Amen. I think you may be seated
and find the first letter to the Thessalonians chapter 5. As we get started this morning, we're specifically going to speak
and talk to or expound upon verse 16 and verse 17 and verse 18. So that we have it fresh in our
minds in the context, let me read, starting in verse 12. 1
Thessalonians 5, starting in verse 12. We ask you, brothers,
to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord
and admonish you and 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. 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. Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks
in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ
Jesus for you. Let's continue. Do not quench
the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but
test everything. Hold fast what is good. Abstain
from every form of evil. 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 who has called you is faithful. He will surely do
it. Brothers, pray for us. Greet
all the brothers with a holy kiss. I put you under oath before
the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers. The
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. As you see, we're
very close to finishing this text. This makes Sermon 23 out
of 1 Thessalonians. And that's been half a year.
Doesn't seem like that long. And oftentimes you'll see that
There's some letters like Philippians, it sort of got a little joke
there at the end, like, we're still in Philippians? And like
Ephesians. But friends, if you are like
me, it's not long enough. In these letters, just like today,
I'm going to deal with 16, 17 and 18. And I honestly believe
that we could, if we were patient, and if the Lord had led this
way, we could spend several weeks on these Three things on this
one breath in the sense of this sequence. Here, Paul is closing
his letter. He's talking to these Christians
in Thessalonica about how they ought to treat their elders,
the pastors who labor over the joy of their souls. He's talking
to them about how they should respect their calling, those
who give an account for their joy, to esteem them very highly
in love because of their work, and to be at peace among yourselves.
It reminds us of what Paul said to the Romans. As long as it
is up to us, we should do all that is possible to seek reconciliation,
all that is possible to be at peace. But what others may do
is out of our hands. But our heart and our affection
toward each other, just as Paul taught here to the Thessalonians,
that he loved them with all the affection of Christ, so can we
love each other with all the affection of Christ. that even
when we, in our sin, reject the gospel, sin against the Lord,
we're dead in our trespasses, Christ loved us unconditionally
and gave Himself a ransom for us. Friends, in the same manner,
this mind is ours in Christ Jesus, as He would tell the church of
Philippi. It's not that we should put it on and work it out and
make it ours. It is ours. The love of God is
ours. The Spirit of God is ours. Christ
is ours. And we are His. And so, we see
that we ought to be at peace with the elders, admonish them. I mean, as they admonish the
flock, to esteem them highly. Be at peace with each other.
To encourage each other. And that we should admonish,
warn the idle. What else? Encourage the faint
hearted. Help the weak. And be patient with all people. So we see how the leaders of
the church ought to be seen and responded to. We see what they
do and what they're supposed to be encouraging the flock to
do. We see that Paul is saying not
only are the elders and the church supposed to have a relationship
that is gospel-powered, but the church in itself should have
a relationship which is gospel-powered. Then he goes on to say how that
looks internally as we look to each other and we see the slacker.
We see the one not carrying their weight. We see the one not maturing
in their faith. And we say, that person's idle.
We admonish that person. We warn that person, don't be
idle. Work and be about the work that
God has called you to. Be about the work that God has
called you to as the local church, amongst the body. Be about the
work that God has called you to in this world as you do your
labor every day for your living. Be about these things. But notice
He also said in all three of these things, be patient. Be
patient as we warn. Be patient as we encourage the
faint-hearted, those who seem like their world is never going
to get any better, that they've lost all sense of hope, all sense
of direction, all sense of focus. These who are not able to stand
up on their own, just like Moses, where they had to lift up his
hands that the work of God may continue. Friends, we sometimes
have to lift up each other's hands. Patiently. And finally, in review, as we
see how we interact with each other through discipling, disciplining,
growing, maturing patiently, we what? We encourage, admonish
the idle, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak. The weak
are those who are weak in faith, who are weak in mind, who are
weak in flesh, who are weak in addiction, who are weak in temptation. We are patient with them. We
wait for them. We encourage them. We hold them. We grab hold to them. And we
walk with them as long as they are willing to walk. But as we
remember, not just here as a reflection or an illusion, but we remember
not only as a church, but the Word of God directly tells us
that when those who do not live according to the Word of God
and publicly make a spectacle of their sin and are unrepentant
and they do not listen to the church, they must be expelled
from among the church. Why? Because the name of God
is at stake. The righteous reflection of the
nature of the gospel is at stake. For me to say I walk in light
while I live in darkness is not possible. Though I may step into
the darkness, though I may peer into the darkness, though I may
long for the darkness, we do. Temptation draws our eye sometimes. Certain things about this world
that we may not even see as idols grab our attention. Sometimes
idolatry can even come into the form of good theological teaching,
good theological training, a little arrogance because we know things
that other people just cannot see. Thank God we're not like
those, the publicans. Sound familiar? But we're to
be what? We're to be patient as we help
them. As iron sharpens iron, as we
rebuke, train and instruct in righteousness, as we do all that
we do for the sake of the unity of the faith and the peace of
the gospel of Jesus Christ is given unto us. But just as a
way of understanding church, sometimes that's not always possible
because sometimes people are just not born of God. So verse 15, we see that there
were many people last week that hurt these Thessalonian Christians.
Many people who, sometimes posing as believers inside the church,
did great damage to them. Did things that were ungodly. Turned them over to the authorities.
Played both sides like a spy. The authorities of Rome and the
Sanhedrin both. The Jews themselves even brought
persecution amongst any Christian they could find. And yet we see
Paul saying, do not repay evil with evil. Do not repay evil
with evil, but seek to do good to one another and to everyone. Even those who hurt you, seek
to do good to them. And now in verse 16, that's all
reviewed. That's the last four weeks of
sermons. Could have preached on that quickly too. Rejoice
always. I find it very interesting now
that he goes from this relationship with the elders, the relationship
within the church, the relationship within the ministry of the church,
what the church should be doing amongst itself, as we see Paul
teach the Ephesians in chapter 4, that we are to be doing what? Preparing the church, equipping
the church to do the work of the ministry. It's always been
an incredible thing to see how churches hire pastors and hire
staff members to disciple one another. That's what I say. To hire somebody to actually
get in there and do the work that every believer who is filled
with the Spirit of God will be driven to do. So now this internal
reality comes out. You minister this way, you love
this way, you unify this way, you relate this way, you relate
this way to the leadership of your church. Now, what about
inside of you? Because see, some of us are just
good enough to put the show on. Some of us are just good enough
to look the part, smell the part, act the part, talk the part,
and run in that direction to the place where people look at
us and they're like, man, their lives are on par with the Lord. Look at that! There's never a
frown, there's never a fuss, there's never lint. I mean, you
know. They don't even have to wash
his clothes. They're always so clean. That
sounds silly, but think about it. There are people amongst
the brotherhood of the church that we look at and we esteem
and we say, oh, if that would just be my mark, if I could just
have the life that they have, if I could just be spiritual
like they are, if my world would just not be up... Friends, everybody's
world is upside down. Everybody is suffering. Everybody
is struggling in their faith. Everybody is burdened. Everybody
is in need of prayer. Everybody needs the gospel every
moment, not just once, not just Sundays, every day. Everybody
fights the fear of sharing their faith, fights doubt, fights unbelief. Every Christian in this room
deals with the war called the Christian faith. The beauty is,
though, as we'll see today, is that there is an inner attitude
that actually begins to show in some great detail that we
indeed are on the right side of things. But I want to be careful
not to say that, hey, if you're able to rejoice, then you are
surely a Christian. I know some non-believers that
have great attitudes. But the test here is not only
to say, this is what you're doing because God commands it. You'll
notice there, it does not say, try to have a rejoicing always
mindset. You notice it doesn't say, I
want you to put on rejoicing, put a smile on your face until
you make it. No, this is a command from the mouth of God. Rejoice
always. Rejoice always. When your spouse
gets in your face, rejoice. When you fall down the stairs,
rejoice. When your car blows up, rejoice.
When your fish tank bursts and floods your house, rejoice. See,
perfect application. Nobody can top that today, right?
Maybe you can. Awful. Rejoice. Always rejoice. Now see, that's a tall order.
It's a tall order. It's not something that we can
do. Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks
in all circumstances. Why? For this is the will of
God for you in Christ Jesus. See, this is tough. Friends,
when we're able to kick back in our easy chair and the house
is clean and everything's going good and the children sitting
down perfectly memorizing the Scripture every afternoon, you
know how that looks. It's easy to sit back and fall
asleep reading Lorraine Bettner. It's easy to sit down and read
some of the, you know, I don't know, maybe Spurgeon. It's all,
life is good, this is great, fall asleep, dreaming of heaven.
I mean, it's easy to say, I'm rejoicing. I'm praying. Oh, I'm so thankful for this
life. But let it catch on fire. Let that 12-year-old who once
walked with Christ walk in with a Bible and rip it. Let that 30-year-old son or daughter
walk in and say, I don't believe in God anymore. This is stupid. Let somebody file you with divorce
papers. Let the doctor tell you you've
got three months to live. Then where's our joy? It's not
in here. It's not there. Where's our gratitude?
Oh, thanks a lot, God. I mean, that's what it sounds
like. That's not true thankfulness. That's how we thank somebody
at the McDonald's window when we order a Big Mac and we get
a pancake. Thank you for the pancake! I
mean, you know, that's not genuine. That's really sarcastic. We're not praying. We're not
intimate when the world's upside down. It's not in our nature.
It's not in our nature to not pay evil with evil. It's not
in our nature to seek the good of each other. It's not in our
nature to give of ourselves at the cost of ourselves for the
sake of someone else who doesn't deserve it. It's not in our nature.
It's in the nature of Christ who's given us His nature, who's
given us His mind, who's given us His heart. That's what the
rebirth is all about. That's what saving faith proves. So let's look at these three
things. And it just so happens this thing just preaches itself.
Anybody can come up here and preach this. This text preaches
itself. It's so simple, but yet sometimes
we look at it too quickly. Three things to do. What are
they? Rejoice, pray, and give thanks. Rejoice, pray, and give thanks. So what are we to be doing according
to the Word of God here today? In our hearts, in our minds,
and see, you might say, well, you know, I don't always feel
like smiling. Smiling is not rejoicing. When I've never been to a funeral
of a loved one or a friend and just been giddy. What's up, dude? High five, you know, bumping
elbow, whatever these young people do these days, you know. Hey,
mama died, man, look at her. She's so pretty. And we get the
silver now. I mean, you know, that doesn't
happen. I hope it doesn't. We don't get giddy when we're
grieving. So we mistake rejoicing with
giddiness. We mistake rejoicing with some
kind of a bliss. Friends, that stuff is fleeting. Worldly happiness, I'll be honest
with you, is oxymoronic. There is no such thing as worldly
happiness. When I hear John say in the second
chapter of his first epistle, Do not love the world, for the
things of the world, here's a big paraphrase, are garbage and are
rotting away and they're not from God. Why do we find happiness
in the world at all? We shouldn't. That's like saying,
I'm a living dead or I don't know. I'm a clean, dirty person. It's like an operating room,
you know. Well, it's sort of sanitized. Is that what we want? No, we want purity. We want it
to be sterile. We want our lives to be rejoicing,
and happiness in this world is not a guarantee. As a matter
of fact, it's an absolute non-guarantee that if you follow Christ, you
will suffer for the sake of the gospel. We, who are the beloved
of Christ, who actually are living as objects of mercy, empowered
by the Lord through His Word and by His Spirit, we are going
to suffer. Sometimes worse than the rest
of the world. Why? Because – there's a whole
other problem to talk about – but because Christ suffered, we too
shall suffer. Because the world, in all of
its wickedness, hates righteousness, it will hate those who are righteous. We're going to suffer. So what
does rejoice even mean? Well, I mean, there's tons of
things to think about, but everywhere you look, you see Paul and the
apostles commanding people to rejoice. All throughout the Old
Testament, you see the prophets rejoicing the Lord. Rejoice. It's a commandment of God. It's
not an option. It's not a question of saying,
hey, put on this good attitude, smile and get over it. It's about
having an internal knowledge, truth and spirit that produces
an attitude that there's nothing that can shake your joy. So that the expression of all
the horror of our lives is, praise you God. That makes no sense. Many people sat across my desk. How am I supposed to worship
God in this? How am I supposed to praise God
in this? How am I supposed to have rejoicing? I always go to
1 Peter chapter 1. Though for now, for a little
while, if necessary, you will experience all sorts of trials. Grievous trials, as though by
fire trials. Hard things, difficult things. But even though you don't see
Christ, you love Him, And you don't see Him now. You love Him
and you rejoice. Here's the key. You rejoice with
a joy that is inexpressible. Sometimes our joy is inexpressible.
Sometimes our joy looks like unbelief, but it's joy. In our
Q&A Tuesday night, I was taken to 1 Samuel chapter 12 where
David is confronted by Nathan and he's told that the Lord is
going to afflict his family. by the sword forever. And not
only is He going to do that, He's going to take the child
that was born in adultery to Bathsheba, but that was conceived
in adultery, He's going to kill it. God's going to kill the child.
Kill the child. Now consider this for a minute.
And the Scripture says that David got up And he did not eat, or
drink, or bathe, but he laid in the floor close to the proximity
of the child, and he pled, and he prayed, and he cried, and
he prayed, and he begged, and he prayed that God would spare
the son, that God would spare this baby. And they went to him
and they longed to see their king get up. Oh, David, don't
do this. Come eat. You've got to eat.
I'm not eating. Leave me alone. Get dressed.
I'm not dressing. Come drink something. Bathe.
Let us take care of you. I am not leaving this floor. I am going to pray. Leave me
alone. And he cried and he cried and
he cried for eight days. The king cried out to the Lord. But David never lost his joy. And we know that because at the
end of those eight days, they reported to the king as he inquired,
is the child alive? They said, no, the child has
died. He immediately got up, cleaned himself up and asked
for a meal. And that perplexed them. Perplexed them. Have you ever
been in an argument at home with your spouse? However your arguments
look. Maybe they're, I don't know,
crazy arguments where you all get loud. Maybe they're subtle
arguments where you just got really mean looks. Or maybe you're
just this passive-aggressive person, just smile, walk out
of the room, close the door. Maybe you go outside and rake,
cut the grass, whatever you do. You know what I'm talking about,
those sinful interactions that we all say nobody else does. Don't joke yourself. Don't kid
yourself. And have you ever been right
in the middle of a discussion that was a little intense and
the phone rang? And you're like, you know, I'm
sick and tired of having this conversation. Every 30 years,
same old stuff. Hey, how you doing? They're like, really? You can
go from rah-rah to hey, what's up? I mean, what's up with that? It drives us crazy, doesn't it?
But it's happened to some of us. If it hasn't, just wait. It'll happen. It'll happen. Or
you're like railing your children because of something that they
did not do, and you're like, hey, what's up? The doorbell
rings, come on in. It's a beautiful day. Come on in. We try not to
hide that anymore. Come on in. It's a war zone in
here. Sit down. We'll be with you in a minute. You know? But that's sort of what these
people thought about when David got up off that floor and he just
brushed himself off, wiped his tears away, and said, hey, get
me something to eat. I'm going to go take a shower. And they're like, why? You were wailing on the floor
for a week. You were crying out before God.
You smell. You haven't eaten. You haven't used the bathroom
water. You're awful. This is a terrible place. And
now you're just going to get up and say, oh well. And he cries
out to the Lord for eight days and the child dies. He gets up,
he says, because as long as the child lived, I could pray to
the Lord to do something about it. But now he's gone. So my
joy is in the sufficiency of the sovereignty of God. I'm fine
with it. But as long as he was alive,
I could labor to the Lord and the Lord had mercy on me and
on that child. He could have done something.
But now the Lord has taken him and I'm fine. And we see Psalm 51 written out
of this. Guys, don't lose track of what text in the Scripture
is for and why it was written. David, after this, wrote Psalm
51. And then he took it into the
temple and he had the choir master sing it. This isn't a private
poet notebook. This isn't a journal. This is
David, the king, writing a song, a worship tune, about how he
sinned and God was gracious, and how he wished the Lord would
return to him what? The joy of his salvation. Don't mistake, don't be deceived
by our culture and by the devil that joy means no problems. Don't think that rejoicing in
our heart means that there's never opportunity where we just
don't know where the next breath is going to come from. We can
rejoice in those moments. How? He'll tell us. In the very first sentence of
this letter to the Thessalonians, Paul says, "...and you became
imitators of us and of our Lord, for..." How did you do that?
"...for you received the word in much affliction." Did you
hear that? You became imitators of us. Who
was us? The apostles. What were they doing? Beaten,
jailed, stoned, hated, starving, shipwrecked, murdered. That's
who they were. You became imitators of us and
became imitators of our Lord in suffering because you received
the Word in much affliction. You imitated us in our affection.
You imitated us in our gospel proclamation. We see all that
in the very first chapter. But in much affliction, he says,
you became imitators of us and of our Lord, for you received
the Word of God in much affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit. You see there? So it's not our
joy, is it? Can you imagine the joy of the
Holy Spirit for just a minute? Consider what it must be like
for God to reflect upon Himself. Think about it. What must God
feel when He looks in the mirror of His own soul? I'm not sure
God's a dancer, but I'd be doing backflips. Look at me, I'm glorious. And people say, that sounds so
selfish. It's not selfish when he's worth rejoicing over, you
see. The problem, it's selfish if
I want you to make much of me, because I ain't worth making
much over. And neither are any of you, I'm
sorry. We make much over each other because Christ lives within
us, because we're the body of our Lord. God is self-satisfied,
He's self-sufficient, He's self-joyful. God, even in His grief, is absolutely
unchangeable. It doesn't take away from any
attribute of His nature or His character. So when we say that
God grieved, you know what that means? In the Bible, God willfully
chose to express grief, but it was not a response of an interjected
emotion that came from any outside influence. God is full of joy. The joy of the Holy Spirit is
the joy of God's self-satisfaction, and when the Spirit of God is
in us, we are satisfied in Him. So the utmost excellence of our
happiness comes from the absolute infinite glory of His being,
of His presence, of His work, of His nature, of His name, of
His providence. The Spirit of God is the fullness
of the joy of God and we are indwelt by Him. So our joy is not even ours,
as you'll see. It's the joy of God in us. We
ought to rejoice, church. We ought to also pray. We're
to pray. Now, we've messed up prayer.
See, we could teach a couple of Sundays on prayer. Prayer,
other than end times, alcohol use, Divorce and remarriage. Prayer is probably one of the
top five questions I get from people in the community. How
do I get what I want from God? How am I supposed to pray? How
come God isn't answering my prayers? All this kind of stuff. Would
you pray for me? Yeah. What would you like for me to
pray for? You know, God would do this and God would do that.
It's like a checklist. Like Santa Claus, here you go. That's what
I want for Christmas. It's one of the most misunderstood and
abused practices. Even the day of Paul, every religion
here in Thessalonica, every pagan religion prayed. They all meditated,
spoke to idols, spoke to something. Even today, you see Eastern mysticism,
they don't even have deities, and they still meditate and pray. You can go on your iPhone, you
can go to your app store, and you can look up prayer apps.
that will prompt you and give you positive affirmations to
think on and say out loud that you might meditate on these good
things, that good energy would come to you. Prayer is one of
the most abused, often mystical things that even Christians,
well-meaning Christians get stuck up in. Women and Christians,
they're standing at the checkout line at a truck stop traveling,
and they see that, you know, they've got all the pornographic
magazines, and all the trucker magazines, and all the guns and
ammo magazines, which there's not much difference between these
and those, and all this different stuff. And then there's that
little three-sided triangle kiosk with Christian books. And we're like, man, I got like
six more days on the road, Oh, how to pray well. Let's get that.
We get it, we get down the road two or three hundred miles, we're
thinking, hey, I never thought about that prayer. I'm saying
it wrong. I'm using the wrong words. I
should use the exact same words that Jesus used. Okay, go learn
Aramaic and do it. Do it. You see that? Oh, you've got
to have the faith in the right place. You know what? In some
of these books, you can actually call in and for $50, they'll
send you an anointed cloth to come back and help you in your
prayers. You stick it in your pocketbook. Or they give you a guardian angel
to stick on your visor and the angel will watch over you as
you pray. None of the people that get involved in this are
thinking, I'm just going to go into witchcraft. I'm going to
go into this mystical, magical place. I mean, this sounds like
something you'd get at Disneyland, you know? Something to think
about. Anyway, we get sucked into these
things because we're so enamored by the mystical, by the unknown,
by the powerful, by the supernatural. Friends, prayer is not that difficult. Jesus, in very clear languages,
gives us the model of His prayer. Our Father. Know what that means?
He's our Father. If He's not your Father, you
can't pray to Him. When you say, Daddy, and God
in heaven is not your daddy, somebody else's ear is perked
up. And we see John chapter 5, and we see John 10, and we see
other places like in John 12, Jesus pretty much says, Abraham
is not your daddy, the devil is your daddy. God's not your
daddy. If He were, you'd know me. Moses isn't your father. Before
Abraham was, I am. You know what they did then?
They gritted their teeth, about broke their teeth out, picked up stones,
ghillie. Because he declared himself, I am. He declared himself
God, the preexistent one, the self-existent one. Even the Pharisees prayed incorrectly. Our Father, people say, I want
you to pray for me, I want you to pray God will do this, I want
you to do that. You know what? I can't. You ever told somebody
you can't pray for them a certain way? It blows their mind. Why? Because God's will for the world
is not for them to have it easy. God's will for the world is not
for them to never suffer. So if I were to sit down with
you and say, God, don't ever bring suffering on this household,
that would be silly. That's not trying to get up tomorrow
morning and hold back the sun. It's coming up. If your flat
earth is coming, it's coming around like this. God listens to his children and
only those who are his children can cry out to him as father.
We understand what Jesus taught us. Our Father who is in heaven,
who is holy, whose name is holy, your will be done, your kingdom
come on earth as it is in heaven. These are the perspectives from
which we pray. We understand that all that happens
in this world and in the metaphysical world, in the spiritual world,
is the will of God. His will is done. It teaches us to pray for our daily
needs. Needs. Xbox Live accounts are
not needs. Not needs. Our daily bread. Forgive us of our sins. I had
somebody tell me years ago, you don't have to pray that ever
again. Whose sins have forgiven the cross? Yes, you're right.
But my intimate relationship, if I slap you and you forgive
me and we never talk again, we've still got some things to discuss,
don't we? We can forgive each other and see each other and
hug each other's neck, but as we're hugging, we're thinking,
he never told me he was sorry for slapping me. The relationship
is tainted. Our expression in prayer in that
way shows us or reveals the fact that God has worked in us as
children. That our intimacy with God, we recognize that it is
not broken, but that it is blurred. Your will be done. Forgive us
our debts because it's our trespasses as we forgive those who sin against
us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. So I believe that when we pray,
our prayers need to come from that perspective. God, please,
heal this person from cancer. That's a good prayer. Heal this
marriage. Put these people back in love
with you. Your will be done. Your will
be done. Prayer. Another way we screw
up prayer in our world, in our culture today, is we twist the
reality of prayer as some formal thing. If we want to pray like
they prayed in the New Testament, we have our eyes open and we
talk. Looking to heaven. Sometimes
with our hands raised. This was the... I mean, if everybody
went to RJ's after church and we all sat around, we all stood
in line and just started talking like this into the sky. We are so glad this day is given
to us. Thank you so much for your love,
for your intimacy, for your tenderness in my life. Thank you for sending
your Son to die for me. Thank you for the food and all
these beautiful people that are standing around here looking
like we're crazy. I mean, you know, I'm not saying
we play in public, but you know what I mean? We've got this idea
of prayer being this, I don't know, if I don't get on my face
and cover my eyes, I'm not really praying. That's just cultural. Afghani people I know don't pray
that way. You close your eyes at their
table, they think you're going to sleep. Wake up! The posture of prayer is
not a physical thing. The posture of prayer is a heart
thing. It's a mindset. It's knowing that our communication
with that little voice inside of us called a conscience, It
needs to quit talking to itself like a schizophrenic. And it
needs to talk to the Father who gave us life. Stop talking to
ourselves and talk to God. Stop having conversations inside
our mind about how things might be. Have you ever become angry
with somebody because of the what-if conversation you had
in your head? I have. I've gotten up from... I never
black out, but sometimes I can get into a thing where I'm just
like there, and I'm thinking, I'm going to tell that man where
to go. The flesh, how did that come?
I haven't even talked to the brother. We assume, we have these
conversations. Man, he's going to be hostile
toward me. How do we know that? We just assume things. And we
talk to ourselves. Friends, praying is about rejoicing
in hope. We have hope to know who sits
on the throne of the cosmos. We have hope in knowing who has
given us redemption. We have hope in knowing that
the same One who spoke the Word of God that became flesh, that
tabernacled with us, that lived a perfect life through the power
of His righteousness, and died a sacrificial death that was
not His to pay, so that we could be the righteousness of God.
This is the same God who raised Him from the dead, who indwells
us by the power of His grace. Why are we so slow to pray? We'd rather call our neighbor
for poor advice, our hairdresser for new advice, or our parents,
our grandparents, or somebody else. When I get some people
that I've known for years, and I get this call out of the blue
like I did back in March from a brother who I haven't seen
in probably 12 years, pastor in the church, his wife left. And I'm like, out of the blue,
here he is, calling me. The first thing I asked him,
I said, what number am I on the call list? He said, what? I said, who else
have you talked to this week? And he gives me the list of names.
I said, what their advice did you not like about their advice? And for two hours, he might have
hung up, I don't even know if he was still on the phone, but
for two hours, I started in Genesis chapter 1 and got to Ephesians
chapter 6. Because all I heard was this
brother talking about how bad things were and his wife treated
him this way and all that and now she's gone. Listen, the Word
of God says this, we seek after the counsel of the wisdom, Pastor
Luke, of the Lord. We don't just keep dialing, dial
a wisdom, dial a counselor until we find the one that fits our
itching ears. When we hear the Word of God,
we go, there it is. Oh my goodness, I am a mess.
Woe is me. I sort of sound like Isaiah sometimes
when I read the Bible. I hear his words as my own. Woe
is me. I'm an impure person amongst
a people of reprobate culture. I'm unclean lips. People around
me, unclean lips. Woe is me. I must die. God, You didn't kill me, You
saved me. You killed Your Son so I could live. You killed Him
so I could be free of the penalty of my guilt. Pray to the One who saved you. Talk to the God who knows you. And then thirdly, we see here,
give thanks. We pray, we rejoice, we give thanks. What does that mean? I was sitting in a theater in
Dublin, California seven years ago, and I remember it because
I don't like theaters. I don't like theaters, especially
kids' movies, especially movies that are just coming out. Anyway,
this is another pet peeve. So, sitting in this theater,
and here's the previews. I love to watch previews. You
get to see a whole lot of cool stuff, and you don't have to
spend money on it. It's like freebies. And all of a sudden, it's around
Thanksgiving, and all of a sudden, this very famous actor comes
up, black screen. He says, be thankful. I'm like,
well, this is neat. This is all about it. Nothing's
exploding. Nobody's shooting at anybody.
This is different. And then another one comes up.
Give thanks. And another famous person come
up, have gratitude. And after like one minute, it
was a bunch of famous celebrities, actors, actresses, musicians
saying, be thankful, be thankful, be thankful. And I yelled out,
to whom? Everybody's looking at me. Gratitude has an object. If you get a paycheck at your
job and you're thankful for that money, and that thankfulness
is a heart of you just being giddy over the fact that you
got something now for you, that's not gratitude. It's not gratitude if I give
you something or if I give you a gift that you really need and
you're just so excited about what you're going to be able
to do with it. That's not gratitude. That's idolatry. Listen. I love this Bible. It's a nice
Bible. It lays open. Have you ever tried
to preach with a Bible that doesn't have a good spine? And I was
like, you're in Proverbs. You're like, I'm supposed to
be in John. Proverbs. John Proverbs. So it takes some
money sometimes to have a good Bible that lays open, lays flat.
I like this Bible and I remember when it was given to me. I'm so thankful for this Bible."
I took it home, I wrote my name in it, and I looked at it, and
I felt it, and I smelled it, and I'm like, I love this Bible,
but I'm not thankful for it, I'm idolizing it. And not idolizing
the Word, idolizing the print and the cow. Or, wait a minute, goat. That's the point. Because I was
glad of what it was going to do for me. It was a nice thing. It worked well. It was going
to give me a little more stability so I didn't have to put all this
stuff in there to keep my Bible straight. That wasn't gratitude. Gratitude is, oh, this great
piece of garbage, not the Word of God now, but this great book
that's going to fade away, believe it or not, we're not going to
have our Bibles in eternity. The living Word of God will be
there with us. Oh, I can't wait. I had to really grapple with
that. I want my Bible, you know. But
I mean, we're not going to need this. So this in itself, in its
physical form, will be destroyed. It's going to decay. It will
rot. I have my great-great-great uncle's Bible and my great-great-grandmother's
Bible and my great-grandmother's Bible and both of my grandmother's
Bibles. I love Bibles. And I love nostalgia. And when
I die, my children are going to have a great yard sale. A
great one. Or a good bonfire. Either one. But what gratitude is, is I know
now that this came through the hand of God's grace. And it is
just a tool. It is just an exchange of funds
from His account through one of His children to another. It
is just an employer whom he may even hate God, but whom God gave
the grace to own a business, to employ people that they may
feed their family. It is not what we deserve. What
we deserve is judgment. What we get other than that is
mercy. So even when we earn a wage, it is not the wage we truly deserve. And our gratitude should be,
thank you God for allowing me to have this job, for allowing
me to work so hard. Thank you God that you've established
a system of government and economics in which I actually do get paid
and I'm not a slave. You see, it's a different way
of looking at things. I'm not saying we shouldn't be
happy about what we receive. I'm just telling us that the Bible
gives us a different description, definition of what gratitude
is. It has an object. And the object of gratitude is
always the giver. Be thankful for your health.
Be thankful for your job. Be thankful for your family.
Be thankful for your mind. Be thankful for these things.
But gratitude must point to somewhere. Someone must receive the gratitude. Like if I give you a gift, you
thank me for it. You're not just thankful for
the gift, you're thankful for the giver. Like the woman that we see in
Mark's Gospel, who cried out on the Pharisees. The disciples
wanted to send her away. And Jesus even said, Woman, what
do you want? Don't you know that the bread is for... The children
of Israel alone? Should I send the children's
bread to the dogs?" And she says, yes, but even the dogs get scraps
from the Master's table. That woman didn't care where
she ate, or what plate it was on, or how big the piece was.
She knew the only thing she needed was the bread of life from Jesus
Christ. How did she have that? Because God revealed that to
her when thousands of people around her couldn't see it, even
most of the disciples. And Jesus says, great is your
faith. What you've asked for is done. Give thanks in all circumstances. How can
we do that? How can we give thanks? Because
in chapter 8 of Romans, it tells us very clearly, for God causes. all things to work together for
good. Do you know that? You know what's amazing? Last
night, Robin stepped in an ant bed unbeknownst to her, goes
in the house, as I'm up here cleaning up the building, goes
in the house, and ants leave her pant leg and get on the carpet
in our bedroom. To which she calls and said,
there's fire ants. I mean, fire ants in the house.
I've never seen it. So we go and we get to the house and there's
ants everywhere and they've smashed them all. And I'm like, why did
you smash them? I wanted to see where they were going. They weren't
going or coming from anywhere. They were just there. We didn't know
that till this morning. I said, well, let's just pick up everything
off all the floors and vacuum everything and just suck them
all up. Do whatever. We didn't know we
were going to wake up with ants on us or what. All things work together for
good. Thank you, God, for these hands. Why? I don't know why.
Well, I know why. Because all those books I had
laid out in my dag-blasted living room would have been waterlogged
this morning. Laptop. All sorts of things. Well, I
mean, just look at the circumstances. I'm not saying that's why God
did it. But even the smallest things we have, God causes all
things to work together for good. I needed to mop my floor and
now it is. And I'm not making light of the
gravity of things, and I'm not making light of saying, oh, thank
God for everything. Well, thank God for that hangnail.
But the point is that we oftentimes are not thankful because we fail
to understand the sovereignty of God. We fail to understand
the love of God. We fail to understand and remember
the work of God through the Gospel of Jesus. We fail to remind ourselves
of these truths that are absolutely necessary for us to actually
be functioning as a Christian people, as a rejoicing people,
as a prayerful people. And giving thanks to God our
Father is an attitude of intimacy. We talk to those people we love
to be around. Do we not? We get on Facebook
and we look at our friends and see what they're doing because
we're anxious to see how their kids have grown. We're anxious
to see what's going on in their lives because we love them. We
want to talk to our Father in Heaven because we love Him and
He loves us. So we can give thanks for all
things. Why do we do such things? In
closing, what does it say there? Rejoice always. Pray without
ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances. For this is the will of God in
Christ Jesus for you. What? Why do we do it? Well,
first, what does it say about when we do it? When do we rejoice? Always. When do we pray? Without ceasing, always. Without
ceasing means non-stop. Without ceasing. When do we give
thanks? In all circumstances. Is this
not a circumstance? In all things. So the when to
do these things is all the time. We are to be always rejoicing,
praying, and giving thanks. Always. It should be the pulse
of our heart. It should be the evidence of
our lives. It should be the, I don't know,
the banner that we're known for. The name. That's a rejoicing,
praying, thankful soul right there. And why do we do it? Because
it is the will of God for us in Christ Jesus. Now let me tell
you something. If you're not careful, you'll
say, OK, this is a command. This is the will of God. I must
do these things. That's not bad. Good. Hallelujah. That's one part of what Paul's
teaching here. I must do these things must be
mine. They must be named among me.
I must rejoice. Always. I must pray. Always. I must be thankful. Always. Why? For it is the will of God,
and the will of God stands. But you need to understand that
if it is the will of God, we won't fail in it. Listen, if
it is the will of God, we won't fail in it. And when we have
moments, we're not rejoicing. When we have seasons, we might
not pray like we should. When we have a couple of times
a day, we might not give thanks. But the Spirit of God within
us reminds us of these things. brings these things to fruition.
The will of God is very much the decree of God. It will take
place in you, beloved, if you are the beloved. Here's the rub. Well, I don't know. I'm not very rejoiceful. I'm not
very joyful. Are you in the Word of God? We've been talking about 6 out
of 23 sermons. How am I in loop? See? 6 in 23 sermons have dealt with
making sure we understand the Word of God is the instrument
of His grace in our lives today. Grace to you, grace be with you.
Paul wrote every one of his letters like that. What is he doing?
He's not just running his mouth with something cool and reformed
to say. He's not just trying to sound like a really neat guy.
He's saying, I'm writing to you, the grace of God is with you,
and the grace of God is coming to you through what I'm about
to write you. And when I close my letters, the grace of God
that came to you through the writing is now with you in the
writing. Stay with it. You want to rejoice? Read the
Word of God. You want to be intimate in prayer?
Stay in the Bible. Friends, it's about perspective
when it comes to understanding that our Christian faith is not
this thing that we hold to in principles. It's a person that
we cling to in power. We believe on the Lord Jesus. He has saved us. He has snatched
us out of darkness into light. Therefore, we are light walkers.
So we walk in light. We fight the darkness. We fight
against temptation. We war against sin because our
heart and our mind that has been made new and created anew by
God through Jesus Christ is solely sold out for righteousness, for
mercy, for love, for rejoicing, for gratitude, for prayer, for
brotherhood, and the list goes on and on. We don't get to say,
well, I'm just not one of these thankful people. You have nothing to do in heaven.
If you don't have an attitude of gratitude, I hate that, it
sounds so silly, an attitude of thankfulness, because it's
just so cliché now. You have nothing to do in heaven. And if you don't have problems
and floods and famine and fear, you never have an opportunity
to express joy and prayer and gratitude. Because when things
are going good, friends, these things are obsolete. But in our
suffering and our affliction, we learn, God teaches us, that
we grow into the person He's called us and caused us to be. That's why we do it. It's the
will of God. It reflects the nature of His redemption. We
do these things and we are these things because God has saved
us and made us this way. But we know about the flesh.
We know about temptation. I'm not teaching sinless perfection.
I'm teaching striving for righteousness by the power of grace. Living
in intimacy by the power of God. I'm not talking about our power.
I'm not talking about our determination. Because look what he says, the
will of God for you in Christ Jesus. It is the will of God that all
men, it is the command of God that all men rather, be holy. And it is the will of God that
some will be. Beloved, if you are the church,
you will be. You will fight the good fight of faith and you will
finish well. You will persevere. You will come to conviction.
You will see the murderous heart that you never knew you had the
closer you are with God. You will see the most wicked,
small, almost microscopic sins that sort of flesh themselves
out that you thought, wow, I never knew I was that way. As God begins
to work in us righteousness. How do we do it? Because we are
in Christ Jesus. It is the will of God for you
in Christ Jesus. That means this is the plan of
God, the purpose of God, to send Jesus Christ to die and save
a people who would believe by faith and be redeemed, and their
Spirit of God would be given unto them. And we see Paul teaching
in Galatians chapter 5 that the Spirit of God brings the fruit
of God, which is what? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, and so on. Hear that? Love, joy, peace,
patience. God purposes in us. In Ephesians
2, this is what we understand about redemption. Grace shall
be saved through faith. This is not of your own doing,
but is the work of God, so that no one may boast. For you are
God's workmanship, created by the will of God, in Christ Jesus,
to walk in good works which He prepared beforehand for you to
walk in. How do we walk in good works?
God did it. God planned it. God purposed
it. God empowered us and we will
walk. We will walk in rejoicing and
joy. We will walk in prayer. We will
walk in thankfulness. And it's not an individual journey.
A sheep that stands out beside the edge of the woods is wolf
meat. We must be together. We must sit under the Word. We
must fellowship as we have opportunity. We must be intimately involved
in each other's life in regard to the Word of God as it lives
in us and lives through us. Not just that we can enjoy these
times together. Sometimes life is too hard to
enjoy. Is it not? Sometimes things come
up in our world that we can no longer fire up the barbecue or
pop the popcorn. But we can still have intimacy
with our Father, and we can still have intimacy with each other. The plan of God and the purpose
of God, through the power of God, is the will of God for you
in Christ Jesus, who purchased you, that you may have the knowledge
of the truth, that your faith, though it may give up some days,
is not rooted in how hard you believe, but in how faithful
that God is. When we are faithless, He remains
faithful, friends. He is faithful. And He is faithful
to save us until the end. And church, in the world today,
In this culture in which we live, in the United States of these
Americas, we have great opportunity for fear, and trouble, and division,
and everything else. The church should stand so far
apart from that type of mindset. We should be people who are full
of joy, continually praying, and always thankful, no matter
what. If Ho Chi Minh is elected the
President of the United States, we ought to rejoice. We ought
to rejoice, we ought to pray, and we ought to be thankful.
That would be something else, though. If you don't know who Ho Chi Minh
is, let's get a world history class. If everything we know about civility
goes down the drain, we ought to rejoice, be prayerful, and
be thankful. Because maybe then we'll be more
like the first century church. I tell you what we would be doing,
we'd be helping each other. Not clean up aquariums, but fight
the good fight of faith as we smuggle Bibles to our brothers
and sisters across the borders. One day, one day all peoples
will see vast and harsh persecution. These Thessalonians saw extreme
persecution. Their very lives were being lost. The very homes were gone. The
very culture rejected them. And yet, they could rejoice and
pray and were thankful. Friends, we got it made. Even
in the hardest circumstances, we do have it made in comparison. It doesn't water down the pain.
It doesn't make your experience or my experience any less hard. or any less grievous to us. But
in comparison to this command, friends, that's how we know it
is a God-sized venture. That only the Lord Jesus, only
with His people, can produce such fruit in the midst of such
fear. So whatever it is that has got
you tangled, beloved, being the body of Christ under the Word,
by His power, is your first step. and seeing and understanding
how He works in any of these things. Do you believe in Christ? Is
your sufficient hope, is your salvation, is your joy, is your
future, is your eternity in the hands of Christ? Or are you still
working that out on your own? I pray the Lord would give you
the sight to see, to understand, and to believe. Let's pray. God, we are so amazingly grateful
that You have such a great love for us, that You bring us together
week after week, and that we're growing in maturity, growing
in intimacy, growing in the knowledge of the truth, that we might be
worshipers in spirit. Father, I thank You that our
children hear the Word of God, And I pray that we would spend
more time outside these gatherings, teaching them the Word. Lord, we pray for our friends
and our family who are lost, that maybe even through us, You
would lead them to the knowledge of truth as we share the Gospel
with them. As we pray, Your Word goes and
does which it was intended to do. Lord, we pray for those sheep
of other congregations that are displaced, some that we know
of, some that we do not know of, the wolves and the snakes
and the dogs and the pigs and all the harm that they do to
the body. But, Father, Your Word is sufficient and clear. We will
not fail. We will not be cast away. We
will not die for forever. Even if we are given over to
death in the body, we live forever by the Spirit. So, Lord, help us to keep these
things fresh. in our hearts and minds. We praise You for this
opportunity. We praise You for Your love.
In Jesus' name, Amen.