Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Focus, control your emotions, be aggressive, listen to your coach, listen, respect your teachers and don't be an idiot.
[00:00:19] These are all phrases that I still kind of normally would normally say to my kids as they would be dropped off at school or practice or even church at times. It was kind of those last minute review of instructions things that you as my child need to think through.
[00:00:42] How are you going to act when I'm not there? You're going to be out of my sight. I can't yell these things across the room. I can't pull you aside and instruct you and coach you in the moment.
[00:00:54] You're going to be out of my control.
[00:00:56] But I kind of want to press into your brain and your heart some last minute instructions. And they've kind of changed over time. I still do this when they're leaving the house or I'm on the phone with them or we're about to part ways. I'll say, don't speed, stay off your phone, don't text while you're driving. Remember, I have life360.
[00:01:22] Save your money. Remember to get your oil changed. Just little things as we're departing.
[00:01:28] Oh, by the way, if you change the air filter in your apartment in a while, it's summer, it's going to be hot.
[00:01:34] And keep plotting, just keep plotting. And again, still don't be an idiot.
[00:01:42] That comes up a lot, especially with the males in my home. Don't be stupid, don't be an idiot. And I hope before the moment we where they're deciding, am I going to be an idiot? Am I going to be stupid? They think about their dad saying, don't be an idiot. That sums up a lot of things in their life.
[00:02:02] But maybe as parents you feel that, you feel that with your kids as you're sending them off in different ways. What can I say that is going to keep them in line? What can I say that's not going to ruin their life, going to make life easier for them? How can I make it succinct and summarize it for them in this moment that they will remember it and do these things? Well, this is what's going on in the verses that we'll look at today in First Thessalonians, Paul is ending this letter and he's thinking, what do I want to say to this church at the end of this letter? And just make sure they get it. I've explained a lot of things. He's talked about ministry, he's talked about how they got saved, he's talked about their influence in the world.
[00:02:53] He's talked about a lot of things. He's talked about the second coming of Christ and how they wait and they hope for that as they suffer. And as this new fledgling church, months old, what are things that you need to remember to be doing?
[00:03:12] And in this section of Scripture, he basically establishes for them a normal pattern of life in a healthy church. What it looks like.
[00:03:22] I want to, in these pointed statements remind you as a church, what life looks like in the Gospel. What life looks like together. He gives them some ecclesiology here in summary form. And the first thing he wants them to do is to be at peace with their leaders.
[00:03:45] Notice verse 12. We ask you, brothers, he's talking to the whole church here, and he says to respect those who labor.
[00:03:54] The word respect here means to identify.
[00:03:57] It means to mark out certain leaders. Notice they're described as those who labor.
[00:04:05] Leaders who labor in the Word who are given over to discipleship. And the word for labor here is strenuous work. They are working hard for your good with the word of God. There are certain people in the church that Paul has handed off the baton to as he has preached the Gospel. He sent Timothy back. Timothy had. Has probably assigned leaders in the church.
[00:04:34] And Paul says, respect. See who your leaders are.
[00:04:39] And they are laboring for you with the Word. But notice they're among you.
[00:04:45] They're not distant. They're a part of who you are. We're not sending in the experts, someone from the outside that Paul says, that's what we do. We plant a church and then we leave.
[00:04:57] But there are leaders among you who he says are over you. They have certain authority over you. And what is their authority? Notice in the Lord, in the Gospel, there is this order of leadership that is necessary for a church. There has to be someone working and leading with the word of God for the church to be healthy. But Paul sets this up in the churches that he plants. He assigns elders and pastors and notice their role here in the Lord in the Gospel, in the bond that they have as the body of Christ. They have authority to notice, admonish you. Now, the word admonish here means to correct or discipline.
[00:05:46] They are to make sure that you are in line with. With the will of God that he talks so often about in First Thessalonians. And so they admonish you. The tendency of our heart is to get out of line with the will of God. And so you have leaders who labor in the word of God to make sure we are corrected and we are in line with the word of God, and it is necessary for the church. And so he says, you need to be at peace with this. You need to be okay with this, that there are leaders and it's important for you. We see Jesus, he establishes this in the church that he is building. First of all, he sends out his disciples. They plant churches. The apostles then are the foundation of the church. And one of the things the apostles do in every church is they assign elders or overseers or pastors.
[00:06:42] And in the Lord, they provide spiritual oversight to correct, to admonish, to make sure we are in the will of God. Now, in Thessalonica, this was a brand new church. And they didn't look around and say, well, he's a pastor, he's a pastor. At this moment, it was probably true that there were just leaders who were given shepherding responsibilities that would ultimately become pastors. And so it's, it, it's even more vitally important before this idea of title of pastor in the context of the church that they understand, someone's got to lead us.
[00:07:22] Someone's got to be working in the Word. And notice what he says, verse 13.
[00:07:28] Esteem them very highly in some sense. He says, hold in the highest regard the imagery here. It's very uncomfortable for me as a pastor to be teaching this, but the imagery here is to put on a pedestal.
[00:07:43] It is to. They are to be set apart and unique in the context of the church. And notice you are to love them.
[00:07:53] So by the authority of the Holy Spirit of God in the Word of God, love me.
[00:08:03] But this is the Word of God.
[00:08:06] But notice there is not just to be respect, it is to be in a respect with love.
[00:08:14] It is an affectionate honor that you are to have. For leaders who work in the Word. And notice the emphasis again here in verse 13. Because of their work.
[00:08:25] This is the reason you respect them.
[00:08:28] Not just because of who they are, not because you like their personality or you may not like their personality. It's because of their work.
[00:08:37] Because of their work. This is the reason they labor in the Word of God. You are to have affectionate honor for them because of what they do. And we see in Scripture, we see in the Bible, this idea of pastoring is, is equated with farming, which means it's hard work.
[00:09:01] You labor to farm to make sure things grow. And it's a 247 job where you are working constantly. Same thing goes on in the church. You are laboring in the Word constantly to make sure the church is growing.
[00:09:17] Shepherding is hard it's grueling.
[00:09:22] And in the church, the pastor is the one given over to study, communicate, counsel, and protect the sheep. And it is hard work.
[00:09:33] And so it's not just, wow, he's cool. There's no pastor here. This clay's kind of cool sometimes, but it's. What do they do?
[00:09:44] They labor. And they work in the word of God, and you are honor them for that.
[00:09:52] Now, if pastors are rebellious themselves, out of line with the word of God, they're distant. Notice you are to be. They are among you. They're over, but they're among you. So if a pastor is distant, lazy, rebellious, he doesn't deserve this respect or honor.
[00:10:11] But in context where a leader is teachable himself and he works hard to give you the word of God, there is to be an affectionate honor where you commit yourself over to his work.
[00:10:27] In Hebrews 13:17, the writer of Hebrews says, obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your soul. Why would you do that? They're keeping watch over your soul.
[00:10:39] It's not just some generic, I do whatever this guy says, no, with the word of God, he is watching over my soul and will give an account, will give an account to the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, let them do this with joy and not groaning, for that would be no advantage to you.
[00:11:03] If you. If there is this lack of love and lack of honor where the pastor is always butting heads with the congregation as he preaches the word of God, and you are making that task difficult, difficult for him, you're actually making your spiritual growth difficult.
[00:11:20] No, you say, you're free to lead me. You're free to give yourself over to the word of God. I need you doing that.
[00:11:27] I need you leading me with the word of God, because I want to know Jesus better and I want to follow Jesus better.
[00:11:34] And notice he says here, he ends this section by saying, be at peace among yourself. Why is that?
[00:11:40] Because anytime we talk about leadership and following leaders, just in our gut and the way that we kind of are in our culture, this idea of authority just. It just irks us.
[00:11:54] I don't really want someone, another man telling me what to do, first of all, in the Lord, according to the scripture, not my own opinion, not the own opinion of the pastors here, but, oh, I just don't like that.
[00:12:09] And so he adds here, be at peace. Because the tendency in the context of the church is that there would be tension between the pastor and the church. The pastor who's given this role and is leading with the word of God. And it's just our sin. Nature goes, ugh, I don't. I don't like to be led.
[00:12:28] I don't like that sort of authority with the word of God. I don't like that.
[00:12:33] He says, no, be at peace with that.
[00:12:36] Peace means that there is rest.
[00:12:39] There's no tension.
[00:12:41] There's no conflicts among yourself in the church. And this is with pastor, congregation.
[00:12:48] And so peace is the result of a pastor who works hard in the word to lead with the word of God and a church that loves that work.
[00:12:56] If we want to be a church that is peaceful, that. That's where it starts. In this moment right here, week after week, where you say you have worked and you have labored and you're working and you're laboring to give us the word of God. We're going to be at peace with that and we're going to love it, we're going to lean into it. Teach us the word of God. We don't want your opinion.
[00:13:19] We don't want any of that. But you teach us the word of God. And as the congregation leans into that, there is peace.
[00:13:27] Chaos and tension and conflict come so often in a church where you want more than the word from the pastor.
[00:13:36] Pastors can do a lot of other things in the context of a church and should do other things for the sake of their word ministry. But a lot of times in our mind, we. We make our agenda for the pastor priority.
[00:13:50] And so often, sometimes it's not giving us the word of God.
[00:13:54] And when we do that, there's opportunity for tension and conflict in the church.
[00:14:00] No. I wish my pastor had a different personality.
[00:14:04] I wish he agreed with me on this cultural political issue.
[00:14:10] I wish he would. I wish he wouldn't speak of my sin so much.
[00:14:16] I wish he would just kind of have status quo. I wish he was a little more entertaining.
[00:14:22] I need to win at life. I need more of that kind of preaching.
[00:14:26] He talks about sin a lot. Why are we talking about sin? Admonish, correct. Make sure we're in line with Christ.
[00:14:35] And what happens is we can sit through sermons and just grow bitter.
[00:14:41] Grow bitter and just listen out of frustration.
[00:14:47] I know people, people friends of mine who leave their church after Sunday school because they don't want to hear their pastor preach.
[00:14:59] And they've been at this church for years.
[00:15:03] And I've asked their pastor, why are they still there?
[00:15:06] Why would you do that? It's not good for you.
[00:15:10] You're not growing in Christ. And what normally happens is that sort of bitterness sort of leaks out of their life and, and creates disunity in the church. And then there's this war between the pastor and congregation. If it's the pastor's idea, then we're just going to. We don't care if it's good or not. We're just going to kind of push back on it. He's got to be held in check.
[00:15:30] And then the congregation pushes back on it and the pastor's like, well, they're just unspiritual, they're ungodly. And then there's this tension.
[00:15:37] We don't want that here.
[00:15:40] We want to pursue a beautiful peace with our work in the Word for your good.
[00:15:47] And if you see us veering from the Word of God and not working in the Word of God and you start coming in here and we have an agenda that is not word driven, it's not mission driven, you fire us.
[00:16:01] But we're going to be high character men.
[00:16:06] We're going to be held accountable above reproach, and we're going to be given over to the mission of the Word of God.
[00:16:13] And to the degree we do that, lean into it. Let's be at peace with one another. And it is the joy of being at this church. I get asked to speak at other places and I don't do it because I love this moment every week in my life. And the reason I love it is because you're leaning in and there's peace. I genuinely love this moment because I know there is this honor and love for the pastors here and there is this sweet fellowship that goes on in the Word and work as we do this together.
[00:16:47] But notice, be at peace with your leaders and then fellowship in the Word. And so the ministry of the Word doesn't end with the pastors, it leaks over into the congregation.
[00:16:58] Notice verse 14. And we urge you brothers, admonish.
[00:17:03] Now, the word for admonish again is to correct something is out of line. And so you're trying to get it back in line, you're trying to correct it. And the word for idle here could actually be translated unruly.
[00:17:18] We think about lazy. This would be folks in the context of the church who are lazy for the will of God.
[00:17:26] They're idle.
[00:17:27] They're not living for Christ.
[00:17:29] In some sense they're rejecting the will of God in Christ.
[00:17:34] And we are to admonish them, we are to correct them. Notice again, encourage the fainthearted.
[00:17:41] So there's folks who are out of line, but then there are folks who are faint hearted, they are discouraged, they are anxious and we are to encourage them. The word encourage means to come alongside.
[00:17:55] It's not to pull or push these people, they are anxious, they are discouraged. And so you step into their life and you come alongside them and you help them walk with Jesus according to the will of God. So you admonish the idol, you encourage the fainthearted and you help the weak, you support, you hold up the weak. Now weak here can refer to weak in the faith, they have doubts about their faith or just immature believers or folks who are captive by immorality and they're given over to temptation.
[00:18:36] It's in general those who are weak spiritually and you come alongside them and you help them and you hold them up. You don't let them give up.
[00:18:46] I'm not going to let you give up. As you doubt, I'm going to remind you of the gospel.
[00:18:51] I'm not going to let you give up. As you fight sin, I'm going to hold you up. I'm going to be there with you.
[00:18:57] I'm going to help you. But notice how we do this. We are patient.
[00:19:02] The idea of being patient with them all means that everyone is in process.
[00:19:08] There's no necessarily levels of discipleship in the church. As you look at this list, you see no, we just all struggle with different things in different ways and at different times.
[00:19:20] It's not as though we're moving up some Jedi leveling up of Christian discipleship. It just means at different seasons in life, we have different struggles and we all must be there for one another. There's going to be times where your brother and sister is out of line with Christ and you step in and you say, hey, where have you been?
[00:19:43] I notice you're distracted.
[00:19:46] Hey, let's get together, let's start meeting, let's get back in line.
[00:19:52] There's going to be times where you see brothers and sisters go through trial and suffering and they begin to doubt the promises of God. And you lean in and say, let me remind you of the gospel.
[00:20:04] God loves you. He really does love you. And me standing here before you, coming alongside you is to be a reminder of God's love in your life. We're to look around and we are to notice these things. One of the things going on here is what Paul is describing as biblical fellowship, where the ministry of the Word doesn't end with the professionals, it leaks out into the church. And every member of the church is a part of discipleship. And as we minister the Word together, In this way we, we are bound together.
[00:20:40] Notice, he continues, we are patient with one another because we're all on a process.
[00:20:45] Seeing that no one repays evil for evil, but always seeking to do good to one another and to everyone. Verse 15 is just a reminder that we all are in process and we're all sinning. As you step into one another's life, folks are going to bow up and they're going to push you away.
[00:21:03] You're going to exasperate some sin issues in their life. He says, don't retaliate.
[00:21:09] Sometimes we just get selfish. We want to be alone. We don't want other people stepping in. People are going to kick back at that.
[00:21:17] Don't retaliate. Be patient with one another.
[00:21:21] Endure, be long suffering and continue notice to seek to do good to one another.
[00:21:27] And this is the process that we see Paul establishing in Ephesians chapter 4. If we go to Ephesians chapter 4, verse 12, Paul talks about these word gifts of apostles and prophets in the church and pastors. And they have the word of God and they are to equip the body for the work of ministry.
[00:21:49] So they coach in some sense, pastors are coaches. We're coaching you how to minister to one another.
[00:21:57] And ministry to one another isn't always serving in kids or on front line or at vbs.
[00:22:04] Primarily the ministry that you have in the context of the church is to take the word of God and help one another.
[00:22:11] That is what you're being equipped for right now. That's why we do BFGS the way that we do. We preach the word of God and then we step into those small groups and we are equipped to fellowship together, to be bound together with the word of God. And the more that we do that, every member of the body grows stronger. And as every member of the body grows stronger, the whole body grows stronger. And that's good for you because you want a strong church to take care of your needs. And it's just sort of this cycle that goes on.
[00:22:44] But your responsibility here first and foremost is to take the word of God and help one another.
[00:22:51] And we're here as pastors, as coaches to help you. We can't get to all the needs. We need you. We need more of you on the field.
[00:23:01] We have to call on you.
[00:23:04] Hey, there's an idle brother. We need you.
[00:23:08] There is a brother who is faint hearted. There is a sister who is discouraged.
[00:23:14] There is a brother who is weak, a sister who is weak. And we need your help. We need you to step into the game and help us.
[00:23:24] He's tempted again. We need accountability in this way.
[00:23:29] We need to build up the church in this way, patiently admonishing, encouraging and helping one another.
[00:23:41] And so we fellowship with the Word in that way. But then we worship in light of the gospel. Notice verse 16.
[00:23:47] Be at peace with your leaders, fellowship in the Word, the whole body, and then worship in light of the gospel. Notice verse 16. Rejoice always.
[00:24:00] Now that is a verb and it's a command.
[00:24:04] Rejoice. Do this.
[00:24:06] Rejoice, and you rejoice always at all times.
[00:24:11] And then verse 17, pray without ceasing.
[00:24:15] Notice. These are commands and they're things that you do. You rejoice and you pray all the time, give thanks in all circumstances. Another way to say, all the time, no matter what's going on, you give thanks and notice. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
[00:24:35] Earlier in the book, the will of God was your sanctification that you flee sexual immorality.
[00:24:41] Here again, the will of God for you is that you joy, you rejoice, you pray, which means you have confidence in God all the time, and you praise God no matter what's going on.
[00:24:58] Those are commands for Christians.
[00:25:01] We normally think about those. Sort of emotive.
[00:25:05] They're feelings driven. How do I just joy?
[00:25:09] I don't feel like having joy today. Don't feel like rejoicing. How do you do that?
[00:25:16] Pray it all. I do other things. How do I just pray all the time, give thanks in all circumstances? I don't feel like giving thanks. How do you do this at all times, in all circumstances?
[00:25:32] Well, you have to do this in light of the gospel. You can't do it any other way.
[00:25:37] You can't.
[00:25:38] The reality is, in Christ, you can always joy, you can always rejoice. Why? You have your sins forgiven. You're covered in the righteousness of Christ, and you have an eternal kingdom that's yours. No matter what's going on, you can stop and say, joy, I rejoice.
[00:25:59] I rejoice in this because of the gospel. And you can only do that because of the gospel.
[00:26:07] How do I pray? How do I just have this confidence that you're talking about? Prayer equates to confidence all the time in God. How do I do that?
[00:26:17] Because of who you are in Christ.
[00:26:19] You have a father who loves you, has given his son for you, and so you have confidence in him. And what does that lead to? As an adopted son and daughter, you talk to your father.
[00:26:30] I trust him. Whatever's going on. I trust him. How do I praise at all times? Well, I remember the gospel. I remember all things that the Father has done for me in Christ. And so you can rejoice and you can have confidence and you can praise God at all times. If you are latched to the gospel and the degree that you're not, you will not be able to do those things.
[00:26:54] That's why we have to come back to those things. That's why we have to be admonished to get in line with the gospel is decisions in light of the gospel.
[00:27:06] And I believe what he's talking about here is not for just the individual.
[00:27:12] Remember, he's talking about the whole church here.
[00:27:16] How do you order your church around? Leadership? And how do you fellowship together? What he's calling them to do in verses 16 and 18 is worship. And they are to come together and do those things. And this is how we fight for joy. This is how we fight for the confidence that comes through prayer. This is how we fight to praise God is we have to come together. This is where those decisions and that command to do those things takes action.
[00:27:42] If you're just alone by yourself, have joy, rejoice, pray, praise. Well, I'll try.
[00:27:53] But on a Sunday morning when you don't feel like it, you got to get up and come here and rejoice whether you like it or not.
[00:28:03] And the decision to roll out of bed and drive here is a decision to have joy.
[00:28:08] To gather is a decision to have confidence.
[00:28:12] Whatever else I could put my confidence in, today I'm going to make a decision to go be with those people whose confidence is in Jesus. And I'm going to fight to say and sing things and hear things. That's going to engender and cultivate confidence in my life. That is how you do it.
[00:28:30] Ultimately, in gathering, it is a decision to have joy and it is a decision to have confidence in prayer.
[00:28:38] And it is a decision to praise. And so you should think about this on a weekly basis when you're sad.
[00:28:46] How do I have joy? I remember the gospel and Sunday's coming and I'm going to fight and claw to get to Sunday. I'm sad right now, but I'm going to be around a group of people and I'm going to have to sing. And maybe I don't sing, but I can hear them singing and I'm choosing to have joy in that. I'm worried. Well, I'm going to gather with a group of people whose confidence is ultimately in Jesus, who will Rule and reign. And I'm going to hear about Jesus coming and ruling and reigning. And even when I don't want to latch my confidence to that, I'm there. And I'm choosing to be there with a group of people who are saying, let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
[00:29:28] And we're going to gather and we're going to say that.
[00:29:31] And even at times where I don't feel it, I'm expressing it, I'm singing it, I'm hearing it, I'm discontent.
[00:29:40] I wish life had turned out differently. I don't want to praise.
[00:29:45] Well, I go and I gather and I praise in light of the Gospel for all that God has done.
[00:29:53] And. And I look around the room and I see a group of people who love me and care about me and they're serving Jesus as if it's a privilege. And God has done this for me. Of all the things this week that I prayed for that didn't happen, this happened and the gospel happened. And I'm reminded of that Sunday after Sunday as I worship.
[00:30:18] And so we are to be at peace with our leaders. We are to fellowship in the word of God together, and we are to worship in light of the Gospel and we are to be led by the spirit. Notice verse 19, do not quench.
[00:30:30] It means to put out a fire or a light. So you fill the flames of the fire for heat. You see, because of the light of the fire. To quench would be to put out the fire so you can't see or feel.
[00:30:43] Notice the Spirit.
[00:30:45] Now, often we think about that phrase and we think about feeling driven, sort of ecstatic momentum in the context of a worship service. Or I'm in my car and I got my worship Spotify playlist on and this is the song I like. And then all of a sudden, car stops in front of me and you just quench the Spirit because you can't drive the car in front. Did that.
[00:31:12] Or you're in worship and somebody distracts you, you say, whoa, you quench the Spirit.
[00:31:20] That's not what he's talking about here.
[00:31:23] In the context of the New Testament, to quench the Spirit would be to cause disunity in the church. That's what we see in Ephesians, is to cause disunity. The Spirit is binding the church together, Jew and Gentile. And Paul says to quench the Spirit would be to disrupt that and cling to your own preferences.
[00:31:43] But also to quench the Spirit would be to reject revelation, specifically revelation about Christ.
[00:31:52] The Spirit of God's primary role is to point to Jesus.
[00:31:57] To point to Jesus through the preaching of the Gospel. To point you to Jesus and to quench the Spirit is to hinder that work, to stop that work.
[00:32:07] And so that's why he says in verse 20, do not despise prophecy, meaning reject prophecy, which ultimately would be about Jesus. Now, there's two forms of prophecy. There is foretelling, we think about telling the future. See, the prophets in the Old Testament point to Christ. They're telling us Christ is coming. But there's also a form of prophecy that was in the New Testament church that was forth telling.
[00:32:33] You had people who were gifted in the church who stood up and told the church the will of God.
[00:32:40] And that was important as the church is being founded.
[00:32:43] They didn't have the Scriptures.
[00:32:46] And so God gifted certain people in the church that would stand up and say, this is the will of God for us. And so often it had to do with Jew and Gentile relationships. Yeah, the Gentiles don't have to be circumcised.
[00:33:00] They even in relation to eating meat.
[00:33:06] And prophets would stand up in areas where the church just didn't know and would give the will of God as they chose leaders, as they made decisions about where they would preach the Gospel, they would add clarity to those things.
[00:33:21] And Paul is saying, don't quench that work of the Spirit if it is in line with what we've taught. You notice, that's why he says in verse 21, but test everything.
[00:33:32] The word test means to sift or weigh or examine.
[00:33:36] And here we know in Thessalonica there were false teachers who were standing up with crazy stories. And Paul says, you got to sift through those things.
[00:33:45] We see in Galatians and other books that there were teachers who were standing up and preaching a false gospel. They were adding things to Christ to be saved. And Paul says, you got to sift through those things.
[00:33:59] What we see in Ephesians and Colossians, that there were all of these ideas about angels and spirits. And he says, you got to sift through those things. If there's false teachers there, you sift through them and notice. He says, hold fast or cling to what is good and abstain from every form of evil. What's he talking about there? He's talking about hearing the word of God and obeying it. And so in the context of the church, there are people who stand up and tell you the will of God. And if it is in line with the Scripture, if it is in line what Paul would say, what I'm teaching you cling to it. If it is not, you abstain from it. You run those folks off.
[00:34:39] This is what it means to hear the revealed word of God in the context of a church.
[00:34:45] Now this is way more simple for us nowadays.
[00:34:49] Didn't say it was easy, said it's way more simple. And why is that?
[00:34:54] We have the completed will of God in the Scripture.
[00:34:58] We have Genesis to Revelation.
[00:35:01] And this is how we receive the will of God week after week. There is a prophet standing right here who is forth telling what has already been revealed in Scripture, unpacking the scriptures, declaring in this prophetic role the will of God for the church and the degree that you are aligning your life with that you are walking by the Spirit.
[00:35:28] So often we think about walking by the spirit in this mystical, feelings driven way. It is ultimately just receiving the word of God as revealed in Scripture.
[00:35:38] Digging into the word of God. I need more of the word of God. What would God have for me today? I need a prophetic word. Will you open up your Bible Genesis to revelation? And there is a prophetic word that is to guide you and you receive it according to the word of God. Now we reject anything that is contrary to the word of God. We abstain from it. And there's plenty of that today.
[00:36:04] We need to be way more in line with the scriptures. There's a lot of new and improved heresy by disqualified people. I mean, TikTok makes heresy sound amazing coming from the lips of disqualified people all the time. And we lean into it.
[00:36:25] And yet Paul would say you reject that if it's not in line with the scripture. And you need to ask the question, is this biblical again? That's why you have leaders.
[00:36:40] Eric is our discerning minister around here. He reads like five books a week.
[00:36:47] And some of you get on these topics and you get on TikTok and you get on the. I'm sounding like some, you know, old school fundamentalist right now. But anyway, you get into all those things and there's this latest, greatest, it's packaged in this cool way and then you tell us about it and we're like, yeah, but it's man, that's heresy.
[00:37:07] That person doesn't even believe in the Trinity.
[00:37:10] Oh, I'm having a Bible study at my house Monday night, watching their video. Hold on. You should have talked to us first.
[00:37:17] And that's the way it happens in the church. We abstain from those things and yet we lean in to the prophetic word of God that makes much of Jesus from Genesis or revelation that exalts him. We want to cling to Christ, the preaching of Christ, who has rescued us from sin and death and changes our life.
[00:37:40] And we do that through the preached word week after week. And so how do you walk by the Spirit where you're in the Word of God? And then when the Word of God is preached right now, you go, what is one thing I can do? What is one thing I can do to apply that word to my life?
[00:38:01] I just want that to be a part of our culture. We say that a lot around here, and we're in passages, and there's a lot there, There's a lot here.
[00:38:10] But just lean in week after week and go, what's one thing I can do?
[00:38:15] The youngest to the oldest here. What's one thing I can do? That's how we will all begin to walk by the Spirit and then build momentum on that and do that daily by digging into the Word of God.
[00:38:26] Richard Baxter, he was a Puritan pastor in the Church of England in 1656, and he wrote this that I often look back on this quote. He says, it's no small matter to stand up in a congregation and deliver a message of salvation or damnation as from the living God.
[00:38:49] That's no small matter.
[00:38:53] Heaven and hell are at stake when you preach the Word of God.
[00:38:59] That's why teachers will incur a stricter judgment. That's no small matter.
[00:39:03] You should tremble.
[00:39:06] And so this is the way he says that he preached.
[00:39:10] And he was rebuking pastors of the day who just kind of stood up and they just read, and there was a lot of formality to it. There didn't seem to be any fire within them.
[00:39:20] He says, when I preached, I would preach as if I would never preach again.
[00:39:25] A dying man to dying men.
[00:39:29] And I think that's good perspective for us.
[00:39:32] What if we came in here week after week and said, this may be the last sermon that I hear here, maybe may not make it back next Sunday.
[00:39:45] Some of you just say, it will be the last sermon because I'm not coming back.
[00:39:50] What if you just leaned in and said, I want to hear what God has to say, and this may be the last time?
[00:39:58] What if we prepared that way that this may be the last time that we would be able to preach the Word of God?
[00:40:07] What would we say?
[00:40:09] What would we say to this church, y' all?
[00:40:13] Fellowship, fellowship in the word, worship in light of the Gospel and be led by the Spirit. I think that would do.
