Sermon Tone Analysis

*Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt.

Test everything.

Hold on to the good.

Avoid every kind of evil*.

Were Paul to visit our church on a Sunday morning, would he approve of our worship?

After sharing our service of worship, do you suppose he would exult: *God is really among you*!

Far too many churches of the day may best be categorised as museums—mere monuments to past glories, or at worst they should be classified as mausoleums displaying the decay resulting from years of spiritual neglect.

I am compelled by dint of the obvious to include many evangelical churches … and especially Baptist churches in this tragic summation.

Though the buildings may be filled with energetic bodies on a Sunday morning and though lively music may emanate from acoustically excellent sound equipment, the description of a museum or a mausoleum is nevertheless appropriate and *Ichabod* is written large above the entrance.

Like Samson of old the weary saints rouse themselves thinking they shall meet the enemy, never knowing that *the Lord has left them*.

May I state very clearly that we are not immune from the tragic results which follow once we have put out the Spirit’s fire.

The warning which the Apostle issued to the Thessalonian church, *Do not put out the Spirit's fire* [*1 Thessalonians 5:19*], is a warning which we each do well to heed in these last days.

Reviewing the text in the original language, I discover the four verses are actually one command with four specific applications.

*Do not put out the Spirit's fire* is the command followed by four specific applications—one negative and three positive.

Negatively, Paul admonishes readers to *stop treating prophecies with contempt* [literal translation].

The three positive applications are treated as separate sentences in our text.

However, in that original language there occurs a copulative conjunction, *but* or *instead*.

In other words Paul provides alternatives to an ongoing action.

By this criterion we must be convinced that anyone seeking to fan the Spirit’s fire into flame is responsible to fulfil three commands: *test everything*, *hold on to the good*, and *avoid every kind of evil*.

Permit me to read this brief passage from several other translations.

It may prove helpful to grasp the essence of the Apostle’s words by hearing how others have grappled with the Greek text.

Don’t try to follow in your own Bible at this moment, but simply listen for a fresh approach to the text.

Phillips provides us with an excellent paraphrase of the New Testament that brings out many nuances from the text we might otherwise ignore or neglect.

*Never damp the fire of the Spirit, and never despise what is spoken in the name of the Lord.

By all means use your judgement, and hold on to whatever is really good.

Steer clear of evil in any form*.[1]

Williams captures the dynamic of the language in an unusual manner, paying special attention to the verbal forms and their English equivalents.

*Stop stifling the Spirit.

Stop treating the messages of prophecy with contempt, but continue to prove all things until you can approve them, and then hold on to what is good.

Continue to abstain from every sort of evil*.[2]

Eugene Peterson has performed yeoman service for our day in his presentation of a lively translation aimed at capturing the sparkle of the New Testament in our contemporary tongue.

*Don’t suppress the Spirit, and don’t stifle those who have a word from the Master.

On the other hand, don’t be gullible.

Check out everything, and keep only what’s good.

Throw out anything tainted with evil*[3]**.

Here is yet another contemporary effort to capture the essence of Paul’s warning.

*Do not hold back the work of the Holy Spirit.

Do not treat prophecy as if it were unimportant.

But test everything.

Keep what is good, and stay away from everything that is evil*.[4]

Clearly there is much more here than just words to fill the space before the closing of the letter.

The Thessalonian Christians were receiving a command and explanations which would ensure that they would continue to please God for the remainder of their days.

The message is an exposition of this one command: *Do not put out the Spirit's fire*.

The organisation of the message follows the outline Paul provided.

If you will focus with me on these four commands as the means by which we are to understand how to avoid extinguishing the Spirit’s fire we will grasp the essence of the divine message and facilitate the task of preaching.

*Do Not Treat Prophecies with Contempt*.

Profhteiva" mh; ejxouqenei`te.

To many of us this injunction appears obscure, dark, even fraught with potential for serious misunderstanding and grave distortion.

In a day in which an increasing number of the professed people of God claim to be prophets and when many seem to continually claim to bring new revelations of the mind of God, such an imperative makes us justifiably uneasy.

There were prophets in that New Testament world; there are prophets in this world today.

More than any other facet for folly, the failure to identify what we are speaking of has introduced great and serious error into the life of the Church.

Too many hearing the word *prophet* understand it to mean *seer*.

They think in terms of revelation of future events and restrict the thought to that one minor facet.

Nothing could be further from truth.

I haven’t time to cover the matter fully in our brief time together, but it is vital that we note that prophecy in the New Testament context is that particular proclamation of Word which reveals the mind of God and which therefore *speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort* [*1 Corinthians 14:3*].

Prophecy, or rather prophetic preaching, is less a matter of revelation then it is an issue of application.

Prophecy is akin to that particular form of preaching which strengthens, encourages, and comforts through providing understanding of the mind of God.

Perhaps we could rephrase this particular injunction in contemporary language so that it read: *Listen to the Word of God as it is preached*.

That seems to be essentially what Paul has in view.

*Carefully attend to the preaching of the Word*.

In the day in which he wrote the Thessalonians the church did not have a complete revelation of God’s will, the Bible was not yet complete.

Today we have a full revelation of God’s mind in the Bible.

Whenever a preacher stands to preach, and when he opens the book and provides an exposition of the text making application to our particular day, that man is continuing in the prophetic tradition.

We must resist the spirit of this age and refuse to treat such preaching with disdain or callous indifference.

Ours is an age populated with people possessing stunted and dwarfed attention spans.

Weaned on television and the nine-second rule we grow to adulthood with an attention span more suited to entertainment than to thoughtful contemplation; and the entertainment sought must be delivered in a manner constantly shifting our attention from one subject to another.

Thus it is difficult for modern man to long focus his attention on any one matter for long.

The minds of those living within this present age are restless and constantly active as the imagination roves far and wide.

Those who study in the seminaries of the day are frequently told that preaching is passé, a relic from days long past when people were not so sophisticated nor so cultured as we are.

I am convinced there is still a place for the spokesman of God.

Let the man of God stand before a congregation announcing, “Thus saith the Lord,” and insure that he has a message from the Living God, and people *will* listen.

There is a heart hunger in our world for a sure word from Him who holds all things in His hands.

Entertainment may gather a crowd for a brief while, but it is a message from the Creator, a word from the Author of Life, which captures attention and which insures reflection by those hearing.

Yet, it is precisely God’s own people who are most able to damage credibility of the spokesman of God, redirecting the attention of outsiders to again seek entertainment when they treat the preaching of the Word with disdain or through treating that holy act in a disinterested manner.

There was a day in the which Christian men and women set aside time to worship, and the preaching of the Word was central to that worship; the people came for morning worship and returned for an evening meeting.

Those same dear saints were at the church mid-week for a service of prayer.

Today, if the preacher speaks for forty-five minutes, and that but once in a morning worship service, we begin to fidget and wiggle and squirm and we turn off the message given through God’s messenger.

Ever and always the preacher is compared to media superstars whose messages continue but seventeen minutes a day, and woe betide that man who cannot match up to the hero of the moment who holds forth on radio or TV!  Brothers and sisters, this ought not to be!

When we fail to look up the passage in the Bible so that we may read the Word for ourselves, when we announce through an attitude of boredom that we would rather be elsewhere, when we choose to neglect the assembly of saints for our own momentary pleasure we are treating prophecies with contempt.

When we hear the words but fail to hear the message, we are treating prophecies with contempt.

When we go through the motion of attending worship but never somehow grasp the theme of the exposition, we are treating prophecies with contempt.

Just at this point I am compelled to note that I can find something of eternal value in every sermon by a God-called preacher.

I confess that I have had a few close calls, but God is in the message when the man of God speaks out of the fullness of study and waiting before the Lord.

*Test Everything*.

Pavnta de; dokimavzete.

Test everything with a view to approving the truth.

The Christian Faith is not a blind leap into darkness.

Never is a Christian to check in his brain upon entering into the Faith.

The Christian Faith is reasonable and sane, a thoughtful faith, and those who walk in that Faith are never commanded to walk in ignorance.

The Apostle enjoins believers to *test everything*, thus embracing the whole of life.

Nothing is excluded from this testing, but especially does Paul direct children of God to weigh carefully the teaching which attends the preaching of the Word to insure that they sift the good from the evil.

How shall we obey this injunction to *test everything*?

The first test to be applied to prophecy is Scripture itself.

Like the residents of Berea we are to *examine the Scriptures* to see if what the Christian teacher says is true.

Some years ago I read a most unusual description of attendance at preaching from the days that preceded Tyndale’s translation of Scripture into the vernacular.

Here it is:

 

                Each of them had his own Bible, and sedulously turned the pages and looked up the texts cited by the preachers, discussing the passages among themselves to see whether they had quoted them to the point, and accurately, and in harmony with their tenets.

Also they would start arguing among themselves about the meaning of passages from the Scriptures—men, women, boys, girls, rustics, labourers, and idiots.

Here over a thousand of them sometimes assembled, their horses and pack animals burdened with a multitude of Bibles.

That account was penned by a Jesuit priest named William Weston in the year 1588 after he had observed a large Puritan gathering in Ely, England.