Church Matters (Part 2)

Lead Vocalist (Phoebe)

Welcome & Announcements (Hopson)

Good morning family!

Ask guests to fill out connect card

____ announcements:

1) Announcement 1

What to do and how to respond

2) Announcement 2

What to do and how to respond

3) Announcement 3

What to do and how to respond

Now please take a moment of silence to prepare your heart for worship.

Call to Worship (1 Chronicles 16:8-10)

Prayer of Praise (Audrey Hammond)

Rejoice

How Firm A Foundation

Prayer of Confession (___________), Doubting the sufficiency of Scripture

Assurance of Pardon (Isaiah 44:22)

I Am Not My Own

What A Friend We Have In Jesus

Scripture Reading (1 Thess. 5:12-22)

You can find it on page 1174 in the black Bibles

Pastoral Prayer (Hopson)

Prayer for PBC—PBC gatherings

Prayer for kingdom partner—Emmaus Baptist (Scott Wade)

Prayer for US—Against abuse

Prayer for the world—US Virgin Islands

Leader—_________

Social issue(s)—_________

Spiritual issue(s)—_________

Local churches—_________

Laborers—_________

Pray for the sermon

SERMON

START TIMER!!!

What are churches supposed to do when we gather?

If you look at your bulletin, you’ll notice that our worship services at PBC are pretty simple.

We pray, we sing, we teach the Bible, sometimes we celebrate baptism or the Lord’s Supper, and that’s pretty much it.

Perhaps your response to that is BOOOORING!

Why don’t we ever spice things up a bit?

I grew up attending churches that incorporated things like military recognition, dramas, skits, visual art, interpretive dances, testimony times, altar calls, and special musical performances into their worship services.

Or if we wanted to get really crazy we could have a foot washing ceremony or a snake handling service.

As long as Mike Klaassen is the one handling the snakes!

Now—apart from the snakes—some of those things aren’t necessarily bad.

I am so grateful for our military, and I think that it’s important that communities recognize them.

I like a good drama. Occasionally I’ll binge watch one on Netflix. I’ve even found a few plays that I didn’t hate.

I couldn’t tell you a Rembrandt from a Monet, but I’m not against art.

I respect the people who can do interpretive dance, I just can’t ever interpret it for some reason.

Testimonies can be incredibly encouraging.

Many people have become Christians during an altar call.

I love listening to a good musical performance.

I’ll admit I don’t like washing other people’s feet, but that’s probably the point. Besides, I understand the symbolism.

I would even pay money to watch Mike Klassen handle a snake. Just not in church, please.

The reason we DON’T do those things when we gather is quite simple.

We’re NOT grumpy about any of those things.

We DON’T think we’re too cool, or too unskilled, or too busy.

We DO think those things have some value in the right context.

But we believe that God didn’t leave local churches in the dark about what to do when they gather.

This is not the Wild, Wild, West or the Book of Judges where every church gets to do what is right in it’s own eyes.

We believe the Bible gives us clear instructions on what to do when we gather.

There’s a scholar of early church worship named Ralph Martin who argues that our passage this morning—1 Thessalonians 5:16-22—reads like the main ingredients of a faithful church service. [1]

Let’s read these verses again…

1 Thessalonians 5:16–22—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.

There are many Christians who look at these verses and mistakenly assume they are individual instructions rather than group instructions.

“I’ve got to always rejoice, I can’t stop praying, I’ve got to give thanks in all circumstances, etc.”

While it’s certainly good to do all those things, this passage is not listing a bunch of random instructions for individual Christians. In fact, I don’t think that’s what Paul is doing at all.

Instead, I think Paul is giving the Thessalonian Christians instructions for what local churches are supposed to do when they gather.

Before we dive into the meat of today’s sermon, let me give you THREE REASONS I think this passage is giving instructions for local church gatherings [2]:

First, all the verbs in our text are plural.

There are eight imperatives—eight commands—in our passage: rejoice, pray, give thanks, don’t quench, don’t despise, test, hold fast, and abstain.

Every single one of those words is plural in the original language, meaning Paul is not giving instructions for individual Christians but for the entire Christian community.

Second, some of the activities described here are clearly intended to happen in the public gathering.

When Paul talks about “prophecies” in verse 20, he’s talking about something that happened in ancient Christian public worship services. We’ll talk more about that as we go along.

If you look a bit further down, Paul continues to talk about things that only happen when the local church is gathered.

You can only “greet all the brothers with a holy kiss” like verse 26 commands if all the brothers and sisters are gathered together.

The same is true about Paul’s instructions in verse 27 to read this letter when everyone is gathered together.

The third reason I believe this passage is describing local church gatherings is the context.

We introduced this passage last week and said the Big idea was...

A thriving local church will structure all it does according to the Scriptures.

We said Paul discusses Three Areas of Church Life that Must be Structured According to the Scriptures:

In verses 12-13 we learned about The Local Church and it’s LEADERS, a group of men called pastors or elders.

In verses 14-15 we learned about The Local Church and it’s MEMBERS, and our responsibility to admonish, encourage, and help one another.

In verses 16-22 Paul is NOT changing the subject.

He is not switching gears to a few random commands for individual Christians!

He is explaining the Third Area of Church Life that Must be Structured According to the Scriptures:

3) The Local Church and its GATHERINGS (16-22)

Once you see this passage is giving instructions for the local church, it revolutionizes your understanding of the text.

You begin to see what James Grant writes in his commentary:

“This section is not just a lot of dos and don’ts, but this section is gospel life, the way brothers and sisters should live together in the church because they have been united to Christ. This is what life should look like because of the gospel. We have here something like family guidelines for the congregation, and Paul groups these guidelines under three sections regarding congregational responsibility: toward the pastor (vv. 12, 13), toward each other (vv. 14, 15), and toward worship (vv. 16–22).” [3]

We looked at the first two sections last week. This morning we’re looking at what Paul has to say about what churches should do when we gathered for worship.

In our text I want you to notice Four Main Ingredients of Faithful Church Gatherings:

The first ingredient we need if we’re going to structure our gatherings according to the Scriptures is…

A) PRAISE

1 Thessalonians 5:16—Rejoice always

Far too many Christians have ripped this verse out of context, turning it into an individual command to be happy all the time.

But remember, this is a command for local church gatherings.

With that in mind, listen to what John Stott says about this verse:

“Paul is issuing not an order to be happy but an invitation to worship, and to joyful worship at that. Yet many church services are unforgivably gloomy and boring. Although, to be sure, it is always appropriate to worship Almighty God with awe and humility, yet every service should also be a celebration, a joyful rehearsal of what God has done and given through Christ.” [4]

This command to rejoice always is a command for our local church gatherings to always include praise to our God.

But what FORM is this praise supposed to take?

Can we do visual art performances? Or a drama? Or an interpretative dance?

Again, those things aren’t necessarily wrong. But the question is, are they right for a local church gathering?

What does the Bible tell us to do?

If we look at a few other places in the New Testament we can find an answer.

Ephesians 5:19—addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart

Colossians 3:16—Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

The FORM our praise is supposed to take in local church gatherings isn’t dramas, or skits, or dance, it’s SINGING.

Let’s camp out here for a few moments to think about what our singing should look like based on these verses.

—Every Christian should sing.

If you’re not a Christian, you get a free pass. We don’t want you to sing words like “I belong to the Lord” if you don’re really belong to Him. We want you to repent and believe in Jesus and THEN sing with joy!

But if you are a Christian, the expectation is that you will sing.

This is particularly a problem for Christian men. I see so many Christian guys who keep their mouths shut and look at the screens while we’re singing.

Listen, these verses don’t say anything about singing WELL. But they do say you should SING!

Have you ever considered that singing in the worship gathering is not a matter of preference, but of obedience?

—Our songs should be congregational.

In both Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3 we are told to sing for one another.

This means we should try to sing songs that are relatively easy for congregations to sing.

By the way, we don’t always make perfect choices here, so if we pick a song that is really hard for you to sing even once you know the song, please talk to one of the pastors or one of the music team so we can evaluate if it’s the right song for us.

We should also avoid long instrumental solos where we just awkwardly stare at the musicians and pray to God that the sound doesn’t cut out.

We should have the sound loud enough that you can easily here the melody of the song, but not so loud that you can’t here the voices around you.

And we shouldn’t dim the lights like we’re at a rock concert while we’re singing, because this isn’t a you and Jesus moment it’s a you and God’s people and Jesus moment.

—Our songs should be biblically rich.

Look at Colossians 3:16 again: Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

We want to sing songs that are rich with Scripture.

So we carefully choose songs—not based on whatever is hot on Christian Radio—but based primarily on what the song actually says.

—We should sing different types of songs.

Both passages list “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” as three types of songs Christian churches should sing.

The interesting thing is that, although there’s been lots of guesses, nobody really knows what the difference between those three types of songs are.

And I think that’s the point.

So at PBC we try to sing old songs and new songs, fast songs and slow songs, happy songs and songs of lament.

And your job is to try to learn those songs and not get overly grumpy because it’s new.

The first ingredient we need if we’re going to structure our gatherings according to the Scriptures is praise through singing.

Second, our gatherings should include…

B) PRAYER

1 Thessalonians 5:17—pray without ceasing

Again, far too many Christians have ripped this verse out of context, turning it into an individual command to never, ever, ever stop praying. Or to always be in a spirit of prayer.

But remember, this is a command for local church gatherings.

James Grant is once again helpful here:

“When Paul tells us to ‘pray without ceasing,’ this should be a characteristic of worship too. If we look at this in an individualistic way, this is a difficult command and impossible to fulfill. But in corporate worship we are to season the whole service with prayer, and that type of attitude should carry us through the week.” [5]

So if I could paraphrase what I think the Spirit is saying to us here it’s this: Don’t give up on prayer in your gatherings.

Because we see different types of prayer in the Bible, we try to incorporate that into our worship services.

We begin with a prayer of praise, and the goal of that prayer is to simply praise God for who He is.

Then we pray a prayer of confession, and the goal of that prayer is to humbly confess our sin before God.

Our pastoral prayers are prayers of intercession, which means someone is interceding on our behalf and bringing our requests before God.

After the sermon there’s a prayer of thanksgiving where we simply thank God for speaking to us through His Word.

Just like we did with singing, let’s camp out here for a few moments to think about how we can get the most out of our prayer time together.

—Pray alongside the person praying.

It’s very easy to turn your mind off when someone else is praying and zone out. I get that, I’ve done it a million times myself.

But I am far more helped when I actively pray in my heart alongside the person who is praying.

And here’s a super simple way to do this: SAY AMEN OUT LOUD!

—Volunteer to pray!

We don’t want PBC to be a church where the “professionals” do all the ministry. So we deliberately invite both men and women to pray in our services every week. If you’re interested, talk to one of our elders.

And by the way, you may have noticed that many of the people praying bring notes with them. Perhaps that feels strange and maybe even wrong. “Can it really be genuine if he’s got notes?”

Well, can a sermon be genuine when the preacher has notes?

Can a song still be genuine even if the music team has lyrics?

If you’d rather be a bit more spontaneous when you pray, that’s fine! But don’t judge the genuineness of the person who relies on a few notes to help them as they pray.

The second ingredient we need if we’re going to structure our gatherings according to the Scriptures is prayer.

Third, our gatherings should include…

C) THANKSGIVING

1 Thessalonians 5:18—give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

By now hopefully it’s clicked that these are instructions for the local church gathering.

So what is the Holy Spirit saying here that hasn’t already been said by the command to rejoice in verse 16?

Local church gatherings should be marked by thanksgiving no matter what we’re going through.

If this should be true for the persecuted Thessalonians, it should also be true for us.

But in addition to this general spirit of gratitude, John Stott brought something else up in his commentary that was helpful. [6]

Look at verse 18 again: do you what the word for “thanks” is in the original language?

SHOW EUCHARIST SLIDE

It’s the Greek word eucharistia.

Does that word sound familiar to anybody? Some Christian traditions use the word eucharist to refer to the Lord’s Supper.

As early as the first century Christians were calling the Lord’s Supper the eucharist.

That means that Christians living around the same time as the Apostles viewed the Lord’s Supper as a key expression of the church’s thanksgiving.

So when Paul says “eucharistia”—give thanks— in all circumstances, at least part of what he has in mind here may be the regular observation of the Lord’s Supper.

What are some practical lessons we can learn about how we take the Lord’s Supper together?

—Be content!

I realize I may have upset some of you who love all the other frills that some churches include to help picture the gospel in their worship services.

But why would we add visual displays of the gospel to our worship services when we already have a visual display of the gospel from Jesus Himself in communion?

Don’t try to come up with a better picture of the gospel than Jesus!

EXPLAIN THE GOSPEL

—Be thankful!

I grew up in local churches where the Lord’s Supper was like a funeral.

Now I get it, there is a weightiness about what we’re doing here. We shouldn’t be flippant about the Lord’s Supper!

And yet, we should take it with joy!

When Matthew, Mark, Luke, and 1 Corinthians talk about the Lord’s Supper they mention thanksgiving.

So yes, examine yourself. But also, be HAPPY!

—Be faithful!

If communion is at least part of what Paul has in mind by this command to “give thanks in all circumstances” then we shouldn’t allow much time to pass before we take communion.

Many Christian traditions take the Lord’s Supper every week for this very reason.

I would not complain if one day that became our practice at PBC. But for now we celebrate it once a month. But if you’re not faithfully gathering with us you may go months and months without taking this meal.

So be faithful to gather with God’s people whenever you can, not simply whenever it’s convenient.

The third ingredient we need if we’re going to structure our gatherings according to the Scriptures is thanksgiving.

Finally, our gatherings should include…

D) WORD

1 Thessalonians 5:19–22—Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.

This ingredient may be the hardest to understand at face value.

So lean in for a second and really pay attention while I do my best to explain what Paul is saying here.

You need to remember that when this was written there was NO New Testament.

This was the first letter Paul wrote that’s been preserved in Scripture.

The book of James is the only book of the New Testament that may have been written before this one.

So we are looking at one of the oldest books—if not THE oldest book—in the entire New Testament.

Before the New Testament was completely written, there were people who had a spiritual gift to prophesy.

In his book Daily Doctrine, Kevin DeYoung writes this about the New Testament prophets:

“Like their Old Testament counterparts, New Testament prophecy needed to be weighed and could be proven true or false. The one congregational prophet we hear from directly—Agabus in the book of Acts— sounds like an Old Testament prophet when he declares, ‘Thus says the Holy Spirit’ (Acts 21:11). This suggest that while God may still give supernatural insight to believers, and preachers may still speak with prophetic power, it is best to think of prophets as having ceased along with the apostles. Indeed, New Testament apostles and prophets are part of the once for all, nonrepeatable foundation of the church (Eph. 2:20).” [7]

So in the early church there were people—like Agabus in Acts 21— who could stand up before the congregation and speak prophetic words from the Holy Spirit.

So with all that as background, here is my paraphrase of what Paul is saying to the Thessalonian church:

“Don’t extinguish the Spirit’s work by rejecting prophecies before you listen to them and test them. Once you’ve tested them, hold fast to the true and good prophecies. But abstain from the prophecies that are false and evil.”

In addition to the Old Testament Scriptures, these prophecies were one of the ways the early church heard from God in their gatherings.

How do we hear from God in our gatherings today?

Not through prophets. They were the foundation and you don’t keep laying a foundation forever.

We hear from God by reading what the Apostles and Prophets wrote. We have the completed Word of God!

The main ingredient in our worship services today is to hear God speak to us through His prophetic Word!

What are some practical lessons we can learn as we we receive God’s Word together?

—Test the sermon by the standard

Just like the Thessalonians needed to test the prophecies in their gatherings by the standard of God’s Word, we should test the preaching we hear by its faithfulness to God’s Word.

One way to do this is by keeping your Bible open while the preacher is preaching. Read the passage in advance. Ask God to help you to understand. Check what he says by the rest of the Scriptures. And don’t be afraid to ask the preacher if you don’t understand.

—Take the sermon with you

Paul told the Thessalonians to “hold fast” to the prophecies that were good.

In a similar way, you should do your best to hold fast to everything the preacher says that is faithful to Scripture.

If it helps, take notes so it’s easier to remember. What’s probably even more helpful with this is to take some time after the service in a life group or with friends talking about what God talk you from the sermon.

Most importantly, fight to actually put the Word of God into practice.

A thriving local church will structure all it does according to the Scriptures.

Our weekly gatherings should include praise, prayer, expressions of thanksgiving like communion, and faithful teaching on the prophetic Word of God.

I don’t know about you, but I think are hands are full enough to faithfully do these things that we shouldn’t have a lot of time to think about adding extra things that the Bible doesn’t command in Scripture.

In just a moment we’re going to conclude our service by doing one of the things we talked about a moment ago.

After I pray we’re going to sing a song while parents gather their children from the nursery, and then we’ll take the Lord’s Supper together.

Invite unbelievers to repent and believe (WHITE FLAG)

Prayer of Thanksgiving

Keep the Feast

LORD’S SUPPER

Doxology

Benediction (Hebrews 10:24-25)