The title of our sermon this morning is Paracletes and Prophecy. And as we deal with the subject of prophecy, even just saying that word, we quickly realize how loaded and pregnant of a term that is. We have some recovering charismatics in our church, and I was joking with some of them the other day about, you know, I was very tempted to text them and say, we're having a prophecy conference on Sunday. And when you hear that word prophecy, what pops into your mind? Because for different people, it'll be different things, right? We're coming up on November, right? We've entered into November and November 5th and all of these things. And so for a lot of people right now, they hear prophecy and they think in terms of political analysts, predicting the future. Some people think about Nostradamus and his insanely vague allusions to various things that can be interpreted any way you wish. Some of you may think of Christopher Walken when you hear prophecy. If you don't get that, you can ask me after the sermon. But some of you just think of bad preachers in white suits. And as our year gets stranger, the joy that is 2020, prophecies abound. about various things, especially about the end of days. I found out this week that you can actually go on the internet and order a prophecy for your life. I'm sure that's just top notch right there. So as we come to this text today, we have to acknowledge all of our, what we call a prioris, our presuppositions, all the things that we think we already know, And we have to take those, and as with everything, place it up against the standard of God's word and say, is this what God means? And to test those things against that which is actually inerrant, that which was actually infallible, because you and I are not. Our text today examines prophecy, but it calls us to examine scripture's meaning of that word. and man's submission to God in prophecy. So we wanna deal with our text this morning over the course of five points. The first is quenching. We're gonna talk about the quenching of the Holy Spirit and what that means. Then we're going to examine prophecy itself. Then thirdly, we're going to look at testing. Fourthly, we're going to look at holding. And fifthly, we're going to look at abstaining. So we begin with this concept of quenching and really the Holy Spirit itself. We continue, right, along in 1 Thessalonians 5. We're nearing the end of this beautiful book. And we are in the midst of Paul's closing exhortations, these rapid fire commands that are actually more interdependent than we may initially realize. And it centers very much here around the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that enables us and works in us to rejoice always. It is the Holy Spirit that causes us to pray without ceasing. It is the Holy Spirit that causes us and enables us to give thanks in all circumstances. These three commands that we examined last week. These are supernatural works in the soul that are found by seeking God. Supernatural does not mean rare, but it does mean beyond man's capacity. Now Paul exhorts us to not quench the Holy Spirit. Do not quench the Spirit. And this ties into scripture's imagery of the Holy Spirit as fire. We see the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in Jeremiah chapter 20 in verse 9. If I say, I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name, there is in my heart, as it were, a burning fire shut up in my bones, that I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot. Jeremiah is talking about how, as the literal bearer of bad news, he cannot refrain from declaring the message which God has called him to declare, because the Holy Spirit is like a fire within him. In Matthew chapter three and verse 11, John the Baptist spoke of Christ and said, I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. And the baptism that we will be seeing this day is that declaration of what Christ has done. I cannot step into that baptismal and baptize anyone with the Holy Spirit. I guess we could, in theory, baptize people with fire, but that would not be good. What John the Baptist is talking about here is that Christ has to do that work that the minister cannot. And that's chapter two, verses three and four. At Pentecost, it says, and divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each of them and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them outrage. John Constable describes the purpose of this fire imagery. Why does scripture call or describe the Holy Spirit as fire? Because he warms the hearts. enlightens the minds, and empowers people's spirits. And it's important that we understand what the work of the Holy Spirit looks like in Scripture, that we examine that throughout the breadth of God's Word in order to be able to discern it. Because as we will examine shortly, we have to be able to distinguish the work of the Holy Spirit from what is not the work of the Holy Spirit. And every true believer is given the indwelling Holy Spirit, sent by Christ as our paraclete, as they say, which is our helper, our comforter. In John chapter 14 and verses 16 through 17, And I will ask of the Father, and He will give you another helper. to be with you forever, even the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him for he dwells with you and will be in you. We see the Holy Spirit described as a seal. In Ephesians chapter one, verses 13 through 14, in him, meaning Christ, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the Holy Spirit, with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. Now we see from scripture that the work of the Holy Spirit consistently points us to Christ and to the gospel. And it renders glory to the Father and the Son, the first and second persons of the Trinity. Now some have even called the Holy Spirit the shyest member of the Trinity. It's always been a fascinating little phrase to me. The Holy Spirit is the shyest member of the Trinity because it never calls attention to itself. Now remember, we're looking at attributes of the Holy Spirit and what we see of its work in the New Testament. It sanctifies us. It mortifies sin in us. It causes us to be serious about that remaining corruption within us as God's people, calling us to contend with it and to give no quarter to it. It calls us and conforms us to Christ to preserve us unto glory. It moves us to serve God and his kingdom, and it gives us gifts to that end. Now, though the Holy Spirit does not seem to call attention to itself, we should call attention to it. We must recognize the essential nature of its work in the church. John Owen wrote, It is inquired, it is asked, what power the Lord Christ did employ? Erecting of that kingdom or church state which being promised of old was called the world to come or the new world. I say it was these gifts of the Holy Spirit. Them it was, or in their exercise, that the Lord Jesus raised his empire over the souls and consciences of men, destroying both the work and the kingdom of the devil. It is true. It is the word of the gospel itself that is the rod of his strength, which is sent out of Zion to erect and dispense his rule. But that hidden power, which made the word effectual in the dispensation of it, consisted in these gifts of the Holy Ghost. Now you may think that we don't focus on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but we absolutely do. We cannot survive as God's people without the gifting of the Holy Spirit. That sustains us, and that sustains the church as a body. But there are well-meaning Christians, many of these are our brothers and sisters in Christ, who grossly misunderstand the nature of the Holy Spirit, of the giftings of the Holy Spirit, and what it means to quench the Holy Spirit. They fixate on extraordinary supernatural workings of the Holy Spirit that were part of the apostolic church. and they forget about the ordinary supernatural workings of the Holy Spirit that persisted through history. When we talk about quenching of the Holy Spirit, a lot of people think that that's, that the quenching of the Holy Spirit is the same thing as being a fundamentalist fadidadi. That we're just mired in tradition and we don't let anything good ever happen. And that that's what quenching of the Holy Spirit is. That we're not open to greater things. But we are not, as Christians, called to just open ourselves to the universe for impulses and miracles. I always think about, this is probably not a very good analogy, but I keep coming back to it in my head, so I'm gonna say it. For those of you who have seen The Princess Bride, there's a scene where Inigo Montoya holds the sword and he just waits to see if the sword leads him somewhere. And there's a lot of people that that's what their Christianity is like. And I'm not saying that they're not Christians. I think many, many of them are, but they don't have that rooting and grounding that they need. And so they're just waiting for the Holy Spirit to push them somewhere. And when we try to talk to them about, well, maybe you should go back to God's word and address these things, they go, no, no, no. Paul said, do not quench the Holy Spirit. But that's not what he's talking about. Most importantly, we are not conjuring the Holy Spirit for us to wield to our own ends. That is the most important thing that we have to guard against. Quenching the Holy Spirit is not the same thing as pursuing order and preventing chaos in the church. We see in 1 Corinthians 14, 33, where there was so much focus on these gifts of the Holy Spirit, the extraordinary gifts, and when Paul wrote to them, he didn't say, good on you, follow it, follow your impulses, follow your heart, see where it goes. He says, no, for God is not a God of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. So what is the quenching of the Holy Spirit? What is it that Paul is forbidding us from doing? Well, it can be a number of different things. But it's about blockading the work of the Holy Spirit. And it can be just an obstinacy to God's calling in our lives, like a calling to faith, where we resist that, where we fight against that pressure of the Holy Spirit to repent and cling to Christ. when we cling to our sins instead. Sometimes it's about the calling to ministry. This is where I have had to repent in my past of striving to quench the spirit and trying to do my own Jonah routine and run away from a calling that I had been meant to follow. It can, and this is not to deny irresistible grace. God will bring about those ends of salvation. God will bring about his purposes. God is immutable. And as we see in Job, none can thwart his purposes, but we can strive against God's revealed will for us and cause a great deal of pain and sorrow in the process. And that's what we're talking about, quenching the spirit. It can also be about the neglect of prayer. when we do not tend to that fire that is within us. Matthew Henry writes, as fire is put out by withdrawing fuel, so we quench the spirit if we do not stir up our spirits and all that is within us to comply with the motions of the good spirit. And then he addresses this second concept, and as fire is quenched by pouring water or putting a great quantity of dirt upon it, So we must be careful not to quench the Holy Spirit by indulging carnal lusts and affections, or minding only earthly things. So here we see more concretely, it can be an obstinacy to God's word, to the Holy Spirit speaking through God's word, these explicit commands therein. It can be the embracing of and clinging to sin. It can be a clinging to our comfortable despondency and bitterness. And this is best summed up in Galatians chapter five, verses 22 through 26. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the spirits, meaning if we've been made alive by the spirits, let us also keep in step with the spirits. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another." So, now that we've examined the work of the Spirit and the quenching thereof, we want to step into prophecy, which is the primary aspect that Paul is directing us towards in terms of what not to quench. Prophecy. Paul commands us, do not despise prophecy, which he always held in highest esteem. Going back to 1 Corinthians in chapter 14, verses three through four, it says, on the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation. The one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church. So, we come back around to this, right? The term we all think we understand. But we often miss the real sense. Prophecy, as Scripture presents it, is not, is not the Christian version of fortune-telling and tarot cards. It is not where you come to the prophet and he tells you what's going to happen next week, like your horoscope. What is prophecy? This is my definition. Prophecy is a supernatural event wherein the living God speaks to his people through the frailty of a human servant to reveal essential truths about the law and the gospel. Now, prophecy may contain prediction of the future. But most often, when it does contain a prediction of the future, it's talking about final judgments and it's talking about eternity with God. but that is not a prerequisite for something to be prophecy. The focus is on God's holy law, which would condemn us, and the gospel of Jesus Christ, which saves us by grace through faith. This is what we have seen time and again. And this side of the gospel being fully revealed in Christ in Christ's life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. Having all of that before us, there is less need for a prophecy regarding the future, right? So as we look at all this, you can see how this coincides with what we've been dealing with in the Sunday School class. When we read through Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, right? In the Old Testament prophecy, we see that cycle that we've examined time and again, where there is indictment and condemnation. This is how you have broken God's law. This is what God's holy law is. This is how you have broken it. These are the repercussions for you. It's the proclamation of law. But then it's followed up with the promises of God, which are about the gospel. We draw all of this from that sea of precedence. But also the New Testament. Genesis to Revelation is prophecy. This is the prophecy. Now during the Apostolic Era, During the time of Paul and shortly thereafter, God raised up prophets to sustain and to guide his church until the fullness of the New Testament was written, copied, and distributed. But very early on, we start seeing the church fathers talking about the diminishing and the disappearing of These miraculous gifts, what we would think of as the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are these extraordinary things. Miraculous healing, speaking in tongues, words of new prophecy. And in all of that, we see God sustaining his church. But by the time of Augustine, he was very clear that all these things were gone. So does Paul's command still apply here? As we stand in the 21st century, do we really need to pay attention to these verses when Paul says, do not despise prophecies? Does that have any kind of application for us? Is there prophecy in Christ's church today? Absolutely. Absolutely. And first, we see that the prophecy that we must adhere to and not despise is God's holy word. We are not to despise that. We are not to discount that or disregard it. But there's another aspect that calls us and has more application for us in terms of the caution of testing, holding fast, and abstaining. You don't have to test this and see if it works. Now, you're welcome to, but it's the infallible word of God. But where do we have to be more critical and cautious? There was a man named William Perkins. He was one of the earliest English Puritans, and he wrote a book called The Arts of Prophesying. You might be surprised to know that I have a book in my office that I highly regard called The Arts of Prophesying. And it stands today as an excellent treatise on the nature of preaching. Because preaching is a supernatural event wherein the living God speaks to his people through the frailty of a human servant to reveal essential truths about the law and the gospel. It is prophecy only insofar as it faithfully exposits and adheres to God's holy infallible scriptures. And it is supernatural, a supernatural event using a supernatural word of God wherein the Holy Spirit wields the natural minister and must submit to that work. And I have to tell you that when we come to this, it's always an odd thing to be the preacher talking about prophecy. and about the nature of preaching and how that actually functions. But I want to emphasize for you that there is a very delicate balance here with what we've already seen in the book of First Thessalonians about the respect that is due to the minister and all of those things and understanding the nature of prophecy. But remember, it's about God's work. That's what it's about. I always tell people that the main reason I was able to step into this role was once I understood Balaam's donkey. Because if God can speak through Balaam's donkey, then he can use me, and I'm comfortable being one small step above Balaam's donkey. That's what I am. It's not about my talents or my abilities or my intrinsic greatness. That's not what this is about. I am called to be above reproach and to fulfill those requirements of the elder, but the glory belongs to God. And despising prophecy, can take many different forms. Oftentimes, it's simply the neglecting of preaching, not counting it as worthwhile of our time and of our attention, that it's a give or take kind of thing. I've heard from many, many people over the years that I can worship God just as well in my bass boat on the lake as I can with God's people in a church. But inherently that denies the weightiness of preaching. And when we come together as God's people, we come to hear God speak to our hearts. We can despise prophecy by ignoring the exhortation, the command that is given. And it should be the commands that are explicit in scripture, but that are then proclaimed through the preaching. That is to despise prophecy, to hear what we are called to do and then go our own way. Or, as is particularly important for the next point, to simply spend our time in criticism, which draws us to the principle of testing. We are not to despise prophecy, but on the other hand, we are to test it. And that is a balance that we must strike. We are to discern what kind of spirits that preaching is of. And so it has always been for God's people. We see in Ephesians chapter four, verses 14 through 15, after talking about how the prophets and the priests, sorry, not the prophets and the priests, the prophets and the pastors and the evangelists are given to Christ's church. Paul says, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes, rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. And the best of God's ministers, properly called and ordained, are still fallible, right? What is the saying? The best of men are men at best. But the main thing that Paul is fixated on here is men who would call themselves pastors and preachers and prophets, but proclaim that which is contrary to God's word. And the Old Testament had very, very clear direction on how to deal with this. There were specific prescriptions given. In Deuteronomy chapter 13, verses one through five, God tells them, look, if a prophet comes up, And he leads you away from following after Yahweh, your God, and leads you to worship other gods. Say, to worship gods of wealth, gods of health, gods of prosperity. God says, kill them. They were to be executed. They were to be removed. And they were not to be followed. And in Deuteronomy 18 verses 19 through 22, it says if a man makes a prophecy regarding the future and what he says does not come true, then he shall die. Now that kept false prophets relatively to a low ebb. But we see that the same idea, now I'm not saying go kill anybody who said, I have a word from the Lord, and it turned out to be wrong. That's not what I'm saying. But it shows us the gravity of what it is for a man to stand up and say, thus says the Lord, and to say that which is contrary to what God has proclaimed. And after leaving Thessalonica, Paul encountered a wonderful example of this principle continuing in Berea. In Acts chapter 17 and verse 11, now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. They took what Paul proclaimed, because Paul shows up and he says, thus says the Lord. And so they took it and they put it against the standard of scripture and they said, does this fit? Does this measure up? And we are given a direct command in 1 John chapter four, verses one through three. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world, but this you know, the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist. which you heard was coming, and now is in the world already. Now, there's a difficult balance to strike in this, as we said already, to be discerning and yet teachable. We can easily become the critics, Siskel and Ebert of the pews, that we simply sit there and we fact check everything that the pastor says, to the point that we are never actually affected by the preaching. We can easily become so critically minded that we just see if the pastor fits the right mold and pick everything apart. And we should be discerning. But if we are so discerning that we never actually absorb God's word in the preaching, then we have quenched the spirits. We have gone against the very purpose of these things. And it feeds our pride if we are not cautious to stand in judgment over the sermon and the preacher, rather than to sit under the preaching of the word of God. And you know who is the, this is, this is my, I'm confessing a lot in this sermon and I shouldn't, but you know who's the worst at this is preachers. And it's something that I have had to deal with as I have gone out and sat under the preaching of other men. It's easy for me to go, oh, well, you know, that wasn't as articulate as it should have been. Well, he really should have used that verse in order to explain this concept and to begin picking apart all of those things. And my sin nature will drive me to that rather than, and I have to rebuke myself and go, no, I'm here to sit under God's word. I'm here for God to speak to my heart. and to draw me back to him. The most effective treatments for dealing with this, for not being the critical minded but also being teachable and yet discerning and balancing all of these things are one, be prayerful, and two, be scripture saturated. I think one of the greatest compliments ever paid in history was to John Bunyan. Where it was said that he was so saturated in God's word that he could scarcely open his mouth without quoting scripture. And we should strive to be such, like sponges plunged again and again into the word of God, so that we never dry out. And a soul saturated in scripture is the essential prerequisite for being able to fulfill all these things, rejoicing. praying, thanking, but especially discerning prophecy. When they want to train someone to identify counterfeit currency, right? If you want to know, if you want to be trained to know how to pick out a phony hundred dollar bill, those men are trained by spending exorbitant amounts of time studying the real thing. Because once you know the real thing inside and out, The little differences, the little flaws, the little changes, all stand out to us. And they become obnoxiously loud when we know the real thing, as we ought to. So now we turn to holding. Having made biblical discernment regarding the prophecy, Paul calls us to hold fast. to cling to and take possession of what is good and true. Now this is about what is right and good in God's eyes. They are the truths which God has revealed and proclaimed. This does not mean that we are only to hold fast to what is palatable and pleasant, but the whole counsel of God. Paul told the Ephesian elders in Acts 20, 27, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Such things we must hold fast and take possession of. We are to take them in, process, and digest as spiritual food for nourishment and strength. In Ezekiel chapter three, verses one through three, and Revelation 10, nine through 10, we see God's prophecy as a scroll to be eaten. And in Hebrews five, 12 through 14, he talks about the milk of the word versus the meat of the word. because they are things that are to be taken in and to become part of who we are. But this means that we are to remember, to meditate on, and to apply the truths that are preached. There's broad application here as well, to hold fast to what is good, the pinnacle of course being Christ and the gospel. This exhortation was likely to have drawn Paul's Jewish listeners back to Isaiah chapter one, verses 16 through 17. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good. Seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause. And in Philippians 4.8, Paul gives us the charge. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. That's holding fast. But the flip side of the coin is to abstain from any appearance or form of evil. And we see the same concept in Titus chapter one, verses 10 through 11. For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. They must be silenced since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach, right? It doesn't say, well, we all have our own opinions, and they should all be given equal airtime. No, he says, if this is wrong, if this is evil, then it is to be cast out. We are to have no fellowship with it. We are not to countenance it. Now, Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Calvin all treated this verse about abstaining from evil as simply regarding testing prophecy. Which is interesting because up through this study, until this study, almost every context I've heard this verse reference had nothing to do with testing prophecy. It was always just treated as its standalone entity. But they're talking about how we test the prophecy. Is this word that is proclaimed, is this word that has been preached, is it good? Well then hold fast to it. Is it contrary to God's word? Is it evil? Well then, abstain from it. Cast it away from you. But we do see that there is a broader application for it. We don't want to deny that. Paul writes in Romans chapter 12 in verse nine, let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good. And he's not talking about preaching in that context. But we want to be cautious. As we take this into a broader application, abstain from every form of evil, or if you have the translation that says every appearance of evil, then we must be all the more cautious because this verse has been misused and abused to further pharisaical legalism in the church. Right? Pharisaical legalism is where we take, and we go, all right, well, these are the, this is the line that God has drawn. Everything inside of this line is bad. So, we're gonna draw a bigger circle around all of that, and we're gonna say we won't come anywhere near that line, because if we never come near that line, then we won't have to worry about transgressing the actual line that God set. And then, and this is the fun part, we get to be more righteous than other people who go past our line. And we can talk about how long hair and rock music are appearances of evil. Because evil people have long hair and listen to rock music. So that's an appearance of evil. We are to abstain from that, brother. Don't you understand? We can easily fall into these things and stifle Christian liberty, producing a spiritual laziness and atrophy and forget the core principle here, that we are not justified by our works. We are not justified by the kind of music that we listen to and the kind of movies that we watch and the kind of places that we live and the kind of company that we keep. but that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. The goal here, what we need to see for this general principle is the positive side in Hebrews chapter 12, verses one and two. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely And let us run with endurance the race that is sat before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. And we are to look at these things. I forget the name of the show my wife watched where it was, does this spark joy? And we are to take the things in our life and go, does this serve Christ? Does this serve the purpose of me glorifying God and enjoying him forever? Can I do this to the glory of God? Can I rejoice in this? Can I delight in my God through this? And if not, then we abstain from any form of evil because it hinders our pursuits of God. And so then let us not quench the spirit with the flood of distractions of this world, nor despise its prophecies which point us to Christ. Let us hold fast to that which is good. especially Christ and the gospel, while rejecting that which is evil or would distract us from that. We must reject our sin in confession before God, in repentance, acknowledging our guilt and our need for a savior, and then we must hold fast to that greatest good, God in flesh, Christ, who died for our sins. Let's come before the Lord in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you for this opportunity to worship. Lord, we ask that the beauty of your word would resound in our hearts and would glorify your name. We ask that whatever has been said that is not of you and is not glorifying to you would fall to the ground unheard. Lord, we ask that you would give us hearts saturated in scripture, that you would help us to cling to the matters of eternity. Lord, recalibrate our hearts and help us to fixate on that which truly matters. Lord, we ask that you would stir up the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, that you would give us the wisdom to discern that Holy Spirit's work and to follow after you with all that we are and with all that we have. Lord, may you be glorified in all these things. It is in Jesus' name that we pray, amen.