Thriving as a Church, Growing in Christ

Now, as we continue to worship today, we just sang so many names of God, and He is faithful Father. He is bondage breaker. Jesus, Messiah, one true God. I'd love if we could gather those songs together this morning and sing those songs with the names of God, because it reminds us of who He is. And the more we know who God is, the more we understand who we are in Him, and the way we're to live and act. But the best way we know that is by diving into God's Word. So before we continue in music, I just want to go into God's Word. What we're going to be in today, we're going to be in 1 Thessalonians, chapter 5, verses 12 through 24. And the first few verses, I just want to read over us as a church, and then we'll pick up and we'll read that all together. And yes, I'm reading it off the back screen because I'm half blind and I can't see in these lights. So I'm going to read it there and set them up. Bible, if you forgive me for that, but we'll get started and read this for a second. So 1 Thessalonians 5, 12 says, we ask you brothers to respect those who labor among you and are over you and the Lord 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 faint hearted, help the weak, and 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. And then starting in verse 16, I want us to read this together as a church and as we read God's word, we read this with authority because there's power in the words of God and we speak these things through our lips. There's power that happens. So starting in verse 16, we all say, rejoice always.

Reign without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances. 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 to what is good, abstain from every form of evil. Now, may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, 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. And I love that the first part of that verse, if you're like me, I read that, I'm going, Oh, there's a lot of things in there that are really hard to do. But let's look at the last verse again, 24, he says, he who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it. And that's why we sing the songs. We sing the names of God this morning. That's why we sing about seeing graves in the garden, because he is the one who's faithful. Faithful is he who can take our morning and turn it into dancing. Faithful is he who takes ashes and makes it beautiful. Faithful is he who can take our shame and turn it to glory. Faithful is the one who takes a grave and makes it into a garden. Faithful is the one who can take the bones of a dead man and bring them to life and bring an army to bring his glory. Faithful is the one who can take the sea in front of us. We can see no end, no way across, and he creates a highway. Faithful is the one who makes a way. He is the only one who can do that. So we sing that this morning. It's empty praise and treasures of age, surely you're not, and you came along and put me back together and every desire is now satisfied here in your love. Oh, there's nothing better than you, Lord.

There's nothing better than you, Lord. There's nothing, nothing is better than you. I'm not afraid to show you my weakness. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ I say, you are good, you're good, oh

You are good, you're good, oh And you are good, you're good, oh You are good, you're good, oh And let the dream of my heart Be the wind inside my sails The anchor in the waves Oh, who is my soul? And let the dream of my heart Be the fire inside my veins The echo of my days Oh, who is my soul? And let the dream of my heart Be the wind inside my sails The anchor in the waves Oh, who is my soul? And let the dream of my heart Be the fire inside my veins The echo of my days Oh, who is my soul? I say, you are good, you're good, oh You are good, you're good, oh And you are good, you're good, Jesus Oh, you are good every day Oh You're never gonna let You're never gonna let me down Come on, every voice, we'll sing together You're never gonna let You're never gonna let me down You're never gonna let

You're never gonna let me down You're never gonna let You're never gonna let me down You're never gonna let You're never gonna let me down Oh, we know You're never gonna let You're never gonna let me down You're never gonna let You're never gonna let me down You're never gonna let You're never gonna let me down You are good You're good Woah You are good You're good Woah You are good You're good Woah You are good You're good So you're never gonna let me down You're never gonna let You're never gonna let me down You're never gonna let You're never gonna let me down You're never gonna let You're never gonna let me down

You're never gonna let You're never gonna let me down Woah You're good Woah Come on we'll sing That you are good You're good Woah You are good You're good Woah You are good You're good Woah For my waking breath For my daily breath I depend on you ♪ I depend on You for the sun to rise ♪ ♪ For my sleep at night ♪ ♪ I depend on You, I depend on You ♪ ♪ You're the way, the truth and the life ♪ ♪ You're the well that never runs dry ♪ ♪ I'm a branch and You are the lime ♪ ♪ Draw me close and teach me to fly ♪ ♪ Yeah, oh, yeah ♪ ♪ With those wings ♪ ♪ I'm falling ♪ ♪ I depend on You ♪ ♪ I depend on You ♪

♪ With open arms ♪ ♪ I'm standing firm ♪ ♪ I depend on You ♪ ♪ Oh, I depend on You, oh ♪ ♪ You're the way, the truth and the life ♪ ♪ You're the well that never runs dry ♪ ♪ I'm the branch and You are the lime ♪ ♪ Draw me close and teach me to abide ♪ ♪ Be my strength, my song in the night ♪ ♪ Be my all, my treasure, my prize ♪ ♪ I am Yours, forever You're mine ♪ ♪ Draw me close and teach me to abide ♪ ♪ Won't You teach me to abide, yeah ♪ ♪ In my past, through death, as I enter Your store ♪ ♪ I depend on You, oh, I depend on You ♪ ♪ For eternal life, to be raised with Christ ♪ ♪ To be raised with Christ, oh, I depend on You ♪ ♪ Oh, I depend on You, oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ You're the way, the truth and the life ♪ ♪ You're the well that never runs dry ♪ ♪ I'm the branch and You are the vine ♪ ♪ Draw me close and teach me to abide ♪ ♪ Be my strength, my song in the night ♪ ♪ Be my all, my treasure, my prize ♪ ♪ I am Yours, forever You're mine ♪ ♪ Draw me close and teach me to abide ♪ ♪ Oh, I, oh, oh, oh, yeah ♪ ♪ Would You teach me, God? ♪ ♪ Draw me close and teach me to abide ♪ ♪ We abide in You, and I depend on You ♪

♪ I depend on You, and I depend on You ♪ ♪ I depend on, I depend on You ♪ ♪ I depend on every morning ♪ ♪ I depend on every evening ♪ ♪ I depend on You, I depend on You ♪ Father, we thank you today for who you are. We thank you for being a God who is worthy of being praised. God, help us to abide in you. Help us to depend on you every second of every day. Not just right now, not just in this service, but every minute throughout the week. Help us just depend on you more and more. Father, we pray today also for those in Venezuela who are going through such pain. Lord, we pray that they are able to see that you are their refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Lord, we pray that they look to you even when the mountains quake, even though the earth gives way, that they will not fear because they know who you are. God, we pray that they're able to be still and be comforted knowing that you are God and that you will be exalted in all the nations, that you will be exalted among the earth. Father, we thank you today for all that you are and all that you do. In Jesus' name, amen. You may take a seat. The gospel in our language,

for many Spanish-speaking communities in the Americas, Christianity was already known, mainly through a single tradition, a single institution, a single way of living religious life. So when the first Protestant missionaries arrived at what we know today as the Southwest of the United States, something unexpected began to happen. People began to meet God's word directly, reading it, listening to it, fighting with it in their own language. And Jesus found them there. Around 1852, a missionary gave a Bible to a man named Ambrosio González in Peralta, New Mexico. González read it and something happened that no institution planned, no program produced. Jesus found him on those pages. He was not a famous pastor. He was not a prepared academic. He was a man who had an encounter with the word alive and could not keep it to himself. Over time, people began to gather around what González had found, seven men and seven women, a small community of faith clinging to what Jesus had done for their lives. In 1869, that number had grown to 42. The path was not easy,

but Jesus had changed their lives and that was enough to move forward. This is one of the first documented stories of a Hispanic faith driven by the gospel taking root in the Southwest of the United States. It didn't start with an institution. It started with a man, a Bible, and a Jesus who was already moving. The gospel is never foreign when Jesus speaks to the heart in a language that people can understand. Well, good morning. So a couple months ago, or a month ago, we had our fourth kid graduate from high school. And so we're in this process of launching him out. And so we've done it with the three before him. And the process is, if you're a parent, the process is kind of similar with each one. We've poured his whole life, we've poured into him and tried to teach him the things that he needs to thrive in life. And then as we started getting closer, now we're at that point where it's just months away from him launching out and we're like, oh, I forgot to tell him this, right? I forgot to tell him to do certain things, or what about this? Is his identity securely in Christ? Have I taught him how to fight temptation? Does he know how to vote, right?

Does he know how to cook anything besides mac and cheese? Like these questions just keep coming up and we're kind of in this little last section of panic of like, do we teach him everything he needs to thrive? And when we look at the scripture today, we're gonna wrap up 1 Thessalonians. And this is the part of the letter where Paul is kind of in much the same place. See, if we remember, Paul is writing this letter to the church that he started in Thessalonica. And just like, kind of like a parent, this church is his child. He started it, he's nurtured it. And then because of persecution, he had to leave. But he's been writing this letter that we've been working through of 1 Thessalonians and he's been giving them all the things that they need to thrive, reminding them, explaining things to them. helping them to see what they need to thrive. And then now he's at the last part of the letter. He's like, oh yeah, and this, and this, and this, and this. So as we kind of read through this scripture, you kind of noticed that there's a lot of just really short, like do this, do this, don't do this, do this, right? And so there's 16 different imperatives there. There's 16 different commands that he gives as ways that we are to live out our faith. And it can be really intimidating to look at that and go, whoa, that's a lot.

But as we zoom out and we kind of look at what he's doing here, he's calling us as a church to really encourage one another. And these are our ways to do that. And he's calling us to grow because as we grow in our faith, as we become more like Jesus, then what happens is the church thrives. And then as the church, the whole body of us thrives, then we grow more. And as we grow, the church thrives. And it's just this beautiful cycle of how we grow to be more and more like Christ, how we grow to trust in him all the more. If we zoom, kind of fast forward to the end of this chunk of scripture in verse 23, here's what he says. He says, 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's talking about this word sanctify. And that word sanctify, it's kind of a big church word. It just means to be set apart. It means to grow in our holiness, to grow in how we look like Jesus. See, when we first come to know and to trust in Jesus, we are immediately made right with God. It's what's called justification. And so at that moment, we are positionally right with God, but we still have some of the same sin struggles

that we had before. And the process of us growing more and more to look more and more like Jesus, that's what's called sanctification. So all throughout our lives, we are growing to look more and more like Jesus. And that's the sanctification that Paul is talking about. So much so that if you remember back a few weeks ago when Corey was preaching, we were in 1 Thessalonians 4, verse two. And here's what Paul says. He says, this is God's will, your sanctification. So if you wanna know what's God's will, a lot of times we wrestle with, God, what's your will for my life? Do you want me to do this job or this career path or marry this person? We wanna wrestle through those things, but if we wanna know what's God's will for our life, well, it's pretty clear right here. God's will for our life is our sanctification, our growth in him. And what I see in scripture is God's will is much more, the focus is much more about, less about what we are to do, the big things that we are to do, and it's more about who we are to be. And then as we start to change, as we start to become more and more like Christ, the things that we do

just kind of naturally take care of themselves. And so if we wanna follow God's will, then we wanna pursue that growth. And that's what this kind of whole section is about. How do we grow in Christ? It really, that's what the whole letter is about. And the good news here we see in this verse is that it's not just totally up to us. God will do this in us. And what he's telling us here is that the way he's going to do it is through, first of all, through the church, that through the encouraging of others and how we work together to grow each other, and through the Holy Spirit. And we'll talk a lot today about the Holy Spirit and how the Holy Spirit will move us and grow us in this. So as we look at these kind of 16 statements or 16 things that we are to do, it really kind of, there's really four things that Paul is laying out. And so he's telling us, it's really kind of four relationships is how we wanna think through this is there's four relationships that we need to work on. Two of them are horizontal relationships. It's relationships with others. And then two of them are vertical relationships, or relationships with God. And so one, the first one is that,

is our relationship with leaders. Then we're gonna talk about the relationship with others, kind of each other. And then we're gonna talk about our relationship, the vertical relationship with God. And then we're gonna get even more specific and talk about our relationship with the Holy Spirit. So these are the four relationships we're gonna press into. And really, the ways that we're gonna thrive and grow in that, the four pieces are this. We're to lift up leaders. We're to lift up our leaders. We're to patiently care for one another. We're to continuously press in to God. And then we're to open ourselves to the Holy Spirit. That's the roadmap we're going down today. And let me just tell y'all, and kind of warn you up front, it's a lot at the end of this letter. So don't be intimidated, and there's gonna be a lot kind of coming at you today. My hope is this, that God will stir maybe just one of those things in you, and that you'll lean into him and he will grow one thing that we can move out of here so that we can grow and become more and more like Jesus as we walk forward. So the first one is this. First thing he says is lift up your leaders. So starting in verse 12, here's what we see. See, we ask you brothers to respect those who labor among you and who 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. So he tells us here that we are to respect and esteem the leaders that God has put over you. And the word here is actually for respect is to know someone or to see, to kind of walk a mile in their shoes, to really understand what they've got. And I realize this is kind of a little awkward here because me as one of the pastors here standing up and saying, hey, you're supposed to respect us, right? It's a little weird because I was always taught that you don't ask for respect, right? You earn respect. Well, that's one of the beauties though of the way we preach these texts expositionally. We take a book of the Bible most regularly and we just kind of walk through that book of the Bible. And so we come across things that normally we probably wouldn't pick this to teach because it's a little awkward, but this is where God has us and this is God's word and it is good. So we're gonna press in and talk about what this looks like because it doesn't only apply to like, you think of the leaders, it's not just Ross, it's not just the staff of ministers we have here. We also have leaders.

I mean, many of y'all who are leading life groups, who are leading in different ministry areas. And so this applies to all of those in leadership that God has put what he says here is over you in the Lord. And so it's a hard topic for us to kind of wrestle through, especially in this cultural moment. Because what we see when we think about authority, that's the idea that God has put some people over, someone over you is that there's a pushback, a cynicism against authority in general. And that's especially true when something has happened, there's kind of been a drift in the American church where people tend to look at church more from a consumer mindset. And you come to church just to receive information, come to church just to get my needs met. And you know what? If it doesn't meet my needs, well, I'll go to a different church, right? And that's not what God has called us to. That's not what the church is. It's not a product that we just kind of, yeah, we take, we leave or whatever. God has called the church, it's the assembled group of people. It's brothers and sisters together, it's a family together that are on mission together for God. And so in order for us to function, in order for us to be on mission together, there has to be leaders who are guiding the way

as we go through this. And the other part that makes this hard is that we all are well aware that there are leaders in churches that spiritual authority who misused that authority, who abused the authority that they had and they really let people down. And that makes it hard. And I know many of you may have come from a place where you've been hurt by a church or a church leader in different areas. And so I just wanna encourage you, there is obviously a lot of healing that needs to happen with that. But don't give up on the idea of leadership in general. Leadership is not a bad thing. Leadership is the way God has designed it. Unfortunately, some leaders though have misused that. But just because some have doesn't mean the whole thing is off and wrong. As a matter of fact, Paul, even Paul way back when he wrote this, he dealt with this too. This isn't a new thing. One of his co-laborers named Demas split, completely bailed on him. Says in 2 Timothy 4, says he was in love with the world and he deserted Paul. And so even back then, there were leaders who didn't hold up

what we're supposed to do. And I just wanna be clear, there is no excuse. As ministers, we are called to a higher standard. But just because some have misused that, that doesn't mean the idea of leadership is totally off the table. As a matter of fact, this is how God designed it. And he says here that we are to lift up, we're to esteem our leaders. We're to respect our leaders. And so we have to understand that God gave us leadership in the church because it is good for us. We need someone to hold us accountable. We need someone to challenge us. We need people who are gifted in certain ways to be able to lead and to be able to continuously open up God's word and continuously point us into God's word. We need leaders in the church. I think an illustration that I think is helpful, my wife and I teach some parenting classes, and one of the things we have to do when we're teaching parenting classes, one of the first things we kinda gotta help parents understand is that you as a parent have authority. And we need to use that authority to shape and help our kids grow to know Christ. And that authority is not a bad thing. And so the illustration we use is the umbrella.

Because authority, like an umbrella, it's God-given, it's good for us. And so if we walk in a rainstorm, we would say, this is good for me, right? This is helpful, it protects me. So it would be really silly of me to say, you know what, I don't believe in authority. I don't believe in, I don't wanna come under anybody else, so I'm gonna stand out here. Right, that would be foolish. But that's what we do when we reject all forms of authority and say, no, I'm out. I'm gonna do my own thing. Then we're left vulnerable, we're left protected, and we're not the way God designed it, his good design of being under good, solid leadership. Not perfect leadership, but good, solid leadership. And that is how God has designed the church. So if we look at this particular passage, and we see, it really is kinda nice because it lays out a few things about leaders that are helpful for us to understand. He says three things in there. He says, those who labor among you, first. Then he says, secondly, those who are over you. And then he said, those who admonish you. Okay, those are three things that leaders do. And I love the order that he puts those in because he doesn't start with those who are over you, like this is their big thing is that they're over you.

No, the first thing is that they labor among you. That is the first and foremost of biblical leadership is that biblical leaders will, it's what Jesus modeled, right? It's that servant leadership. In 1 Peter 5, Peter says that as a leader of the church, you don't lord it over them like the Gentiles do. We're to lead differently than the world does. And so that's what it looks like to labor together. Ephesians 4 paints a picture of this as well. In Ephesians 4, he says that the leaders are to equip the saints for the work of ministry. The saints, all of us, to be equipped. So there's certain people who are gifted to gift the saints, but all of us are working together. So it's not the leaders doing all the work. It's not the congregation doing all the work. It's all of us working together to do what God has called us to do. That is good leadership. That's biblical leadership. That's what we see here. And I love just that we, Ross's example in all of this. I love watching him because he's not a long distance kind of manager of just kind of, hey, you guys go and I've got to focus here on preaching. No, Ross is in the trenches with us each and every day. He's meeting with people. I don't know how he does it. Because not only does he weekly prepare the messages

and everything else, but he is constantly pouring into people's life, many of y'alls. That is solid leadership. That's what we're called to do as leaders of the church. And Ross leads us well in that area. I was also really encouraged in studying this because when I think about this command to lift up your leaders, y'all do this so well. As a leader here, as a minister here, I feel so loved. I can't tell you how encouraging this church is. I can't tell you how generous this church is. I can't tell you how honoring this church is to the staff here at the church. And so as we think about what does this look like to lift up our leaders, I wanna kind of expand a little bit, too, and think about all the leaders in the church. Because like many of you, each person here is in different ministry areas. You're in different life groups, and so you have different leaders over you. And I wanna encourage you today to really, how can you lift up those leaders in your ministry area? One of them is to just encourage them. So maybe today, send a text to your life group leader. Tell them how much you appreciate what they're doing. Another thing we can do with our life group leaders or others is to maybe lift some of the burden for them. If you've got a life group leader and they're kind of doing everything for the group,

hey, why don't I take this piece for you? Another thing is just the showing up. Leaders put a lot of work into putting together a life group or whatever it is. And if we're, what is probably most discouraging that I hear from life group leaders is when they do this and then people say, ah, I've got this commitment, I've got this, I gotta do this or whatever else, and they don't put in the commitment to group. And so that's one way that we can lift up our leaders. We can honor them is by, hey, you've done the work, we'll be there. And then the biggest thing. The biggest thing that I wanna just beg you to do for your leaders, for your life group leaders, for us as a staff, is would you please pray for us? There are some hard things that we have to deal with in leadership, and we love your prayers. So would you please, just regularly as you pray, would you pray for us as staff of a church, for your life group leaders, everyone here, and especially Ross. We would love that from you. So these are just some ways that we can step into that we can lift up our leaders, which is the first thing that Paul's telling us. Now, the second thing that Paul's telling us here, the second relationship, the horizontal, is that we are to patiently care for one another. So starting in verse 14, here's what he says.

We urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, and 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. So the second relationship that Paul focuses on, each other, and that we're to care for one another. And then he calls out three specific groups of people that we're to care for. He says, those who are idle, those who are fainthearted, and those who are weak. The idle, he says, admonish those who are idle. That word idle, it means to be out of step. It's a military term. So out of step. So those who are not following God's word, not following God's will, we are to admonish, which just means to gently confront and say, hey, this is what I see in your life. Tell me what's going on here. This is what I see happening. And we gently admonish. We're also to encourage the fainthearted. That word fainthearted means discouraged. And so by encouraging them, what we're doing, and the word encourage literally means encourage, right? It's to speak courage into people. That's what we're to do. And then finally, we're to help the weak, help those who are struggling in some way,

who just need a little extra help, that we're to press in and step into them. And y'all, this is totally counter cultural. This is different from what the world teaches. The world teaches us, hey, you gotta look out for number one, right? The world teaches us like, hey, if there's someone who's kind of dragging you down, run, cut them off, right? But what Paul's saying is, no, no, we gotta press into people who are struggling. Help them. How can we help them? How can we minister to them? How can we care for them well? And here's the thing about this. This is only, you can only do this in relationship with others. That's why life groups are so key. That's where we do most of these things, right? That's where we gently, hey, call each other out and challenge each other on certain things. This is where we encourage one another. In life groups where people come in and they're just discouraged. Maybe it's a job loss. Maybe it's a whatever else. And it's in the life groups that we can build each other back up.

And it's where we help each other. I can't tell you how many life groups I've seen where tragedy strikes or something goes horribly wrong with someone and they've got, what do I, where do I go? And how the life group rallies around them, lifts them up, meets physical needs and helps them carry through really, really difficult times. That's how we do this. And then Paul tells us that we are to be patient with everyone. He kind of widens the net. He says, we're to be patient in all these areas. In Ephesians four, verses one and two, he says, therefore, I therefore a prisoner of the Lord urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility, gentleness and patience, bearing with one another in love. So he tells us here that the way we love one another is to be patient with them and we bear their burdens. We help bear them up even when it is difficult.

It's the idea of patience. It's another way that patience is used. We see patience all throughout scripture. As a matter of fact, Paul, when he's telling us, he's explaining what is love. In first Corinthians 13, he's giving like, here's what love is guys. It's not what you typically think. What's the first thing he says? Love is patient. That's right. Love is patient. So if we wanna love others, we need to be patient with us. And this is hard because this takes time. It takes us laying down ourselves oftentimes in order to patiently wait for someone else. I got to see a beautiful picture of this this past week because we took 200 students up to Estes Park, Colorado. Middle school and high schoolers. And God did some amazing things during that time period. It was really incredible to see God work. But here was one of my. favorite things to watch. I watched over 40 leaders.

These are volunteers who took a week off of work to go pour into these students. And I watched them love these students so well. They admonished those who were out of step, right? There was a few shenanigans that had to be addressed. They were able to encourage those who were so discouraged. Some of the things some of these kids are going through right now, it just blow your mind, but they were able to step in and encourage them. And they were to help those who needed help. For some of these kids, they hadn't been away from home a lot, and so there's just kind of the normal camp struggles and things, and they helped them. And what I loved is these leaders, with very little sleep all week long, after a really long bus ride up there, did this with such patience. It was so beautiful. It was really cool to see. And so that, I hope that that is a picture for us as a church. For us to rally and say, how can we do the same for each other? How can we care for each other well? All throughout scripture, we see this call to patience. I raised the question for me, why is patience such a big deal to God? Well, I think it's because God has been so patient with us. We've pushed God away in a lot of ways. We've said, no, God, I got it, I'm gonna do this my way.

And God patiently draws us back to him. Paul goes on to say that, do not repay evil with evil, but seek to do good. It's the idea of forgiveness, that we are to not repay evil, but we're to forgive other people. Once again, this is what God does for us. The reason we're to do it for others is because God forgave us. And with God, it gets a lot more complicated because he is a completely holy character. He is completely holy. And so what it means is that he couldn't just say, forget, I forgive you, just don't worry about it. Because that would be a violation of his holiness. So he had to do something else. Instead of just washing it under the rug, our rebellion and our sin, he had to lay it on something else. And that was his son, Jesus. And so that's why Jesus came, lived the perfect life, never sinned at all, and then died on a Roman cross to pay for the penalty that we deserve. He took on our sin. He took on the separation that we deserve from God. And he took on death itself so that we could then be found without guilt, that we could be forgiven, that we could be made free in Christ

because of what he did for us. At Estes Park, at least 12, we're still following up with a few more, at least 12 students trusted Jesus for the first time. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And what they encountered changed their life forever because they saw the forgiveness available to them.

They stepped into it and they are now following Jesus. So we are to forgive others because we've been forgiven. So this week, as we kind of think through this kind of this coming week, what does it look like for you? What are areas that you need to be patient with others? Who is someone that you need to forgive? Who is someone who is out of step that you need to have a hard conversation with? Who is someone who is discouraged that you can speak courage into? Who is someone who just needs help and you can step into it? We are to patiently care for one another. And then Paul turns from there and from those horizontal relationships to the vertical relationships. And he talks about that the next, we are to continuously press into God. So starting in verse 16, here's what he says. He says, rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God. This is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. So notice how these three things go together. Rejoice, when? Always. Pray when? Without ceasing. Give thanks when?

In all circumstances, right? It's this idea of 24-7. These, we're to pray, we're to rejoice, we're to give thanks all the time. But that's not typically how we typically think about these things, is it? We typically think that, no, I'm gonna rejoice when things are good, right? And I'm gonna pray, maybe I'll pray in the morning, you know, one time a day, and then I'll pray when I need something, but that's about it. We think that I'll give thanks, yeah, when things are going my way, yeah, I'll give thanks, for sure, thank you, God. But that's not what he says. He says 24-7, all the time. He says, he's telling us that we need to move from an event mentality, like I'm gonna do this at a certain time, to a continuous dialogue. That's what he wants with us. That's the relationship that God wants with us. It is continuously talking throughout the day. And if we're gonna grow in our faith, and this is how we have to shift. Oftentimes, we think about, okay, I wanna pray, I've got my time set aside that I'm gonna pray to God, and that's a good, good thing. And we don't wanna,

we wanna keep that carved out, focused time, but what if that time was just the launching pad for continuous conversation throughout the day? We often think about, hey, when we talk about rejoicing and praising God, think, well, yeah, Sunday mornings, I come here, we praise God. What would it look like if instead of coming here to worship, we came here worshiping, right? That we were praising God all throughout the week, that we were being grateful to God all throughout the week, we were praying all throughout the week, and then when we came together, it's just a culmination of all of that. That's what God is, what Paul is encouraging us to move to. He wants us to move from our faith becoming a little, from our faith being a little compartment of our life, to being the totality of our life. My daughter does something that I thought was kind of, it was kind of strange, and so, but the more I thought about it, I think it's a good illustration for this. She'll get on the phone with one of her friends, and she'll FaceTime that friend. And they will be on the FaceTime forever, like hours. And she'll be baking a cake, and they'll be having conversations or whatever else. She'll be doing homework, and they'll be talking on the FaceTime. She'll be brushing her teeth, whatever it is,

they're just doing life together via the phone. And I don't know about y'all, but that's weird to me. Because that's not how I use my phone, right? I use my phone, like I'm gonna call Joe, and I gotta tell him this, this, and this, and hey, check in, how is he doing? And then that's it. But as I started thinking more and more about it, the way she does it is more about what Paul is calling us to do with God. It's not a check in every once in a while, but it's more of a continuous just doing life, just being together each and every minute of the day. What would that look like if our faith was more and more a continuous dialogue with him? So how do we do that? Because it takes a lot of focused effort because a lot of times as we run throughout our day, we get busy and we're thinking about all these other things. And I don't know about you, but sometimes I get to the end of the day and go, I hadn't thought about God hardly at all today. So what are some things we can do? Well, I think it starts with how we start the day off. I think it's key that we press in with him and that becomes a launching pad for the rest of the day. One Psalm that I have been praying just about every morning for a while now is Psalm 90 verse 114,

where he says, satisfy me in the morning with your loving kindness, so that I may rejoice and be glad. So just set our souls on, God, you are my satisfaction. Whatever else today brings, God, I wanna be satisfied in you. And then what does that look like throughout the rest of the day? Psalm 12 is a good one too. It says, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And on his law, he meditates day and night. It's so much easier to have a constant conversation with God if we've got God's word implanted in us. That word law means his scripture. So as we memorize God's word, then throughout the day, it's really easy to interact with that particular scripture that's already in our mind and we can have that continuous dialogue with God as we wrestle through and we just kind of churn over in our mind those scriptures that we have. Then throughout the day, how do we move to more of an ongoing dialogue where we're just constantly asking God, just, hey, God, would you do this? God, how about this? We're seeking wisdom from him. We're asking for, we're repenting. We're saying, God, I've messed this up.

And just as we go, if something good happens, we're just thanking him right there. What does that look like as we continue to grow into an ongoing dialogue with him? And this takes practice. It's not something that we can say, okay, I'm starting it tomorrow. We gotta build into this. And so I would encourage you, maybe there's some things we can do as just reminders throughout the day. Help us to step into this. Maybe one is just maybe set a reminder on your phone at certain points in the day, talk to God. Maybe it's a sticky notes in certain places where you know, oh, that's gonna trigger me to have a conversation with God. Maybe it's just you tie it to events. And so, hey, I've got every meeting I go into, right before that meeting, I'm gonna talk to God. How do we start to build that muscle? The same with gratitude. Gratitude is a muscle. The more we work out that muscle, the easier it becomes, it becomes a habit for us. Rejoicing is a muscle. Talking to God is a muscle. How do we continue to grow in that? How do we practice that day in, day out? Paul tells us then, he says, for this is God's will,

that we are to pray continuously, that we are to rejoice, that we are to be grateful. That's God's will. Once again, God's will is less about this big thing that I have to do, and it's more about who he wants me to become. He wants me to be, have a relationship, an ongoing dialogue with him. Which leads to the last piece of this. And that is open yourself to the Holy Spirit. This one's gonna be fun. All right, verse 19. Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise the prophecies, but test everything and hold fast to what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. All right, so Paul is painting a picture here for us. He says, do not quench the Spirit. The picture here is a flame, a fire, and being quenched with water. I'll never forget, there was a time where, this was really clear to me on what it means to quench a fire. So several years ago, I got it, I said, you know what? I wanna, there was kind of, there's a big thing about frying turkeys. So I wanna learn how to fry a turkey, right? And so I got the turkey fryer, and I read the old instructions, and you put the peanut oil in there, you bring it up to a certain temperature.

And then when I went, it was sitting on this wooden deck at a house I was renting at the time with a bunch of guys. And so I took that turkey and I put it in the fryer. I guess I did something wrong, because then the grease kind of went over the side and got into the flame, and then the flame climbed up. And so now the grease in the pot is on fire. I'm like, oh no, what do I do? So I ran over to get the garden hose, but I stopped. No, no, no, no, I stopped. I said, wait a second, something about water and grease fire. No, you're not supposed to do that. So I thought, okay, I got a better idea. It wasn't better. I got a shovel, and I got some dirt. I got a shovel full of dirt, and I threw it in the pot. Well, all that did was displace the grease and the fire, and now the deck's on fire. And I'm going, oh great, what do I do now? So I finally got the hose, and I hosed down the deck, and got that cleaned up. And then I looked over, and sure enough, there's a lid to the thing right there. I thought, oh, if I just put the lid on it, that quenched the fire, right? So that's how we quench the fire. By the way, I did not get my deposit back from that house. It was a little bit of a disaster.

But that's what it looks like to quench. And so we do this all the time. We quench the Holy Spirit. So what does that mean to quench the Holy Spirit? And the first thing we gotta be really clear on, because there's a lot of confusion around this, is who is the Holy Spirit? So the Holy Spirit, just so we're clear, is the Holy Spirit we see in Scripture is not a force. The Holy Spirit is a person. And the Holy Spirit is God himself. So when we think about God, we think about God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. One essence, three persons. We don't have to wrap our minds around that and figure out how is that possible. That is just what Scripture reveals about who God is. So the Holy Spirit is God himself. And he's the person in God who indwells us. He's a spirit that indwells us. So here's what Jesus said about the Holy Spirit. In John 16, seven, he says, "'Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. "'It is to your advantage that I go away. "'For if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you.'" The Helper is the Holy Spirit. Now picture this. Jesus is telling his disciples, hey, I'm going away,

and it's actually gonna be good for you, right? You've been walking with Jesus, of all people. And Jesus is saying, it's gonna be better, actually, if I leave. Like, no, how can that be better? But what happens is when Jesus left, he sent us the Holy Spirit. He sent those disciples and all of his followers, including us, so that when we trust in Jesus, the Holy Spirit takes up residence within us. He dwells within us. And this is what the Holy Spirit does within us. He seals us. He keeps us safe when we trust in Jesus from falling away. He seals us. He convicts us of sin. He guides us. He empowers us. He gifts us. It produces fruit through us. These are just some of the things we see in scripture that the Holy Spirit does within us. God himself living within us, working through us. This is why it was such an advantage that Jesus went away because we got this Holy Spirit. So now God uses us. God uses us to do the work of ministry, to continue the ministry of Jesus. And he uses those, can we keep that list up for just a second?

He uses these ways through us to do that. So how do we grieve the Holy Spirit? I'm sorry, how do we quench the Holy Spirit? It's when we silence him. It's when we pour water on him doing these things in us. So if at, so someone who doesn't have the Holy Spirit might say, hey, I am, the Holy Spirit can still help people who aren't believers yet start to know Jesus, start to draw them towards Jesus. And so if they quench the Holy Spirit, it would be them resisting that sealing at conversion. He convicts us of sin. So if we are convicted of sin from the Holy Spirit, and then we just say, you know what? No, I'm not gonna do, I'm gonna do this anyway. That's quenching the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 4 tells us that that is also called, that's called quenching the Holy Spirit. In this text, it would be that we are quenching the Holy Spirit. In, sorry, in, where'd it go? Hang on. We're there. Ephesians 4, he says, do not grieve the Holy Spirit. So that's that same idea. If the Holy Spirit's convicting us of sin, and we're resisting that, that is grieving or quenching the Holy Spirit. What about in, the other one is to, as he guides us.

The Holy Spirit guides us. If we silence him, then that is quenching the Holy Spirit. Now, I don't know about y'all, but this one I have struggled with a little bit. I've been a believer for almost 20, for 24 years now, and I'm just now feeling like I'm starting to kind of understand what this means to be guided by the Spirit. I've heard people talk all the time about like, well, God told me this. I'm like, gosh, what's wrong with me? I don't feel like, I feel like maybe he's led me. I don't feel like it was that certain that God led me to this. Like he told me these things. But here's what I'm starting to experience. And here's what I think this is a lot of times, is it's a small, whispering voice within us. And what I've found is it's the voice that's not my own. It's the thoughts that God puts in my mind that I'm like, that's not from me. It's the insight that he gives me that I'm like, I couldn't have come up with that. Those are ways that the Holy Spirit guides me in that. And here's what I found. Here's the key. Most of the time, he's telling me things that I don't want to do. Or telling me things that I don't want to hear. And that's how I know it's a voice that's not mine.

It's probably the Holy Spirit. Now we wanna discern that. We wanna test that against other things. And he's gonna talk a lot about that. But that's what it looks like a lot of times as we sort through. And it is hard because we've gotta sort through, in our minds, we've got fleshly thoughts and we've got spiritual thoughts. And we've gotta sort through this and identify what is the Spirit doing versus what is my flesh telling me. Romans 8 verse five says this. It says, for those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh. But those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. So we wanna set our mind or our mind be governed by the things of the Spirit. We wanna seek those things that the Spirit is giving us, not our flesh. As we try and sort those things out, we try and live more by what God is teaching us through His Holy Spirit, how He's guiding us, how He's leading us. Galatians 5.25 says, if we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. And so it's not just trying to discern, okay, what's God telling me? But then we step out and we actually move forward in that.

And I think, y'all, this is the hardest part. Because if there's a voice that's not my own telling me to do something that I probably don't wanna do, then to step out in faith in that is hard. But here's what I've found, is what I do, is what I think, I think that's the Holy Spirit whispering to me, and I step into that, then now I start to grow in how I recognize and understand and discern the Holy Spirit. And the more times we step out into that faith and move where the Holy Spirit is moving us, then we start to walk in the Spirit a little bit more. And it becomes a little bit easier to discern Him the next time, and the next time, and the next time. And so that's what my experience has been in walking with the Holy Spirit, trying to discern the Holy Spirit. It also is really important, if we're gonna do this, that we've got to slow down. At the pace we're running, it's gonna be really, really hard to. hear the Holy Spirit. And so it comes back to that continuous dialogue with God. If we're having that continuous dialogue, what we're gonna know more and more, I think that's God leading me, moving me, prompting me to do this. So we can quench God's spirit when he's guiding us. We can also quench God's spirit when he gives us gifts that we don't use.

And that really, I think, is the context for what Paul is saying here, because he says, do not quench the spirit and do not despise prophecy, which is one of those gifts, and we'll get to that in a second. When the Holy Spirit enters into us, takes up residency, he gives us certain gifts, certain things that maybe we could do before, but we could do in a more supernatural way. He gives us the ability to do things, things like leading, things like teaching, things like wisdom, discernment, all these different gifts that he gives us. If you want to learn more about that, the different gifts, Romans 12 talks about it, 1 Corinthians 12 talks about it, 1 Peter 4 talks about it, and Ephesians 4. So those are places to go. If you wanna go more, we did a whole sermon on this, and it was May 21st of 2022, called Don't Waste Your Gift. Okay, so that might be, if you wanna learn more about these spiritual gifts. But what happens is God gives us these gifts, and here's the purpose of the gifts. 1 Corinthians 12, verse seven says, to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. That's the key. Each of these gifts are not to build us up,

to make us look good. The purpose of the gifts is to build up the common good, to build up the church, to encourage one another through these gifts. So that's the purpose that God has given us, these spiritual gifts. And one of those gifts that he lists in a couple of places is prophecy. So what in the world is prophecy, right? This is a hard one, because Christians disagree on this a lot. Good Bible-believing, Jesus-loving, good scholars disagree on what is this? First of all, disagree on, some would say that the gift of prophecy no longer happens, that it was a first century thing, and then after the apostles died off, that gift has gone away. Others would say, no, it's continuing on, but they would disagree on what does it actually look like? So let me just give you one thought, one way that this could look with the gift of prophecy as it kind of plays out today. Think about, when you think about prophecy, think about the Old Testament prophets. What did they do? Now, first and foremost, when you think of Old Testament prophets, sometimes they did foretell what was going to happen, right? But most of the time,

what they were doing was not foretelling, it was forth-telling. They were given an insight by God, and that was pertinent to the time and the place, the situation that they were in, and then they were to communicate that to others, right? That's, in essence, what a prophet did in the Old Testament. Let's carry that over to the New Testament, and it's very similar. There are some differences we'll talk about, but it's similar in that, just like when we are trying to walk in the Spirit, trying to be guided by the Spirit, we get an insight from God, and that insight has to do with some particular situation, and then we speak that to someone else. It's very similar to being guided by the Holy Spirit, but it's for the benefit of someone else. It's to communicate it to someone else. That's an idea of what prophecy could look like, but he tells us that here's where it's different than the Old Testament prophets. The Old Testament prophets were given the job by God, like, you are to speak these things, and people are to listen, and you have the authority to teach these things. It is authoritative teaching, because it was encapsulated in Scripture by the Holy Spirit, and so that teaching from those prophets was authoritative.

We weren't told to test them, told that this is what God said, do it, right? If we come over to the New Testament, the apostles, what they wrote down, their letters, the letter of Thessalonians that we're reading, what they put down, it was encapsulated in Scripture by the Holy Spirit, and it is authoritative. We don't need to test it. It's solid, but when we talk about the gift of prophecy, we're called here to test it. We're not to just take someone's word for it. If someone says, hey, I feel like I got a message from God, and I think you're supposed to move to California tomorrow. I'm not gonna sell my house tomorrow. I'm gonna be discerning about that, right? Because this I trust implicitly. Prophecy, I'm gonna weigh it against, Does it match what was in this book? Is it, does it come under the authority of Scripture as I'm listening for what someone might be telling me God has a message? Okay, that's a difference that we have here. And so Paul tells us that we are to be discerning. Here's what I think, what a lot of people think was happening in 1 Thessalonians, that people were speaking these prophecies and then those prophecies didn't pan out so well. And so the people of the church in Thessalonica said, you know what, they were wrong.

I think we're just gonna forget this whole prophecy thing altogether. Matter of fact, just forget this whole Holy Spirit thing because that seemed weird to me, right? And so they just kind of washed it all away. And I don't know about y'all, I tend to do the same thing. I've seen some of these, the gift of the prophecy or tongues or other things that have been abused by people or seem to be manipulative. And my tendency is to say, yeah, no. But what Paul's telling us here is no, no, no, no, no. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. The things are real just because someone abused them, just like leadership, just because somebody abuses it doesn't mean it's not still the thing. Doesn't mean it's not real or it doesn't exist. And so what Paul's telling us here is don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Don't just despise all the anything, prophecy of any kind. What we need to do is we need to test and discern it. Okay, that's kind of what's happening here. And how do we test and discern it? Well, we always hold it up to scripture. So if this doesn't line up with scripture, it is not the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit communicated this. He's not gonna communicate something that's counter to that. We also test it against the character and nature of Jesus. If it doesn't match the character of Jesus, then it's not from the Holy Spirit.

We also wanna ask the question, is this to build up that person or is it to build up God? Because the Holy Spirit glorifies God in all he does. And it's not meant for the common good, not for one particular person to make a big deal, okay? Those are some tests that we can run as we look through scripture. But I don't wanna get too hung up on the prophecy piece. I think we need to spend a little bit of time to explain it. But really what I want, the big idea here is that we're not to quench the Holy Spirit. Don't close off the Holy Spirit. Don't pour water on the Holy Spirit. Instead, just test. Ronald Reagan had a saying that he'd said over and over again when he was negotiating with the Russians on nukes. And he said, we will trust but verify. And that's what Paul's saying here, trust but verify. And so as we step into this, the bigger piece of this is that we are not to squash the Holy Spirit. We're not to quench the Holy Spirit. He gives us these gifts. He gives everybody in this room that is follower of Jesus, he gives you gifts. Are you using those gifts to build up the church? Are you using those gifts to serve others? And I get the question a lot of times, well, I don't really know what my gift is.

The best way for us to learn and grow in our gifts is to jump in and start serving. And just to see where is God kind of moving in you? What are things that, I never thought I'd be good at this, but I kind of am. Or here's how God used me in some really cool ways. I wanna press in more on that. That's what it looks like to step into our gifts. And so God's calling us not to quash the Holy Spirit, but to instead use the gifts that he's given us. So where are you quenching the Holy Spirit? Is the Holy Spirit convicting you of a particular sin? And you just keep putting that lid right on it. Is the Holy Spirit guiding you into maybe going to doing something or approaching someone? And you're just throwing water on that because you don't want to. Is the Holy Spirit guiding you to use your gifts for something, to step out and serve others in the church? And you're just kind of putting a blanket on top of it. Where are we quenching the Holy Spirit? As we wrap up, we have covered a lot today. And so what I wanna do is I just wanna remember kind of where we started. Remember, this is, here in just a minute, I'm about to dismiss y'all and you're gonna go, and it's just like I am sending off my son and you are going. And so what I hope, what I wanna do is allow just a minute here

to let the Holy Spirit work in you. And I wanna pray, I wanna give a minute for you to pray and ask God, what of all the things that I heard today, what's one thing that you want me to change as we move forward here today? Is it something around lifting up our leaders? Is it something about patiently caring for others? Is it something around? that we continuously press into God, or is it something about opening up to the Holy Spirit? So I'm gonna give you a minute to just pray through that, to ask God that. And I'm gonna close this, and I'm gonna close this by praying verses 23 and 24 over us, because this is a letter written to a church just like this one. And this is what Ross actually, as he kind of thought through, here's the series that we're going through, this is what Ross asked us to do, is just to end this series, to end this book of Thessalonians by praying this prayer over y'all. So let's take a minute to just pray to the Lord, and I'll wrap us up.