Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Sermon scripture is 1 Thessalonians 5, chapter 5, verses 19-22. Please stand for the reading of God’s command word.

1 Thessalonians 5:19-22: “Quench not the spirit, despise not prophesyings, prove all things, hold fast that which is good, abstain from all appearance of evil.”

You may be seated. My son is worried that the little children not be dismissed to go to Sabbath school since it’s not printing in the bulletin, but they will be dismissed in just a second.

I think that we should probably go ahead and pray now that God would open his word to us and illuminate us. The prayer for illumination we use today is unusual for us apparently. We’ve only sung this once or twice in the last year or two, and you probably might notice that so far all the songs we’ve sung are from Psalm 119, as was the responsive reading, which has to do with our sermon today: the spirit of evaluation.

So let’s pray that God would indeed open our eyes, that his word would be our counselor and guide.

Father, we thank you for your holy word and we thank you, Lord God, for reminding us every week that this word is unlike any other book or words that we read. It is to be understood spiritually, and your Holy Spirit of evaluation is what teaches it to us and indeed writes it upon our hearts as we live in obedience to it.

Father, we pray now that as we open this word and we discuss it and think through it and ponder the implications for our lives, that you would be instructing us from this word, that you would indeed illuminate it to our understanding. We pray to you that those younger children who go to Sabbath school now, if their parents desire, that you would also illuminate the teacher and them, also our children, to understand things out of your word, that you would show them wondrous things from your law, to the end that they might rejoice in the great salvation you’ve offered us in Jesus Christ and walk in obedience to what you instruct them this day and indeed carry that message into all the world.

Father, we thank you again for your holy word and pray that you would illuminate it now for understanding. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

At this time, the younger children may be dismissed to go to their Sabbath schools if their parents desire that. Okay, we continue now through our series going through the book of First Thessalonians. We’re of course reaching the end of it, but not for a few weeks yet. We’re right in the middle actually of this section from verses 19-22.

And while I could have taken each verse separately, I tried to show about a month ago—the end of December actually when the last time we looked at this passage was—I tried to show that this is really a unit, and we can get a little confused about things if we break these things up one from the other.

The spirit in verse 19, the prophesyings in verse 20, the need for evaluation in verse 21, and the actions to follow evaluation in verses 21 and 22—these things really are kind of a piece together. And if we split them up, we don’t want to split off the spirit from prophesying or the spirit from evaluation or prophesying from evaluation, and all those things from ethical actions. That would be a big mistake.

So I’ve decided to lump them all together in one kind of large outline, and we went through the first couple of points—actually point one and portion of point number two, 2A—at the end of December. So let’s review a little bit of what we said then.

What we’re talking about is the spirit of evaluation as it relates to these three or four verses. We said that as we go into this new year and consider many things in terms of our church family, perhaps more of a tighter definition of secondary standards, we’re in the process now, and I hope many of you will show up Tuesday night for the examination of Richard. We’re in the process—in a couple of weeks we’ll ordain our next elder at RCC, which is a big step for us.

And once he gets on board, one of the things we’re going to start working on, one of the first tasks, will be perhaps some bylaws that we’ll run by the congregation and see if we want to make these part of our covenant statement, etc. And we’re also looking at other denomination secondary standards to see if there’s some possibility of associate membership, etc.

So we have some big areas that we’re looking at. And it’s very important that as we do these things and we evaluate much of what we’re doing, as we evaluate the men that God has called into office at RCC and we evaluate the written documents through which our covenant is formed, it’s very important that we recognize that the spirit of evaluation is quite vital for us to understand in terms of doing these things.

More than that, however, I think that this sermon and this portion of scripture is obviously always applicable to us. The spirit of evaluation extends not just to the special big events in our lives but rather to the small events as well. And we’ll talk about that a little bit later.

Now, basically I broke these four verses up into the need for evaluation, the means of continual evaluation, and then the actions to follow evaluation. And you’ll notice on your outline under point A of the second point at number two, we see bold type. And that bold type continues down to Roman numeral 3. The bold type is what we’ll be talking about today. Before the bold type is what we spoke about the end of December, and then point three we’ll address next week.

I want to deal separately and exclusively with the actions to follow evaluation in one sermon.

So we’re dealing with the bold portion of the outline, and at the top the bold portion as well is applicable. And the subtitle for this talk is “The Spirit of Evaluation Part Two.” The subtitle is “Maturation in the Standard of the Word as Mediated by the Spirit.”

Now there is a need for continual evaluation. That’s right. And we talked about this a little bit last month, but just to review quickly what we said then: we talked about the fact that this evaluation, this testing of all things, is really applicable to all of life. While Paul may have especially had in mind, as indicated by the second Thessalonians reference, prophesyings or statements about the second coming of Christ or a coming of Christ, certainly the need for continual evaluation is evident in this text.

It says to approve, or rather to evaluate or test all things—not simply those particular elements that are known as prophesyings. The context can indicate that those certainly must be evaluated, but beyond that, all things must be evaluated.

We have a need for continual evaluation. We talked about how the early church fathers and other places in church history talk about a statement attributed to Jesus himself. We don’t know that to be the case, but it’s certainly throughout the scriptures the case. And that is to be approved, money changers—or to be approved people that understand, evaluate, and test money. And throughout the scriptures, this testing that’s used here to approve has reference in various places to the testing of currency to see if it’s draws or to see if it’s really silver and gold.

Evaluations and testings are part of our life, and it’s part of what we do every day. You had to evaluate whether or not it was worthy in your mind to come to church today. And of course, you made that decision probably fairly automatically and quickly based upon His word and various provisions of it. But you also had to make various other decisions.

We have need for this continual evaluation in our life.

Secondly, we began to talk about the means of this continual evaluation that God gives us. And the first thing we spoke of was the grace of the spirit. It is the spirit himself. If all things in life are to be understood on the basis of the revealed word of God and not as brute facts in and of themselves—in other words, we don’t look at this microphone stand or this microphone or this piece of paper in isolation from their creator, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, with Jesus Christ being the creator, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit being the ones who have ordained this and brought it to pass.

All these things must be understood in relationship to their creator. They’re made for the purpose of bringing glory to him. And so all things must be tested and understood in relationship to our Father in heaven. Well, the spirit does just that. And the scriptures tell us clearly in the text we looked at last month that spiritual things must be spiritually discerned, and we cannot understand things around us correctly apart from the spirit who indwells us and teaches us how to evaluate and try things.

We talked about how this fire of the spirit—the term coming from the quenching of the spirit in verse 19—the term means to put out a fire. Some commentators have talked about how this kind of indicates the warmth of the spirit in our lives, giving us illumination, etc. And there’s some truth to that.

We remember we gave a little caveat that really the spirit and the fire of the spirit is related by John the Baptist to judgment, which is also part of the evaluations and testings that God does of us. He burns our dross out. But in any event, we can use that metaphor, that analogy, of the spirit as being fire. And that fire must be fed with the oil of compassion.

To think that we can correctly evaluate apart from a correct sense of compassion for our neighbor belies the various scriptures that we looked at the end of December. We must have love, compassion for our neighbor. We must have love for our neighbor. And there’s a relationship pointed out in the passages on your outline between that and a correct understanding and evaluation of the spirit.

The grieving of the spirit in Ephesians, that phrase is used, has specifically as its context the requirement to minister grace one to the other with our words. And so if we fail to do that, if we fail to exercise compassion toward our neighbor, we don’t really feed the fire of the spirit, so to speak. Instead we begin to quench it through those sorts of deeds.

Additionally, we pointed out in parallel passages—and particularly we looked at Romans as a big parallel passage to all of this—the parallel passages listing on your outline including Romans 12:6-14, etc. that our relationship to God is obviously also integrally related to the ability to understand and utilize the spirit of evaluation. If we don’t love God and love our neighbor, then we’re not going to really have the spirit be sensitive to the spirit’s leadings, and as a result we end up quenching the spirit in that sense—not the spirit himself of course, but rather the operation of the spirit in our lives.

And indeed we said that really is the context in 1 Thessalonians 5 as well. He’s given us instructions about our horizontal relationships, one with the other. And remember we talked about the need to understand our responsibilities one to the other—vertically and horizontally rather. But God also then went and talked about in 1 Thessalonians 5. The next lump of verses had to do with our understanding of our relationship to our Father in heaven, the need to rejoice and to give thanks and to pray in all things.

And both those things are necessary to get to this place now in the text where we’re told not to quench the spirit. The spirit can be quenched when it’s not fed with the oil of compassion, love for God, and love for our neighbor. But secondly—and this is where we begin in today’s material—that spirit must not be extinguished by quenching waters.

We must feed that spirit, the grace of the spirit, with the oil of compassion, and it must be protected from quenching waters. We’ll go through this briefly.

First of all, the scriptures list—there are many other references of course that we could use, but the scriptures that I’ve decided to use today—Jeremiah 20 tells us that one of the quenching waters that the Bible specifically warns us about is discouragement.

Jeremiah 20:8-9: “For since I spoke, I cried out. I cried violence and spoil because the word of the Lord was made a reproach unto me and a derision daily. Then I said, I will not make mention of him nor speak anymore in his name.” The word was made a reproach to me and a derision, so I said, “I’m not going to talk about this anymore.”

Jeremiah says, but goes on to say in verse 9: “But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing and I could not stay. I had to speak.”

He said sometimes we can be discouraged from the spirit of evaluation and speaking forth the word of God as it relates to a particular situation through discouragement. It doesn’t seem to do any good, for instance, to week after week, month after month, year after year talk about, for instance, a biblical evaluation of abortion as murder. You know, it’s a derision. People get mad at you. It’s not a message easily received.

And so we can be discouraged in the context of our everyday lives from speaking forth God’s word and feeding that evaluating fire of the Holy Spirit. Discouragement. And I’m sure that in the lives of many of us these last few months have had some element of discouragement. But if we are sensitive to the scriptures and what they teach us about God’s word, we’ll understand that his word then becomes a fire in our heart, as it would for Jeremiah.

We should pray to that end. We should pray also that we not allow the quenching fires of discouragement to prevent us from speaking forth the word and evaluating all that we have around us on the basis of God’s word.

Secondly, the fear of men can have a quenching effect on the work of the spirit in our hearts as well.

Amos 2:11-12: “God says, ‘I raised up your sons for prophets and of your young men for Nazarites. Is it not even thus, oh ye children of Israel?’ says the Lord. ‘But ye gave the Nazarites wine to drink and commanded the prophets, saying, Prophesy not.’”

The fact is that sometimes it’s not just discouragement or the inability of the men around us to respond correctly to the evaluating power of God’s word. Sometimes it’s their very opposition to us that can cause us to close our mouths, to close off our minds and evaluation in a biblical sense. They can say prophesy not—quit evaluating things and speaking forth God’s mind as it relates to specific events around us.

And when we have fear of men, it closes our mouths from proclaiming God’s word. This isn’t really quite so blatant in our day and age in the context of the local church. We wouldn’t see this kind of thing happening. But in the extended church, we do see a great emphasis, for instance, upon church growth movements, lowest common denominator Christianity, etc.

And one of the effects of this—and I’m going to relate this spirit of prophecy to something other than the pulpit in a little while, but in terms of the pulpit ministry of the church, the prophetic ministry of the church in that way—when churches give into a need to dumb down the gospel, remove references to sin, remove those portions of the worship service that bring conviction to people’s lives for the sake of increased congregations, they really are pouring the quenching water of the fear of men upon the ministration of the spirit in their heart.

And we want to be very careful that we don’t end up with a democracy view of what the spirit of prophecy and evaluation is all about. A democratic view or a polling aspect of the faith. No, that represents the fear of men. And if you want to go that route and get big crowds in for Sunday sermons, etc., it’s a very easy thing to do.

You simply play to the baser elements of men and drop off the use of the term sin, etc. This is a common device used in many evangelical and conservative churches today—the elimination of the reference of the word, use of the word sin. For instance, I know of a large church in this area that almost removed the name Bible from their church’s name because they thought that might give offense to the unbeliever.

And so this big emphasis upon—I know churches in the Reformed tradition in this state as well, in this area, that have explicitly tried to tailor their worship service to accommodate unbelievers and not offend them and bring them in somehow. Well, I think that this is really pouring the quenching waters of the fear of men upon the ministration of the spirit in our lives.

Thirdly, another quenching aspect can come, and according to Numbers 11, in terms of the prophesying, the quenching water of envy is also another problem that can affect us.

Numbers 11:28. Remember Numbers 11—that’s one of the key passages for government in the scriptures. You got Exodus 18 with heads of tens, fifties, hundreds, thousands. Numbers 11 has the selection of the seventy to assist Moses in the wilderness. Remember the people were asking, wanted better food and the administration of the people. Moses had a problem with that. So God takes seventy men and he takes the spirit that was upon Moses and he puts it upon those seventy men who were called officers in the text.

And we could talk about that in relationship to the office of deacon in the New Testament church. We’ve spoken of that before. But in any event, God takes the spirit upon Moses. He puts it upon the seventy and they prophesy. And even two that were in the camp—sixty-eight were out away and two were in the camp. They prophesied as well. So a real manifestation of God’s empowerment of a spirit-filled bureaucracy, so to speak. Very important text for us.

Well, for our use today, I want to point out that in verses 28 and 29, Joshua—no less a personage than Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of Moses, the text tells us, one of Moses’s young men. Now, he was young at the time. That probably has something to do with this. But in any event, Joshua answered and said, “My Lord Moses, forbid them.” That is, forbid these men, these elect, these seventy men from prophesying.

Moses said unto them, “Envy thou for my sake? Would God that all of the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon all of them.”

Envy. Joshua, according to Moses, envied for Moses’ sake. Remember envy says that you got what I can’t have and I can’t get it, so I’m going to take it away from you too. Envy on the part of those who are not called to a special office can produce rancor against people in that office.

You say I can’t get it, I don’t want you to get it either. And Joshua here could be interpreted as saying I don’t have the spirit of prophecy, and so you’re not going to get it either. And that’s a real problem.

Now, remember—and I’m getting a little ahead of myself here. I know this is what you do when you take a big text like this. You kind of run around it many times. But we’re going to talk to you a little bit later about how prophesying, of course, isn’t limited to pulpit ministry. It isn’t limited to special office.

What Moses asks for here—would that all the Lord’s people were prophets—is the case today in the New Testament. The gift of the Holy Spirit has been poured upon all mankind in the latter days. The young men prophesy, and so all the people prophesy. And so there is a sense in which we’re all prophets before God. And if somebody brings an understanding of God’s word, an evaluation of a situation in which you’re involved with, which is one of the aspects of prophecy, you may enviously not want him to do that because you didn’t bring that information.

And you may want to cut him off. You may want to say, “No, it’s not good.” And if you then try to put a damper upon his exposition of the scriptures, his explanation of them as they relate to your affair, then you’ve let this water of envy dampen the spirit of evaluation in the context of the church. So that’s a very common thing to have happen. The scriptures warn us about it.

But it’s interesting because Joshua, according to Moses, envied for Moses’ sake. It doesn’t just have to be an inferior to a superior. It can be a superior to another superior. I mean it can be a prophet to another prophet who also doesn’t want that person speaking. And so in terms of special office, you have to be very careful of that. You might want to keep people out of special office because you don’t want them prophesying as well as you.

And so that’s a very thing—you know, they can run either way. Envying and wanting somebody else to have what you see to be part of your prerogative or somebody else’s prerogative. These things can happen in many different ways.

The word of God tells us quite clearly here. I mean Joshua said, “These guys aren’t qualified. Stop them from doing this.” And Moses’ response is that’s the best thing. That’s the completion. When we get to the New Testament, when the Savior Messiah comes, all of God’s people will have that ability.

And later on—and again I’m getting ahead of myself—but in 1 Corinthians 14, we’re told that if people are prophesying, then maybe another person has a perspective and an understanding of a situation based in God’s word taught by the Holy Spirit. Let him speak. And so in the context of the church of Jesus Christ, everybody has this ability and power of evaluation. And the spirit of evaluation we’re talking about—we’re called upon to exercise it at different times.

And so we must be very careful not to try to restrict it to a particular class of people or a particular time.

So those are some of the quenching waters that can be thrown upon the gift of the spirit of evaluation: discouragement, fear, and envy.

Now, so again we’re continuing with the means. The means of the grace of the spirit fed with the oil of compassion, not quenched with these waters of discouragement, fear of men, and envy. But the spirit—the grace of the spirit—is mediated through the standard of the word. Or rather, the word is mediated through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit uses the standard of the word of God as he ministers the spirit of evaluation to us.

And this is where I want to spend a little bit of time. In your outline, basically what I’m going to do here is insert a section here, so to speak, a little discussion of what prophecy is between subpoint B and one of B—between the standard of the word and then the word of truth, orthodoxy. That’s where we’re going to be for a while now.

And you might get a little confused because I don’t have these subpoints listed in that portion of the outline, but I’ll try to make it more orderly for you as we go into this.

We’re talking now about verse 20: “Despise not prophesyings.” “Quench not the spirit.” And part of the job of quenching not the spirit is to despise not prophesying. Now, what does this mean? This is a text that can be pretty problematic, particularly in our day and age when the charismatic movement has challenged much of the conservative Christian community with statements such as this.

In other words, you’re despising prophesyings. You don’t have people get up and prophesy when the end of the world’s going to come or something. So you’re despising these prophesyings and so it’s not a good deal. You’re quenching the spirit.

Well, I don’t think it’s quite like that here in the text. We need to spend a little bit of time here talking about prophecy in the scriptures.

Lensky, I think, does a good job of summarizing the fact that there are essentially two different kinds of prophesying in scripture. There is the miraculous—the reception of immediate revelation. The other is the ordinary gift of prophecy, which is the reception of immediate revelation and the ability to transmit this required revelation to others.

In other words, before the completion of the canon, there was immediate revelation. God would directly give Paul a revelation to inspire him to write these things, for instance. So Paul was a prophet in the sense of this immediate revelation. But ordinarily, what happened since the completion of the canon is the idea of immediate revelation—in other words, that God will, the Holy Spirit will take a portion of God’s word, illuminate—illumination might be a better way to talk about this—illuminate to our minds and understanding, and then show us the relevance of that to a particular situation that we may be involved with or in the condition of the world around us, etc.

G.W. Garod in his commentary on First Thessalonians said that a prophet really can be, has three different components to it. It can be one of three things. The word prophet comes from two words meaning “forth” as the first part of the word. The second part of the word “to speak”—to speak forth. In other words, this is the basic element of the grammatical structure there.

And if we look at the scriptures, Garod’s definition is that a prophet is one who speaks forth. He can be number one, a foreteller. F-O-R-E-T-E-L-L-E-R. In other words, one who predicts something. He can be number two, a forteller. F-O-R-T-H as a herald or proclaimer for God. Speaking forth in that sense. Or he can be number three, a foreteller. F-O-R-E-T-E-L-L-E-R. One who speaks for God.

Now we normally think of the predictive element of prophecy. That is not the primary element of prophecy. It is and it can be an element—a prediction, a foreteller in that sense—but it’s not always that. And in fact, normatively, it’s not that. The prophet is the one who declares the mind of God in the power of the Holy Spirit. And throughout scripture, prophecy is linked to the gift of the Holy Spirit.

So in the context of our text, when Paul says, “Despise not prophesyings,” He’s telling us to stop treating the message of prophecy with contempt. That’s what a prophesying is—the message of prophecy. Stop treating this message of prophecy with contempt. And the Greek indicates that kind of verb tends to it—stop doing it. In other words, they were doing it.

There is the plural noun here without an article, which indicates that there are individual cases where the spirit spoke through prophesyings for the edification and instruction of the church, and they were being despised or set at naught—ignored, in other words, by members of the Thessalonian church.

Remember we said last month—when we talked on this—that Acts 17:10, when we talk about the Bereans, we always think of the Bereans as the ones who search out the scriptures diligently to see if this is so. And that’s certainly true of the Bereans. But Acts 17:11 says there were two things that characterized the Bereans that made them more noble than these Thessalonians. And the first thing was they received the word with all readiness of mind. They received it with readiness of mind. They didn’t despise it. See, they didn’t treat it secondarily, or they didn’t kind of ignore it.

Now, it’s true. They then evaluated it. They searched. And how do they evaluate it? They searched the scriptures to see if it correlated with the scriptures. But both are needed: a desire to hear evaluations of situations in the world around us on the basis of God’s word by one who has a message from God to speak forth in the situation. But they also tried or evaluated that according to the word of God. And both things are necessary.

Now, if we think of the Thessalonians, there’s no indication that they ever treated Paul’s statements with disdain. And so we can surmise—and it is only a surmise. I can’t prove this when you stretch the imagination—but it would not be at all unlikely that the prophesyings he’s talking about were explanations, illuminations that were made by individuals who spoke about the scriptures or the writings of Paul and related them to a particular situation in Thessalonica.

You see, in other words, it may well have been that mediate type of prophesying—on the fortelling without the fore on it—that was being ignored here by them. And so Paul is warning them not to do that.

So that’s essentially what’s going on here. Paul is warning them against this.

Now it is important that we recognize a couple of things here. And again, we’re dealing in this middle section of this outline. And we’re going to talk now a little bit about prophesying. We, as I said before, we tend to look at prophesying as some sort of prediction of the future. But consider what just some of these scriptures that are on your outline say.

1 Corinthians 14:3 says, “He that prophesieth speaketh unto man to edification, and exhortation, and comfort.” Edification, exhortation, comfort. Verse 31 says, “Pray that you all might prophesy one by one that all may learn and that all may be comforted.” That all may learn, that all may be comforted. The instructional aspect, learn, and comforting are some of the results of prophecy.

Acts 15:31: “Judas and Silas being prophets also themselves exhorted the brethren with many words and confirmed them.” Prophesying is linked over and over again with exhortation and with comfort and confirming the believers.

Ephesians 4:29—remember we said that’s a parallel passage to this grieving the spirit. Ephesians 4:29: “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers, and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.”

He doesn’t use the term prophecy, but he does say that you’re supposed to be ministering grace to the good of edifying. That’s what those prophets were doing. That’s what Judas and Silas, being prophets, did. They exhorted and edified and built up the brothers. And Paul in Ephesians 4:29, we’re to be evaluating our own speech. Is it corrupt or is it good for the purposes that the spirit desires it to be spoken for? If it’s corrupt, don’t let it out. If it is evaluated and found and tested to be good, the evaluation of the Holy Spirit, to minister grace to the congregation or to individual members of the congregation, that is a good thing. Then to speak forth that truth, and in that way you apply that evaluation to yourself, and you don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God.

Ephesians 4:11 tells us that he gave men to the church including prophets, and it says that their specific task is for the perfecting of the saints, for the edifying of the body of Christ, that we all come to unity of the faith, the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man.

So prophesying is linked strongly in the scriptures to edification and exhortation and comfort and confirmation—not to predictive elements, not to intellectual stimulation or curiosity. It’s got nothing to do with it.

The book of Revelation is the one prophecy so stated in the New Testament. Why is it there? If we treat it as aimed at the volitional aspect of men’s lives to encourage them to do what’s right, then we understand the book. But if we look at it from intellectual speculation, then the book is a closed book to us because we’re not evaluating it according to the graces of the Holy Spirit.

Now I want to spend just a couple of minutes here, and you can write this in the middle of that white section if it’s still open. And I’m going to do this real quickly, but I do want to make these points.

First of all, I’m going to relate prophecy to spirit and law. Okay? Together: spirit and then law. Then I’m going to relate prophecy to the group and to the individual. And then prophecy to council and covenant. And then prophecy to the voice of Jesus and the new man. Okay, so the first doublet is spirit and law, group and individual, council and covenant, Jesus and new man. Okay, we’re going to go real quickly through this.

First: spirit and law. The scriptures relate of course prophecy to the spirit. Second Peter 1:21 says, “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”

So prophecy is linked to the Holy Spirit. Luke 1:47: “Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost and prophesied.” Acts 2:18: “My handmaidens and my servants, I will pour out on those days my spirit and they shall prophesy.”

So throughout the scriptures, there’s a relationship between the spirit and prophecy. And most of us tend to understand that and relate that. But throughout the scriptures as well, there is a relationship between the spirit and prophesying and law.

Thought, for instance, Romans 2:18: “Thou know his will and approve the things that are more excellent being instructed out of the law.” The ability to approve the things, to evaluate the things, which Paul links through prophesying in the gift of the spirit in our verse, in Romans 2 he relates to being instructed out of the law. The way to evaluate—the way the spirit of evaluation works—is through instructions out of the law of God.

Romans 12:2: “Not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove that which is good and acceptable and perfect—that will of God.” There we’re told that again it is this transformation to the end that we might approve or apply the spirit of evaluation, which has to do with prophesying, to understand and evaluate things according to the word of God or according to the spirit of evaluation.

That spirit of evaluation works through the law of God. And that’s why I chose all those references from Psalm 119 for our songs and for our responsive reading today. The spirit, when he ministers to us in the sense of prophesying and the spirit comes upon us, he teaches us what? The words of Christ. And those words of Christ are the words of his law, the words of the scriptures. That law is the method for evaluation. The spirit of evaluation works through the law of God.

And so prophesying is linked to spirit, but it’s also linked to law. And indeed, the scriptures tell us in the gospels that up to the time of Jesus, the prophets and the law prophesied of the coming of Jesus. But “the prophets and the law” is a summary statement for all the Old Testament. But that doesn’t really change it, does it? I mean, part of the Old Testament is explicitly called law. Now all of the scriptures are law in the sense of all of the scriptures reveal the mind of God. All of the scriptures, the revealing of God’s mind in the sense of prophecy as well, but some books are prophetic oriented and others are law oriented.

And in the gospels, we’re told that the law rather and the prophets prophesied the coming of Jesus. So the law is related to the spirit. And we’ll talk, we’ll look at this in more detail a little bit later. But prophecy is linked to the spirit of God obviously, but it’s also linked in the sense of evaluation to the law of God.

In 1 Corinthians 14, we won’t take the time to read the verses, but verses 24 and following through 37, we have references of prophesying both in the context of a group but also individual men coming under conviction of that prophesying. Let’s see verse 25: “And thus the secrets of his heart that’s an individual—coming in, a non-believer is made manifest and falling down on his face, he will worship God and report that God is in you of a truth.”

Individuals seem to be the subject of some prophesyings in the context of the discussion of 1 Corinthians 14:25. So prophesying can be in the context of a group—as it frequently was and usually was in the Old Testament prophets, for instance, to all the nation of Israel. But on the other hand, prophesyings can be to a particular individual. Remember Paul himself received the prophetic utterance in terms of what he would find awaiting him in Jerusalem.

And so individual and groups are both the subjects of prophesyings according to the scriptures.

Interestingly enough, in 1 Corinthians 14:32 we read that the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. The context seemed to indicate there again that in the church in the New Testament church that’s being addressed, all men have been brought into the prophetic ministry in a general sense. And it says earlier than that—well, again, I talked about this before—that there’s this evaluation that goes on in the context of all the men.

In a way, it’s sort of like our question and answer period. You know, I stand up here and utter a prophetic ministry in a sense where I take God’s word and reveal it and apply it to individual situations to our context, etc. But then some of you are moved by the spirit of God to reveal to, to understand, how these things relate in a different way, and during that question and answer time we can have that kind of interchange where the prophesying—the evaluation—the application of God’s word and the power of the Holy Spirit to our cultural setting and to our lives and the lives of this body of the church as well—those things can be evaluated by all men.

The spirit of the prophets are subject to the prophets in an evaluative sense.

So the scriptures talk about prophecy in terms of groups and individuals, two directed at groups and at individuals.

And then third, this concept of the council of God and the covenant of God. And this is a little tougher to get. But you know, there’s this principle in the scriptures of interpretation where the first use of a word is very important. And the very first occurrence we have of a prophet in the scriptures is Abraham—not a man known for his prophetic utterances particularly.

And the situation in which Abraham is revealed by God to be a prophet declared so to be is in Genesis 20. The situation is this: a prophet has just given his wife to Abimelech. Abimelech is approached by God and says, “You know, Abraham is a prophet and he will pray for you.” Okay. And so Abimelech is admonished to give back Abraham’s wife and to not go near her.

Okay. So Abraham is revealed to be a prophet, and specifically there the sense is not some sort of prophetic utterance about the future at all. It’s the ability to approach God in prayer for the deliverance of one who needs protection. So this idea of prophet being part of the council of God—in other words, going to God, ushered into the council of God, and into deliberations with him to affect things that happen in the context of history—that is wrapped up in this concept of prophecy as well.

And indeed the prophets themselves of course would—for instance, Moses, the great prophet who is an emblem of the coming prophet to come, the Lord Jesus Christ, would make intercession for the people in his prophetic role. And so in that sense also the prophet is part of this council of God who brings prayers to God.

Abraham was called a friend of God. A friend of God is how Abraham was described in another portion relative to this portion of scripture in Genesis 20. Friends of the King. We talk about that expression down stairs at communion time. You see, we’ve been brought around the table of the King. We’ve been made friends with the King, Jesus Christ. We sit around the table as friends.

Well, in the Old Testament, the friend of the king was his counselor. The king would listen to him—wouldn’t obey him, wasn’t submissive to him in that sense, but he would get counsel from the friend of his, from his counselor. That’s a very important position in the Old Testament. We see again and again with the kings.

And so when we’re told that we are prophets, that we’re friends with the King in the New Testament, Jesus says, “I don’t know—I call you brothers now, friends.” And so he brings us into counseling him in terms of prayer and intercession. And so, for instance, part of our weekly worship service is the prayer that we offer up interceding, going into the council room of God, so to speak, and asking him particular things based of course upon things redounding to his glory.

So this idea of counsel to God is wrapped up in the idea of prophecy as well or prophesyings as well, because that’s what prophets were.

Isaiah 63—let’s see, Nehemiah 9:30 says, “Yet many years did thou forbear them and testified against them by thy spirit in thy prophets. Yet would they not give ear, therefore gave you them into the hand of the people of the land.”

What’s being talked of there is why the people went into captivity. Remember Nehemiah, they’ve come out of captivity. Why do they go into captivity? Well, he says, “You testified against them by your spirit in the prophets.” And so prophets are those who under the control and empowerment of the Holy Spirit testified against a particular people.

Abraham as a prophet could bring prayer for Abimelech, but Abraham could also bring prayer against Abimelech. And Abraham could bring to Abimelech a message from God, from God’s council room, so to speak, a message of judgment against them.

And repeatedly in the Old Testament, that’s the primary thing all the prophets are doing. They’re not on the scene giving predictive elements. Primarily, the prophets in the scriptures are those who are particularly whose particular mission is to go forth from God and to speak forth a testimony against the people for their violation of the covenant of God. They bring what some have called a covenant lawsuit against God’s people on behalf of God. They speak forth the mind of God. They’re forth-tellers. And they’re forth-tellers in the sense of bringing the council room decisions of God relative to violations of his covenant home to people individually and as a group.

And you see here again, this is where we can bring back in this concept of the spirit as fire and judgment—that’s part of what the prophesying of the Old Testament was all about. There was the fire of the spirit involved because they were bringing covenant lawsuit against God’s people.

Isaiah, for instance, is just one of many examples. But Isaiah 63, we read, “They rebelled. They vexed his Holy Spirit. Therefore he was turned to be their enemy and he fought against them. He’s stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears.” Well, anyway, Isaiah there brings their sins of the people home to them. The fact that they had vexed his Holy Spirit. The prophets had brought these warnings against them from God’s council room, and they ignored or tried to quench or essentially put out the manifestation of that spirit’s work in the context of their group.

So prophesying also has this connotation, this relationship between council and covenant. It evaluates the situation lies around us according to God’s word, which is a covenant word. And then on the basis of that, the spirit teaches, illumines our heart to understand things and to speak forth the decisions of the council of God relative to individual’s lives or the lives of a nation as well.

And so in many ways, for instance, the sermon last was more prophetic in taking the sins of the people against God’s law word, making them manifest in the context of the culture around us. So that’s the prophetic element as well.

And then finally: the voice of Jesus and the new man. And this is kind of brings all this together. We read in the book of Revelation 19 that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

The testimony of Jesus spoken of in Revelation, of course, is the testimony that John has received relative to the course of history—the judgments that God will bring forth upon a rebellious and apostate nation that had rejected Messiah. That’s the testimony of Jesus. It is the evaluation and prediction of what occurs in history based upon understanding of the covenant, the laws of the covenant, and then the predictive aspects of the covenant—blessings and cursings. That word of Jesus, his law, his testimony of history in relationship to that law and the working out of God’s providence—that is according to Revelation 19, the spirit of prophecy.

Now, it’s interesting because in 1 Samuel 10, Saul was possessed by the spirit, so to speak. He was told the following—and this actually occurred to him: “The spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them and shall be turned into another man.” Strange terminology—to be turned into a new man, another man in a sense. Saul was spoken of as a new man here in this sense, but directly related to the coming of the spirit of the Lord upon Saul and his prophesying as a result.

Now, what I’m trying to get at here is that I think if we bring all these things together in terms of prophecy and understanding what “despise not prophesyings” means, it be specifically this:

We are ushered into the fellowship of the Trinity—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—have fellowship together and they consider things, so to speak, as it were in our limited understanding. This is the way God explains it to us. They consider things together. They have communion and discussions amongst themselves. “Let us make men in our own image.” Or then later when they’re going to bring judgment upon Sodom, “Shall we withhold this thing from Abraham? He’s our prophet. He’s the one that gets to discuss these things with us.”

And they allow Abraham to come into that discussion, the evaluation of the situation in Sodom and then God’s actions against it based upon violations of his law.

And I think that is a foretelling of what all of us are involved with now in the Christian church. We are covenantally, in the person and work of Jesus Christ our savior. We are new men because we have the testimony of Jesus. We’re one with our savior now. And because we’re one with Jesus Christ, because the new humanity has been brought into that dialogue between Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, we have access into that dialogue and we speak forth on the basis of the testimony of Christ one to the other, one to the church and to the world.