1 Thessalonians 5:19-28 (Part A)

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. And so we see grieving the Holy Spirit is something that a believer does to God.

Rejecting the Holy Spirit is something that the unbeliever does to God. And then quenching the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 5. This is something a church does. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 1 Thessalonians.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of 1 Thessalonians Chapter 5 with today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio. This is important stuff because he's talking about the Holy Spirit. And quenching the Spirit heightens the risk of being quenched by the Spirit.

And that's why it's very important. For example, there was King Saul. Most of you, or those of you who are Bible students, you're familiar with King Saul.

Not a very noble man at all. And yet the Spirit was gone from him. In spite of Samuel the prophet being in his life, in spite of the many blessings, then there was Judas Iscariot. You can't top him when it comes to apostates. He walked with Jesus, saw the miracles, heard the sermons, and yet he still betrayed the Lord.

And then there was Ananias and Sapphira. And so we have to remember that the Holy Spirit is as much King as the Lord Jesus Christ. He is co-equal with the Father and the Son in every way. And to cut him short, to interrupt him, or ignore him, or interfere with what he is doing is not only rude and irrational, but in some cases it is blasphemous.

And we need to take it very seriously. He does not operate as a king because that is not his role within the Trinity. He does not draw attention to himself, but he draws it to Jesus Christ. This in no way diminishes who he is, and he is a person, and he is very much God. So here are four ways in which we can oppose the Holy Spirit, which is to oppose the Father, which is to oppose the Son. He can be resisted. He can be grieved. He can be quenched, and he can be blasphemed.

And we need to talk about how these work out in life. You notice there is a devolution that belongs to this. First he is resisted, then he is grieved, then he is quenched, and then he is blasphemed.

It is working downhill all the time. A church can quench the Holy Spirit, his work within their assembly. This is part of what Paul meant when he said to the Galatians, having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect in the flesh?

Have you tossed him out of the boat, and now you can do these things on your own? This is the whole case with the churches that were rebuked in Revelation 2 and 3 by the Lord Jesus himself, namely the church at Ephesus, the church at Thyatira and Pergamos, the church at Sardis and Laodicea, all of them rebuked for their behavior. And so a church, an assembly of believers, can quench the Holy Spirit by refusing to repent of any sin that they may be guilty of, by allowing any to usurp his authority. Again, this is detailed for us in Revelation 2 and 3. By refusing to follow his leading, by permitting false doctrines and practices, by permitting immoral behavior to take root within the assembly. That is how you quench the Holy Spirit.

It is done too often if it is done once. And it is important, I think, to remember that the Christless soul is in a perpetual state of resistance, and should they die in that state of resistance, that is under the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. It is the unpardonable sin. God has no solution to those or for those who reject him except to be rejected by him at death. And this is why preaching the gospel is serious business. And, you know, I want to get ahead of myself just briefly here, but someone may listen to the gospel message and say, it's too good to be true.

And God responds to that. It's too good to ignore. It's too good to resist. It's too good to die without it. Don't be a fool.

It is too good because I made it and I make all things good. The New Testament warns about resisting the Holy Spirit for believers. Believers are the ones that can grieve the Holy Spirit. But before I get back to that, first the unbelievers, they resist him. Stephen, the apostle, you might remember in Acts chapter 7, in verse 51, I'm going to turn there and I want to read this part of his sermon because it still takes place. It's a very powerful part of the sermon.

He says, you stiff necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears. In other words, you have no covenant with God. You pretend that you do, but you don't. And the evidence is how you behave. It is contrary to what he says in the covenant.

And it really doesn't even bother you. All of that is built into that little statement that Stephen just made. And he continues, he says, you always resist the Holy Spirit as your fathers did.

So do you. And then he hits them with this. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the just one. Now, I didn't mean to read all that, but I love reading scripture. And perhaps what I like more or as much in reading scripture is being able to read it to a group of people.

To read God's word out loud is a high and righteous calling. And back to this consideration of the New Testament warnings, resisting the Holy Spirit by unbelievers is fatal in the end. And then back to grieving the Holy Spirit. This is something that believers do. Grieve is a love word.

It is a word that you do not use for an enemy. We grieve over that which we love. And Paul, when he writes to the Ephesians, he's writing about the Church of Christ. When he writes to the Colossians, he's writing about the Christ of the Church. Very important for our doctrine.

Very helpful, very useful when going through those letters. But he says in Ephesians, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. And so we see grieving the Holy Spirit is something that a believer does to God. Rejecting the Holy Spirit is something that the unbeliever does to God. And then quenching the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 5.

This is something a church does. Now we move to blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Jesus spoke about this in Matthew Chapter 12.

Anyone can blaspheme the Holy Spirit. And it is to reject what he does. And what does he do? We said what he does.

He does not hold court. He brings us to Christ. That's what the Holy Spirit does. Jesus said he will not testify of himself, but of me. And so to reject the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to reject the gospel, is to reject the cross, is to say, Christ, I do not need you to do this.

The cross is to say, Christ, I do not need you to deliver me. There is no pardon for that. You say, what about the unborn who are murdered before they are born?

Different category. They did not deliberately, willfully reject the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we are on guard that we do not extinguish or mock or attempt to create or paint the fire of the Holy Spirit. We want it.

We want it under his supervision, under his leadership all the time. Many churches and individuals, I think you all have noticed this through history and even today, many churches and individuals are capable of continuing in their claim of Christ long after he is departed from them. The religious machinery continues to grind godless grist in his name. Churches that practice blasphemy and insist they're right.

One of the brothers was just telling me about a church service where the communion table, where the priest or the leader of the group, whatever it was, said that he wanted to catch the football game and that if you want the communion articles, here they are. Help yourself. In the flesh, in Jesus name, you'd want to take him to task. But in the spirit, it is grievous.

It is heartbreaking. Is this what Christ died for? So that he could play second fiddle to anything, let alone a sporting event. That he could say, hey, if you want to help yourself, these are the ordinances of God. They are entrusted to the church. They are entrusted to men who have been called by God, appointed by God to minister them to the people of God in sobriety, in seriousness. What does holiness mean? What is the word sacred for? If you can trample the blood of Christ, that's what the writer to Hebrews said. You trample the blood of Christ. There's no out for you now.

There's no out for you now. Israel did this. They trampled Jehovah of Israel. The prophets wrote about it extensively. Jeremiah, he wrote this. He said, God speaking through the prophet, I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran. I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied.

But if they had stood in my counsel and caused my people to hear my words, then they would have turned them from their evil way and from the evil of their doings. I would add that when the pastors neglect their ministry, the people begin to emulate that. They fall in line with it. This was the case in Israel. Not all of the people, thank God, the righteous don't go that way, but the masses do. And in Israel, this was the case.

They did not warn the people. And so the people began to enjoy the sin that came from the pulpits. In fact, the people applauded this pastor or priest or whatever you want to call him.

Pastor would be a misapplied word because he's not shepherding the flock at that moment if these things are so. The people applaud this. They think it's cool. We're not interested in cool. We're interested in Christ Jesus the Lord.

There's nothing more cool than that, nothing more hotter than hell. Israel was addressed by the prophet Ezekiel and he talked about how they quenched the Holy Spirit. And he tells us how God, the Shekinah, departed from the temple of God in stages.

It was sort of a reluctant goodbye. First we read Ezekiel 9 verse 3, Now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up for the cherub, where it had been to the threshold of the temple. That's the seat, the mercy seat that was over the Ark of the Covenant where the cherubim was. And so there's the Shekinah leaving, going by the doorway of the temple. And then he writes again in Ezekiel 10 18, Then the glory of the Lord departed from the threshold of the temple. And then later we read he departs from Jerusalem altogether. Jesus Christ, we read this of him coming into the city, into Jerusalem. He writes, Mark does, in chapter 11 of Mark's Gospel, verse 11, Jesus went into Jerusalem and into the temple. And so when he had looked around at all things as the hour was already late, he went out of Bethany with the twelve. So he comes into the city. He looks around at everything on the temple campus.

He is evaluating them, and this evaluation led to the action that he takes the very next day. We pick it up again in Mark's Gospel, chapter 11, this time verses 15 through 17. So they came to Jerusalem. Then Jesus went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves and would not allow anyone to carry wares through the temple. Then he taught them saying, is it not written my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of thieves.

And an amazing rebuke. They didn't listen to Ezekiel 500 years ago, Jeremiah and Daniel 500 years ago, Isaiah 600 years ago. And here the Lord comes, and he looks around at all things, and he makes his judgment, and he's still doing it to this day. He comes into the church which belongs to him, and he looks around at all things, and if that church is dishonoring him, he quenches the Holy Spirit, Revelation, chapter two, verse five. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, repent and do the first work, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.

The consequence of not repenting, the consequence of leaving the first love, is that he leaves us. He puts the fire out. Paul says don't quench the Holy Spirit. You don't know who you're messing with. You'd rather pull on Superman's cape than do this.

You'd rather pull on Superman's cape than do this. He says this almost matter-of-factly, don't quench the Spirit, but if you're sitting there listening to this letter being read, you can't miss the statement. He could be talking about anything, and then he says don't quench the Spirit, and if you know who the Holy Spirit of God is, you don't miss a syllable of what was just said. And then he says in verse 20, do not despise prophecies. Now, we must define this because there are multiple meanings to this. Prophecy is manifold according to the Scripture.

It is one of the most abused gifts given to the church. It is the movement of spiritual information in some form, but not limited to a single form, and certainly not limited to predictive prophecy. Yes, there is such a thing as predicting the future because God has revealed it.

We'll get to that in a minute. The context will spot for us the operation of which facet of prophecy is in operation. When Nathan the prophet stood before David and told him the story of the man who had a deer lamb, and that lamb was taken and eaten by a rich man who had a huge flock just to satisfy his pleasures, and David said, who did this?

He will die for this. And Nathan said, you're the man, David. That's a parable of what you did to Uriah and Bathsheba.

You are the man. That is called direct prophecy. That is thundering the truth of God at the right moment to the right person. That is applying God's word appropriately when Peter said, Ananias, who has filled your heart that you should lie to the Holy Spirit, and he dropped dead. That was direct prophecy with judgment, both under the umbrella of prophecy. But then in scripture, there is also those who are singing or proclaiming God's word or exalting through God's word or through God's teachings and edifying one another. That also is called prophecy. And so we go first to 1 Chronicles chapter 25 verse 1.

1 Chronicles 25 verse 1. Moreover, David and the captains of the army separated for the service some of the sons of Asaph, Haman, and of Juduathan, who should prophesy with harps, stringed instruments, and cymbals. And so there you see that those who were ministering to the flock in song were said to be prophesying. They were not predicting the future.

They weren't singing about the future. They were singing praises to the Lord. And then in Acts chapter 21, we read of Philip the evangelist, the gift of evangelists that man had. He would preach and people would get saved. The church has those who their strong point is not in bringing people to Christ, but is teaching people who have already come to Christ.

The gift of teaching is an operation in that regard. Well, here he had four maiden daughters, four righteous virgin daughters. And it says here in verse 9 of Acts 21, Now this man had four virgin daughters who prophesied.

They weren't telling the future. They were encouraging the flock. They were preaching the word.

They may have been singing. But what we're establishing here is that biblical prophecy, according to the Scripture, when it uses the word, it is not limiting it to predicting the future. And this comes out further in 1 Corinthians chapter 14. This is why we could link it very easily to the events in Acts chapter 21, what the New Testament church also thought of prophecy. Chapter 14, 1 Corinthians verse 3, But he who prophesies speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men. So when you see someone say, Thus saith the Lord, a fire will come out of the sky, burn off all your hair and strip you of your clothing and you'll be embarrassed by everyone. That's probably not prophecy, not very edifying. And so who would say such a thing, right? Well, you might be surprised.

Well, there's more. And so that covers this point that there is direct prophecy. There's prophecy, what is meant by it, song, proclamation of the word, exaltation, edification.

Whenever you preach the word to someone at work or give a word in season to a believer, these are all under spiritual activity according to God's word, according to God. Now, it does not stand to reason again that these believers were predicting events, but that they were also praising the Lord. We see the predictive prophecy and the singing of songs labeled as prophecy in the Old Testament in the life of Saul.

Now, we mentioned him earlier, one of the great apostates of Scripture. Samuel, you might remember, was told by God the future concerning Saul. 1 Samuel 9, verse 15, now the Lord, that's Jehovah, had told Samuel in his ear the day before Saul came saying, tomorrow about this time I will send you a man from the land of Benjamin, you shall anoint him, commander over my people. And he continues to develop the prophecy and that is exactly what happened. And so that is predictive prophecy. God has given the word to Samuel.

Samuel now knows the future concerning these events. And then in chapter 10, we see the prophecy coming to pass, but we also see other usage of the word. He says in verse 5 of 1 Samuel 10, after that, you shall come to a hill. Now, this is Samuel telling Saul the future because God has told Samuel, you shall come to a hill of God where the Philistine garrison is and it will happen. When you have come there to the city that you will meet a group of prophets coming down from the high place with stringed instruments, a tambourine, a flute, and a harp before them and they will be prophesying, they'll be singing to the Lord. Then the Spirit of the Lord will come upon you and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man. So what we are hopefully establishing here is the usage of the word prophecy to teach us what does the Bible mean when it speaks of prophecy.

Well it's not limited. So when Paul says don't despise prophecies, he's not only talking about the office of a prophet, he's talking about the various ministries of prophecy. We come to the next two which bear warning with them, the ministry of the word.

The ministry of the word is also considered prophecy. And we find this in Revelation chapter 19 verse 10. John writes, I fell at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, see that you do not do that. Now this is John, he's in heaven and there's an angel with him explaining to him much of what he is being shown by Jesus Christ and John is overwhelmed and he starts to bow down to the angel and he says, ah, that's going to cost you 10 yards. You do not do that here. He doesn't say it that way, I kind of add it because it wasn't me.

If it was me, I'd be telling the story and he said, oh Rick, come on, you're smarter than that. But anyway, that you do not do that, I am your fellow servant and of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus worship God for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. So you see, when you are ministering the gospel, when you are sharing the faith, it is under the authority of prophecy. And then there is predictive prophecy. Jesus said, you see this building, not one stone will remain upon itself. And of course that happened just as the Lord said it, it was predictive. And the temple was destroyed by Titus in 70 AD. So sometimes this predictive prophecy is immediate as with Samuel and sometimes it is delayed as with the Lord's prophecy or as with Paul's prophecy of the rapture, harpazo in the Greek, you will be by force taken away by the Lord.

Are there imposters, counterfeits, frauds, oh my, absolutely, let's not forget charlatans. Matthew's gospel chapter seven, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? That means they were singing, they were talking about Jesus, again don't think in the sense of always predictive prophecy. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of 1 Thessalonians. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app as well. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the book of 1 Thessalonians right here on Cross Reference Radio.