For the last two Sundays we have looked at 1st John chapter 2 verses 15 through 17 Which is a warning to believers about the danger of worldliness and this morning I want to take those verses just a little further And as we do that, I want to invite you to take your Bible and turn to 1st Thessalonians chapter 5 1st Thessalonians chapter 5 and there's only one verse that I want to look at here and it's found in chapter 5 and verse 19. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 and verse 19. Now as I said I want to take this a little further and what I mean by that is I want you to see what happens every time you and I become worldly. Every time a Christian becomes worldly. Notice what he says in 1 Thessalonians 5.19. He says These five words, do not quench the spirit. Do not quench the spirit. If I were to rephrase those five words, I would rephrase it this way, do not put the fire out. And the reason why I would say that is because when Paul says do not quench the spirit, he is saying do not extinguish or put out or restrain the Holy Spirit in your life. The language here is taken from the idea of putting out a fire. And in the sense here, we are not to extinguish the influences of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 1.6 to stir up, that means to kindle afresh or to cause to burn the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. He was to stir it up, cause it to burn. And that's the way we ought to respond to the things of God. The Spirit of God burning deep withinside us. And we don't want to extinguish that. We don't want to put that out. We don't want to push that down in any way. And anything that will tend to damper the ardor of piety in the soul, to chill our feelings, or to render us cold and lifeless in our service to God, may be regarded as quenching the spirit. Now we all are guilty of that, and so I wanna help us this morning to understand that command in 1 Thessalonians chapter five and verse 19. But before we do this, I wanna talk about what the Holy Spirit does in the life of every believer. If you have your bulletin, if you'll just flip to the back of it, you'll find there that first heading, what the Holy Spirit does in your life as a believer, and then I wanna give you just a few, looks like a lot, but I wanna give you a few of the things that the Holy Spirit does. First, He regenerates you. He regenerates you. He does that by giving you life, spiritual life. It says in John 6, 63, it's the Spirit who gives life. That means He quickens you. He makes you alive. None of us could come to faith in Christ if it wasn't for the Holy Spirit. He is the one, again, who awakens us. And not only does He make us alive and waken us and quicken us, but it says over in Titus chapter three and verse five, it says, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy, He saved us. God saved us. And then it says, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit. And so, when He makes us alive, He regenerates us. He does that by the Holy Spirit. God does that by sending us His Spirit. He does that by quickening us. He does that by waking us up, if you will, from the dead, because Ephesians 2.1 says we are dead in trespasses and sins. Ephesians 2.5 says God makes us alive. But He does this through His Spirit. And as it says in Titus 3.5, by washing, by regenerating, by renewing. All those three terms are beautiful when you understand them. The first one is washing. And that word speaks of cleansing from the defilement of sin. And it's a word that's viewed as producing an instantaneous change that ended the old life and began the new life. The word regeneration, it's a compound word. It comes from again and to become, and it could be translated becoming again. Jesus used the phrase being born again. And so that word carries the idea of receiving new life. And then the third word, renewing, means to make new. Our new birth is also spoken of as a renewing of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God brings about a marvelous transformation. In fact, it's not putting new clothes on the old man, but it's putting a new man in the clothes. We still have this vile flesh, this vile body that is yet to be put off, and we'll be given glorified bodies. But we are a new man in this body. We are not the same. We are different. We have been transformed. And so that's one of the things that the Holy Spirit does. Second one, or B, He indwells you. He indwells you. Now the permanent residence of the Holy Spirit of the believer is a result of His coming. And let me have you just to take your Bible and turn to John chapter 14. John chapter 14, and look with me. And verse 16, John 14, 16, this is Jesus talking. And he says to the disciples, and I will pray the Father, and he will give you another helper, parakletos, aleparakletos, it means another of the same kind, that he may abide with you forever, even the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him, but you know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you. Now that was something brand new. Paul had even told the Corinthians that, 1 Corinthians 3.16, that they were the temple of God and that the spirit of God dwells in them. He told the believers at Rome that they were no longer in the flesh but in the spirit. When he says you are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if indeed the spirit of God dwells in you. Now again, that was something new. That was something brand new as part of the new covenant, the New Testament. That wasn't true of Old Testament believers. The Spirit's ministry was temporary. It was as well selective. We hear David praying in Psalm 51 in verse 11, do not cast me away from your presence and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. We can't pray that today because the Holy Spirit has been given permanently to every believer. Every child of God has the Holy Spirit. No matter how much you sin, you will not lose the Holy Spirit. But again, it wasn't true in the Old Testament. Selected for different people for different times. And David knew that his sin could cause the Spirit to leave. We find another place of this in 1 Samuel 16, 14. You don't have to turn there, but listen to what it says. And here it's speaking of King Saul. It says, but the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and a distressing spirit from the Lord troubled him. Again, you don't find this in the New Testament. You don't find this after Jesus leaves and He sends the Holy Spirit. Every person who is ever to be saved has the Holy Spirit. Again, Romans 8 and 9, if you don't have the Holy Spirit, you're not His. You don't belong to God. You're not a Christian. So again, this is another element of the Spirit's work in our lives. And by the way, the indwelling is one time. Filling is something different. That indwelling is once. Third, we would say or see on your outline is that he seals you. He seals you. This occurs, again, at the moment of salvation. If you have your Bible still, turn with me to Ephesians 1.13. And you'll notice there a statement that the Apostle Paul makes to the Ephesians in reference to the sealing of the Holy Spirit. Notice what he says. In Him you also trusted, that is in Christ, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of His glory. Now, the principal idea of sealing is that of ownership. The believer is sealed with the Holy Spirit to identify that the believer belongs to God. Men, husbands, when you proposed to your wife, you gave her a what? An engagement ring. Of course, you had to say yes first, right? But you gave her an engagement ring. This is the same concept here. God gives us His Holy Spirit, as it says in verse 14, who is the guarantee of our inheritance. When we gave that engagement ring to our future bride, that was a guarantee that we were promising that we would marry. There was a promise there. And here, there's a promise here. And here, again, this sealing of which Paul speaks of, it refers to an official mark of identification. They would use it on letters, they would use it on contracts, documents. We do things like that today to make it official. When I notarize something, I stamp it, I sign it, that makes it official. Same kind of concept, sealed. And it was officially under the authority of the person who put that stamp on it. When they sealed the tomb, it was sealed by who? Rome. No one could break that seal except for Rome or someone greater. And of course, the Romans believed they were the greatest, but God broke that seal, didn't he? Jesus broke that seal. The Holy Spirit broke that seal when that stone rolled away and Jesus came out. In fact, he didn't need the stone to roll away to come out, did he? The stone was rolled away so people could look in and see that he wasn't there. So again, there are four truths that come out of the sealing that are identified by the seal itself, and I'll just give you a few verses that you can put with it. One is security. Daniel 6, 17 is a good verse for that. Matthew 27, which talks about the sealing of the tomb. Authenticity, 1 Kings 21. The third one would be ownership, and the fourth one would be authority. All of these things are derived from just the sealing. And again, this served as a guarantee of future inheritance. A Christian without the Holy Spirit, again, is a contradiction. You can't be a Christian without the Holy Spirit. So He regenerates you, He indwells you, He seals you, fourth one, or D, He places you in the body of Christ. He places you in the body of Christ. It says in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, for by one spirit, we were all placed into the body. That idea of being placed there, it is a concept of something that happens once and for all. It is a concept that's similar to baptism, but there's no water involved here. The spirit is the element, just as in water baptism, the water is the element. And the baptizer here, according to Matthew 3, 11, is Jesus Christ, and the agent is the Holy Spirit. Every person placed into the body of Christ are given that by Jesus Christ. They're given the Holy Spirit. And as it says in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, for by one spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and have all been made to drink into one spirit. So that's another element. And a lot of these things are non-experiential, except for the regeneration. You know when you've been made alive. All things that become new, you know that. The indwelling, the sealing, being placed into the body, these are facts. These are things that happen. Whether you realize it or not. Let me give you another one. He gives you gifts. He gives you gifts. It mentions a set of gifts. And here in the list there are temporary gifts. There are a few of them there that are permanent gifts. But the purpose of the gifts were to authenticate the message as well as authenticate the messenger. They didn't have a completed Bible like you and I have. We don't need someone today doing these things to authenticate themselves. We have the Bible. We have the Word of the living God. We have that by which that we examine a person. We can look and listen to what they're saying. and we can verify from Scripture whether they're speaking from God. In 1 Corinthians 12, he says there when he lists the gifts that there are, verse 4, diversities of gifts, but it's the same Spirit. Verse 5, there are differences of ministries, but it's the same Lord. Verse 6, there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the prophet of all. And then he lists the gifts. And like I said, many of these are temporary, but you also have some permanent gifts there. The Word of Wisdom, you have the Word of Knowledge, verse 9. You have faith. You have also gifts of healings, verse 10. You have working of miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits. different kinds of tongues, the interpretation of tongues, but it's the Holy Spirit who distributes to each one individually as He wills as to the kind of gift that you would have to serve the body. Now if you go with me over to Romans chapter 12, it mentions more gifts, but you'll notice as I've mentioned when we've done some study on the gifts that there are gifts in chapter 12 of Romans that are not in 1 Corinthians chapter 12. The letter to the Romans was after Corinthians in terms of dating. And so when we look at the list of gifts, we find that there were temporary gifts that may have already ceased by time of the writing of Romans. We certainly know by the early church fathers that there were temporary gifts that are in 1 Corinthians 12 that were not mentioned at all by the early church fathers like the miracles and the healings and the tongues and so forth. But if you'll notice in Romans chapter 12, he says in verse 6, Having then gifts differing according to the grace that's given to us, let us use them. If prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith or ministry. Let us use it in our ministering. He who teaches in teaching, he who exhorts in exhortation, he who gives with liberality, he who leads with diligence, he who shows mercy with cheerfulness. No temporary gifts there. These are gifts functioning today. These are gifts that help build up the body. But it's the Holy Spirit that gives these gifts. He also gives gifts to the church according to Ephesians 4 11 in the form of evangelists and pastor teachers. And he says in verse 12 of Ephesians 4, for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry. But again, this is another element of the Spirit's work in the life of a believer. He regenerates and dwells, seals, places you in the body of Christ. He gives you gifts. Next we would say He empowers you. What was the message that Jesus gave to the apostles before he ascended back to the Father? He said, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. You will have the power that you need to be a witness of me. You will have the power that you need to remember all the things that I taught you. You will have the power that you need to remember when it comes time to write it down. Ephesians 5.18 says it in this way, and be not drunk with wine in which is excess, but be filled with the Spirit. That's power. The Holy Spirit empowers you. Colossians 3.16, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. That again is saying the same thing that Ephesians 5.18 just said. It just uses different terms. Being filled with the Spirit, experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit means obeying the word of God. That's what it means. and the Holy Spirit enables you, He empowers you for this to happen. Over in 1 John 4, and we will get to this, I promise you, because we're going through 1 John, but let's just take a moment and look at it for a second. 1 John 4, we see in our next list here, is that the Holy Spirit gives you discernment. Discernment. Discernment is a spiritual gift. but it's also an element for every believer that they are to have. That is why I believe that God has given us a book. And with having a book, language and print and conversation and commands and admonitions and exhortations are all frozen right there on the page. It's not a moving video. Praise God it's not a moving video. Praise God it's not a movie. Praise God it's not a music video, right? It's not something constantly moving and you go, wait, I didn't get that. Could you back it up? No, it's something already frozen on the page. Even Koine Greek, it's frozen right there. They don't speak Koine Greek. We have it right here. And so we can look at this and we can discern from it what it says. And it says in 1 John 4, one, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and it now is already in the world. You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are of the world, therefore they speak as of the world, and the world hears them. We are of God. He who knows God hears us. He who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error." You and I have to discern what is being taught what we are hearing we have to compare it with the scriptures and i'll tell you right now from personal experience if you are regularly in the word of god you will know error when you hear it that does not mean that you and i have to run out and study i do believe that teachers need to be equipped they need to be understand what's going on but they need to know the bible first There are a lot of people that know a lot of things about other groups and what they believe, but when it comes back to the Bible themselves, there are things that they err in. There are things that they're mistaken in, things that they have not studied through, and they need to study through that. And I believe if you study truth, then you'll know what counterfeit is. That's the same thing that they do with counterfeit bills. Study the authentic, so when the counterfeit comes through, you will be able to discern what is fake. And I believe it's the same way. So he gives you discernment. Next, he sanctifies you. He sanctifies you. That means he sets you apart to God. He makes you holy. Over in 1 Corinthians 6, we hear a statement that Paul makes to the Corinthians. And listen, if there was a church that was messed up, it certainly was the Corinthians. 16 chapters to correct the problems that were going on there. There is no evidence of any leadership in the church at Corinth. If there were, they were involved in the same sins that the people were involved in. But in chapter 6, beginning at verse 9, if you're following me there, look at what he says. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified." There's that word, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. So he points out there. that they had been set apart to God. He points out what their life used to be like. He points out what their life is like now. He says this is what you were like, but this is not what you are now. That's true of every believer. Every follower of Jesus Christ who has been transformed by the Holy Spirit is a different person, is a new creation in Christ, 2 Corinthians 5, 17. And then last I would say, He enables you, that is the Holy Spirit, He enables you to overcome sin. He enables you to overcome sin. And over in Romans chapter 8, we find in verse 13 these words, He says, if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. How do you put to death the deeds of the body? How do you deal with sin in your life? It is by whom? The Holy Spirit. He is the one that enables you. Again, He's the one that empowers you. He's the one that gives you discernment. He does this. This is an ongoing work in his life. And therefore, when we come back to 1 Thessalonians 5 and verse 19, and what does he say right there? Do not quench the Spirit. If he does all these things in your life, don't put out his influence. Don't extinguish him. Don't stop him in his activity. Now, Ephesians 4.30 talks about we can grieve the Holy Spirit. If we have sin in our life, that grieves the Holy Spirit. That is extinguishing Him. That's putting out the fire. You want the fire to burn because you need the Holy Spirit to live the Christian life. You need the Holy Spirit to make disciples. You need the Holy Spirit to talk to people about Jesus. And if you're sinning and you're pushing it down, you're putting it out, you're putting out the very power that you need. I believe that the Holy Spirit is the key to our Christian living. He is the key. And it's sad that we talk little about him. But let me just say something about quench, as he mentions that in verse 19. This is a present active imperative verb. And what that means is, you could translate it back this way, stop quenching the spirit. The present tense means it's an ongoing thing. This is something that they were already doing. The imperative, that's a command. He's commanding them to stop doing this. Here is an action that's going on, and he wants them to stop. Now, we take that back to 1 John. 1 John 2, 15 to 17. 1 John 2, 15. Do not love the world. And the word love is a present tense. Same thing. Stop loving the world, he says. And here he's saying this, stop quenching the spirit. When you quench the spirit, you're worldly. When I quench the spirit, I'm being worldly. And if you go to James 4, you can't be a friend of the world and a friend of God, because that's enmity toward God. You can't be both, it's one or the other. And so because we have this vile body, Because we have this flesh that Paul says that there's nothing good that dwells in it, we have to subdue it. We have to fight against it daily. You never want to take your guard down. You never want to come to a day to where you're not in the Word. You say, well, you don't know my schedule. Hey, listen, we don't have an excuse today because of electronics. We can be in the Word in some capacity. If you can't sit down and actually read it, you can listen to it, you can share it, you can take verses that you memorized and you can work on Scripture memory. Hey, believe me, there's a reason why I have us doing Scripture memory. There's a reason why I put it to music. One, to help you memorize it. All you gotta do is sing it, learn the song, you learn the verse. That's a good take, right? But it's also to equip you, to give you what you need. as you live the Christian life, to give you what you need to depend on the Spirit, to give you what you need to drive you to the Word of God. I would much rather have Scripture running around in my head than the songs of this world. I would. And having come out of a background of playing the songs of this world, there are times when I go into a place and those songs are playing, that it really has a major impact on me because I so freely gave myself to it. And there's so many things in my life that are associated with it. So right after I became a Christian, I really worked hard on changing the music in my life. Being a musician, playing music, you listen to it at a different level than just a casual listener or just someone who doesn't play an instrument. So you hear it a little differently and it really takes root. Music is powerful. Secular music is powerful in the life of unbelievers, but Christian music is powerful in the life of believers. There are times that you hear a song that focuses you on the Lord, points you to think about the things of God. That's powerful. That's good. Now, I certainly have a contingency on trying to listen to a song written by a Christian artist, and when they recorded it, the words were drowned into the music. I think the message is lost. I have trouble understanding what the message is. I'm driving. I can't pull out the words. and read while I'm driving, you know, can't do that. But I wanna make sure also the message is biblical. Not everything you hear on the radio is biblical, even though it has the title Christian next to it. But you have to discern that. We go back to discernment. The Holy Spirit helps you with that. But we don't want to quench him. We don't want to put out the fire. You want it to burn. You want Him to burn freely in your life. And you want to yield yourself to Him constantly. And going back to Ephesians 5.18, be being kept filled with the Holy Spirit. That's the little rendering in Greek. You have to die to self for the Spirit of God to lead you. You have to get out of the way. Galatians 5.16, we mentioned this last week, walk by the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Walking is one step at a time. And I would encourage you this morning to survey your life and to look at your life as we prepare for the Lord's table. We don't want to quench the Holy Spirit. We don't want to put out His fire. We don't want to stop His activity in our life, and we certainly don't want to do this as we prepare for the table. So as we pray, I want to ask you to pray. I want to ask you to confess everything that comes to your mind, that the Holy Spirit brings to your mind, and prepare your heart. focus your attention on the death burial on the resurrection of Christ Jesus said do this in remembrance of me and that every time you do this you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes so every time we do this we're proclaiming his death we're proclaiming his resurrection right that is our gospel The death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus is the gospel. And that's what we call people to believe. And we proclaim this every time we take of the Lord's table. And so as I pray, I wanna ask that you'll pray silently and that you'll prepare your heart as we have this opportunity in this moment together. Father, we thank you so much. that you have given us an opportunity to be in the word today, Lord, to sing praises unto your name. And we pray now, Father, as we have this opportunity to partake of the table, that we would understand that as we do this and as we come to the table, that this could be a table of blessing or it could be a table of cursing. And so, Lord, right now, I would just pray that you would help us to realize this and that we don't take of the table in an unworthy manner. We ask all this in Jesus' name, amen.