? Obviously not. Clearly, if you've been a believer for any period of time, you know that you're still not flawless in your state of being sanctified and declared blameless and righteous and holy, like Ephesians 1 talks about.

But God will bring it to pass. Only God can keep us blameless and pure and sanctified and righteous and holy. Absolutely. Yeah, if it wasn't through the lens of Christ's blood, so to speak, it would be still full of failure. But Christ's blood was completely effective.

He says, Brethren, pray for us. Greet all the Brethren with a holy kiss. I adjure you by the Lord to have this letter read to all the Brethren. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. I'd also, in discussing teaching this class with Roger and Brad, said I was going to do something special with Brad. I was going to greet Brad with a holy kiss.

See that used to scare me because I didn't know what a holy kiss was. I thought that was lip contact between two believers and I was a little nervous about that. Turns out the holy kiss would be as you may have seen before in various cultures and people that even here in the United States do this, where they'll kiss one another on the cheek. Alright, that's the holy kiss, okay? It's not holy because of where it is, it's holy because of who you are in Christ. Okay? And there's nothing weird and freaky about it.

Oh, Paul starts out there, pray for us. I skipped ahead, I apologize. Given Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy's critical mission, prayer was an obvious and important part of their ministry's continuity. When you read through Acts, has everybody here, or most everybody, been through a Bible study on Acts? Have you noticed that in Acts, they don't get a royal chariot going before them?

Hey! These guys have God's Word! Everybody listen! Everybody treat them well. That's not the way things operate. In fact, you find stonings, you find extreme hate, you find riots. In fact, in Thessalonica, there were riots. All of those being part of it. Pray for us. Yeah, without ceasing, please. There was a lot there. I just said about kissing the brethren on the cheek. Then he says, please read this. Have this letter read. Now I mentioned literacy a little bit earlier.

Most commonly, I was talking with my uncle about this earlier this week, most commonly there would be slaves that would do the reading. People who were wealthy would buy a slave who was educated who would come and tutor their children and raise their children up and teach them. And it was very common for the slaves to actually be the ones reading.

But if you've only got one copy of the letter, you've got to have somebody who can read it. And it's got to get there, and you've got a reader, and they've got to read it out loud to the whole body. Just imagine if somebody missed it, and that reader's going to have to read it again. Aw, shucks.

But Paul's admonition there, hey, have this read. Group reading would also lead to group Bible study, and group theology, and discussing what does this mean? How does this apply to us? It's also going to mean when Paul, remember many of you were in the Romans class, in Romans 16, Paul says, hey, this person needs to stop doing that. Stop doing this, that.

When that's being read in public, and your name comes up, that's going to have a little bit of a sting to it. But then that's going to be edifying for the body because people are all going to know, hey, this person's been corrected by the Apostle Paul. And then they're going to work for that edification of that saint. The last thing, and since we're already at the last verse, I'm going to go a little long, sorry.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Is there a sweeter way to close the letter as when we started this letter several months ago? He starts it with grace. Grace to you. Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, grace to you. And he ends it, grace to you. It's a pretty awesome way to end the letter and start the letter. Our lives are nothing without grace in Christ. Oh, just kidding. That's fake.

Let's go before the Lord and then we'll be done. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for all that you do in our lives. Thank you for giving us such an incredible letter to a church that you were growing and edifying and building up. Thank you for growing and edifying and building up this body and we just pray for your return as we look forward to the rapture and we praise you in Jesus name. Amen.