First Thessalonians 5:16-22 Our relationship to the will of God

Okay, so we're coming down to the end in 1 Thessalonians, I almost said 1 Corinthians. So we got two sessions left, and actually you might think a lot of times in Paul's epistle you get to the end of his epistles and you think, wow, we can just zip through these really quickly and they're not consequential, but actually the last This section, and I think also the conclusion, actually there's quite a bit of interesting things and good teaching in these last sections. So let's go ahead and take a look here.

So actually I used Macaulay again. I just put the whole very simple outline. So this section is going to talk about the will of God. And actually that's expressed in the original language many times by the imperative mood, the mood of command. You know, sometimes we're kind of afraid of that command. We're under grace here. You know, that's what we talk about a lot at Holly Hills.

But we shouldn't be afraid of God's will or imperatives. And I actually, it really came home to me as I was studying for this. The will of God is is perfect. It's just what we need. His will is perfect for us. And remember what our Savior said? He does nothing except, you know, He's in God's will and He does it for His pleasure. And God's will actually expresses His pleasure.

With that in mind, we're going to look at some verses 16 through 18, talk about different attitudes, about prayer, about rejoicing, about giving thanks. Then we get into the 19 through 22 and talk about two topics. One is the Holy Spirit, our relationship to Him. And secondly, in regard to all things, things that come into a believer's life. And he's gonna have two aspects.

Are they good or are they evil? And boy, in today's world, we see plenty of evil. I mean, it's just incredible. I personally think that you look at this world and you say, how can you not see Evil succeeding and you think how can that be? Well, if you don't if you're a student of scripture you you scratch your head But if you know scripture you say what this is what you have told us Lord that you know The whole world is in the power of the evil one So there are plenty of evil things out there and the Lord wants us to be aware of those and and looking and focusing on the good Okay with that short outline there.

Let's just go ahead and to the verses here. So they're actually in three sections. The first section talks about these three characteristics of the believers should maintain. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and everything give thanks for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus. So you look at that list and you say, wow, Lord, you want me to do all these? And look what's happened to me. Rejoice always really pray without ceasing that would actually might be a little bit where these days we're praying a lot and In everything give thanks.

How can I give thanks and everything things are things are a mess So we'll see we'll look we'll see about that. There's actually some cool things the next section talks about a relation to the Holy Spirit and actually I begin to realize that and talking about a Not quenching him and we'll look at that. What does that mean and these idea of prophetic utterances?

You know, we're seeing a lot of that in first Corinthians. We didn't do it. Mike's going to talk more about that today again. And, you know, you have to kind of go back, go back to the early church. You say that's how they got God's word. Don't think of prophetic meaning so much for the future. That's how God's word outside of the letters that were passed to the churches. That's how we'd have men and women speaking forth from God.

It just struck me when I was studying this thinking, boy, I don't know whether, that would be a strange way. Just imagine our body, different people popped up and we didn't have the Bible, we had false letters, and they'd just be saying things and you'd think, is that really true? How do I figure out if that's true or not? So actually, here's a case where the injunction by Paul here is not to despise these prophetic utterances.

The men and women speaking from God, so that's an interesting one. And then lastly, here's to kind of be careful. And we are to be careful. Examine everything carefully. Hold fast that which is good. Abstain from that which is evil. So a lot really packed into these short number of verses. If you have questions, please stop me. So I'll just keep rambling on here.

Okay. All right. Actually, I actually kind of like this setup. Hopefully it looks good on Zoom. Looks like it might be a little bit washed out in my way of thinking. There's no nice trees behind me. We need to talk to Bill about getting some nice stuff behind us here. It'd look like we're out in the forest or by the seaside or whatever.

Okay. Enough of that. Okay. Rejoice always. All right. So actually, literally, we have to hear you, a believer, always be rejoicing. So you're going to say, OK, Roger. How are you going to convince me of this one? There's a lot of bad things out there. So the Greek word is the idea, always is the Greek word, pas, in the original. It means all-inclusive. So there's nothing that we're not to rejoice in. And that kind of brings up a problem, it seems, at first.

So here's some verses that Philippians 4, the A part says, Rejoice in the Lord always. And then if you looked at Philippians, it just basically says, Rejoice in the Lord. So I think that's a key part of this, just like we found in studying about God's love. It has to be sourced in the Lord. in our Savior.

We're rejoicing not so much, and we're not to rejoice in evil. You can find many verses that talk about that, so we shouldn't think that, but when you say rejoice always, we're rejoicing in evil. We're not to do that. We're to rejoice primarily in the Lord, and that keeps our focus correct. We're rejoicing what He's doing, what He's accomplishing. So that's the focus about rejoicing. So the meaning is, Rejoicing is joy to you. And as I mentioned before, we're going to see all these set of commands or God's will all in the present tense. Continuous action. We're continually to be doing this. And they're in an imperative mood, which shouldn't frighten us. It shouldn't put us off. This is God's will. And we're to do it in the active voice.

So Macaulay points out the source of joy is always independent of one circumstance So that's that's the key, you know, many times people say think about happiness and joy, you know, remember our Constitution were life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It didn't say joy. It's the pursuit of happiness. So This is talking of joy is is not to be equated with happiness. We're not we're not looking for happiness.

We're looking for God's truth God's love sourced in our Savior in the Lord So there's some what I liked here vine Fine, I looked at I always look at his Dictionary is I have available in an electronic form But he he looks at all the original words and he and will make comments about them and give us a definition so he has a list of some of the things in Scripture and that were to rejoice about. He categorized probably 20, 20 or more. So for the sake of brevity I didn't put all, I'm not going to go through all 20, but just a few that I thought were interesting.

So first of all, were to rejoice, there was rejoicing at his incarnation. Luke 1.14, for you have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth. Were to rejoice in his power, and Luke 1317 be and the entire crowd was rejoicing over all the glorious things Being done by him.

So people were were amazed and marveled and rejoiced At what when Christ was here on the earth what he was accomplishing what he was healing healing the sick and giving sight to the blind So there was rejoicing over that Now continuing on rejoicing with the father So here's a case where, you know, the Lord kind of tells him, you know, in those chapters in John, like 14, 15, 16, he says, you know, I'm going to go away, but I'm going to send you another comforter who'll be like me. And so, you know, I think it was Thomas said, he talked about the way he says, I'm going to go away. And he says, but Lord, we don't know the way.

And so the Lord is trying to comfort them. And so here's a verse that speaks to that, but there's rejoicing. There's actually rejoicing that he's going away. He tells him to have rejoicing. You have heard I said to you, I go away, I will come to you. If you love me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. So he's telling them to rejoice. So here's a situation where we're rejoicing in a situation that, from a human perspective, our Savior is going to leave us.

He's going to go away. Well, I'm not too happy about that, but he tells them to rejoice because he's going to accomplish the Father's will and going to go to the cross and be with Him. So here's one. This is a list from Vine. His presence with them. John 16, 22. Therefore, you too have grief now, but I will see you again. So this same kind of thought process. This is John 16.

But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you. And that's another aspect, the joy that we have in our Savior. You know, this points out the fact that that joy, once we come to know Him, is permanent. We cannot lose that joy Even though we may temporarily get focused on something else, we can't lose that joy.

And that's pretty cool. That's a promise we have from Him. And their hope. Romans 12, 12. Rejoice in hope. So this is a list. If you go in Romans 12, there's the whole list of different things. Rejoicing in hope. If you guys remember the definition of hope, Hal used to tell us all the time when he was with us, what's the definition of hope from scripture? God's hope.

How would you define that? Anybody online, on Zoom, want to? Andrew, I'm sure you know what it is. Go ahead. I think he said it's absolute certainty. Amen. In the things of God. Perfect, perfect, that's exactly what, so it isn't interesting. We're rejoicing in something that's certain. We're rejoicing because we know, we know the end from the beginning.

We know how it's all going to play out. You know, we are so fortunate in this world today, people, you know, I drive down the street and I still, some people seem to be still suffering from COVID, I mean, in the sense that they're frightful. I don't know whether they've been vaccinated or not, but they're very frightful of that. But we know that COVID won't be a big deal. We know the end. We know the Savior's gonna take us to be with Him. We know the final, what's gonna happen to mankind. And we know that from Scripture. So we can rejoice in the absolute certainty of who God is.

Okay. So the last one I have here, like I said, there's about 20 or 25 in this list. And you can look it up, you know, if you have it, if you have Vines in a hard copy version, or if you have it online, you can look it up. Just search for the word rejoice. Suffering with Christ.

1 Peter 4.13 But to the degree that you share in the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that, or with the purpose that, also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation. So here's one of the amazing things of Scripture. But to the degree that you share in the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing.

Wow. Seems like that's a I'm to rejoice that I'm suffering. Well That's what it says, right? And actually then you could take it. There's another level you could take it. Well, what about the this says the sufferings of Christ? What about my personal sufferings?

What about my personal trials and temptations and the Lord says that you can you can rest assured that he is He knows. He is a believer. He knows what's happening. He understands. And actually it says He has ordained that for you. He hasn't ordained evil or evil things, but He has ordained your way through whatever situation you're in. You think, well, how did I get myself into this situation? Or how did this happen to me and my family and my children and so on? Well, God didn't necessarily cause, He didn't cause illness, but He is providing for us and our family that know Him through every situation.

Hey, Roger? Yes, go ahead, Roy. Well, just a thought. It occurs to me to look back at the first, I think it's verse 6 here in 1 Thessalonians 1. where each one of you entered into this state of imitating each one of us in other words the believers there imitated Paul and Silas and Timothy with the result that even in the midst of great adversity they had joy that was produced by the Spirit if you take that literally. But at this point, he's giving a command, which is like, in a sense, he's coming back to this again and saying, even though you don't understand that some people have gone to sleep, you're going to go with them. They're going to perceive you when the Lord comes back. He's reminding them what they were taught to continue in that joy that's produced by the Spirit, I think. Yeah. Is that what you see here, too? Yeah, no, that's good. That's really good. I didn't quite, you know, I kind of focused, you know, kind of on this particular listing of ones, but that certainly fits with what I'm talking about.

We're to rejoice, and the joy is based in what God has accomplished, His promises, not in what we see for the moment, what we perceive for the moment. And that's what He was doing with Thessalonians. He was showing them His plans for the future, and they could be assured of that. That's a good point. Not a self-made joy either, it's of the Holy Spirit.

Absolutely. Well, we're going to see all these attributes, rejoicing, giving thanks, and another one, are all based, you know, in our relationship, and they're provided by us through the Holy Spirit. Yeah, yeah. To us. Okay. Alright, so we're actually, that kind of finishes the rejoicing one. So now let's go to the next one, which is pray without ceasing. Okay?

So, you be praying unceasingly, kind of flipped it around a little bit. Praying in the present tense, continuous action, it's in the middle voice, for your own benefit, and it's also, I didn't put it, it's also imperative again. Unceasingly. So this is almost like a double emphasis on the matter of praying. Unceasingly is the idea without ceasing, it's you, so that which is constant and reoccurring.

So we need to clarify this a little bit. Make sure we understand this. Is this, you know, is this the thing, you know, you see the Hare Krishnas out there? They're chanting for hours and hours and hours. Is that Hare Krishna? Hare Krishna? Hare Krishna? Hare Krishna? Okay, whatever. You say potatoes, I say potatoes. No, no, no, no, no. Hairy Christians? I don't know. Some are hairy. It's okay. You can be hairy, I guess. I don't know. Okay. So, actually, I thought this was really good.

So, Paul is not saying here, Paul is not saying, saying prayer of all time, but rather maintain a reverential and prayerful attitude in the midst of all your activities. And both of these are from Macaulay. So the adverb, without ceasing, does not refer to uninterrupted prayer, but to constant reoccurring prayer.

And boy, I think that's just what maybe we've all experienced, that we live our lives as we're driving. We don't close our eyes and pray, right? You might have a wreck there. But we're aware of the Lord's presence, and we thank Him. Thank you, Lord, I didn't try to cut off that guy that cut me off. You know, you could say that or... Anyway, but it's a consciousness of who we have, who our Savior is, and we're in contact with Him.

We're praying, we don't have to be closing our eyes necessarily, but we're praying through the activities of our life. Not a mantra, not a constant, uninterrupted sound, but a A constant, in a sense, focused on Him. And we have to do our job. We have to work. We have to, you know, interact with people. But our whole attitude, I like the phrase there, maintain a reverential and prayerful attitude in the midst of all your activities. Okay, so I have a little bit more on this. So, here's some verses. Romans 1-9.

For God whom I serve in my spirit, in the preaching of the gospel of his Son, is my witness as to how unceasingly I make mention of you, always in my prayers making requests. So that word unceasingly is the same word that we had in our verse, pray without ceasing. So it's this idea of we're constantly reminding, ourselves or we're praying to God about a situation. I'm sure that many of us, when we have a difficult time, that's what we're about. We're about interacting with God that way. And God wants us to do that. He says, pray without ceasing. When we're rejoicing, that's not when we're praying, where everything's going great and nice, and so we don't need to pray. But this says, pray without ceasing. So while we're rejoicing, we should be praying, too. Well, could you be praying a rejoicing prayer? Could be, too. You get two for one there? That's good, that's good.

And the other thing is, you hear a lot about tragedy going on and everything, and people say, well, send your prayers. Well, who are we sending them to, you know? And that's kind of, the world doesn't see that. They just think of prayer as just a, I don't know what, what they think, actually, and who are they praying to. Right, right.

And there's another aspect, this might be a tad bit off the topic, but it seems like, and this seems to be in the body of Christ, there's this concept of, and I hope I don't step on some toes here, but let's see how, and have you guys ever heard of the Tower of Prayer?

I'm probably picking on somebody here, but anyway. And if I understand the concept is, if I can get more and more people to pray, I can influence God. The more, the better, right? Well, boy, to my way of thinking that's taking some liberties there that scripture doesn't talk. It's not the quantity. I think it's the quality of prayer. It's you interacting with the Lord. It's not how many. Even, I mean, we should let our, you know, give our requests out, and that's wonderful. But it's not quantity, not the quantity of people. It's your prayer to the Lord as an individual believer. Okay. Well, the Lord is going to answer the prayer as He will. Amen. And that's right.

So, are we going to change? So, and this is where Bonnie and I have discussions sometimes. Well, if that's the case, Roger, you're a teacher at Holly Hills there. Well, then why do we pray at all, right? If He's going to answer it, you know. So, but He says pray without ceasing. So, I'm not going to attempt to answer that question because I'm not sure I can. If someone has an answer, I'm sure there's some additional thought you could bring to bear on that, but...

Go ahead. I think that thankfulness and keeping in mind all that He's done for us, that's also prayer. Exactly. So, you know, that would... there's plenty to be thankful for. Amen. Well, actually, it's interesting that the grouping of these three, rejoicing, praying without ceasing and being thankful, they're grouped. So it's an interesting group, right? Rejoicing, praying, and being thankful. So the Lord's kind of telling us those three are important in our relationship with Him. So I think, you know, we're to do all three. So, go ahead. Yeah, push the button down until it turns green. A bright green. Go ahead. On Prime, I was watching a documentary. I think, no, it was on PureFlix, I think. And it was about a group funded by a nobleman back in the 1700s. And they actually prayed 24-7 for a hundred years. It was an interesting documentary. Can people hear Pat? What's that? He was a nobleman and he was shunned by the other nobleman how he would spend his money helping these common people. It was a German group.

Interesting, interesting. Wow. Okay, well that is interesting. And maybe one conclusion, people are different. and they have a different calling. I'm wondering about that. The Holy Spirit was apparently very involved with this. I don't know. Well, as we're going to see, this is going to come down to the end, and the Lord's going to tell us to examine or test everything, and we're to test it against His Word. So as we look at prayer, and look at rejoicing, and prayer, and thanksgiving, and these are I mentioned here, but I mentioned another place, where to test that against the rest of Scripture, so that we don't go off on tangents. And it sounds like that's a tangent in my mind.

Well, just to throw another one in, which was an amazing account on Pure Flix, was Woodland in Birmingham. A high school started praying, and they brought in a guy. who went to the coach and said, I want to draw your students. And the guy said, you have no business here. He pursued. And he won that whole team. They were all praying. It's an amazing account of what happened in Birmingham. This is Birmingham, Alabama, right? Birmingham, after all their...

Yes, I understand what you're saying. No, I pray those things as well. And you wonder, for prayer, is that Is that for God? Does He need? I think, we've talked about this, Brian and I, a lot, about it's more our time with Him that's the more important thing. He sees us 24-7, but we're maybe off here or there or everywhere else, so it's our time with Him that prayer brings out. And our interacting with Him, that's the wonderful blessing we have in doing that. One of the great examples, I think, is the Book of Acts. Almost every single chapter has prayer in it, in the development of the early church in the Book of Acts.

In rejoicing as well as in petition. Boy, it's just full of it. When you're praying or thankful or rejoicing, your inconstant awareness of who God is and what he's doing. Yeah. There's an intimacy there. Right. He wants us to depend on him. Amen, that's all really good. Actually, Patti had a comment, too. I think a lot of times prayer is our recognition that we're dependent on God. And just like someone else said, that who He is, that it's our dependence on Him for, you know, His intervention in whatever. Good, good, okay. We're early in the stage of this lesson. We better get going here, okay. All right, so a couple more verses about praying.

We give thanks, 1 Thessalonians 2, we covered this earlier. We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers. Constantly, this is kind of focused on this without ceasing, constantly bearing in mind the work of faith, labor of love, steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ and the presence of our God and Father. And then lastly, this is almost should belong in the thanks column. And this is a little bit earlier, we say this one too, for this reason we also constantly thank God. When you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it, not as a word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you. Okay, so now we're gonna go on to the third of this trilogy here.

In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus. So give thanks is, Christo to show oneself grateful be thankful to give thanks Present tense continuous action. It's imperative mood again. This is something we should be doing Constantly continuous action in it here.

No one of these amazing and everything with no exceptions So we're we're we're rejoicing and everything we're praying and we're now going to give thanks and Okay? Paul is saying that a thankful attitude is not dependent upon pleasing or grateful circumstances. So once again, we're not, in all these three things, we're not focused on the circumstances. We're focused on the Savior and the God who has appointed us to that situation.

Giving thanks is used in the following verses. So I kind of have another list here of one. Ephesians 5.20, always giving thanks for all things And here's kind of the key, and we saw that in the previous one, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God.

And then in Colossians 3.17, whatever you do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. So it's through, again, it's through him, we're giving thanks through him.

And now what I found, this is one of the more interesting parts that I found, The last part of it, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus. So to my mind, this kind of helps us kind of understand the imperative mood, or it kind of justifies that. For this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus. Actually, I flipped around a little bit here. Luis has it, the will of God in Christ Jesus, and then the other one has it the other way around. Okay, so this tells us why it makes sense to give thanks. Because it's God's will. He refers back to giving thanks. So let's think about will here for a second. I'm not sure I can pronounce this. So this is from the Zodiates. Zodiates had three comments that I thought were really outstanding. Will, not to be conceived as a demand, but as an expression or inclination of pleasure toward that which is like. that which pleases and creates joy. Really interesting.

So God's will is what pleases Him. And actually, on a human level, in our relationships with people, with our family, it's natural to want to please one another. But in God, it's even more interesting. When it denotes God's will, It signifies His gracious disposition towards something. Used to designate what God Himself does of His own good pleasure. So this is His good pleasure. His good pleasure is that you give thanks. Which is just, you know, which is really cool. So let's just talk about for a second.

For this is the will of God for you. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. So in Christ Jesus, another key aspect of this. So in giving thanks, so in the giving of thanks, it's in our living union with the Lord Jesus Christ. It's in our life. He's our life. We're giving thanks in that relationship. God's will can only be carried out by those who are in Christ Jesus. That's interesting.

People have all kinds of concepts about, well, I'm pleasing God now. I'm possibly a believer. I'm pleasing God now by doing X, Y, and Z. Well, no, unless you know Him as your Savior, you can't please Him. I have that point at the very end here. Only a person in Christ Jesus will have the motivation to give thanks and everything. And then lastly, we all know God's will for those who do not know Him is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, as we say.

We see that in Acts 16 and 31. All right, so that's kind of, okay. So that kind of ends that section, those three aspects, rejoicing, praying without ceasing, and giving thanks. Now he kind of switches to our relationship to the Holy Spirit. And it seems like he's addressing a problem that was happening. I mentioned earlier in this message about in the churches there are people It's the way the church operated. It's not like Holly Hills. We didn't say, open your Bibles to so-and-so. It seemed like, and it seems like kind of bizarre. I would be kind of put off a bit.

Well, brother, so-and-so, sister, so-and-so, you have a word from the Lord and they stand up and they give you the word. And that was from God. Now there's a copycat of that, I would say, that we see in today's Christianity. But that's the early church. We have people that really spoke from God.

So this admonition here is not to prevent that. So quench, this is kind of the word for quench. It means to dampen, to hinder, to repress, as in preventing the Holy Spirit from exerting His influence, His full influence. Again, we have this in almost every verb through this whole section, present, imperative, active. So the not here, it's for an action that's already going on. We're not to prohibit this ongoing action.

So you could render it, stop quenching. It could be rendered that way. Quenching the spirit is a figurative expression used to illustrate the possibility of hindering the spirit's work in and through the believers. So I thought Constable had a good image here. The image is that of throwing water on a fire.

So if the Holy Spirit, and this is focused on Paul's admonitions to the Thessalonians is focused on giving God's word out in that body of believers, and you throw water on it, so to speak, or make it less, then that's not a good thing. That's not God's will. So continue on. Okay, so I thought just, quickly, we know these things, but I thought, well, let's think about what is the proper relationship to the Holy Spirit? What is our proper relationship to the Holy Spirit?

And Mike actually has a whole class that's teaching all the wonderful things the Holy Spirit's doing, but a couple of the key ones are in Galatians. But I say, walk by, or by means of the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. And then later on in that same chapter, it says, if we live by the Spirit, or by the means of the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. So that just kind of gives us a, you know, talks about quenching, This is more for us today, right here, we're to walk by means of the spirit. So the next verse is gonna tell us the way in which they were punching the spirit.

Do not despise prophetic utterances. So this is an action that's assumed to already be going on. Apparently in the Thessalonian church, they were despising these prophecies from God. and despise is to make of no account, to regard as nothing, to despise utterly, to treat with contempt. Again, same kind of present imperative active. This is God's will. So prophecies here, once again, kind of keep the focus on what prophecy is about. Mike is talking about this again in Corinthians here today, signifies the speaking forth of the mind and counsel of God.

Because that's what they That's what the believers had at that time period. They had maybe letters from the apostles, but they didn't have the completed canon and scripture so that they would depend upon members of the body speaking for the council, the wine and council of God. And then Keithley, I like, I had quite a few quotes here from Keithley coming up here. In this text the noun is plural clearly clearly refers the utterances or messages of many the prophets that may have been in a church at Thessalonica So that's why he's saying don't this is how God's speaking to your body don't Don't despise it now.

I have weeks translation of this verse 20 Stop counting as nothing Divine revelations given in the local assembly by the one who receives them And just an aside here, I think you guys already know this, but there's a body of believers that kind of think that all these things are still in play. We still have men and women that get up and they can speak from God.

Well, with the completed canon of scripture, we don't need that. That ministry has ceased. And we talked about that incorrectly. So it's unfortunate that body of believers has gone off that path. I think it's not correct. But this was a warning not to prevent that, to that church. Okay, so here's kind of the final part. Sorry to kind of rush through this. And this is kind of the part where we are today. Where are we today?

It says, but examine everything carefully. Hold fast to that which is good. Abstain from every form of evil. So let's kind of go through this step by step. So, but in contrast to despising the prophetic utterances, examine, and this is one of our favorite words, and Andrew and I are, Andrew and I have talked about these words before, and these are, and our brother Hal kind of really gave us great insight for these. This is documadso, examine is documadso, to put to the test for the purposes of approving. Again, same verb tense, present imperative, active. So we're to put to the test everything. Not just something, everything. So everything that enters our minds and our hearts are to be put to the test, and they're being put to the test against the truth, which is God's word.

And here's a couple of verses from 1 John. And this kind of talks about the spirit of people who we interact with. It says, Beloved, do not believe every spirit but test the spirits, that's the word, dakimatsu, to see whether they are from God because many false prophets have gone out into the world. And then the following verse, by this you know the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.

So that's really, haven't you noticed like when you talk with people, maybe you're having a casual conversation and it gets down to who Jesus Christ is, Right at that point, you can almost tell, it's either gonna go good, it's either gonna go correct or not correct. They're gonna either say, amen brother, Jesus Christ is my savior, my lord. Or they're gonna say, well, you know, I believe in God, I go to church, I've been baptized, and so on and so on. They're gonna, that's the defining, who is Jesus Christ?

Who is that wonderful person? That's the divider of many situations. It says, we're to hold fast, after the semicolon, hold fast that which is good. Hold fast, as used in this context means, conceivably, to hold fast in the sense of retaining and guarding.

The good is the truth in accord with the revelation of God in Christ Jesus. We're to hold fast to that revelation we have, we have it in His words. And then this is kind of a related idea about contending earnestly for the faith. You know, in June, I felt necessary to write to you, appealing to you to contend earnestly for the faith. And that's what we're, we do that actually in my mind, and the faith is the body of truth from scripture. So we have to do that on a personal level, I think, once we interact.

And also maybe corporately in a body of believers. Okay, abstain from every evil. This is the last part. So this is an interesting one. Show of hands, who uses the King James Version? Okay, Bob does. Okay, good, good Bob, we'll see. Okay, so there's a little bit of, and I came across this as I was looking, and I probably already knew this, but from every evil, Okay, the word form, so we're to abstain from every form of evil.

So what's pointed out, Vine pointed it out, and Keithley pointed it out, and others, this word form, that which is seen, Christians are exhorted to abstain from every form of evil. And they point out AV, that's kind of the British, AV is the authorized version, the authorized version is the King James, so they have appearance of evil. And mine said that's not adequate. It's more the thought, it's every kind of evil is probably the better idea. And Keith had a couple of points on this.

The contrast is not between what is good and what only appears as evil, but what is really evil as a result of the testing. So we're not, there may be some, you know, false information, you know, you get false information about a situation, He said, well, I'm not going to have anything to do with that because I heard this or that. Well, no, is it proven to be even? I mean, you know, you test it against God's Word. It has to be tested. Thus, believers must examine everything carefully and avoid that which does not conform to the truth. Roger? Go ahead, Bob.

Yeah, you know, it just made me think this verse or these verses, but examine everything carefully, hold fast, and watch as That which is good reminds me of the hymn we sung last week. When I feel my faith will fail, he will hold me fast. We can grasp all we want, but knowing his love for us, that he will hold us fast, allows us to respond to the great grace which he extends. That's good. That's great. I like that. He's the one that's going to hold us fast.

But we're to be good stewards of the word, and we ought to be librarians, you know, search the scriptures to make sure they're so, and I think, you know, that's what a serious believer is about, is searching God's word to make sure that what he interacts with, the people agrees with God's word.

And I actually, I couldn't, Keithley is very verbose, as Bob has found, he has lots to say, so I have a couple more quotes from Keithley. There will be many professing, there will be many professed spiritual manifestations that do not contribute but rather detract from the development of spiritual growth and progress in the faith. We probably can think of many of those. There's many flashy things that we see, we see in Christianity, many flashy things out there that look like they're gonna be helpful. A further application of this command, abstain from evil, Using the truth as our index for testing, believers are to avoid every kind or form of evil in thought and deed, everything that might produce beliefs and behaviors contrary to the truth. I have a lot in that, I kind of read it a few times, but we are to be good stewards of God's word, good stewards for ourselves personally, and good stewards in a body of believers, that we accurately test what comes in the door, what we hear people say, what they claim to be spiritual manifestations in their life so that we'll have the truth from God's word and not something that man has done, some effort of man. All right, I apologize for just, there's actually a lot, you wouldn't think just those few verses, there's just a lot of really cool things, a lot of interesting things. Any last thoughts or comments?

We have maybe a minute or two. Well, we'll go ahead and close. Thanks, good participation. Great, thanks. Well done. It's nice. Actually, this is working out well. It's good in person. I think Bob saw that last week. It's good for the teacher. I can see people on Zoom. I can see people in class. So it's really good. Thanks for your participation. All right.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much, Lord. Thank you for the the truth of your word, the truth of who you are. Lord, help us to be just students of your word. Help us to be focused on you. Help us to let you be who you say you are, and that you will accomplish according to your will, according to your purposes in our lives, in our body of believers, that which pleases you, Lord. Thank you for this time. In Christ's name, amen.