Dennis Tuuri

Uh we’ll probably break this about halfway through. We’ll see how it goes. And I’ll explain maybe now why I handled these particular texts the way I have. We’re dealing with verses 19-22 with a set of five specific statements or commands. Remember, we’re in that last part of the book of 1 Thessalonians where we have a lot of short little commands, but these commands are lumped into little groups and I read all of them that we’ve gotten so far here at the end together as our sermon scripture because we’re going to look at the context for these last set of five as well as looking at them individually.

Now, it’s true that probably each of these could be taken individually and preached on many times and I’ve decided to lump them all five together and try to get them all through in one sermon or maybe two or maybe three. We’ll see what happens. The reason I did it this way though and give you the outline that I’ve given you is that we might go for a couple of sermons. There is a literary connection between these five statements.

I think there’s an exegetical connection. There’s evidence in the Greek itself that these five are linked together. And I think that as we go through the verses a little bit, you’ll understand why they really do form a unit. Each of these five commands—the object is placed first and the verb is placed last. Okay? So “the spirit, do not quench” and that emphasizes both parts.

Remember the last ones we talked about—the verb was placed first and that placed the emphasis on that in terms of the actual grammatical structure. We have here a series of five commands: two negative and then three positive. In these verses: don’t quench the spirit, despise not prophesying, and then three specific positive commands. Test all things and hold fast what’s good and abstain from every appearance of evil.

And really, I have chosen—all of these are by the way also in the second person plural is in the form in verb form—which simply means that it’s obvious from the text itself from the verb form it’s used that these are intended for all the Thessalonians again, okay? So we don’t have to worry about whether these are directed to leaders or those with gifts or whatever. These are for all the believers in the Thessalonian church and therefore for all of us as well.

And I’ve chosen to use this as a little group and actually I’m going to start with the middle of these five commandments because I think it’s kind of a center of the whole thing and that is to test all things.

The first of the positive commandments make it as reference back to the quenching of the spirit and the despising not prophesyings. And then after we see this statement to test all things, then we see what you do with the two things you’ve ended up testing. Those that are trying to test good and those that test bad. There are actions related to both of those. And I’ve entitled the sermon “The Spirit of Evaluation.”

How do we test all things? And I think it is linked back to the spirit grammatically here in other places in scripture we’ll look at.

So basically the outline goes—that we see in these five verses if taken together—a need for a continual ongoing evaluation and testing in our lives generally and there is specific application in the text obviously to prophetic utterances in the early church and that has application for us in our setting today as well, which we’ll get to. But essentially at the base of this it says test all things.

Okay, so we have a need for continually evaluation of everything and it gives us the means both in this text and in the analogy of scripture. We look at a systematic theology of how we evaluate all things. Then we see that the means of this continual evaluation is the grace of the Holy Spirit working through the standard of the word of God. And this also develops and matures. It is an ongoing maturing process in the spirit and the word.

And then we’ll see that there are actions that are to follow that evaluation: Hold fast to what’s good. A strong adherence to the good is what the verse tells us. And an equally strong—we’ll see grammatical things there—an equally strong aversion to what is evil. And so that’s kind of why I’m trying to treat them all together. It is helpful sometimes to break the scriptures up and look at the minutia, but we don’t want to break it up too fine because we’ll lose the sense and the flow of these verses and it has correlation to what’s just gone on as well.

And we’ll talk about that.

Now, in the providence of God, again, it is a nice thing that last week we were speaking about joy and prayer and thanksgiving beginning the Christmas week and this week as we begin the week that contains the transition in the providence of God from 1991 in our country to 1992. We are at the end of the year. You’ll see all kinds of things over the next week in the papers, in the media about evaluating what’s happened in the past—the best and the worst of the movies, the best and the worst of the videos, etc. etc.—and then resolutions for the future. And this is a time when really many people turn to an evaluation mode.

And in the providence of God, he’s given us a set of verses here that deals specifically with evaluation and testing and gives us the correct means by which we’re to evaluate all things. And so it is good timing. God’s timing is always good. And sometimes it’s obvious to us why that timing is good. Other times it isn’t quite so obvious. And in this case, he’s made it very obvious to us. Okay.

So, let’s get into the first few points of the outline of what we can deal with today.

First, the need for continual evaluation. Prove or test all things. Verse 21, the center of these five commandments.

Now, the term used for prove here was used in the Greek of testing metals. You know, test what were counterfeit, what was base in a metal or what was good in a metal. Taking gold and, you know, looking at what was dross in it and what was good, or evaluating a coin to see if it was counterfeit or not, for instance.

And so, this word means test metals and it became to be used for approved metals as well or approved coins. And so the general sense then is approving things—that’s what’s indicated by the word. You could say that what this means is you’re supposed to avoid gullibility in everything. You’re supposed to be continually evaluating things and you’re supposed to find out what rings true according to some standard.

One of the ways you can test for counterfeit metals, for instance—I remember when the government began debasing even the copper penny. There was the downward cycle from pure gold and gold currency then to silver currency and then to mixed denominations in terms of the larger coins till finally even to base the copper penny a number of years ago and we started collecting copper pennies. We got a ton of them at home. But one of the ways you could find if it was really copper or zinc you could weigh it, of course—the zinc coins weren’t as weighty, which is interesting. But also you could flip it with your fingernail—bing! Flip it up in the air and a coin that is one substance—all copper in this case—will have a nice true ring to it.

Ding.

You know, but you take a zinc coin, a coin where you’ve got two metals put together. Apparently, I don’t know the science of this, but they must resonate at different frequencies or something. But you do that with a zinc coin and it’s going to thud. You know, no true ring to it.

So, this verse tells us we’re supposed to be doing that in everything that we do. We’re to be evaluating things and proving what’s genuine—the genuine article—as opposed to the counterfeit or the debased article.

To prove or to test. This is in the present tense and so it means an ongoing action. It’s not an isolated one-time sort of thing, but rather this—since it’s in the present tense—should be seen as a settled rule and a continuing practice for every bit of our lives as Christians and as followers of Jesus Christ.

Williams in his translation reads this verse in the following way: “But continue to prove all things until you can approve them.” So you keep testing until you find out. It may not be easy with a particular item. May take patience, time, etc. You continue to test or prove all things until you can approve them one way or the other—until you find out what they’re made of.

Now there is, I think, here a general statement made. It has specific application to what just went before it, of course, the two verses that say quench not the spirit and despise not prophesyings. And particularly despise not prophesyings—certainly in the context of the early church—and we’ll deal with this in a minute.

Prophetic utterances were quite important since they didn’t have the finished canon of scripture. They didn’t have all the books of the Bible together and so there was the need for the prophetic office. And certainly Paul is one of the applications of this general principle. The immediate one to the Thessalonians is: if somebody tells you this is a prophecy from God and the spirit of God is telling them this, don’t be gullible in it. Test it.

In 2 Thessalonians in the next Epistle to the Thessalonians, we know that there were those who said that the day of Jesus Christ had already happened. And he warns them in 2 Thessalonians 2 and 3: “Don’t let them deceive you by any means, for that day shall not come until there being a falling away first and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.”

Now, we don’t want to get into all that means right now, but the point is that Paul said, “Here’s a way to evaluate prophecies about the coming of Jesus Christ. Until these things that I’ve instructed you occur, if a prophet comes to you and says, ‘The day of the Lord has already come,’ forget it. He’s not telling you the truth.” So he gives him a means to evaluate. So Paul certainly has a specific application here in mind.

But he uses a general term in terms of testing all things. He takes it away from the specific of the prophetic utterances and takes it into every aspect of their lives.

Now at this point it’s very interesting if we read the Patristic literature—that the early church fathers—who wrote and their writings on this verse and other things. It’s very interesting that there is a quotation that some ascribed to the Lord Jesus himself. And that statement is that they link to these verses that we’re just dealing with.

Now, the statement that supposedly some people think came from Jesus’s unrecorded statements—of which we know there were obviously very many—was one that said, “Become you approved money changers.” Become approved money changers.

This particular admonition is quoted as if it formed a part of this very verse by Clement of Alexandria and by Basil the Great, by Ambrose and by Athanasius. Athanasius, you know, who wrote the Athanasian Creed. So, some very important early church fathers actually quoted this statement, “become your approved money changers,” and then went on to quote these few verses here: test all things, hold fast to what’s good, and reject every appearance of evil.

Clement of Alexandria ascribed this statement—become money changers—to scripture itself. Cyril of Alexandria ascribed it to the Apostle Paul. And after quoting it then added verses 21 and 22 of our text here.

Origen, Jerome and Epiphanius ascribed it to Jesus Christ. These were church fathers who ascribed it actually to Jesus Christ. Yet Usher later on thought it was actually taken from the apocryphal gospel. But in any event, it is very striking in the early literature of the church—the correlation of this phrase “becoming approved money changers” to the verses we’re dealing with.

Again, the sense of being approved money changers means that the good money you’re supposed to keep, but with every sort of bad money, every form of counterfeit money, have nothing to do with it. And so essentially this correlates very well and gives us more evidence from the early church fathers who interpreted this text to show that it indeed does have a connotation in terms of every area of our lives and currency being one of the primary means we have of evaluating transactions at the core of all that.

So all of life, according to these verses that we’ve just read and supported of course by the commentaries of these early church fathers and maybe even by the sayings of our Lord himself—all of life is a process of being. We should see ourselves as Christians, one of our central callings, as being good money changers. And that has significance for a lot of things.

We’ve talked before about monetary reform as the years roll on here and as the truth of the things we’ve sung about today and the Christmas songs last week—as the age of gold comes around—as God continues to make manifest the gospel of Jesus Christ and the manifestation of his kingdom—as we pray for the establishment of his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven and therefore we pray for the destruction of all kingdoms that would exalt themselves against Jesus Christ—as that’s worked out.

One of the central aspects of working that out is to restore a biblical system of weights and measures so that we can be approved money changers and evaluate our money correctly. But of course, the verse doesn’t have application just to that. That’s really a model for a command to us to evaluate every transaction, everything that we do in our life according to some standard and then sorting out and discriminating between good and bad.

Now, here at Reformation Covenant Church, this is extremely timely for us as well. We’re in a transition period. Now, as we begin to grow in size and as we need to put on a few more institutional trappings, so to speak, we have talked about and mentioned it again now that we’re going to set up various study groups these next few months to look at possible denomination affiliation—to evaluate the secondary standards of a new denomination that’s been started this last year by Mr. Talbot down in Florida. We’re going to look at—we’ve already you already looked at and evaluated one man in terms of elder—and the next few months, the next 6 months to a year, we’re looking at other men as well and evaluating them.

We’ll be evaluating the very process—the steps that we develop as a church—bylaws and standards by which we’re to select elders and to do various things in the context of our congregation. I think that we’ll probably be looking at a little bit more detail in terms of our relationship to Seattle. Some of the men up there have indicated a desire to see things a bit more sketched out in terms of how they should go about selecting an elder, etc.

And so there’s various activities that we’re going to transition into now. We’re going to be writing hopefully documents or booklets, brochures to explain paedobaptism simply because we operate in the context of a church that in America professing set of believers and certainly in this part of the country that are primarily dispensationalist.

Now I think that one of the things that we can rejoice in—the break up of the Soviet Union—is also in the destruction of the dispensationalist system. I hope that doesn’t offend anybody, but the dispensationalist system in its purest sense that said that God’s law is totally gone in terms of a standard for us to make these sorts of evaluations by. It has crumbled. It is gone. And there are very few men left at the university or Bible school, seminary level who would be anywhere near some sort of strict dispensational.

That’s a tremendous thing. And the church of Jesus Christ is awakening once more to the reality of the law of God. We’ll look at some verses about that in this sermon or the next couple as well. And so that’s a good thing and it’s important. We recognize that as people come out of that tradition, we want to be able to explain to them in simple terms as possible the distinctives of what we think is the biblical faith relative to the sacraments, relative to the use of God’s law, relative to a proper view of God’s history, relative to a proper view of worship, what we do at RCC.

You know, every time we go through this liturgy, I hope you don’t think that somehow we just sort of found it someplace. It’s been very carefully developed. Not that it’s perfect, not that it doesn’t have to be—like all other things—evaluated and tested and continue to improve. But there’s reasons why we’ve done these things. We want to put those in writing to help people evaluate our church as well when they come and visit with us.

So, we’re on the verge of doing all kinds of activities here. And these activities are kind of a building block sort of nature. It’s kind of like producing an infrastructure that is in place so that as growth continues to occur, it can occur in an orderly fashion and people know very distinctly upfront what we represent, what we believe in very simple terms that can be understood.

And so the need for continual evaluation is quite important in our life as we make this transition. We look back at what we’ve done, thankful to God, but also seeing things that need to be improved and developed as we look forward to the future. The way we evaluate what we’ve done in the past, the way we evaluate where we’re going in the future is what we’re talking about today. And that’s why we might take a couple of weeks to develop this.

So, this is very important for us. This need for a continual evaluation of all things that we’re told of in the context of 1 Thessalonians chapter 5.

Now, God doesn’t just tell us a command and then not give us any instruction on how to do it. He doesn’t say, “Love your wife,” and then leave it up to you as to what that means or what is the means of loving my wife or husband.” How does that work? He gives us the means of this continually evaluation as well, the standard so to speak. He does it in this text and he does it with the analogy of scripture as well.

So, let’s talk a little bit now about the means.

Okay, Dennis, it’s real important that we evaluate things real carefully and not just jump to this or that conclusion. How do we go about doing that? And I think that the means of this continual evaluation that’s going on in our lives are developed in the scriptures and they’re in two senses. One, the means is the grace of the Holy Spirit and the second is the standard—the word.

First, the grace of the spirit. In verse 19 we read “quench not the spirit” and again the context for this proving all things is the immediate verses that preceded it and that includes this command to not quench the Holy Spirit. The spirit himself of course is part of what’s being—the supposed utterances of the spirit are being evaluated in the text before us. But other than that, the spirit itself is the means by which we are to evaluate all things.

We are supposed to—in the immediate context that Paul wrote of—they were supposed to weigh supposed spirit-inspired words and deeds against a certain set of standards that they had received from the apostle Paul. And while Paul doesn’t say this explicitly, here the spirit himself is what enables a person to determine the genuineness of a word or a deed done in that Holy Spirit.

In 1 Corinthians 2:14 and following we read the following:

“The natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God. For they are foolishness unto him. Neither can they know them because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things. Yet he himself is judge of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him. But we have the mind of Christ.”

These verses tell us very explicitly that it is the spiritual man. It is the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It is the spirit himself who gives us—and who is the spirit of evaluation. We just read a responsive reading about wisdom. And we saying that God would grant us wisdom. Well, how does he do that? Well, the wisdom comes, I think, through a sensitivity to the leading and guiding of the Holy Spirit. Wisdom is the means to evaluate a situation correctly—to discern the good and the bad, the counterfeit as opposed to the genuine.

And God tells us that the spirit himself, it is the subject of this section of scripture. “Quench not the spirit” is the means by which we can evaluate all things. Discrimination is an activity directed by the Holy Spirit. That’s what 1 Corinthians 2:13-16 tells us.

Now, in the context, what the verse says in our particular specific set of verses is “quench not the spirit.” And I want to spend just a minute talking about that term quench.

Obviously a term referring to fire. And we just—I think—sang a song about—well, we sing it every when we—our song—our prayer for illumination of God’s word—an acknowledgement that we need the Holy Spirit to teach us God’s word to help us to evaluate things in the word to understand them and then apply them to all of our lives.

What did we—one of the words is uh—”breathe on us.” What lost my—How does it read there?

Oh, I got it right here. Okay., let’s see. “Breathe thou upon us, Lord, thy spirit’s living flame.”

And so, we have this reference in the very song we sing weekly to the flame of the Holy Spirit. And certainly here, it has that implication to it. One of the commentators said that what is being spoken of here is the gift of warmth for the heart, light for the mind, and his power to kindle the human spirit.

And so those positive elements of the spirit’s warmth and his light and the power to kindle our human spirit is what’s being spoken of.

Well, maybe. But it is interesting and I think significant in terms of this evaluation we’re speaking of. If we look at again the analogy in scripture, the references to the Holy Spirit and fire, the most prominent reference of course is in Matthew 3 also in the Gospel of Luke.

But when John the Baptist promises the gift of the Holy Spirit, John says, “I indeed will baptize you with water unto repentance, but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.”

Sounds good. Yeah, fire. That warmth in the heart, right? But he goes on to say, “Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor and gather his wheat into the garner, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

So, we’re not going to do damage to the text here. What John the Baptist is talking about in terms of the spirit and fire is the fire of judgment against the chaff. Unquenchable fire, the fire of hell is what he’s speaking of.

Now, this is really a reference back to Isaiah 4:4 where we read that “the Lord shall have washed—when the Lord washes away the filth of the daughters of Zion and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof—by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning.” The Holy Spirit—the spirit of burning judgment.

So when we read “quench not the spirit,” I think we certainly can see some indications that the spirit does bring light and the fire is a good fire. But the element of judgment is also part of the fire of the Holy Spirit. And of course, when the Holy Spirit’s judgment and purging flame—that purges out the dross from the silver and evaluates our lives—comes to our mind, that’s when we normally want to quench it, right?

When things get a little hot for us.

And so Paul, I think part of what’s going on here, at least in terms of the analogy of scripture—again, we take the whole scripture together—he’s saying that as God evaluates you and as you are self-evaluating yourself by the power of the spirit, don’t put out the quenching spirit in terms of the indications that you are in sin over a particular area and that there’s dross in your life.

And so part of the continual evaluation of all things is the spirit’s evaluation of us.

Now we, you know, we do this weekly here. We’re reminded weekly. It’s easy to forget the reminder because it is weekly, but you know, the world has kind of a yearly cycle—at the end of the year, evaluation and looking what you’ve done. We have a weekly cycle of coming to the Lord’s table with an admonition not to come unworthily and to re-evaluate your life as you come to the table.

And if you’ve got sin in your life that’s undone with, take care of it. There’s situations where people can go years, months, long time without taking care of sin and it will make itself manifest. Make no doubt about it. The fire does not ever—the Holy Spirit can’t be quenched. The manifestation of the spirit’s grace in your life that can be quenched, but the Holy Spirit is not limited. And if you’re a believer and you’re keep turning that oven down because you don’t like the heat melting out your dross.

Believe me, that fire is going to be a flaming furnace one day for you. And hopefully, you’ll respond in grace—will be the manifestation of God’s grace to you and not judgment. We don’t know that. Well, in any event, part of this indication of the quenching not the spirit is this idea of being open to the evaluation of the spirit.

We have a weekly cycle reminds us of that.

Many of us, and I’ve urged this and only partially, you’ve done it successfully in my household as well, but I’d urge you all—urge myself again. I tell you and I tell myself that it is a good cycle to build into your daily lives as well. The beginning of the day is thanksgiving for the day that lies before us. The end of the day, the prayer is one of evaluation. And a time spent of evaluating back and thinking how we did.

You know, Paul says if you evaluate yourselves, you judge yourselves, you won’t be judged in terms of the strong judgment that can come upon you for taking the supper unworthily, for instance.

Okay. Again, here the activity is ongoing.

Okay. So essentially the means of evaluation according to the scripture is the spirit. Frequently that spirit works in a fire in our lives. That fire is a good fire though it can kindle us to flames. There is you know the idea of warming our hearts so to speak. But also has this aspect of judgment and burning out the dross from our lives.

And what I’ve done here in terms of delineating more of the specifics in terms of the means of this quenching not the spirit is I’ve used a couple of expressions that are lifted sort of loosely from Chrysostom, another of the early church fathers who was is very delightful to read in case you haven’t read some of his sermons or commentaries. But in any event, he said that fire needs two things going on here. One, you don’t want to sprinkle water on fire. You don’t want to quench it in that sense. And on the other hand, you also don’t want to quench it by not supplying it what it needs to burn. So you want to supply oil to the fire, he said, and you don’t want to sprinkle water on it.

And I think that in the context of these verses we can see that the grace of the spirit that is the means for our continual evaluation is administered both with the feeding of that fire with the oil of communion with our neighbor and with God and also it is protected from quenching waters.

First the oil of communion—the things that feed and develop the manifestation of the grace of the spirit that helps us to evaluate ourselves and evaluate all things.

The oil of communion first with our neighbor. I read the whole context. Because in first Thessalonians, this fifth chapter in this final section, while it is a series of short little commands, and the first time you read it, it may seem disjointed, once you begin to think through it, it fits together very nicely.

Remember, we spoke first about the responsibilities we have horizontally with members of the church, with members of people outside of the church. You know, remember the three different ways we’re supposed to deal with different kinds of people. Remember the ways we’re supposed to deal horizontally with those who are in a functional superior position to us—the pastors—those who are outside of us. We’re also supposed to not return evil for evil, but rather good for evil to the unbelievers so that God will either bring them to repentance or bring them to judgment and damnation.

We looked at those horizontal relationships there and then we looked at the vertical relationship last week very quickly. We’ve talked about it before at the beginning of this series: rejoicing in all things, giving thanks to God and praying. And those are things that speak of our devotional or communion with God.

Well, so there are these two oils that precede this quenching out the spirit. So we read being quenched at the spirit. The spirit is motivating us in terms of our horizontal relationships. And when we are—when we work with each other and when we manifest the fruit of the spirit in terms of the manifestations of the body of Christ, that feeds that ability to discern and evaluate what happens in the context of our lives.

And when we have this vertical relationship to God developed through the spirit who gives us joy and peace and thanksgiving, we’re in that kind of attitude, then we’re also not quenching in the spirit, the manifestation of the grace of the spirit—because we’re operating with him. We’re cooperating as it were. We’re being fed that oil, which then helps us as well to evaluate all things.

And if you’re rejoicing in all things and giving thanks for it all and praying so that you can understand all that works, makes you think twice about what’s going on.

I had an example. Probably shouldn’t use this, but it’s I don’t know. Last week, before I was to preach on rejoicing in all things, giving thanks and praying. Night before we were going to go to the Hayes’s house for the for a kind of a little Christmas thing with other families. And we didn’t know if we were going or not. Christmas kind of feeling bad, you know, a little morning sickness and whatnot. And I had that flu thing I think for about 10 hours on Saturday. God graciously lifted it about 5:00 Saturday night so that I could preach the next day and we could go to the Hayes’s.

But I decided at 5:00, yes, we’re going to go. You know, I know we’re not feeling that good, but we’re going to, you know, do something of the Christmas spirit here. Well, then, so we I we didn’t have time to get dinner ready or anything, so I ordered a pizza and the pizza was an hour and a half, hour and 15, hour and 20 minutes late. They said it’d be there in 20 minutes. We had to leave at 7:00 and it was 4 to 7:00.

It still wasn’t there. And I called, you know, 6:20, 6:30, something like that. I was really getting angry and I did not handle it well. And God convicted me about, you know, here I tomorrow rejoice in all things. What about this? You know, like this.

But one of the small little things that I did do right, the only small thing that I did do right in the context of that situation was that I thought, well, rejoice in all things. You know, where’s that pizza guy? Pray. You know, pray is the way we’re supposed to be able to rejoice. So, I thought, well, I could pray. Maybe the guy is being held up. Maybe he’s being killed. Maybe got in a bad car crash or something. So, I prayed, albeit briefly, for the man’s physical safety.

Well, he was safe. He I think he was indulging in foreign substances, which is why he was late. But in any event, if we’re doing those things correctly, if we are trying to rejoice and have patience and to pray for all things, then it helps to begin to think through things more biblically.

Maybe the guy is in a wreck. Maybe the way to—how do I extend grace to this man? How do I do return this man good for his evil even? How do I do that? Well, you’re going to get a proper spirit to do that. You’ve got to be rejoicing and praying, etc.

So vertical and horizontal relationship.

So the oil communion—first with our neighbor. This truth that there’s a relationship between these verses about treating people correctly in 1 Thessalonians 5 and then the quenching of the spirit is indicated here, but it’s also indicated in other portions of scripture.

For instance, turn to 2 Peter 1:4 and following. We’ll look at a couple of verses there. 2 Peter 1, verses 4 and following.

We have here a real neat section of adding things—manifestations of the spirit’s work in our lives. He reminds us in verse 4 that we’ve been given an exceeding great and precious promises that “by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”

You know what a fantastic thing this is, and it relates to what we’re talking about here. We have been made—through the grace, tender mercies, and love of God—partakers of the divine nature. You can argue that what that means—want to maintain the creator-creature distinction. But what I think what it goes on to tell us is that we can manifest the communicable attributes of God. We can manifest the grace of God in our lives.

We’ve talked about this before. We can actually minister grace to those that we come in contact with on a daily basis through our speech. What a tremendous thing. We have been brought to that—having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. We were corrupt, totally no good, totally depraved, on our way to hell, judged by God, and he has brought us out of all that.

Give us these great promises in inheriting the world, exercising dominion over the entire created order. And in the meantime, we manifest the divine nature of God and who we are. What a tremendous thing to give to give joy and thanksgiving to God for at this time of year. And this work of the spirit in our lives that we’re not supposed to be quenching is the manifestation of that. Don’t quench the manifestation of the grace of the spirit that is the exhibition of the divine nature through the very vessel that is you as an individual.

The god of all creation, his spirit indwells you and works through you to manifest the divine nature. That’s a tremendous—a tremendous thing. And it’s a tremendous warning that we can somehow quench that. We can dim that light somehow through various ways.

Well, here’s one way we can feed that light. Because he goes on to tell us:

“Besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, to patience godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lack of these things is blind, cannot see a far off, hath forgotten that he is purged from his old sins.”

If you’re blind—expression of the scriptures—you are not able to evaluate. You cannot discern if this is a gold coin or a debased coin for that matter. You know, you’re blind. He correlates here these various manifestations of the divine nature—brotherly kindness and others—the way we treat people with patience, forbearance, brotherly kindness and love. If you have those, then you’re able to discern. If you don’t have those, if you neglect those, if you don’t treat your horizontal relationships according to the scriptures, then you’re not adding the fuel to the fire that gives you an illumination from the Holy Spirit. You’re blind if you don’t do these things.

Again, in Ephesians 4:29 and following:

“Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good for the use of edifying, that may minister grace unto the hearers. Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God whereby you’re sealed under the day of redemption.”

Now, there’s a lot there that’s going to when I go back to this verse and we get a little bit further in the text talking about prophetic utterances. There’s a real correlation here between the use of edifying, grieving not the Holy Spirit. We’re in our verse it says quench not the spirit, despise not prophetic utterances, which has to do with edification. We’ll see that in a little bit.

And Ephesians goes on then to talk about what we have already talked about in Thessalonians—our horizontal relationships. Because it goes on to say:

“Grieve the Holy Spirit. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice and be kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”

So in Ephesians, he correlates the grieving of the spirit with a failure of edification in the first half of verse 20-29. But in the second half, if you don’t put on the right stuff and put off the wrong stuff in terms of your horizontal relationships, you’re going to grieve the Holy Spirit. Quench the spirit, dim the manifestation of the spirit’s grace in your life.

And so here as well, we see that to use the language of Chrysostom, the oil that feeds the fire of evaluation. As we go into the new year and evaluate what we’re doing, that oil—part of the mixture of that oil that feeds that fire that helps us to do that correctly—are our horizontal relationships, one with the other.

And if we’re treating people with bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, etc., then we’re blind. But if instead we put on the new man and the power of the spirit, charity, tender-heartedness, forgiving one another even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you. By the way, there’s a correlation again between the way we forgive, the way God forgives. Our forgiveness isn’t autonomous. It’s linked to God’s forgiveness.

We do those things. Then that feeds that oil of communion—feeds the fire of evaluation. So it relates back to the horizontal relationships. This necessity to evaluate all things and need to do that through a correct horizontal relationship. It goes back to the verses 12-4 of 1 Thessalonians 5, but it also goes back to just the few verses we just dealt with as well.

Calvin said that the spirit within us is not to be thwarted by unthankfulness. Calvin saw that “quench not the spirit” follows this admonition to rejoice in everything to pray and to give thanks in all things—directly give thanks. So Calvin said that the spirit within us is not to be thwarted by unthankfulness.

There is a relationship between quenching not the spirit to the verse that just preceded in terms of the joy, prayer and thanksgiving. That’s to manifest our vertical relationship to God the Father through the Son and the Spirit. And so it is—it is our relationship, our communion with God as well that feeds the fire, the flame of the illumination of the spirit that enables us to evaluate ourselves in all situations correctly.

I’ve got a few verses listed in your outline that relate the Holy Spirit and the joy, prayer, and thanksgiving of the verses that just precede this particular verse about quench not the spirit.

Acts 13:52: “the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost.”

Holy Ghost brings joy.

Romans 14:17: “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”

When you sit down to dinner downstairs in a couple of minutes as the model for your dinner throughout the week, think of this. Meat and drink are great things. They’re pictures to us. What are they pictures to us of? Well, God correlates here that they’re really pictures of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. So, we have thanksgiving—a thanksgiving feast every week at RCC is the model that all of our meals throughout the week are to be thanksgivings for the righteousness, peace, and joy of the Holy Ghost.

In any event, again, the linking of joy with the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 6:18: “we’re commanded to pray always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, watching there unto all perseverance and supplication for all saints.”

It is the Holy Spirit that links with us or motivates us and is with us as we pray to God the Father.

And then finally, 1 Corinthians 14:16 says:

“When you bless with the spirit, how shall he that occupyth the room of the unlearned say amen at the giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest?”

And the important thing here is that he correlates the giving of thanks, the prayer of thanksgiving with this blessing with the spirit. And so again, is the spirit who motivates us and is with us as we give thanks to God.

And so if we fail to be joyous, then we’re really quenching. We are, in Calvin’s words, thwarting the grace—the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in our lives. If we’re not joyful and if we’re not prayerful, if we’re not thankful, then that’s another way to quench the spirit. And by the other way around, of course, is that when we give thanks to God, when we do have an attitude of dependence or reliance upon God in all things through prayer—either spoken or just as a way of life dependently lived upon God in his standard.

And when we give and when we rejoice in the presence of God for the salvation that he’s given to us that all things work together for our good and for the manifestation of the king’s glory. When we do these things, we feed this fiery evaluation that enables us to evaluate ourselves and all things correctly.

Despondency, idleness, immorality and the like all are means of quenching, diminishing or thwarting supporting the work of the spirit in our life. And so if you’re sullen a lot and you’re not thankful a lot and you’re just kind of down in the mouth a lot and you don’t try to make some attempt to fix that, then you’re not going to be able to properly evaluate and fulfill the command to evaluate all things in life. And think what a pickle you’re in.

I was thinking of that I was watching C-SPAN this last week and there were three journalists on and I’m just amazed at the technology we have. They had this journalists on C-SPAN and it was a call-in show from all over the world and people from Turkey and India and other places calling with questions for these journalists. We were also watching my wife and I the other night Soviet—the Soviet Russian evening news. It’s incredible.

And by the way, this is a diversion, but you remember last week I talked about the joy and the anticipation of the Christmas tree behind the closed doors that Lenski spoke of. You know, in Germany they don’t get to see the Christmas tree until Christmas morning, but the kids know they’ve seen the tree probably come in. They’ve seen the decorations. They don’t know what the parents are going to do with it. They don’t know what the presents are going to be wrapped like. And then Christmas morning, they have the great joy of opening the doors.

But the days leading up to that, they have the joy of anticipation of what’s going to happen. And as I look at the technology that God has given to us in terms of communications and the computers, etc. I look at the joy of anticipation, how God will use all this for the manifestation of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. I know that it’s being used for evil purposes now, folks. But I know too that for instance, when music was began with the ungodly line. It was to the end that eventually musical instruments might be used to worship and praise God in the temple and then later in the church.

So these things are tremendous benefits from God. Well, anyway, I was watching this broadcast and evaluating the last year and a caller called in and said, “Well, you know, the problem is that our concerns were always negative. We wanted to stop Russia. We don’t want to have a depression, but we never talked about what we should be doing on a positive side.” And it went right over the head of the journalists.

They didn’t. They didn’t respond to that really at all, but I thought it was an excellent question to ask. How do we decide what is good that our nation wants to achieve other than just the cessation of war or the getting rid of economic problems? There’s no standard. There’s no way to evaluate. And if we through lack of horizontal or vertical communion with the people in our people in your church and your fellowship, your friends, your Christian associates, etc., and your relationship—your personal devotional relationship to God and rejoicing, giving thanks, et etc.

If we don’t do that, then we’re just like those poor dumb journalists who have no way to evaluate the circumstances of the world, whether they’re intrinsically good or evil, whether they’re to be held to or rejected. No way to evaluate things. And the scriptures say that if you quench the spirit, that’s the way you are too in your Christian life. And then you start getting in a position of trying to evaluate things, you’re going to make a lot of mistakes because your light is real dim.

Now, there’s one parallel passage and I guess we’ll close here actually. Turn to Romans 12, verses 6-14 and we’ll see a parallel passage to this.

Sorry. Romans 12:6. We read:

“Having therefore gifts differing to the grace that is given to us whether prophecy let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith or ministry or—” goes on to talks about exhortation and ruling.

Then in verse 9, after talking about these gifts—these manifestations of the spirit—and by the way all of these particular lists from six on are non-miraculous. And so there’s reason to believe here that this prophesying—by application perhaps the prophesying that Paul is either directly speaking to or alluding to—the gifts of prophecy can be part of this list which are non-miraculous gifts.

We’ll talk more about that next time we speak to this text which is going to be in February actually—probably. But what I’m saying here is that prophecy—there’s two essentially different types of prophesying in the scriptures. One is the miraculous—directly through the immediate work of the Holy Spirit—and the other is through the immediate revelation of God through the written scriptures. And in this particular list of these gifts and the manifestations of God’s work in people’s lives, this gift of prophecy is at the head of a list of things that are non-miraculous in nature.

And so there’s reason to believe that correlates to other—well it means that there’s application of that when we get around to talking about despising that prophesyings. We’ll go back to this verse for some explanation of the two different means of prophesying in the New Testament.

Well, in any event, in Romans 12, we begin with this statement that prophets, okay? People are going to prophesy. They’re going to be rulers. There’s going to be people that are exhorters, etc. And then he goes on from there to talk about:

“let love be without dissimulation. Abhore that which is evil, cleave to that which is good.”

Very much parallel passage to what we just read in terms of the verses that follow the evaluation—you’re supposed to things that you find good, cling to, every appearance, every form of evil, abstain from and hold yourself away from.

So, he basically says the same thing. And then in verse 10:

“Be kindly affectionate one to another with brotherly love in honor preferring one another, not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing instant in prayer.”

See the correlations? He mentions prophesying. He mentions the evaluation and then the action from the evaluation. Abstain from what’s evil. Cleave to what’s good. And he goes on to relate that then to our horizontal and vertical relationships. “Be kindly affection one to another with brotherly love. And then be fervent in the spirit serving the Lord. Rejoicing in hope, joy, patient in tribulation—give thanks for tribulation. Continuing instant in prayer. Continually praying. Just what Paul writes in first Thessalonians.

“Distributing to the necessity of saints given to hospitality. bless them which persecute you. Bless and curse not.”

And he talks here about rendering good for evil just as Paul had previously done to us in the context of this as well. So the scriptures are real clear that there is a need and as