Would you please take your Bibles and turn
to 1 Thessalonians chapter 5.
1 Thessalonians chapter 5.
Let me just say a couple of words
of introduction before we read this passage and
then pray and turn our attention to it.
I must confess to you that I labored,
indeed agonized, greatly over what I would share
with you all this evening.
Dan can tell you he and I were
emailing back and forth trying to get a
sense for where the Lord was leading and
I suggested actually two topics that I had
settled on in my heart and then later
changed my mind.
Well Dan, I've changed it for a third
time because I finally came to my senses
and thought it might be a good idea
to ask God what he thought.
And after I did that, I really felt
a deep conviction about speaking to you all
on a particular passage and theme tonight.
And I hope and pray that it will
be helpful and instructive and encouraging to you
here at Christian Fellowship.
By way of just introduction to why I
came to this conclusion, I began to reflect
this past week once again on the wide
variety of churches where I have had the
opportunity to minister over the last three or
four years, of all denominational stripes, of all
theological orientations, of all kinds of style and
substance.
And I've come to a conclusion about those
churches that would classify themselves, theologically speaking, as
either Pentecostal or Charismatic or Third Wave or
some would like to use the word continuationists
because they believe in the continuation of spiritual
gifts.
But whatever you want to label those churches,
if you kind of put them all in
one basket, as it were, and I've looked
at them closely and talked with pastors and
the people who fill these congregations, and it's
very obvious that there is a serious crisis
that is occurring within churches that believe in
what I would call a robust view of
the Holy Spirit's ministry today.
Now again, I don't want to sound like
an alarmist, far less a sensationalist when I
say this, but it seems to me that
in most cases in these kinds of churches,
they are gravitating to one of two extremes.
In fact, at dinner tonight, I didn't even
mention the topic, and Phil even commented that
he has observed this as well in the
body of Christ across our country.
On the one hand, it seems that many
of these kinds of churches have given themselves
over to what can only be called gullibility
and a naivete that actually borders on recklessness,
so open, so undiscerning concerning the things that
at least claim to be the work of
the Spirit that they are very near to
falling into heresy.
And at the other end of the spectrum,
there are those churches who still, at least
in terms of their theological affirmation, believe in
the gifts of the Spirit, but they are
so fearful and so cynical because of abuses
that they have seen that they are on
the verge of falling into what I would
call paralysis.
They're just not moving anywhere at all.
The first group are so desperate for anything
that smacks of the supernatural and oftentimes so
biblically uninformed that fanaticism and extremism and an
embarrassing state of affairs has taken over.
As I said, they're on the verge of
sometimes committing some serious theological heresies, oftentimes scandals,
whether of a financial or a sexual nature
have been revealed in some of these congregations.
Not that the others are immune to that,
but it seems to be more prevalent in
those.
And yet on the other hand, the second
group are so tired and weary of the
fanaticism, so of the extremes of the lack
of biblical integrity that they have, as it
were, pulled in the reins on what the
Holy Spirit can do in their midst.
They struggle with doubt.
They're increasingly cynical about the supernatural.
They have become what I would call practical
cessationists.
A cessationist is, you know, somebody who believes
that gifts of the Spirit ceased in the
first century.
Well, these people don't believe that, but they
practice as if it were true.
In other words, they rarely, if ever, pray
with expectancy for the sick.
They don't make it possible for the gift
of prophecy to operate in the body of
Christ.
And this division, again, isn't one that occurs
between so-called charismatic churches and so-called
evangelical cessationist churches.
It's happening within charismatic churches themselves.
And it's a real crisis, and it's very
dangerous, in my opinion, and I believe very
disheartening to our Lord.
So I want to speak to both groups
tonight, but especially the second.
So with that in mind, I want you
to look with me at a very short
passage of Scripture, 1 Thessalonians 5.
I think you know it well, beginning with
verse 19.
Do not quench the Spirit.
I'm reading from the English Standard Version, by
the way.
Do not quench the Spirit.
Do not despise prophecies, but test everything, hold
fast what is good, abstain from every form
of evil.
Let's pray.
Father, help us tonight as we open Your
Word.
Open our hearts to the truth of what
You have revealed here through the Apostle Paul.
Father, I pray that that if any here
tonight are particularly given to an undiscerning gullibility
to things of the Spirit, or if there
are some who have perhaps been wounded by
extremism in the past, and they're increasingly cynical
and closed, Father, I pray that You would
speak to each.
Speak to us all.
Grant us wisdom and discernment in knowing Your
ways and Your will for Your people.
Help us, Father, I pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.
I doubt if many of you have heard
the name Octavius Winslow.
A man died in 1878, but I want
you to listen to something that he said
about the Holy Spirit, and I'm quoting.
All that we spiritually know of ourselves, all
that we know of God and of Jesus
and His Word, we owe to the teaching
of the Holy Spirit.
All the real light, sanctification, strength, and comfort
we are made to possess on our way
to glory, we must ascribe to Him.
Where He is honored and adoring thoughts of
His person and tender, loving views of His
work are cherished, then are experienced in an
enlarged degree His quickening, enlightening, sanctifying, and comforting
influence.
I don't even remember where I found that
quote in Winslow's writings, but it expresses a
truth that I believe that we as Christian
men and women need to hear today, especially
today.
Think again about what he's just said.
Everything that you know about God the Father,
to the degree that you understand His attributes,
His love, His power, His grace, His majesty,
everything you know about God the Son, the
fact that you have come to faith in
Jesus, you have put your confidence in His
work on the cross, you owe to the
ministry and the work and the illumination that
the Spirit of God has brought to bear
on your soul.
Whatever change you've experienced as a Christian, whatever
degree of conformity to the image of Christ
you've experienced, to whatever extent you understand His
Word, whatever encouragement you have ever felt in
a time of despair, whatever consolation in a
time of depression, it is all due to
the work of the Spirit of God.
That's why Winslow says correctly, where He is
honored and adoring thoughts of His person and
tender loving views of His work are cherished,
then Christian men and experienced, as he says,
in an enlarged degree, the glorious benefits of
His work.
The antithesis, the opposite of honoring the Spirit,
the very complete and utter antithesis to cherishing
Him in His person and His work, is
what the Bible calls quenching.
I can't imagine a more serious offense to
the heart of God than when the people
who have been the objects and the recipients
of this glorious work of the Spirit, in
turn, conduct themselves and speak and act and
orchestrate ministries in the local church in such
a way that they quench that very Spirit
of God.
The Spirit of God wants and wills to
work in our midst.
I hope you know that.
And here in 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul describes
the Spirit under the imagery of fire.
He is a flame, as it were, whose
flame we must be very careful not to
extinguish.
It's a stunning image.
The Spirit, as it were, longs to operate
in our midst, to make known His presence,
to inflame our hearts, to fill us with
the warmth of His indwelling power.
And what do we do in response so
many times?
We organize in the church what I would
call a Christian bucket brigade, and we try
to douse the flame of His presence and
His power with all sorts of warnings and
extra-biblical rules and legalism and fear and
a flawed theology that says He doesn't really
do today what He did in the first
century.
We have all sorts of ways of quenching
the work of the Spirit.
It's interesting when you look at the New
Testament, as best I can tell, there are,
and these aren't all of them, but there
are at least five primary sins that can
be committed against the Holy Spirit.
As you know, in Ephesians 4, Paul warns
about grieving the Spirit.
In Acts chapter 7, Stephen in his sermon
accused the religious leaders of resisting the Spirit.
Here we read about quenching the Spirit.
In Matthew 12, Jesus warned about blaspheming the
Spirit.
And in the book of Hebrews, He talks
about insulting or outraging the Spirit.
Now, I happen to believe, but I can't
go into it, that blasphemy of the Spirit
and outraging the Spirit can only be committed
by non-Christians.
But we, if we are not careful, could
easily grieve, resist, or quench the Spirit of
God.
Now, before I say anything more about how
it is that we quench the Spirit and
what we need to do to counter that,
let me just say a brief word about
the mere fact that it is possible for
us to do this.
That's a remarkable concept that Christian men and
women can actually quench, put out the fire
of the work of the third person of
the Godhead.
It's amazing to me that the Apostle would
tell us that the Spirit of God has,
in a sense, granted to the Christian the
power and the authority either to restrict or
to release His work in our midst.
Now, as was mentioned to you from the
subtitle of one of my books, I'm a
Calvinist.
I have a very high view of divine
sovereignty.
Some people tell me too high a view.
So I do not take easily to any
suggestion that limitations can be put on what
God does.
Certainly the Spirit of God is omnipotent.
He can accomplish His will.
But the fact remains that the Spirit comes
to us, Paul says, as it were like
a fire, a flame, either to be fanned
into the fullness of the heat, as it
were, that He wants to bring to bear
in our lives or to be doused by
the water of human fear and control and
flawed and fallacious theology, especially when it comes
to spiritual gifts, manifestations of the miraculous and
the supernatural, the Spirit of God will rarely,
if ever, force Himself upon us.
For example, we don't need to turn there.
Let me just remind you of Paul's remarkable
statement in 1 Corinthians 14, verse 32.
Here Paul is giving guidelines and instruction on
how spiritual gifts are to operate in the
local body.
He specifically addresses the issue of tongues and
prophecy as you know.
And yet you oftentimes hear people say, well,
you know, when the Spirit comes it's just
so powerful, it's just overwhelming, I can't help
myself.
And if I step outside of the Pauline
instruction, if I violate those guidelines, well, it
was just the Spirit, you know, that just
took over and took control and I couldn't
help myself.
And Paul says in direct response to that,
the Spirit of the prophets is subject to
the prophets.
His point is that the Spirit does not
act upon us as though we were automatons
or puppets.
He happily subjects Himself to our decision concerning
when and how we deliver prophetic words in
particular, that's what he had in view in
1 Corinthians 14.
People, this is a frightening thought.
What an incredible responsibility is placed upon us
that we can make choices that determine when
and how and to what extent the Spirit
will manifest His presence in our midst.
Paul doesn't say here, hey folks, don't worry
about the Holy Spirit, don't worry about your
theology of how He operates.
You know, don't give a second thought to
how you structure your services and your worship
and your times of prayer and ministry.
I mean, the Spirit's going to do whatever
the Spirit wants to do regardless of what
you say or do.
That's not what he says.
Now, as again, as I said, it doesn't
come easily for me to acknowledge this, but
here Paul tells us, the Thessalonians and you
and me today, if you so choose, you
can quench, extinguish, douse, diminish the work of
the Spirit in your midst.
Don't do it.
That's a very serious exhortation that is delivered
to us.
Our responsibility is to fan the flame of
the Spirit's fire, to intensify the heat, to
rekindle what may have grown cold through our
neglect and our indifference.
Facilitate the Spirit's work.
Teach about how the Spirit operates.
Encourage people.
Make it safe for them to follow the
Spirit's guidance and His lead.
Don't create an atmosphere of hesitancy in which
people are terrified of making a mistake and
being denounced in public or cast out of
the church.
Don't forbid the speaking in tongues.
Don't despise prophetic utterances.
When you discern the Spirit's presence, throw gasoline
on the fire.
Now, having said all that, let me mention,
if I may, in the time we have,
very quickly, seven ways that we quench the
Spirit of God, seven ways that we need
to be very careful lest we, as it
were, blow out or douse or somehow extinguish
the work that the Spirit of God wants
to do among us.
Number one, we quench the Spirit whenever we
conduct ministry in such a way that His
personality is ignored or we pursue life as
Christian men and women in such a way
that the Spirit is described or spoken of
as if He were no more than an
abstract power or energy.
Gordon Fee, a great New Testament scholar today,
commented in one of his books about a
student of his that was having a hard
time dealing with the personality of the Spirit.
He said, the student wrote on one of
his tests, God the Father makes perfectly good
sense to me.
God the Son I can quite understand, but
the Holy Spirit is a gray, oblong blur.
I understand that.
I can relate to it.
We don't have any problem thinking about God
the Father within the Trinity, God the Son,
because Father and Son are personal terms, but
the Spirit, it almost strikes us more like
the force of Star Wars or some sort
of pervasive, vibrating energy that gives life to
all around us.
It's hard to hug a spirit, isn't it?
Or to be hugged by it.
There are times, tragically, when people in the
body of Christ, well-meaning no doubt, talk
about the Spirit of God as if He
were somehow the divine equivalent to an electrical
current.
You know, stick your finger of faith into
the socket of His anointing presence and you'll
get the jolt of your life, that kind
of language.
If you haven't ever heard it, you've been
spared.
This kind of mechanizing of the Spirit, this
reducing the Spirit to some kind of impersonal
force is offensive.
It diminishes ultimately what the Spirit will accomplish
in our midst.
May I remind you that although the Greek
word for spirit is neuter in gender, that
doesn't have anything to say about whether there
is personhood to the Spirit, because Jesus on
many occasions refers to the Spirit with masculine
pronouns.
The Spirit has all the qualities of a
person.
In fact, if I were to ask you
all to write down, what are the differences
between Phil and this lectern?
I hope that they would have a few
that they might come up with.
You would say things, well, a person like
Phil has a mind, he can think, he
has self-consciousness, he is moral, he makes
choices, he has affections and feelings and emotions.
A lectern is just lifeless, it's just an
object, it's a thing.
Well, all of these attributes are predicated in
the Spirit in the Bible.
It talks about his mind, he thinks, talks
about the fact that he has feelings, he
can be grieved, Ephesians chapter 4 says that.
He can be insulted, he can be sinned
against according to Acts chapter 5.
He exercises his will, it's according to the
Spirit's will that certain gifts are distributed to
certain people.
The Spirit performs all the functions of a
person.
He talks, testifies.
As I said, he can be lied to,
he can be tested or tempted.
The Spirit can enter into relationship with people.
He encourages, he strengthens, he teaches and all
of these, I have a multitude of texts
that confirm this.
So we need to be careful when we
talk about the work of the Spirit that
we do not reduce the glorious, precious Spirit
of God to some kind of impersonal energy.
We need to realize we are talking about
one with whom we have intimate relationship.
Secondly, we quench the Spirit whenever we neglect
or overlook or worse still deny some feature
of his multifaceted ministry.
Let me explain what I mean by that.
There are a number of people in the
evangelical world who don't believe that we should
even talk that much about the Holy Spirit.
And they appeal to something Jesus said in
John 16.
You remember in the room Jesus said this,
when the Spirit of truth comes, he will
guide you into all the truth for he
will not speak on his own authority, but
whatever he hears he will speak and he
will declare to you the things that are
to come.
He, that is the Spirit, will glorify me,
Jesus.
He will take what is mine and declare
it to you.
All that the Father has is mine, therefore
I said that he will take what is
mine and declare it to you.
That's a great passage.
But the point they derive from this is
that the Spirit therefore will never draw attention
to himself.
In other words, his divinely appointed task in
the economy of redemption is to shine all
of the light on God the Son to
instruct us concerning who Jesus is.
In other words, he will glorify the Son
and therefore his ministry is supremely Christ-centered
or Christocentric.
And therefore, even for me to be speaking
to you tonight about the Spirit and talking
in the terms that I am, some would
say, you know, that's really not biblical in
light of what Jesus said.
But we must be very careful to avoid
the error of what I call reductionism.
And what I mean by that simply is
that we try oftentimes to reduce the ministry
of the Spirit to Christology, as if the
Spirit does nothing else but shine a light
on Christ.
Now make no mistake, I believe that the
primary role of the Spirit of God in
your life and in this church is to
illuminate and to make known and to exalt
the person and work of Jesus Christ.
That is the primary role of the Spirit,
but it's not the sole role or task
of the Spirit.
Don't make the mistake of arguing that the
primary purpose of what the Spirit does is
the exclusive purpose of what He does.
All I need to remind you about is
the hundreds of verses in the Bible in
which the Spirit, who inspired the text, talks
about Himself.
The many, many instances in which the Spirit
makes His presence known.
You just have to read Acts chapter 2
and what happened at Pentecost to take note
of that.
The fact that the Spirit of God gives
direction to the church, Acts chapter 13.
Acts chapter 15, it is the Spirit who
guides and leads the Apostolic Company to draw
the conclusions they did at the so-called
Jerusalem Council.
It's the Spirit who awakens in us, according
to Galatians 4, the awareness of our adoption
as God's children.
It's the Spirit who provides the guarantee or
down payment that what we have now will
be consummated.
In every one of these arenas, to the
degree that we neglect that truth, we are
quenching the Spirit.
So the fact of the matter is, whereas
the Spirit's primary work is Christological in nature,
that's not the sole or exclusive thing that
He does, and to the degree that we
neglect or ignore or even deny this multifaceted
work of the Spirit of God, we throw
water on the fire of His presence.
A third way, we quench the Spirit whenever
we suppress or legislate against His work of
imparting spiritual gifts and ministering to the church
through them.
Now, some people hear me say that, and
they respond by saying, now, Sam, does that
mean that you are saying that the doctrine
of cessationism, the idea that the gifts of
the Spirit ceased in the first century, that
that doctrine, when it is taught and when
it is allowed to govern the life of
the church, are you saying that that's quenching
the Spirit?
Yes.
Let's just get that question right out of
the way.
Absolutely, that is what I am saying, without
hesitation.
People, the church is in a desperate state
today.
Do I need to remind you of that?
The church needs every resource that God has
been pleased to provide.
Can you imagine contracting with someone to come
to your home to do repairs or remodeling,
and they show up with a hammer and
a screwdriver, and that's it?
You know, we need every tool, every instrument,
every resource that God has provided to do
the work of the kingdom in building up
the body of Christ.
And I mean all of the gifts.
I am not just talking about the controversial
gifts of 1 Corinthians 12.
I am talking about the gift of teaching,
the gift of administration, and of mercy, and
of serving, and of evangelism, and of giving
to the degree that we do not instruct
and encourage and release people into these arenas.
We are quenching the Spirit of God in
our midst.
A fourth way that we quench the Spirit.
Now, listen carefully to this.
I may have to repeat it twice.
We quench the Spirit whenever we create what
I call an inviolable and sanctified hegemonious atmosphere
in our corporate gatherings or in our small
group meetings, such that the spontaneous work of
the Spirit is virtually impossible.
In other words, I have in mind so
constructing how worship is done, or so controlling
the flow and the development of a class
or a small group meeting, that the spontaneity
or the special leading of the Spirit in
terms of how we pray, and how we
preach and teach, and how we sing and
worship is not permitted.
Now, again, please don't misunderstand me.
I am not advocating chaos.
I am not saying anything goes.
I am not suggesting for a moment that
should your pastoral leadership provide guidelines and instruction
that they are therefore guilty of quenching the
Spirit.
Let me go on record in saying that
right now.
That's not what I'm suggesting.
What I'm talking about is creating an atmosphere
that is dominated by fear, in which people
are just, they're on edge, hesitant, if they
ever sense the Spirit is doing something or
saying something because they are terrified of being
rebuked and marginalized in the life of the
church.
And so inhibition begins to rule rather than
freedom.
And they are disinclined to contribute when in
fact the Spirit may well be seeking to
minister through them.
They are anxious about what others are going
to think because we've created this kind of
atmosphere.
I confess to you, for years of my
ministry, I quenched the Spirit of God in
my preaching.
I was absolutely terrified of ever departing from
the notes that I had in front of
me.
To me, that somehow was dangerous.
If I ever felt a prompting or a
moving of the Spirit to move in a
different direction or to speak on a particular
theme or emphasize something or even, lo and
behold, feel that there might have been a
revelatory word that was given to me, I
would find a way to justify ignoring it.
Everyone who's ever preached the Word of God
will tell you on those remarkable occasions, it
doesn't happen all the time or even often,
when the Spirit of God, as it were,
takes over in the midst of a message
to do something that maybe wasn't even planned
on.
Or consider how this takes effect in our
worship.
I know you all are familiar with the
passage in Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5.
In Colossians 3, 16, Paul exhorts us to
teach and admonish one another with psalms and
hymns and spiritual songs.
Now I doubt if I'm saying anything that's
new to you all tonight, but let me
just say it anyway.
Have you ever thought about the distinctions in
psalms, hymns and spiritual songs?
If you haven't, you need to.
Psalms, nobody disputes that.
He's talking about the Old Testament Psalter, those
150 psalms, those hymns of praise.
Hymns, most likely, was Paul's way of describing
the compositions that were coming forth in the
early church that primarily focused on Christ.
I think, for example, of Mary's hymn of
praise in Luke 2 called the Magnificat, or
Paul's Christological hymn in Philippians 2, verses 6
-11, or the one in Colossians 1, verses
15-17.
But what in the world are spiritual songs?
There are some who say, well, that's just
another way of saying the other two.
Well, if it were, then why did Paul
bother?
Why be so redundant?
Psalms and hymns are songs, and psalms and
hymns certainly are spiritual.
We don't want them to be carnal.
But there's something in spiritual songs that goes
beyond what happens when you sing a psalm
or you sing a hymn.
And I am convinced that what Paul is
talking about are spontaneous outbursts of praise that
just come through individuals or through a worship
leader that weren't planned, that are spontaneous, improvised.
They can be prophetic in nature.
But where you just have an atmosphere, and
those of you who've been in these kinds
of services often, or in worship services or
conferences or small groups, you know exactly what
I'm talking about.
Where the Spirit within us is given free
reign to declare and to praise and to
sing something that isn't in the book or
on the overhead transparency or in the bulletin.
And it is a marvelous and edifying and
Paul says, instructive and admonishment toward other believers
as we minister one to another in this
way.
I can't begin to tell you the countless
occasions in which I have been so richly
blessed when the Spirit of God has been
given the freedom to operate in that fashion.
Now again, it's not something that is to
be given such free reign that there are
no guidelines.
It's difficult.
You talk to musicians.
You talk to worship leaders.
Even the best will say to be discerning,
to be able to know what the Spirit
of God is doing is not easy.
And it can't just be a free for
all.
But at the same time, we need to
facilitate that kind of manifestation of the Spirit's
work among us.
A fifth way that we quench the Spirit
is whenever we make others feel hesitant, unsure,
or even fearful of following the Spirit's lead
in their life.
Not simply what we do within our own
souls, but when we actually conduct ourselves in
such a way that others begin to recoil,
to constrict, as it were, in their spirit.
I have to confess to you, for about
the first 15 or 16 years of my
marriage and of my ministry, I quenched the
Spirit in my wife.
I never consciously thought that that's what I
was doing, but I had created in her
mind an image of what a godly Christian
was supposed to be, and I had taught
her very faithfully what I thought the Spirit
would or would not do today.
And she was very faithful and very loving,
and if I can even use the word
that people don't like today, very submissive in
the way that she yielded to my leadership
in that regard.
I still believe in leadership of the husband
and the family, but I got to tell
you, not like that.
Because I suppressed and I quenched what the
Spirit of God could otherwise have been accomplishing
in my wife.
I think one particular vivid example that stands
out in my own experience, and I share
this story in my book, Convergence, but just
briefly I'll tell you back in October of
1970, a long time ago, and I'm getting
ready to get in trouble because I was
going to say, in October of 1970 when
I was a sophomore at the University of
Oklahoma.
Now we got that out of the way.
I had a life-changing encounter with the
Spirit of God, and God very graciously and
mercifully blessed me with the gift of tongues.
And I was very active at that time
in the Ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ
on the campus at OU.
In fact, I was the student leader.
I hosted all of the corporate gatherings.
I was on the steering committee with the
staff members.
And in that day, it's no longer the
case, but in that day, any charismatic expression
was absolutely forbidden in Campus Crusade for Christ.
And I'll never forget, after this happened, I
went back to my fraternity house.
I called one of the staff members who
was my leader.
I said, I've got to share something with
you.
And he immediately came over, picked me up.
I got in his car.
I hadn't said a word, and the first
words out of his mouth were, you spoke
in tongues tonight, didn't you?
I said, yeah, I did.
It was incredible.
And then the next words, you can't do
that and stay involved with Campus Crusade.
And I just remember this.
It's like he just punctured the balloon, and
I just so deflated.
The air just went out of my life.
I said, what?
He says, you know, we just don't believe
that that's a legitimate spiritual experience in this
day and time.
And if you're going to remain the student
leader and be a part of the leadership
team, you're going to have to renounce that
and just promise me that you won't ever
do it again.
The Spirit of God was quenched in me
as I yielded to that man's instruction and
his leadership.
The consequences for the next two decades in
my life, I won't even go into detail.
It was just horrific.
A sixth way that we quench the Spirit.
I'm using here the words of John Piper.
In talking about the work of the Spirit
in the church and wanting to facilitate it,
John once said that we quench the Spirit
through what he called the verbalized institutionalization of
caution.
The verbalized institutionalization of caution.
And what he meant by that was when
leaders will stand in a pulpit or small
group leaders will share or an adult Bible
class or even one-on-one and we
say, oh, yes, well, of course we believe
in the gifts of the Spirit.
Of course we believe in the operation of
prophecy in our midst.
And then after we have made that kind
of grudging concession, we then launch into a
long, impassioned, austere warning about all of the
horrific things that might happen if we go
too far.
This long, verbalized institutionalizing of caution and whatever
good we may have accomplished in our instruction
and encouragement concerning the Spirit, we just have
immediately destroyed and robbed from people's hearts.
Be wary of affirming on the one hand
your belief in what God has done, what
the Spirit is doing, but then through the
long...don't misunderstand me.
Sometimes we need warnings.
Sometimes there are things we do need to
be cautious about.
But it can be done in such a
way that people are still encouraged to be
open to the Spirit's work and not feel
judged and quenched.
Seventh and finally, and this brings me...believe it
or not, it took me all this time
to get to my passage.
That was an introduction, people.
Look at 1 Thessalonians 5, the seventh and
final way, and the primary manifestation of Spirit
quenching is when we despise prophetic utterances.
Look again at Paul's language.
I don't know what English text you're reading,
but I want you to see very clearly
what he does here.
Do not quench the Spirit.
Do not despise prophecies.
Now, most New Testament scholars will point out
to you that when Paul says do not
quench the Spirit, he's thinking primarily, not exclusively,
but primarily of the despising of prophetic utterances.
Don't sever these two elements in Paul's language
here.
The way you don't quench the Spirit is
by facilitating the exercise of prophecy.
Look at the parallel between verse 19 and
verse 20.
Do not quench the Spirit, and if I
can just kind of paraphrase here, but...excuse me,
do not quench the Spirit, which consists of
despising prophecies, but rather test everything and hold
fast to what is good and abstain from
every form of evil.
Now please note carefully how Paul's argument unfolds
here.
Perhaps the most important word in this passage
is that word but, with which verse 21
opens.
I hope it's in your English translation.
Paul is setting up a contrast.
Rather than quenching the Spirit by despising prophetic
utterances, examine everything.
In other words, the word everything or all
things here in verse 21 is a reference
to the prophetic utterances in verse 20.
That leads to the conclusion that the good
that he mentions in verse 21, to which
we are to hold fast, and the evil
in verse 22, from which we are to
abstain, are references to the prophetic utterances in
verse 20.
How many times have you said to somebody
when you wanted to get them to do
something right, and to avoid...you said, oh, don't
you remember Paul's words?
Hold forth to what is good and abstain
from every form of evil.
Well that's good advice, but that's not what
he's talking about here.
The good are those prophetic words that after
being judged and weighed and assessed, are concluded
have indeed come from God.
We are to hold to them, Paul says.
The bad, the evil, are those alleged prophetic
words, which after being judged we have determined
are not from God, are either carnal or
fleshly, or perhaps even the counsel of the
enemy himself.
You know, the fact that Paul had to
write this is stunning in and of itself.
The church at Thessalonica may well have been
the most mature church in the ancient world.
Paul's glowing endorsement of them in chapter one
of his first letter, how they had received
the word of God, not as the word
of men, but for what it is as
the word of God.
How they had embraced it in the midst
of much affliction, and yet stunningly in that
church there were people who were disenchanted with
the spiritual gift of prophecy.
You might say, well, why?
Why were they inclined to despise and disdain
prophetic utterances?
And the answer is, for the same reason
you are.
Think about it for a moment.
Perhaps you have watched people with the gift
of prophecy use it to control the lives
of others and with great damage done to
them, and you just go, oh, I just
don't like that.
Or maybe there were cases where an individual
with the gift of prophecy used that to
expand their power base in the church, and
to perhaps argue that they deserved a place
at the table of leadership when in fact
they were unqualified for that.
Or perhaps the gift of prophecy has in
a congregation or small group been overused and
overemphasized, almost as if it's the only thing
of value in the Christian life.
Or maybe you've watched how words have come
forth, and they weren't judged.
They were just kind of left hanging out
there, and you didn't know what to do
with them, and they ended up coming to
nothing.
Or maybe it's just because you think it's
weird.
Just weird.
It just makes your skin crawl, and it's
embarrassing.
Maybe people who really have genuinely the gift
of prophecy present themselves as if they're highly
favored, and that God really has blessed them
in a way that he hasn't blessed you.
Or maybe words were spoken even over your
life, and they didn't come to pass.
I could go on and on and on,
people.
You know what I'm talking about, and you
know what happens deep within.
You say to yourself silently, if not to
others, well if that's what this spiritual gift
is all about, I don't want anything to
do with it, and I don't want to
be a part of a church that has
anything to do with it.
Now listen to me.
It doesn't matter how badly people have abused
this gift.
It is a sin to despise prophecy.
If Paul commands the Thessalonians, he commands us,
do not despise prophetic utterances.
If you find yourself feeling contempt and disdain
and frustration over the abuses, and they exist,
make no mistake about it, in the exercise
of this gift, and you just are, you've
clenched your fist, and you grit your teeth,
and you've kind of resolved in your heart,
I'm just not going to go there.
That's sin.
Now, you say, but wait a minute Sam,
is the alternative, is that it?
It's either I quench the spirit by despising
prophetic utterances, or I just throw open the
gates to anything that claims to be prophetic?
Absolutely not.
Look at what Paul says.
It isn't anything goes.
The alternative to not quenching the spirit is
what?
Examining every word.
Judging every word.
Evaluating.
Assessing.
Paul doesn't correct the abuse by commanding disuse.
He corrects the abuse by saying, judge it.
Bring the light of scripture to bear on
what is happening.
There's a real life baby in that bath
water that you want to throw out.
Be careful.
It's biblically informed discernment that he calls for.
We are neither to gullibly believe every word
and let it go unjudged, nor are we
to cynically reject them because it's just weird
and out of control.
We are to judge and evaluate and assess.
That is our responsibility in the body of
Christ today.
I don't have time to go into this.
Let me just quickly say, you're saying, well,
how do we do that?
Well, obviously you know that you apply the
authoritative and infallible word of God.
I say this so many times, and I
don't know if people really grasp what I
mean.
We have no idea how much confusion and
bad doctrine and abuse and all sorts of
fanaticism in the body of Christ could be
eliminated if we just had a basic biblical
literacy in the body of Christ.
If we understood the fundamental principles of the
book of Proverbs alone, you could eradicate virtually
so much of the chaos, confusion, and ethical
compromise among Christians today.
When people say, God told me I could
do this, and I felt led to do
that.
If we just understood the principles of Proverbs,
we'd say, no, wait a minute, time out.
No, God didn't say that to you because
God said this in his infallible word.
We so quickly and cavalierly say, well, we
need to judge prophecies in light of God's
word, but we really don't understand what that
means.
Why?
It's because we are basically illiterate when it
comes to the ways that God acts.
If we understood the principles according to which
God operates in relation to his people, if
we just looked into biblical history, and then
when somebody comes along with some outlandish and
outrageous claim that they've heard the voice of
God tell them this or to do that,
you'd say, you know, as best I can
tell, that's just not how the God of
the Bible operates.
Here's how he operates, where we bring these
prophetic words to the test of 1 Corinthians
14, 3, where Paul says that their purpose
is to encourage, to edify, and to console.
Ask, did that word encourage or did it
discourage?
Did it build people up or tear them
down?
Did it console them or confuse them?
That's a good way of testing words.
The test of love, does it contribute to
mutual affection in the body of Christ?
The test of community, what do other wise
leaders and Christians and mature believers with many
years in the Lord say about this?
And the test of personal experience, does it
come to pass?
Isn't it amazing that the Apostle Paul himself,
although he knew he was operating and speaking
and writing under the inspiration of the Spirit,
commended the Bereans because they wouldn't take him
at his word.
They said, we want to test, we want
to look and examine in light of the
Scriptures to see if these things are true.
Paul wasn't at all offended, in fact, he
applauds them.
Would that we could do that today.
So many times, and I will stop.
You know, I hear some outrageous things as
you do.
I can still remember the prophecy of the
man on television who told us of the
date of the second coming of Christ, that
was about 15 years ago.
Well, we're still here and he isn't.
Or the prophecy that I heard just a
few years ago from two so-called well
-respected individuals, who I'm not saying they don't
have the gift of prophecy, but who said
that California was going to suffer such a
devastating earthquake that half of it was going
to fall off into the Pacific Ocean.
Well, maybe it should, but it hasn't.
If you're from California, just understand.
Or, you know, these vague, pious platitudes that
people espouse that you sit there and say,
you know, my eight-year-old understands that
and mentioned the same thing to me the
other day.
And it just, it's just vacuous and empty
and it doesn't seem to be of any
benefit.
These things exist and it causes us, oftentimes
subconsciously, unaware to our own hearts, to withdraw,
to recoil.
And in the process, we pour water and
we extinguish the fire of the Spirit in
our midst.
The Bible does not call for us to
be gullible or naive or to operate in
an anything-goes atmosphere because we're so afraid
of quenching the Spirit, but neither does it
endorse a hypercritical, cynical, skeptical, censorious attitude that
pours water on His fire.
You may disagree with some of the things
I've said tonight.
You may want to reject my suggestions, don't
buy my books, but please, I beg of
you, I plead with you, do not commit
the sin, and it is a sin, of
quenching the precious Holy Spirit of God.
Let's pray.
Gracious Father, we need your help.
We need the illumination of your Word.
We need the wisdom of seasoned saints in
the body of Christ.
We need all these things and more, Lord,
that we might facilitate and make possible the
turning up of the heat of the Spirit's
fire in our presence.
Oh, Father, what an awesome thing you have
placed upon us, that the Spirit of God
will so manifest Himself in our midst that
we can either extinguish or intensify what He's
doing.
Lord, forgive us for having neglected what the
Spirit is doing and who the Spirit is.
Forgive us for having allowed fear rather than
faith to dominate our lives.
Give us wisdom.
Give us the maturity in Christ that is
needed so that this precious gift and all
the gifts and all the ministries that the
Spirit awakens and energizes within us can be
accomplished for the glory of Christ and the
praise of His name and the edification of
His people.
We pray this in Christ's name and for
His sake.
Amen.