I would have you to turn back
in your Bibles to 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, if you will. Now the
message I'm going to share with you this day is taken from a
series I brought at that time out of 1 Thessalonians chapter
5. I brought two messages starting
at verse 16. I'm going to read verse 16 through
verse 20, and then I'll commence with our portion of exhortation
today. Rejoice evermore pray without
ceasing and everything give thanks for this is the will of God in
Christ Jesus Concerning you quench not the spirit despise not prophesying
prove all things hold fast that which is good abstain from all
appearance of evil and the very God of peace sanctify you wholly
and I pray God your whole spirit and and soul and body be preserved
blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. What I
just shared with you are seven imperatives, seven instructions,
seven commandments given by the Apostle Paul under inspiration
of the Holy Spirit. We have looked at seven imperatives. Those are commands to do. Rejoice
evermore, pray without ceasing, Be thankful in all things. Quench
not the spirit. Despise not prophesying. Prove
all things. Hold fast to that which is good.
Abstain from every appearance of evil. Do that and God promises
to sanctify you wholly and present you spotless before the presence
of his glory with exceeding joy. The title of our message today
is You Are the Temple of God. This is the premise upon which
the apostle is actually exhorting the church at Thessalonica. One
of many of the churches that Paul established in his missionary
journey of which, if you recall, he saw in a vision a man waving
from Macedonia which said to him, come over hither, come over
hither, we need you to minister to us too. And finally Paul made
it over to the regions of Thessalonica where he had some trouble but
ultimately was able to establish the gospel ministry there. And
when you read your Bible, every one of the epistles that are
written to the several different churches are written with unique
instructions, exhortations, admonishments, and encouragements for that local
body. Children of God, every local
church has something in common with God, who is the head of
the church, Christ, who is the head of the church. Every local
church has certain things in common. But at the same time,
every local church is its own unique entity. Like every family
is its own unique entity. No two families are alike. So when you think about the church
in Rome, the body of believers in Rome, they are radically different
than the body of believers in Thessalonica. When you think
about the church at Corinth, the Lord knows that they are
uniquely different than virtually every other church in the epistles.
You think about the church at Ephesus or you think about the
church at Philippi or Colossae. All these are gospel churches
with believers in them like you and me. But they are all different
churches. And so the Spirit of God works
in the life of the minister to share things with each local
church unique to them as God would do for you individually
and for us as families individually and for us at Grace uniquely. And here the Apostle Paul calls
attention to seven instructions for which he says, if you do
these things, you will be a vital gospel church. A vital gospel
church, ladies and gentlemen, will be a church that is hallmarked
by and recognized by constant rejoicing. See verse 16? Constant rejoicing a healthy
church like a healthy family will have as a feature disposition
joy a Healthy believer that is a healthy family. I'm using the
word healthy in our present vernacular in the Greek. It's the word sound
To be complete to be whole to be grounded, to be solid, to
be mature, to be equipped. That's the word for sound doctrine.
It means to be healthy through and through. You know, sometimes
we can be all right, but we're not always sound. We can be functional,
but we're not always healthy. Am I telling the truth? And so
what I mean by a vital gospel church or in some Context a spirit-filled
church that there are hallmarks that underscore the character
of a believer When he or she or they are walking with God
one is they are people who are found to be rejoicing Constantly
now when I say rejoicing I am NOT talking about the Mary Kay
smile that religious folk put up when they're trying to deceive
people as if they don't go through trouble I I'm not talking about
that. Rejoicing has nothing to do with
external things or outward circumstances. The joy I am talking about is
first positional. I thank God for who I am in Christ. And I thank God for who Christ
is for me. And I thank God for the things
that Christ has accomplished on my behalf. Deep down inside,
there is a continuous joy in that going on, no matter how
bad my outward circumstances are. So we are rejoicing evermore. Nevertheless, I would say this,
while our joy is not based upon outward circumstances, it is
experiential. Joy is an emotion. And when you
have authentic real joy, it's based upon being happy about
something. And when you have joy, it cannot
ultimately be hid. Now you and I might be naturally
phlegmatic. We might be naturally melancholy. We might be naturally given to
very little existential manifestation of joy, like my brethren who
are Brits. In the Virgin Isles, our folks
are very British. So they can be bubbling over
full of joy on the inside, and you would never know it. I've
tore that down this week. I guarantee you that. I want to see it bubble over
a little bit. But I mean, people are different, right? I had a
friend years ago who used to sit up front and listen to me
preach. And when I preached, he would cry. And I would say,
man, what's wrong with you? Every time I preach, you cry.
He said, because I'm happy. OK? So everybody has their different
way of rejoicing. What I when Paul says rejoice
evermore He is talking about the discipline of the mind being
fixed on gospel truth by which you know Everything is well with
your soul. No matter what's going on in
the world And therefore it is experiential, but it is not rooted
in circumstances. It's rooted in the promises of
God It's rooted in the reality of Christ in your life and it
flows out of the presence of the kingdom of God in you And
this is the kingdom of God. Righteousness, peace, and joy
in the Holy Ghost. Romans 14, 17, by the way. The
kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness. That
is the righteousness of Christ, which is the foundation of my
eternity. And then peace. That is the fruit
of Christ's justifying work, by which I'm alright with God
no matter what happens in my world. And when you have that
kind of peace, that is a consequence of righteousness, it's going
to overflow with joy at some point, is it not? At some point,
you're going to be happy about being at a permanent state of
justifying peace with God. So this is what Paul means. Demonstrate
the fact that you're God's child. Show it, let people know that
God is worthy of you rejoicing if nobody else will rejoice in
God. And you know the whole plethora of biblical truth around rejoicing.
The psalmist says it everywhere. I will rejoice in the Lord. I
will rejoice in the God of my salvation. I will rejoice in
your mercy. I will rejoice in your goodness.
I will rejoice in your faithfulness. I will rejoice in your chastening
me. See, the people of God rejoice
in God and what God has done. Christ rejoiced in the election
of God's people. Matthew 11, 25, he said, Father,
I thank you that you've hid these things from the wise and the
prudent and you made these things known unto babes. He told us
to rejoice in Luke chapter 10, that our names are written in
the book of life. Listen, if you're going to rejoice in something,
rejoice in this. God wrote your name indelibly
in heaven. So that you are a citizen of
a heavenly kingdom and it never can be erased. That's something
to be happy about That's something to be happy about so a Spirit-filled
church a vital gospel church are people who are fixated upon
Committed to and live out of the reality of the kingdom of
God in their life The second evidence is praying without ceasing.
Do you see that now? We have been persuaded here at
grace that we can't accomplish anything for God apart from prayer
I am utterly committed to the discipline of prayer. And wherein
God chooses to demonstrate that I am walking carnally and also
operating out of my own confidence or my own skill sets, my own
abilities, it will be indicative of a lack of prayer in my life,
authentic prayer. Because real prayer simply means
I need God. Real prayer simply means I need
God. And when I am praying out of
earnest to the God of glory, then I can be confident that
what I do, God can use it because I am not ignorant of the source
behind which I am now doing what God is calling me to do. This
is true for the body of Christ, too. I'm going to make that more
plain here in a moment. So the evidence of a spirit-filled
believer, a vital gospel church, is a joy that is rooted in Christ,
a prayer life that's consistent, cognitive of not only our need
of God. Listen, saints, we pray because
it's a commandment. We pray because prayer works. We pray because Christ prayed. We pray because we've been born
again. Have you been born again? Have
you been born again? Do you have the spirit of adoption?
Do you cry Abba Father? It is natural then in your soul
to pray to God. It's natural to us. When God
saved Paul on the road to Damascus, he told Ananias, you're going
to find Paul because when you catch up with him, behold, he
is praying. So the nature and character of
a gospel church, when it is vital, is that it's rejoicing in the
Lord, it's constantly praying. but then it's also a thankful
church. See verse 18, that was our theme
this year, right? In everything give thanks. Ladies
and gentlemen, that's the hardest thing to do unless you have your
eyes on Christ. Is that true? He says in everything
give thanks. You know what that means? You
have to rise above your situation and believe that God has your
eternal good in view when you're going through opposition and
hostility. See, Christ was able to give thanks the very night
he was betrayed by his disciples and taken into the hand of the
Sanhedrin and drinking the cup that his father gave him to drink.
He gave thanks for the cup. You see, so when we are giving
thanks, we're not giving thanks also for the fact that we have
a house, a car, a job, and God's prospering us. We are giving
thanks at the remembrance of God's goodness to us and his
faithfulness in our lives. We are thankful as a consequence
of a revelation. And I'll tell you this, if your
bank account is low on thankfulness, take a trip to a third world
country. You will come back very thankful. When you go to some
of these countries and you don't have the kind of bathroom you
got in your house, and you trying to get in and out quickly because
critters are around, You will say, I'm so thankful for the
kind of bathroom I got. You know, you can go to your
bathroom and sit there for a whole hour. Listen, because you're
not worried about the Geico jumping off the roof on your head, or
those big old spiders, or those flying roaches. Flying. All I'm saying is this. You and
I have to thank God for his measures of grace in our life. because
there's nothing about your circumstance or mine that merits us not thanking
God. Somebody is worse off than you.
It goes on to say, quench not the spirit. That's where I want
to work with today. I want to work with this metaphor
that the apostle now places upon us. This is the second part of
two parts of a message that I brought, and I dealt with the first three
As we have just noted briefly, and now I'm dealing with the
last four and primarily this subject of quenching, not the
spirit. The apostle says, do not quench the spirit, no longer
quench the spirit. Don't start quenching the spirit. Now, why would he make that kind
of statement? Why would he utter that language? Because you are the temple of
the living God. and the Spirit of God dwells
in you. He is taking the analogy of the
temple and he is apprehending the metaphor of the menorah,
the candlestick in the temple, and he's drawing a conclusion
that you and I must pay careful attention as to what it means
to be the light in this world as a representative of Christ. And he wants us now to understand
the privilege and the blessing but certainly the purpose behind
which you and I are called the Temple of the Living God. And
I just want to call your attention to several things with regards
to that. We are the candlestick. This
will be made more fully known when we go through the seven
churches of Revelation. But in Revelation chapter 1,
you know that first vision given to the church where John says
in verses 16 through 20, and I turn to see the voice Him that
spake with me and turning to see the voice or the trumpet
He saw one like the Son of Man Standing in the midst of the
seven golden candlesticks you guys remember that Now he's already
given us the interpretation the seven golden candlesticks are
the seven churches the point is by application or extension
every local church is a light and Every local church is a lamp. Every local church becomes a
means by which the glory of God and the truth of the gospel is
communicated to the world in the metaphor of light. This is
why he said to the disciples, you are the light of the world.
You are a city set on a hill. The people that are in darkness
can come into the light because of you. Now he's speaking, children
of God, to the body of Christ. Let me make this observation
as we go on. You know, you and I are meditating
on our theme this year. We are the temple of the living
God, right? Do you believe that's what you are? Well, the word,
ye, in the New Testament, the preponderance of the time that
it's used It's in the second person plural, not singular. Meaning the idea of the temple,
while it is true that you and I individually are temples, really
God is speaking to the collective body of Christ. We as a collective
whole are the temple. We are the body as a whole, every
member together. Remember what I told you several
weeks back? When the Lord taught the disciples how to pray, our
Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come,
thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this
day our daily bread and lead us not into temptation. Forgive
us of our trespasses. Forgive others as we forgive
others. That whole litany of prayer directives is to the body
of Christ as a whole. It does not say, my Father which
is in heaven, give me this day. It's us, it's we, it's ours. There's a sense in which we must
capture the nature of the church in its corporate fashion, especially
in the biblical text, so that you and I do not misinterpret
the ultimate meaning of the exhortation that's there. Here, you and I
are being told collectively that we are the body of Christ, and
we have, as it were, the presence of the Spirit of God in the midst
of us, and we are now being exhorted. As a group, it does not negate
our individual responsibility. But as a group, we are now to
consider the earnestness of this proposition. Is it possible to
quench the spirit? See, and this is where we must
now develop some consideration around the blessedness of being
the temple of the living God. Remember what our master said
in Revelation chapter 2, speaking to the church at Ephesus? I won't
develop it now. We'll deal with many more inferences
and implications when we get into that text. He said to her
in chapter 2, I have this against you, that you have left your
first love. Repent therefore and do your
first works over or I will come and do what? Remove your candlestick
from you. Are you hearing me? So the earnest
warning on the part of the Apostle Paul to the local church is it's
possible if we were to neglect our walk with God, our calling
with God, the duties and the privileges of a local church,
that if we would dishonor the presence of Christ by his spirit
in the midst of our gospel ministry, that we could look up one day
and be as dead as a doorknob. Ichabod could be ridden all over
the doors of the church. We could be like the church at
Sardis in chapter 5. You have a name that you are
alive, but you're dead. God can quench, snuff out that
light, if we collectively fail to understand the great privilege
of the ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Are you guys
following me? And so I am continuing on with a fundamental exhortation
that I started earlier, and that's this. We need one another. And
you who have been called to Christ, you have been called to the body
of Christ, not just to yourself or to Christ, to the body of
Christ. This became so vividly clear
when I preached in the conference this week, which they received
very well because God prompted me to talk about the importance
of the local church. The importance of the gospel
in a local church. And they received it well. And
I trust that you will too. The Apostle Paul speaking to
us about not quenching the spirit moves us into our second point.
The command to always what? Burn. The command to always burn. You know where that's taken from?
Exodus chapter 27, verse 20 and 21. where Moses was instructed by
God to make sure that when you make the golden candlestick that
there was oil constantly supplied to the candlestick so that the
candlestick stayed lit in the Holy of Holies at all times. In other words, God did not want
the people of God to view the possibility of the church being
lit up for a while and then going out for a while, then being lit
up again and then going out, that would be a clear contrary
typology to the nature of the Spirit of God given to the believer
when once born again. In other words, those who have
the Spirit of God do not have it sometime and sometime not. God doesn't cut the lights on
sometime, then cut the lights off sometime. The idea of obtaining
and becoming part of this great imagery and metaphor of the light
is that you and God through the Spirit are to walk together continually. That you are to be a light continually.
That the light should be burning continually. Are you following
me? Let the light in the temple burn continually. Now there are
three things in the temple that God said make sure they continued
without ending. And these three are germane and
relevant to where we are in our call for the gospel. The first
was that the sacrifices were to continue morning and evening
without stop. The sacrifices to be burnt in
the morning and the evening continually. This is a perpetual ordinance.
What is the sacrifice? It's the gospel of the cross
work of Jesus Christ. We are to preach the gospel of
the atoning work of Christ incessantly. Christ must be preached as the
lamb that was slain continually. The blood of Christ must be declared
and proclaimed and set forth in his atoning work continually.
In other words, we are not a gospel church where Christ is not preached. And he is to be preached continually
morning and evening and evening and morning. Thus we know we
are in the right place. For if you are in a place where
Christ is not preached, Christ is not there. And if Christ is
not there, the Holy Ghost is not there. See the text tells
us in Exodus chapter 27, very clearly that not only was the
light to remain burning at all times, but the altar of incense
was to be burning profusely as well. You know what he's doing?
He's combining prayer with the revelatory work of the light
of the gospel. Are you guys hearing what I'm
saying? These are in the same verses. Let the light burn all
the time and make sure that the altar of incense is constantly
burning. Ladies and gentlemen, what he's saying is there must
be an identity of the people of God hallmarked by a fervent,
passionate, consistent prayer life and the illuminating work
of the Spirit of God in the preaching of Christ. What is that source
of illumination? It's the Spirit of God. He is
the oil, is He not? Is the oil not the Holy Ghost?
And so then the apostle is saying to us, as we are contemplating
verse 19, quench not the spirit. See to it that your life as believers
in the reality of the covenant where the Old Testament was typical
You and I are the reality walk in the reality of those things
that are declared Typologically in the Old Testament in other
words you and I are to continue in fellowship communion with
God through his spirit it's by prayer and it's by the illuminating
work of the Holy Ghost which brings me into my next point
and relationship to that yes quite naturally the metaphor
of the Spirit of God being represented by fire is something that the
Apostle is is extracting from the whole of his nature the metaphor
fire is an impersonal analogy but the Holy Spirit is a person
and he possesses many other predicates and attributes and characteristics
far more than fire is that true he's not just a force ladies
and gentlemen He's a person with divine attributes and predicates
that span all sorts of aspects of his relationship to us and
the Father and the Son of the Living God. But as fire, the
goal of the Spirit of God is to work in our life in these
several ways. The purpose of fire is to warm,
warm. You know, God warns us about
being cold, doesn't he? We talked about that recently.
And our hearts ought to be warmed by the sweet communion of the
Spirit of God as we fellowship with God and in prayer and as
we meditate on His Word daily and as we commune with the brothers
and sisters in Christ. My heart was warmed this week
meeting brothers and sisters I had never met before. And we
could talk about the things of God at length because we had
the same Father. We were born of the same Spirit.
We have the same gospel. And so we can talk about these
things. And so the heart is warmed by the exhortation of the Spirit
of God. Is that not true? When we are
of like mind. But the Spirit of God is also
heat. Do you know what that means?
Passion. Passion and zeal for God. I told you this before.
God does not expect you and I to be without zeal. Zeal is critical
to the glory of God. What's Christ full of the Holy
Ghost? Was he zealous for his father? My, the first thing he
did when he went into the temple after his ministry started was
get a bunch of switches and whip all of the crooks out of the
church. That's zeal. And remember what the text said?
The zeal of my father's house has eaten me up. And so the people
of God ought to hallmark the zeal of the fire of the Spirit
of God in our soul. You and I ought to be passionate
about God. zealous for God. And then the
fire also goes on further to move into that work of revelation
and illumination that comes with what we call the expository preaching
of the Word of God. Is it not the job of the Spirit
to take the things of Christ and reveal them effectually to
our soul? Is it not the job of the Spirit
to not only reveal them to us, but to reveal them effectually? It's called the illuminating
work of the Spirit of God. His job is to reveal Christ to
our soul. That's John 16, 8. His work is
to reveal biblical truth to us so that we grow in grace and
in the knowledge of the Lord. His work is a work of revelation. And so Paul said in Ephesians
chapter 1 that God might give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation
and the knowledge of Christ. The objective then with regards
to quenching not the spirit is to make sure we correspond to
the analogy that we keep the light burning continually. Everything from the warm edifying
work of the Spirit of God in prayer and in fellowship to the
passion and zeal that comes from the heat of the love that we
have for Christ and Christ has for us, to the illuminating revelatory
work of the Spirit of God through the exegetical preaching of the
Scriptures. Which brings us to our next verse. Despise not what? Prophesy. See, those are really tandem
statements. To quench not the Spirit really means to be committed
to sound biblical teaching. To quench not the spirit means
to be committed to sound biblical teaching. The Spirit of God does
not work in our life to transform us, renew us, instruct us, conform
us apart from the Word of God. So when we talk about making
sure we don't question the Spirit, what we're saying is do not neglect
the teaching and preaching of the Word of God which the Spirit
uses to build us up and give us an inheritance among those
that are sanctified. You can tell a church that doesn't
have the Spirit of God because that church neglects sound, comprehensive,
theologically deep Christ-exalting, God-glorifying, Spirit-aided
preaching, which is critical to our identity, our maturity,
our effectiveness in the ministry. Are you guys hearing what I'm
saying? I can know that I'm getting sick in my soul when I no longer
want to hear the Word of God. I'm sick. I'm sick as a dog when
I can absent myself from the preaching of the Word. I'm talking
about right preaching. I'm not talking preaching foolishness.
I'm talking about the sound preaching of the Word of God where the
Spirit of God has taught a man how to rightly divide the Word
of God and exalt Christ in the preaching of the Gospel. When
my soul can absent itself from that kind of feeding, I'm in
trouble. Did you know that the menorah of which we are now contemplating
that you and I are, the light of the candlestick, was designed
to cast light on, in the Holy of Holies, the table of showbread.
See, in the Holy of Holies, there were three articles in the holy
place. Three articles were in the holy place. The menorah that
Aaron was to light, And then the altar of incense that was
allowed, that Aaron was to allow to burn continually as a metaphor
and imagery of prayers ascending up to God. And then over by the
altar of incense was the table of showbread. What do you mean,
preacher? I'm going to make this more fully
plain in a moment. The goal of cutting the lights
on is to first cut the lights on the glory of God in Christ. In other words, the goal of the
Spirit is not simply to cut the lights on in everything that's
going on in the world, but to show us Christ, the bread of
life. Are you hearing what I'm saying?
And this is the business of the whole Levitical order, or the
priesthood of which you and I are. We are priests in the temple
of God, and we get to feed on the showbread, do we not? But
how can we even find the show bread unless God cuts the lights
on and reveals to us? Jesus Christ the bread of life
and the bread of ordering Now you're hearing what I'm saying
cut the lights on let's eat and let's pray I Like that deal don't
you? see because the priests get the
eat of the altar of which they worship and then we pray and
then we go into the Holy of Holies and where God communes with us
between the cherubim on the mercy seat, which is our propitiation
in the person of Jesus Christ. What a wonderful, wonderful metaphor
of our fellowship with God. So the writer to the Thessalonians
is saying this, brothers and sisters, do not find yourself
quenching the spirit by our attitude, by our behavior, by patterns
of life, that would, as it were, minimize and bring to a halting
stop the zeal and passion to be under the Word of God. It
can happen. You know that you can find yourself,
and it doesn't even have to be intentional, you can find yourself
being promoted on your job. Promoted out of the hours necessary
for you to be in communion with God personally. So where you
are in the hustle and bustle on the hamster wheel of financial
success because you've been promoted, guess what you're not doing?
You're not praying. Pray always, remember? And now as you're hustling
to make the money to buy the car and buy the house and enjoy
life on a material level, you are going to find yourself in
the drudgery of a carnal mindset and you're no longer going to
really be thankful. Remember? Be thankful. Because
you're going to have attitude as you're seeking to go to work
on an empty tank when you don't spend time in prayer and when
you don't spend time in the Word of God when you're not hearing
the gospel as the motivating basis for you to go to work.
I'm making some sense. Am I making some sense? And see,
again, on a much more corporate level, I just wanted a personal
application for those of you who don't like to apply the Word
to yourself. I'm going to get you anyway. But on a larger corporate
level, take the business of gospel preaching serious. Do not compromise
in your own mind where you are going to sit under the gospel.
Make sure your teachers are serious about the Word of God, that they're
committed to scripture, committed to Christ, committed to sound
biblical teaching, both in terms of their abilities and giftedness
to teach, but even more so their life. Are you hearing what I'm
saying? That is where the Spirit of God
dwells. He dwells in the midst of men
and women who are serious about Christ. I want the lights on
to see Christ, and I want the lights on to see Christ in you,
the hope of glory. Is that okay? Can I say that?
I was sharing with my elders, my men's meeting several weeks
ago, that sometimes we commit the fallacy of over pious statements. Have you ever done that? Have
you said things that were just overly pious? You know, I could
give a long list of overly pious stuff we've said. We don't mean
it with nothing in us, but we say it because it sounds so good.
So I'm going to give you one that I have learned here in recent
years that's not only not true, it's not wise. We say in the
ministry that we want to be so hid that no one sees us, but
all they see is Christ. Now, doesn't that sound good?
Now, hold on. Doesn't that sound good? Doesn't
that sound like it might be right? Lord, I want you to hide me so
much that the people don't see me, but see Christ only. Let me share something with you.
If that ever happens, the people will lose their hope. If God
ever makes you so invisible that all people see is Jesus, Those
folks will never have any hope for glory. Because Christ, the
Father, nor the Holy Ghost, meant for you to be invisible. He meant
to make you a vessel wherein Christ dwells so that Christ
is seen through you, not apart from you, so that men and women
can have hope of the glory of God through Christ in you, the
hope of glory. Can I make the application in
case y'all getting excited? Here's my point. My point is
when they look at you, there it is, and then they think about
Christ and they go, Christ can hang out with her or him. I have hope of the glory of God. So here's my point. Don't go
around giving people a hopeless facade of somehow this is not
about you and Jesus. This is about Christ through
you, Christ for you, Christ with you, and Christ by you. See, listen, I'm thankful for
the Apostle Paul. Are you? I was talking to the
preachers in the conference. About how important it is for
men to be models for other men. I love the apostle paul Because
one of the things about the apostle I loved is that he was an honest
man He got mad sometimes I mean downright mad And he would say
something like i'm not gonna glory, but yes I am i'm gonna
take a moment to glory in what I have done for christ's sake
now I don't i'm not supposed to but I am and he does and the
holy ghost writes it down You know what he, the apostle says,
now if other people get upset and burn, I do too. I can get
mad. See, I'm like a real brother.
I like a real brother because God is able to work with that.
This party of I'm, I want to be so holy that they never see
me. The oil is to be poured into
a candlestick. And the candlestick is made out
of beaten gold. This is my last point. And the
candlestick is to be polished after it's formed and shaped
so that it possesses its own beauty in the hand of the potter,
in the hand of the craftsman. So that the candlestick is designed
to manifest the glory of God with the light that proceeds
from it by the power of the Spirit of God represented by the oil.
Are you guys following me? And in fact, when you go through
the Old Testament, here's what you learn about something I'm
getting ready to capture now as I tie this down. The connection
between the oil and the candlestick and the preaching of the gospel.
Everything in the temple that was made out of gold, silver,
Brass was beaten. It was beaten gold. It was beaten
brass. It was beaten bronze. What am
I talking about? I'm talking about the sanctifying
work of the Spirit of God to take the raw material and pound
it into a form and shape useful for the glory of God. What am
I talking about? I'm talking about what God must
do to you and me as raw material to conform us to the image of
Christ that we would conform to the patterns that are laid
out in those temple articles. Now let me tell you why he must
do that. Because he did it to our master. So I'll go back to
the analogy. When the lamp were made, it was
to be furnished with oil, right? Now the oil olive oil. The text literally says that.
Make sure that you use olive oil and there are two words that
are used with regards to this olive oil. Do you know what that
is? The word is beating and pressing. Make sure you use beaten olive
oil. That was Exodus 27 verse 20.
What are you saying preacher? The oil needs to be beaten too?
The oil is only available when it's first beaten and then pressed. What do you mean? I mean this,
that when we talk about the spirit of the living God working in
the life of the people of God, we are talking about a work of
the spirit, which is a consequence of Christ and him crucified.
You see, the olive oil came from olives that were on an olive
tree. which had to first be beaten
off the tree. Are you hearing me? The peasants
would climb the tree with sticks and beat the olives off and they
would fall to the ground. The beating of the olives points
to the sufferings of Christ. Christ suffered beatings. He suffered bruising. He suffered
punishment as the tree of life by which the olive oil would
flow out. be available for you and me pastor
how do you make that good the night in which our master was
crucified he went into the garden of Gethsemane the place where
he was want to go all the time to pray and there he sweat in
his prayer great drops of blood do you remember He was being
pressed under by the Spirit of God as God began to pour the
weight of His justice upon the Son of God. He began to fill
the cup of which He said, Father, if it be Your will, remove it. But it wasn't His will. And the
Son now, as the olive tree being beaten by the law of God, is
now brought to the ground and crushed under the weight of the
Spirit of God. Do you know the Garden of Gethsemane
literally means oil vat? Look at God. We have wine vats
wherein we take grapes and we put them in the wine vat. And
what do we do? We crush them. We beat them in order to make
the wine. Christ is our wine. Is He not
the vine tree that had to be crushed as well? Well, Christ
is also the source and means by which the Spirit of the living
God is given to the church of the living God by Him being beaten
on our behalf. He hangs on Calvary's tree. He's
pierced in his side and straightway comes out blood and water. And
as a consequence of his death on Calvary Street, guess who
we have right now abiding with us permanently? The third person. Here's the connection. The spirit
of God is inexorably bound to the person of Christ so that
when you have the spirit, you have Christ. When you have the
spirit of Christ, You have Christ Himself. If any man have not
the Spirit of God, he's not of Christ. This also means, listen
to me now, when you and I have the Spirit, the job of the Spirit
is only to point to Christ. Only to point to the one who
was beaten, to the one who was pressed, to the one who was brought
low, in order that you and I might experience the life-giving savor
of the Spirit of the living God. Watch out for the false spirit.
See, the false spirit exalts man. The true spirit humbles
man. The false spirit minimizes the
glory of God in Christ. The true spirit exalts Christ. The false spirit says that many
ways lead. The true spirit says there's
only one way that leads. The false spirit glorifies himself. The true spirit glorifies Christ. Why? Because the Spirit of God
was liberated. He was free to come only because
the olives were beaten and crushed and placed in the wine vat of
God's providence and purpose to make sure you and I are brought
to Jesus Christ. Now, how does this work on a
practical level with regards to teaching and preaching? Here's
how this works. This is my last point around this. When the text
says, quench not the spirit, and do not despise prophesying.
He's talking about our ministry in the Word of God. Will you
notice what our fourth point underscores? The content of the
light corresponding to the content of what? Prophecy. In other words,
the preaching of the Word of God. We preach Christ and Him
crucified, the hope of glory. And we do that, saints, in four
ways. We do that evangelically, do
we not? When we call men and women to
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. We do
it also apologetically. Do you know what that means?
We defend the gospel against everything that exalts itself
against the knowledge of Christ. We also exhort The believing
child of God is exhorted through the preaching of the gospel to
look to Christ, to trust Christ, to run to Christ, to hope in
Christ, to live for Christ. We exhort you through Christ,
do we not? And then we also, ladies and gentlemen, through
the preaching of the gospel, oppose and expose every heresy,
every false teaching, every false doctrine. See, there is that
aspect of the gospel that's essential. We have to let you know when
crooks rise up to deny God his glory and to bring the people
of God into captivity and bondage. This is called polemics. In polemics,
we say that is wrong. That is diabolically wrong. That
is a hellish doctrine. We expose the unfruitful works
of unrighteousness. We make manifest all of the corruptors
of the word of God. We expose heresy and false doctrine
in order that the saints might be able to walk in light. See,
whatsoever is made manifest is what? Light. And sometimes the
teachings of heresy and false doctrine is so subtle without
faithful preaching and teaching. To expose it, you can be drawn
in. You can be deceived. Because
as scripture says, false prophets and false teachers will arise,
and they will show signs and wonders, and they will deceive,
if possible, the very elect. Now when the plumb line of the
gospel is not in the midst of teaching and preaching, to discern
what's right and wrong, you can be off course just a little bit
and not know it. But when once you drop the gospel
down there, have you not experienced that? You said there was something
missing in that message. It seemed good, but it was something
missing. And that person had a sugary,
sweet, nice, comforting message. You felt good when they were
done. But you also felt a little bit
empty. Y'all know what I'm talking about?
Like cotton candy. It tastes good, but it has no
substance to it. And so you get a rush for about
five seconds and then you start coming down real quick and you're
scratching your head. What was it that I just went
through? You just went through a ministry and preaching that
had no substance to it. It had no content to it. It had
no rich theology to it. More importantly, Christ was
not preached. He was not exalted. He was not
made known in all of His offices. Because when you're born again,
you want to know Him. You want to know Him in the power
of His resurrection. You want to know Him in the fullness
of His glory. I want to know about Christ.
And this is eternal life, that they might know Thee, the only
true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. If I go away from
the worship and haven't had Christ preach, I know it. As good as
those practical lessons are, and I want them, God speak to
me as to how to walk right with you. I'm not one of those cats
that don't mind being admonished. Admonish me. When I'm wrong,
admonish me. Let the righteous smite me. It'll
be a good ointment because I know he won't break my head. He'll
simply tell me the truth and then lead me to Christ where
the healing balm goes to work and bring me back to where I
need to be. Don't lie to me. I'm not always all right. I'm
not always straight, but my mediator is. My mediator is. So admonish
me for the word of God is profitable for doctrine, for reproof. Correction instruction and righteousness
and all whom the Lord loves he what? That's right. And then
he go run quickly to Christ so that you're so that Christ thought
goes way up for you Goes way up for you Then the writer says
this he says prove all things that and hold fast to that which
is good. Isn't that what it says? So what
we are called upon to do is to make sure our relationship with
the Spirit of God is such that we are sincere and earnestly
pursuing God by means of the third person. We are to make
sure our doctrine is sound and that we are comprehensive and
deep in our pursuit of biblical truth because that's what conforms
us to the image of Christ. And we are to prove all things.
You and I live in a generation, ladies and gentlemen, that does
not want to test things. I said this to the saints in
Tortola. I said, we are in a world today
where challenging propositions and assumptions is not tolerated. And as a consequence, what happens
is people are allowed to continue to walk in error. And when you
say that's wrong, you are mean. You're not walking in love. If
you say, hey, oh, sir, what you just stated is a biblical fallacy. That cannot be true. Let's sit
down and reason through the scriptures so I can help you understand
how far away you are from Christ. No, you have your opinion and
I have mine. Listen to me, ladies and gentlemen,
with that kind of notion, you can never come to the truth.
The job of a faithful ministry is to pursue and examine every
doctrine of Scripture so that we can know that we are walking
right with God. And when we see doctrines rise up, false doctrines
that do not glorify God, false doctrines that exalt men, false
doctrines that diminish the cross work of Jesus Christ, false doctrines
that distort the nature of the Spirit of God, false doctrines
that assail the Word of God, we must oppose it. We must oppose
it. Because our master did. And here's
what the apostle says in closing, will occur if you and I rejoice
evermore, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks, quench
not the spirit, despise not prophesying, prove all things, hold fast to
that which is good, abstain from all appearances of evil. Ladies
and gentlemen, you and I can't do this seventh commandment where
we have failed to prove all things. We cannot abstain from an evil
we don't even detect. You cannot depart from error
until lights are cast on that error to show it for the darkness
that it is. And this is why our churches
are filled with so many unconverted people. Am I making some sense? The goal of the church is to
conform to the image of Jesus Christ. And this is the process
by which it's done. I'm thankful for a gospel church,
aren't you? I'm thankful for a church where Christ is preached,
where the people of God love God, love Christ, love His Word,
yearn for the Spirit of God to work in us the will and to do
of His good pleasure. That's a process. That doesn't
happen overnight. You and I are not naturally inclined
to obey God. I hope you know that. I hope
you know that it's a great grace when God gives you an appetite
for the truth of God's Word. Everywhere I go to preach, I
have to warn people that I'll preach for at least an hour.
And they fall out, oh, an hour. How can your people stand you? Well, the time has come when
they will not endure sound doctrine, but will heap to themselves teachers
having itching ears. And they will turn away their
ears from the truth to fables. Folks will sit up and listen
to lies for hours. But to sit and hear serious biblical
teaching for one hour, it takes the grace of God because we are
in an apostate generation. Are you hearing what I'm saying?
I tell folks wherever I go preach, I say, the reason why my brothers
and sisters can listen to me for an hour and 10 minutes is
because they have been conditioned to listen. Is that true? Being conditioned to listen.
Being conditioned to listen. We have been conditioned that
we're going to pay attention to God as long as He's speaking. Because we know this does not
have to happen every day. I don't have to even have a heart
to sit for an hour and listen to the Word of God. It's the
grace of God that I can do so. May God continue giving us grace
to listen to His Word as long as He wants to preach to us. And here's the promise. By these
means, and by these evidences, in the life of a believing person,
in the life of a believing family, where you see joy, where you
see prayer, where you see thanksgiving, where you see the passionate
commitment to the Spirit, where you see sound doctrine preached,
proclaimed, exalted where you see a proving of all things and
not walking in presumption where you see a cleaving to that which
is good where you see avoiding of all appearances of evil you
can know God is in the mist to sanctify you wholly do you see
it that's his promise and the very God of peace this is a covenant
phrase Saints not a God of peace that raised our Lord Jesus Christ
from the dead, that great shepherd of the sheep, that great shepherd
of the sheep through the blood of the everlasting covenant make
you perfect in every good work to do his will working in you
that which well pleasing in his sight. What are we talking about?
The temple of God. We're talking about the temple
of God, are we not? We're talking about the place where God dwells.
Is God going to keep his place clean? Is he going to make it
holy? Is it going to be useful for
the glory of God? That's what I want. And he promises to do that. Faithful
is he who hath called you, who also will do it. Amen and amen.