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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.
Do Not Put the Fire Out (Pt 1)
Series Special Message
| Sermon ID | 101162219132 |
| Duration | 31:06 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | 1 Thessalonians 5:19 |
| Language | English |
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