1 Thessalonians 5:19-22
Amen. You can be seated. Please
turn in your copy of the scriptures to 1 Thessalonians chapter 5,
19 through 22. 1 Thessalonians 5, 19 to 22. We’re just a couple verses away
from ending and then we’ll make our way into 2 Thessalonians.
The Thanksgiving break will give us time to think about a psalm,
I think the third week or so, maybe a couple weeks from now.
And then we’re gonna look at the theme of covenant through
the Advent season, and then we’ll pick up with 2 Thessalonians
in the new year. 1 Thessalonians 5, 19 through
22 is a continuation of Paul’s church commands to the young
church at Thessalonica. A couple of weeks ago, we looked
at the commands he gave for the congregation to respect and honor
the leaders, those who labor over them spiritually. Then he
gave us some commands about how we are to serve others. Last
week, we looked at what we owe ourselves. And today we want
to look at what we owe God. not quenching the spirit, not
despising prophecies, basically paying attention to God’s word. And so before we read, let’s
pray together. Lord, we’ve come today to your house of worship,
your house of prayer, now your house of instruction. And so
we ask that the Holy Spirit would give testimony to the reading
and preaching of the word that we would not despise prophecy,
not quench the spirit. And we pray that you would glorify
this your word in the hearts of all who hear. And we do pray
that it would run its errand, it would do its work, that it
would enlighten the ignorant, it would awaken the careless,
that it would establish the weak and reclaim the wandering, and
that it would comfort the feeble-minded, and most of all, make us, your
people, ready for the coming of Jesus Christ, our great Lord. And we ask this in his name,
amen. 1 Thessalonians 5, beginning
at verse 19, The apostle Paul to the Thessalonian church, do
not quench the spirit, do not despise prophecies, but test
everything, hold fast what is good and abstain from every form
of evil. Amen. The word of our God for
us. If you look at the scriptures and what they show us about the
word of God from beginning to end, you will see across the
span of redemptive history, God speaking to his people in all
kinds of ways. With Adam, we supposed that they
walked in the garden. Remember when Adam and Eve sinned
against God by eating the forbidden fruit? God was walking in the
garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and Eve, he could not
find for they were hiding. They were naked. They were ashamed.
They had sinned and fallen short of his glory. And so they hid
from his holiness and their unrighteousness. We know somehow, some way God
commanded Abraham to leave Ur of the Chaldeans. to leave his
kinfolk, his people, his familiar land and his idols, most especially,
and to go into the land of promise, to go into Canaan and sojourn
there and that God would give he and his offspring that place,
that land as a reward, as an inheritance. And of course, that
came to pass. After the exodus and the wilderness
wanderings and through the ministry of Joshua, they entered their
inheritance. We sang Psalm 76 as our opening
hymn today, and it speaks about how God went before them. They
fought all their battles and how they got to a place under
King David with peace around their borders. That land extended
under David from north to south to east and west as far as it
could. And we know along the wilderness
way at Mount Sinai, God met with Moses face to face and gave him
the 10 commandments etched on stone as if written by the finger
of God. We know Moses wrote the first
five books of the Bible, and so on the scrolls they were written,
on the parchments, Paul speaks of writing his Bible words. We know from Peter that holy
men of old were carried along by the Holy Spirit, and as the
Spirit worked in them, their life, their personalities, their
language, Their abilities, they wrote down the scriptures, which
we now have in our copies of God’s word. What does Paul say
to Timothy about the scripture? All scripture is breathed out
by God. We know when God breathes out,
he breathes breath into man and creation. breathes breath into
those dry bones in Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones. He breathes
life and gives his powerful life-giving, life-changing word. And so all
scripture is breathed out by God and is useful for teaching,
for doctrine, for correction, for rebuke, and for taking what
is scattered and disheveled and making it straight, making it
orderly. And so what a wonderful thing
it is to have the direct word of God, the divine word of almighty
God, the words of poets, the words of prophets, the words
of historians, the words of Jesus himself, the words of Peter and
Paul and all the other writers of the scripture. It’s a wonderful
thing. to have this. We see in Jesus’ life and ministry,
he would go into the synagogue and he would read the scriptures
as was the custom of the people. And then he would explain it.
Ezra did that in the post exile era. And one of the great blessings
we have as Christians now living 2000 years since the death, resurrection,
and ascension of our Lord Jesus, We have the wonderful blessings
that Paul speaks of in Ephesians chapter four. Paul uses Psalm
68, which is a divine warrior going back to heaven with the
victory spoils of war. And as the divine warrior goes
back to heaven with the victory spoils of war, people give gifts
to that returning king who did justice by fighting the enemies
of God’s people. And so gifts are given, but in
Ephesians 4, Paul takes that passage. And as the New Testament
writers are known for doing, and because it’s under the inspiration
of the spirit, we take it as the right way to see God’s word
and the fullness of redemptive history. Paul takes that passage
and says, when Christ ascended on high, instead of receiving
gifts, you know, yay King, you won for us, here’s stuff. It
says he gave gifts and Ephesians 4 says that he gave for the New
Testament church. He gave some to be apostles.
He gave some to be prophets, some to be evangelists. And then
finally he gave the pastor teacher. And these are all to do the work
of the church. These are all to do the work
of the church. We’ll speak of that in a few moments. But in
apostolic times, you had apostles, sent ones who went about establishing
the church. You had evangelists giving the
gospel and you had prophets still speaking for God, his direct
word, his direct revelation in these apostolic times. So think
of Thessalonica, Paul’s letter to them. They were in a epic
that we don’t live in. They weren’t under Adam in the
garden or Moses on the mountain. They weren’t under the prophets
of the Old Testament, but they lived under the apostolic era
where things that no longer happen in the church era took place
in order to build up the church. In fact, when Jude, the half-brother
of Jesus, later is writing the little bitty book of Jude right
before Revelation, he tells the church, contend for the faith. And there he’s not saying your
faith in Jesus. He’s saying contend for the faith, the doctrine,
the content of your beliefs. Contend for that faith that was
handed down to you by the apostles. That was handed down to you by
those people God appointed. And so bless the Lord that we
live in a time with 66 finished books. We live 2000 years down
church history where these books have been affirmed as preaching
Christ. These books have been affirmed
to fit the whole of scripture. They don’t contradict. We’ve
been given these books written by holy men of old, 45 or so
human authors. Our canon, the canon of scripture
is closed. There’s nothing added to it.
There’s nothing taken away. In fact, you read Revelation,
God warns, blessed is the one that hears, but cursed is the
one that takes away. So we live in wonderful times
with wonderful translations and if You have a study Bible in
your lap today, or perhaps it’s on your desk at home, with really
good study notes. You are living in very high and
privileged times. And speaking from a church standpoint,
I believe we’re living in the best times of biblical scholarship,
resources for ministers and Christian educators. We’re living in a
very wonderful time. where if you’re a teacher or
preacher of the gospel, you have very little excuse, maybe just
money, not to have good stuff on your shelf in order to feed
the flock of God. But even more importantly than
that, and of course it’s election week, Tuesday, we live in a land
where we’re free to still worship and still preach and proclaim
God’s word. That’s not the case around the world. And so we have
many great and wonderful blessings. But there’s a warning in our
passage today. There’s a warning not to quench
the spirit. who gives us these words. There’s a warning not
to despise prophecies, the very mouth of God. And there’s other
warnings in scripture. We want to hold that it’s the
word of God, that it’s the inherent and infallible word of God to
which nothing is added or taken away. We’re also warned that
there will be people, Paul says to Timothy, there’ll be people
in your day that they’ll have itching ears and they will gather
to themselves teachers who will scratch that itch. In the 1990s and early 2000s,
the American church was evaluated. Not a good diagnosis, not a good
judgment, but the American church was diagnosed as being ripe with
moralistic therapeutic deism. Moralistic is the teaching of
moralism. Be good, right? You hear this
across the land. Jesus was a good man, a good
teacher. We should imitate him. Jesus was a bit more than that.
And that was not the purpose that we would imitate him by
going about doing good, though that is part of it, I would suppose. But the therapeutic side, you
feel good. So be good, moralistic. Therapeutic, feel good. There
should be nothing in your life as a Christian that should make
you feel bad. And if you get sick or get poor, you’re doing
it wrong under today’s prosperity or therapeutic gospel. And then
there’s the whole deism. This is the worst part of it.
They believe that God basically took the world like a Harlem
Globetrotter. He spun it and stuck it on his
finger and got it spinning. And then he tossed it in the
air, right? You’ve been to the Globetrotters and they do that
with a basketball. And when will that basketball
stop spinning and eventually fall? Well, when time and energy
run out and people who hold the deism believe God is there, but
he is not involved. They say God is there, but he
doesn’t intervene. He’s not sovereign. He’s not
the God of Providence. who sees and provides for his
own creation. And so those are terrible views
that are out. We remember the Old Testament
prophecies. When God wants to bring judgment,
he gives a famine in the land. And it’s not a famine of wheat
and grapes and wine and other things. It’s a famine of his
word. In fact, that passage in Proverbs, where there is no vision,
No prophetic word, the people perish. And I think the same
is true in the American church. We are living in a very impoverished
era. Though we have the Bible, though
we have these good study Bibles, though preachers have these great
resources, there’s a lot of itch scratching. There’s a lot of
things out there being said, and maybe they are true, but
people need to be fed by the steady diet of the word of God
and there will be life resulting. And so our passage today tells
us don’t quench the spirit. Don’t despise prophecy. Test
everything. Hold fast to the good and abstain
from every form of evil. So let’s think about these church
commands that God gives through Paul under the inspiration of
the Holy Spirit to the Thessalonian church who were living under
apostolic times, but to us who sit here today still under the
ministry of God’s word. So do not quench the Holy Spirit
if you’re a Boy Scout. You learned when you went camping
or you set a fire to always have a bucket of water, right? Fire
gets out of hand, you douse it, you quench it, you snuff it out. Maybe some of you have candles
in your house and you put the lid on and it snuffs out the
fire. You have a fire in the fireplace,
it dies down, you close the damper. you quit fueling that fire, do
not quench the Holy Spirit, has this idea that we hear the Word
of God, we feel the Spirit at work in us, but we dump five
gallons of water on it. We live disobedient lives. We close our ears to the Word
and to the teaching of the Spirit. And it really should be the opposite.
Maybe you go to Williamsburg, You go to Old Salem, everybody
loves to go to the blacksmith shop. And they’ve got their pedal,
they’re pumping away and there’s that big leather set of billows
that’s pumping air. And all of a sudden the fire
at the forge is getting red hot. And I don’t know what temperature
it has to be to soften iron so they can do their blacksmithing,
but it has to be pretty hot because you see those orange coals, those
embers, and you can feel the heat as you stand there and watch
and they pound and they pound and they pound and shape their
iron. And we need to see the Christian life like that. The
Christian life is full of light, the word of God. And it’s also
full of heat, the spirit of God. And when we douse it, when we
snuff it out, it takes away that great life. We
get out of step. with the Spirit. We get out of
step with the way God wants to work. We get away from the habits
of grace. Down the road, there’s a church
that has the letters you can put out, and that’s dangerous.
Never give a preacher a sign where they can put letters. And
there’s a church out that way, and there’s goofy stuff on it.
Some of it’s helpful. I always get a chuckle. And the
one that’s really goofy, but it’s true, seven days without
God makes one Week. W-E-A-K, right? So every once
in a while, they get you. But you get out of the habits
of grace. You quit coming to church. You don’t come to the
sacraments. You’re not in the fellowship of the believers,
the prayer of the saints. You’re not known, so people don’t call
you, check on you, encourage you. The one and others aren’t
possible because you’re, you know, one who’s away, that kind
of thing. But you don’t read your Bible
during the week. You don’t say prayers, you don’t confess your
sins. The spirit reminds you of something and you say, I don’t
know. And here’s where the rubber really hits the road. And I know
you know this because I know this and I’ve experienced it
and none of you are different from me. You ever struggle like Paul
says in Romans 7, I know the thing I ought to do. And that’s
the thing I don’t do. And just before you know the
thing you ought to do, it’s because the word and the spirit confirmed
it and you feel really good about it. We’ll do it. And then Satan
comes in like the birds and snatches, right? Or he shows you something
of the world that’s just more enticing at the moment. And in
your mind, you really say, I know what I ought to do, but I’m not
going to do it. Y’all been there? You thought
that? If you hadn’t, you’re lying. See, you’re sinned already. And
what does Paul say after that? He says, I know the thing I ought
not to do. And that is the very thing that
I do, O wretched, man that I am, who will deliver me from the
body of death. But you’ve got to be careful in your daily living
not to quench the spirit, not to say, you know, God, it’s good
and well that you told me what is right and what is wrong. And
I’m just not going to do the right thing. I’m going to do
the wrong thing. You’ve had that process, that thought process
in your mind and in your heart, and it’s terribly wicked. And
later when you confess your sins, you say, oh my goodness, I told
the third person of the Trinity to buzz off. It’s what it is,
isn’t it? And so Paul says, do not quench
the Holy Spirit. It is sin to do that. And you
will get yourself in a fix. Well, he moves on and gives another
command. Do not despise prophecies. And
most biblical scholars, biblical theologians say, don’t quench
the Holy Spirit as the big command. Everything else is kind of a
subset. So the third person of the Trinity, We don’t want to
despise him, but we also don’t want to despise prophecies. And
remember how prophecies come, at least the true ones, they
come from the Spirit at work in holy men of old. And as they
were carried along by the Holy Spirit, they gave prophetic utterances,
they wrote down the holy scriptures. And so Paul is still speaking
to a church in the apostolic era where the risen Christ has
given prophets, evangelists, and apostles to establish the
church. He’s given prophets and evangelists
and apostles to establish the church. Now today, we believe
at the end of the apostolic era, so when St. John died, probably
the last apostle, after he wrote Revelation, we believe that the
pastor-teacher mentioned there in Ephesians 4 is the way God
primarily speaks. We believe in the priesthood
of all believers, of course, where we can read our Bibles
and we can understand it. But God has designed the church
for the weekly preaching the weekly reading and the preaching
of the scriptures by someone set apart to do that, to be the
way God primarily feeds his lambs. And, you know, with COVID and
the TV screen churches and the satellite thing where the guy’s
preaching at this one place, but there’s all these campuses,
you know, we believe in the personal ministry of a pastor with elders
to the local church. The Babylon Bee had it so well
four or five years ago. And I’m not saying there’s not
a place for digital technology. There is. And I use it often.
But the funny was, how is the TV screen going to minister to
the couple in marriage trouble? Right. Because that pastor can’t
see. That pastor can’t be there. And usually there’s so many folks.
But it’s a wonderful thing to be in a flock where there are
shepherds. And we have pastors. We have
elders here. And what a sweet, wonderful thing
that is. But the passage warns us today
in our era, don’t despise the reading and the preaching of
the word. Don’t despise the way God primarily
works. So whatever you think of the
scripture and charismatics can go one way and You know, people
believe there’s still prophets, apostles, evangelists. They can
go another way. But here’s the issue. When God speaks and it’s
his true word, we should hear it. We should believe it. We should lay it up in our hearts
and put it into practice in our lives. And so the work of the
Lord is done through the word. In fact, what does Paul tell
Timothy? I mentioned it earlier. All scripture is breathed out
by God and is useful for teaching and rebuking and correction.
And training in righteousness so that the man of God is fully
furnished to do the work of the ministry. So the work of the
ministry, Ephesians 4 says, God gave pastors, teachers to equip
the saints, to do the work of the ministry and to build up
the body. How do you build up the body?
You strengthen their faith. You give them knowledge. you bring
them to maturity in Christ, and then you work at spiritual growth. And so we don’t want to quench
the spirit, dump a bucket of water. But we also don’t want
to despise prophecy. Somebody told me the other day,
they said, I can’t go to a church where the preaching’s any more
than 15 minutes. That’s what they told me. And what is the old saying, sermonettes
make Christianettes, is that what you heard? No, no. Yeah,
I’ve been in churches where the preaching can go on 50 minutes.
And, you know, back in the old Puritan days, they preached two
hours. You know, we need to get in and out of here in about an
hour or something like that. So we, we try to remember people are
people and they got, you know, pills to take. And, you know,
there’s personal things that we got to go do. Lunch is just
around the corner. And so just keep coming back
and over time you’ll get the full counsel of God. But there’s
a third command, where to test everything. So don’t quench the
spirit, don’t despise prophecy, test everything. Now, what’s
the Apostle Paul speaking of here, test everything? Does that
mean you’re supposed to fact check me while I preach? You
know, like ABC, CNN, whatever? Well, sort of. We listen, we
take notes. We got the sermon note-taking
cards back there on the table. You can scribble in your bulletin.
I sat in y’all’s place about a month ago and we had a guest
minister and I took notes. That’s how I don’t fall asleep
or that’s how I pay attention. You take notes and then you go
home and you look at it and was the preacher right? Did he teach
the word of God? You need to be like a two-year-old.
Now, not in the sense we talked about earlier, they get a mouth
and motor skills, they become sinner, you know, they start
committing sin. A two-year-old, what’s a two-year-old say? Why?
Exactly. Why? We need to test everything. There are four questions that
we ought to ask anytime we engage in critical thinking. And it
could be critical thinking about the scriptures. It could be critical
thinking about politics or a social matter. But a great question
is, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by what you
said to me? What do you mean about women’s reproductive health?
Do you mean abortion? Okay, those are two pretty big
different terms or concepts, right? What do you mean by that?
Another question is, where’d you get your info? Hey preacher,
where’d you get that from? Did you get it from the Bible?
Or did you go to pop psychology? You know, the moralistic therapeutic
deism. A lot of preachers don’t need
a theological degree nowadays. They just need a pop psychology
degree. Where’d you get your info? Oh, it gets worse. How
do you know you’re right? See, if I read and preach the
word, I know I’m right. Correct? What if you’re wrong? What if you teach? Or what if
you uphold the law? Or what if you are a health care
professional? And what if you give the wrong
diagnosis? What if you give the wrong answer? Boy, get real theoretical
here. What if you’re the one cutting
the green wire? What happens if you cut the green one when
it should have been the red one? Right? So these are good questions
to ask, test everything. The two-year-old, ask why. The
Christian, like the Bereans in Acts chapter 17, remember, Paul’s
at Thessalonica, gets run out, and so he cruises through Berea.
And Acts 17 says the Bereans were more noble. Instead of being
like the Jewish folks who always said, Paul, you’re wrong, and
they raised up a ruckus and run them out of town, what did the
Berean, Folks do. They looked it up to see if it
was so. Test everything. But I think we should also take
this to say, look at all of life through the lens of the scriptures.
You know, I don’t want to be political here, but Tuesday is
a big day in the minds of us all. And we say, probably as
good Christians, I don’t vote for the person, I vote for the
policy. You know, I’m going to vote pro-life
because God says we’re all made in his image and he also says
you shall not kill, shall not murder. And so our principles,
our biblical principles feed how we might view public policy.
And so we need to look at all of life through the lens of the
scripture. We should never vote for evil. We should never do
anything that upholds evil. We should pray against it. think of? Discernment. If you
ever listen to John MacArthur, listen to his teaching or preaching
or read his books, discernment is one of the biggest things
he always brings up. And he says probably the worst
thing about American Christians is they lack discernment. And
you see that when you look at the exit polls of how Christians
may or may not vote. A lot of Christians today would
say, oh, there’s nothing wrong with abortion. It’s because we’ve cleaned up
the language so much to make it okay. On and on through daily life,
we could go and we need discernment. We need to look through our biblical
glasses and see what is good, what is right, and what is true.
It could be our choice of music. It’s how we spend our money.
It’s how we fill our calendar. It’s what we watch on the television
or in the movie theater. It’s every moment of every day. We run every thought. In fact,
Paul will tell the church, we take every thought captive. We
take it prisoner until it is obedient to Christ. It’s our
Christian filter. And so we need discernment. We
need to know what is good, right, and true, to reject what is evil,
hold fast. to what is good. Now, how do
we know if something is true? Let’s just mention prophecy or
let’s mention the movement of the spirit. How do we know? Well,
does it affirm Jesus Christ as Lord? If something does not affirm
Jesus Christ as Lord, we should not listen to it. It cannot be
from the mouth of God, for God would never deny his own son. Is it biblical? We hear something
and Oh, it’s of the Lord. God told me, whatever. We hear
that language all the time. Well, is it biblical? If it contradicts
scripture, you know, God told me to get a divorce. God told
me to abort my baby. God told me to, it was okay to
speed. You know, God told me it was
okay to have a secular humanistic worldview, right? No, God would
never say, Oh, that’s, I’m cool with that. We need to understand
is something of the Lord. Is it biblical? Is it edifying?
Is it universally true for all believers? Does it help the church? Does it bring glory to God’s
name? Does it edify believers? We have to have this filter.
We take every thought captive. We check the scriptures to see
if it is so. And so test everything. Don’t
quench the spirit. Don’t despise prophecies. Test
everything. And then there’s a two-fold response to the testing
of everything. We hold fast to the good. And
we abstain from every form of evil, hold fast to the good with
tenacity, something that’s beneficial. You know, if it’s Christian preaching,
Christian teaching, if it’s our Bible, we should delight in it. We should love it. We should
hold fast to it. We should arrange our schedule around it. We should
do whatever it takes to get God’s word into our hearts and into
our minds. You know, we can’t avoid the
gas station, can we? Tank’s going to go empty. The
other day, I was in North Greensboro. I went to take the bypass, and
I didn’t want to pay $3.09 for gas. So I thought, I’m going to go to
that Sheetz at the bottom. Maybe y’all know it on $0.70
of the bypass, because the Sheetz will be cheap. So in order to
save about $0.30 a gallon, I risked a 10-mile run with my light on.
And I did make it, thank the Lord. But we can’t skip gas. Or how about
the feeding trough? You know, related to preaching,
oh, the preacher went on over today. And we got to the restaurant
after the Baptist. See, struck a chord, didn’t I? We eat, we fill up with gas,
we get to the doctor. But what about the Word? Do we
discern and hear and test what is good, right, and true? Do
we sense the Spirit and say, I got things to do, got places
to go, got people to meet? What do we do? We hold fast to
the good. We hold on to it with tenacity.
We hide it in our heart. We keep it in our minds. We declare
it with our lips. And yes, this has to do with
the scriptures, but also the good. This is our Father’s world. And there is so much in this
world that is wonderful and good. And it can even come from non-Christians. We call this common grace. You’ll
hear some people say, well, I got a Christian painter. You know,
I got a Christian mechanic, I got a Christian heart doctor, I got
a Christian whatever. You know, this world is filled
with non-Christians who, because they are made in God’s image,
can do many wonderful things, including write good books or
give good advice or be good lawyers, that sort of thing. And we need
to remember, we hold fast to the good, yes, in the scriptures,
but there’s so much good in this world because of God’s common
grace. And because the vestiges of the image of God and the righteousness
of God are all over the place. Yes, Christians are better thinkers.
Yes, Christians acknowledge God and others do not. That’s all
true. But there is much we can learn
from living and observing in this world. And so we hold fast
to the good, but we also abstain from every form of evil. We steer
clear of it. As I drive down Fisher Street,
a couple days a week coming from Mebane, from being at the kids
school or ball games or whatever, I finally have figured out where
this pothole is. But if you’re coming down Fisher
Street, and a couple of you probably know it, if you’re coming down
Fisher Street and you’re passing Front Street, United Methodist
here, and Front Street as it comes out of the historic district,
there’s this pothole that if you fall in it, you may not ever
come out. And I got a pretty big vehicle with a pretty big
tire, and it’s, boom, it goes down in it. And I think, boy,
my alignment. or whatever my front end whatever
it’s gonna gonna be bad and so I have learned to steer clear
of it and I have to watch out for other cars because in steering
clear you know you fudge a little into the other lane but I steer
clear of this pothole because I don’t want to destroy my tire
and my front end. I guess I should go to a city
council meeting and complain or something or get on their
little app or how about this time of the year when people
you know cough what do you do? You sit right beside them and
say, how you doing? No, you get away and you get
out your elderberry and all your natural stuff and you try to
figure out how to wash your hands and all the rest. We steer clear. But then we go channel surfing.
Then we go internet surfing. And before long, We’re like the
wicked in Psalm 1. Remember the righteous in Psalm
1, blessed is the man who does not sit, walk or stand in the
way of sinners. His delight is in the law of
the Lord, his filters at work. He’s testing, he’s abstaining.
He’s not quenching the spirit he’s listening to and not despising
prophecies. But with the wicked, it is not
so. They’re like the chaff, which when driven by the wind, flies
away. But God knows the righteous.
He knows how we spend our time, how we use our minds, how we
fill ourselves with God’s word or don’t. He knows when we quench
or when we fan the billows of the flame of the spirit. He knows
when we avoid what is not beneficial and what does not build us up.
And so what should be our attitude toward God speaking? What should
be our attitude towards the word of the living God? It ought to
be the same as food for the stomach. Actually, no more. It ought to
be the same as clothes for the body or supplies for the house.
No more fuel for the car. Today in Puritan terms is what
we call market day of the soul. Tuesday may be market day where
you go get your fruits and vegetables and your gas and your things
for the stomach. But Sunday is the market day
of the soul. And so the question is, do you
shop with the same fervor as you do the stuff for the house?
You know, as we sit here today and Saturday number two is going
on outside these walls. You know, Saturday number one
is to chase the kids, right? Saturday number two is to fill
the fridge. As you sit here today listening to God’s word, the
market day of the soul, many are still only in the market
day of the world. And so as you are gathered and
equipped by the word, you can go and be a bright light and
give witness to the power of our speaking God. Our God who
gives us word and sacrament, our God who blesses the reading
and the preaching of the word, who gives his word visibly to
us. God’s word always trumps this
world. God’s speaking always trumps
the wisdom of this day. And our thinking can get fuzzy. We can begin to rationalize or
moralize or quench or despise or forget to discern. And what
does Paul say of the church that fails to hear the word? They’re
tossed about by every wind of doctrine. They’re tossed to and
fro on the tumultuous sea. of falsehood. And so we are given
a very clear choice today. And it boils down to this. Do you hear the voice of the
shepherd? Or do you hear the hissing of Satan as he hissed
into the ears of Adam and says, you shall be a God unto yourself
and self rule your life. Or do we bow in submission to
the King? who, when he speaks, we give it all the reverence,
all the awe, and all the obedience that is due. Let’s do pray now.
Lord, help us to hear and to receive and to believe and to
put into practice. May every word from your mouth
be bread of life for us. May it not depart, but may we
put it into practice. Help us, we pray in Christ’s
mighty name. Amen. We want to prepare now for the
Lord’s Supper. We’ll stay seated and sing number
422.