Paul's Final Instructions

Believe it or not, we have already arrived at the end of 1 Thessalonians and while there is so much more that I wish we could have covered from these 5 great chapters, I am happy that by the end of tonight, there has not been a single verse that we have not read together. Unfortunately, I’m not here tonight to finish it with you in person but I am excited to be back next week as we roll right into 2 Thessalonians which will carry us through the end of the school year. At the end of chapter 5, Paul is wrapping up his letter and what is amazing about the section of verses that we are going to look at tonight and I would argue that while all of the letter is applicable, this series of verses just might be the most applicable section of the entire letter. Paul just puts forth application in an almost rapid fire like burst and time and camera battery fails us to be able to look at each statement that Paul makes in detail but I will bring to our attention 4 of the statements that I feel have not be represented in other lessons that we have done recently. One of the statements that Paul makes in verse 16 is that we are to rejoice always and that is one of the main themes that we went through last year in Philippians. Let’s just go ahead and dive into these last few verses and I encourage you to follow along in your own Bible or you can just watch me awkwardly read for the next minute or so. Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28

1 Thessalonians 5:12–28 ESV

We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it. Brothers, pray for us. Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

As you heard and may have seen as you followed along, there is so much practical instructions in these verses, there is so much that can be applied to our lives. So, what are the 4 statements that I want to draw our attention to? 1. Encourage the fainthearted and help the weak. 2. Pray without ceasing. 3. Give thanks. 4. and test everything. We could spend weeks looking at the last few verses but I think that these 4 statements will be good for us because we haven’t really spent much time looking at these things.

Encourage the Fainthearted

I think one thing that is worth stressing out of all of Paul’s instructions here is that he is simply asking us as believers to do that which Jesus has already done. Look at this list and it really does sound like he is just describing Jesus. Jesus is the Prince of Peace, He constantly encouraged and helped the weak, He has shown a great deal of patience, He sought good and never evil, the author of Hebrews says that Jesus endured the cross for the joy that was set before Him, who was more constantly in prayer than Jesus? Who embraced the Spirit, held fast to what was good, and abstained from evil more than Christ? Really, the purpose of our sanctification is to produce little Christ’s. I mean that in a totally non-blasphemous way but we are saved so that we can glorify God and live and look like Christ. Let’s look at one of Paul’s first statements that we are to encourage the fainthearted and help the weak. From one end of the Bible to the next, we clearly see the command to love our neighbors and to care for the less fortunate. There is a special place in God’s heart for the hurting. Take one look at the sermon on the mount and you see Jesus speak about the need to help others and look at His miracles, they all address hurting, weak, and fainthearted people. Paul all through this letter has called the Thessalonians to encourage the fainthearted. Fainthearted, the Greek for it just means those that are discouraged. Look back at 1 Thessalonians 5:11, Paul says encourage one another and build one another up. He says the same thing in 1 Thessalonians 4:18. In chapters 2-3 we read about how Timothy was sent to encourage the believers and how Paul encouraged them while he was there. Paul recognizes how easy it is to become discouraged and one of the marks of our sanctification is our willingness to encourage others. James says in James 1:27

James 1:27 ESV

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

This is such an important verse when it comes to the good works that we do in the name of Jesus. I think much of what can be applied from this verse can be applied to what Paul says about us encouraging and helping the weak. When we look at what James says, you may ask, “how can religion be pure and undefiled before God through visiting orphans and widows in their affliction and keep oneself unstained from the world?” You might understand the part of being unstained from the world because we’ve talked quite a bit about how we as Christians are in the world but not of the world. That we are to live lives that are holy and pleasing to the Lord but what is it about visiting? When I say the word visit, what comes to your mind? If you are like me, when you think of someone visiting, don’t you think of someone who is just popping in to say hello? Or maybe a friend comes over to see you for a little bit? Is this what God means? Does He mean that we just need to stop in and give the less fortunate a pat on the back? I don’t think so. What we need to do is look at what visiting meant to a 1st century Christian that was familiar with how that word was used in the Old Testament. I’ll just give you a few examples but one thing that you see numerous times in the Old Testament is God Himself visiting His people and this visiting always happens when? When they are weak and discouraged. In Ruth 1:6 we read

Ruth 1:6 ESV

Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food.

1 Samuel 2:21 “Indeed the Lord visited Hannah, and she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters. And the boy Samuel grew in the presence of the Lord.” Jeremiah 27:22 “They shall be carried to Babylon and remain there until the day when I visit them, declares the Lord. Then I will bring them back and restore them to this place.”” Psalm 65:9 “You visit the earth and water it; you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water; you provide their grain, for so you have prepared it.” These are just 4 examples where God comes with an expressed and intentional purpose. When God visits, stuff happens. It is intentional, it is to address a great need of the ones that He comes to. Perhaps the greatest example of this is when Zechariah says in Luke 1:68 ““Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people” To visit the poor and the powerless in the way that God intends is for us to not just address their need and provide but to love them with the very love with which God has visited us. When God comes to visit, it isn’t just to say that He has done it but to actually and truly accomplish something in the lives of the hurting. Douglas Moo said, “Care for orphans and widows is commanded in the Old Testament as a way of imitating God’s own concern for them—he is the ‘Father of the fatherless and protector of widows.’” How can you apply this to your life? You don’t need to travel far to find people around you that are hurting. Who in your life can you be like God to? Who in your life can you come to at just the right moment to love, care, and provide for. You don’t need to financially support someone through college to love them. Be all there and show that you love them. Encourage the fainthearted and help the weak.

Pray Without Ceasing

The next thing that I want to quickly touch on is 1 Thessalonians 5:17 where Paul says that we are to pray without ceasing. I think we all struggle with prayer. I certainly don’t spend as much time in prayer as I would like to or should. When Paul says that we are to pray without ceasing, does that mean that we are supposed to spend our lives 24/7 in prayer? No, that’s not what Paul is calling us to do. Instead, what he means is that we are to all have an attitude of prayer at all times. Leon Morris summarized what we are to do really well when he said, “It is not possible for us to spend all our time with the words of prayer on our lips, but it is possible for us to be all our days in the spirit of prayer, realizing our dependence on God for all we have and are, being conscious of his presence with us wherever we may be, and yielding ourselves continually to him to do his will.” We will never outgrow our need for prayer. We will never communicate to God all that we will be able to communicate. One thing that we need to do is look at the prayer life of Christ. Jesus didn’t just pray to say that He did it but He sought out time to pray. He desired to commune with His Heavenly Father. There were so many times in Christ’s earthly ministry when He would have crowds surrounding Him and He was getting really popular and instead of staying put, He would withdraw from the crowd and go pray. Before He chose the 12, He prayed. Before He was arrested in the garden, what was He doing? He prayed. On the cross, what did He do? He prayed! If Jesus put such a high emphasis on prayer, shouldn’t we? If the Son of God felt the need to be before His Father in prayer, shouldn’t the People of God strive to do the same? The more time we spend in prayer, the greater our faith will be. Jonathan Edwards went as far as saying that prayer is simply the voice of faith. We pray with the faith and confidence that God will hear us and while we may not spend night and day in prayer, we can always have the attitude of prayer. We can always have God high and lifted up in our hearts and minds, we can always recognize that we need God more than anything and desire to be in His presence. We can always live our lives with the recognition that God’s will shall be done and a desire that we would be used for His will and His glory.

Give Thanks

The next thing that I want us to look at is 1 Thessalonians 5:18 “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” Time out, I thought that Paul said just a chapter or so ago that the will of God for us was our sanctification? Did Paul forget he said that? No because remember that this is God’s preceptive will. This is what God desires for us to do and just as He desires us to be holy, He desires that we give thanks. Regardless of what is happening in your life, there is always something to be thankful for. We are debtors to the One that has paid our debt and our salvation is something that we can always be thankful for because our salvation does not depend on circumstances. But what if I just found out that I have cancer and my dog died and my wife left me and my house burned down? How can I give thanks in that? Because if you are a Christian, you are a child of God and that is something that can never be removed from you. Even Job found a reason to worship. John Calvin said, “God is so disposed toward us in Christ that even in our afflictions we have abundant cause for thanksgiving.” God has given us things now and will give us such amazing things in the future that we will never be able to have a moment where we can’t be thankful. God gives us good things but the greatest thing that He has given to us is Himself and in that, we can always be thankful. One last thing and then we will wrap up.

Test Everything

Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21 “Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good.” This is something that we have talked about a little bit and I wish we could talk about it more some day. I am not one of those people that says that spiritual gifts are no longer in use. If God wants something to be done, it’ll be done. If He chooses to use human instruments to do it, praise be to Him. What I do not enjoy is when people come along and say, “God told me this, or thus says the Lord” and it is totally out of line as to what the Bible teaches. We do not need a greater revelation than what God has already provided for us. If there was something that we absolutely needed to know in the Bible in order to be saved and glorify God, God would have put it there. Christians are far too eager to jump at the first thing that sounds Christian. Instead we need to be like the Bereans in Acts 17 where they took what Paul had said and went to the Old Testament to make sure that what he said lined up with Scripture. John would later say in 1 John 4:1 “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” What is the test then when it comes to truth? When it comes to what God says? When it comes to prophecy? Does it line up with the Word of God! That is the test. God’s Word never changes, therefore that which God states in His Word comes with all the authority and unchangeableness of God Himself. No one gets to come along and say, “That’s what God meant in the 1st century but here is what this means in the 21st century.” I understand that their are dietary laws and ceremonial laws in the Old Testament that don’t apply to us but even what those laws were for was so that we could recognize that we are to be set apart and holy as God is holy. Truth does not get dictated by feelings. You don’t get to change what God says because you don’t like what He said. Remember what I’ve said before, the Word of God is not hard to understand but it is hard to swallow. When things come that claim to be Christian, we need to test to make sure that they are Christian. You can put a lot of fabreeze on garbage and it’s still garbage. God wants us to test the spirits to see whether or not something is from Him. Something that happened fairly recently was the “revival” in Kentucky and I would say that even that is something that we should test to see whether it was truly a revival, if it was truly from God. I hope that it was but I think there are things that we need to test to make sure. If it’s from God, I think we are going to see it make a huge impact for years to come. It could have just been a prolonged worship service and even that is not a bad thing. But there were some things that concerned me about it and no it’s not just because according to some I just like to find fault with things. I heard a lot of talk about how the Holy Spirit was front and center. There were quite a few interviews that I saw where the star of the day seemed to be the Holy Spirit. Before I get questioned on that, I believe that the Holy Spirit is God and should be worshipped. But Jesus Himself said in John 15:26

John 15:26 ESV

“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.

The goal of the Holy Spirit is not to point to Himself but to bear witness about Christ. So, I believe wholeheartedly that the Holy Spirit should receive praise, honor, and glory but when the Spirit moves it moves hearts in the direction of Christ so I believe that when revival comes, there should be more talking and praising Christ above all else. Now could this have been happening? Yes absolutely but this is why we test everything. I also think that when you look at the university that the revival happened, it’s theology is never very strong and I think that should concern us. I think we should also look at how since the 1900’s Asbury university has claimed to be the site of close to 10 different revivals and I think you have to ask, “Why this place and this place only?” When you look at the Great Awakening, it expanded well beyond Northampton and went all throughout the colonies. The Great Awakening didn’t just bring people in, it sent them out. I think that needs to happen for revival to really be revival. Something that should be alive needs to come to life again. Revival means more than just Christians become more Christian. Revival sees the lost saved and the spiritually dead raised to everlasting life. How can we determine if things are from the Lord? By testing them and holding fast to what is good. If something is from God, praise God that He is doing it. But not everything that bares the name of Christian belongs to Christ. Paul applies this mindset when he talks about the offspring of Abraham and says in Romans 9:6-7 “But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.”” Test to see if what claims to be Christian is from God and if you have to shape and edit and cut Scripture so that it meets that mark, it isn’t from the Lord.

May we be found blameless when He comes

As Paul ends this first letter to the Thessalonians, he says in 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.” As we close in prayer I want us to meditate on those words. I want us to pray that God would apply those words into our lives. We have spoken much of Christ’s return and we will continue to talk about what that looks like over the next few months but even if He comes back tonight, my prayer is that we would be found spotless and blameless as He comes. I want Him to find a people that are pleasing to Him and take a look at the world. Surely, He is coming soon and I want us to be ready. Are your hearts right with Him? Are you lives in line with the Gospel? Are you growing in your faith and sanctification? Lord willing, next week we will see more of what a Church looks like that is eager to see their Savior return and a Church that is growing deeper in their faith. Let’s pray.