Our Father in heaven, we thank you, we praise you. For you are God, and you are God indeed, and there is no other. We gather before you today, mindful that you have made yourself known to us. You've opened our eyes, giving us a spiritual resurrection. We're thankful for that. We come to you with joyful hearts on that basis. Father, as we do, we pray that you will open our eyes still more to what your word has to say to us today. We realize, as Paul said to the Philippians, that you started in them a good work and that you would bring that work to completion. And along the way, there are moments of growth. Lord, we pray that as we enter into this service today and engage in the means of grace, we pray that you will bring about growth in each one of us. Give us exactly what we need, for we are in need. Father, we pray that you will do this not only for our good, but for the glory of Jesus Christ, for we pray it in his name, amen. But again, just leave that open on your laps and we'll get to that reading in just a second. I like things to be symmetrical. My wife and I one day were hanging some home decor together and she said to me, I don't know if she noticed it before this, but she said it on this particular day. She said, you know, I noticed that you like things to balance out. And I looked at her as if to say, who doesn't? But that's probably, you probably picked that up yourself. That's why I like things like inclusios. They bookend text. That's why I like chiasms. There's the A, B, B, A structure. I like those things. Those things have a pleasing effect on my mind. It's not that I try to read them into scripture. I try to read them out. I think they're there, but when they're there, they please me. Not that they're there for that purpose, but you get the idea. Now, I want you to know something. I think that First Thessalonians is symmetrical. I think it's a balanced book. It's a balanced letter. For example, I want to remind you of something. I want to remind you of something that will lead in to what we're going to be thinking about today in our text. But I want to remind you because I said it to you earlier, about 10 weeks ago, when we started looking at 1 Thessalonians. But I think it's worth remembering. And I want to remind you of it. When you go to the first chapter of this letter, the letter opens with Paul saying in verse two that he prays, giving thanks always for the Thessalonians. And then he adds this word, he says constantly. There's a sense in which there's a double affirmation of prayer on the part of the apostle. We pray always, we pray constantly for you. Now, having that in mind, I want you to just go now to our text, which happens to be at the end of the letter. And we're going to read this in just a minute, but look at it for now. And there we find that the letter closes in 5.17 with Paul encouraging the Thessalonians to pray always. It's a mirrored expression. But then let your eyes go down just a few more verses to verse 25. And there we find another admonition. Brothers, pray for us. So not only are the Thessalonians encouraged to pray, but here we find at the end of the letter, a double admonition to pray, which matches the double affirmation of Paul's words at the beginning of the letter. I call that symmetry. I think that's there. I think Paul, led by the Spirit, does that to help us to understand key things. Now let me tell you how you ought to hear this doubling expression of prayer at the beginning and at the end of the letter. It opens with a righteous man praying earnestly. And it ends with that same Spirit-inspired righteous man calling his readers to follow him in his example, to pray. Now, I want you to understand what this does. This communicates in a profoundly clear way that prayer is not simply a nicety of Christianity. I want to take this opportunity to apply this particular lesson about the symmetry of the opening and closing that Paul uses. Prayer is not a nicety. You know what I mean by that? Standing there talking with a person, they're having difficulty. You're about ready to part and you say something like this. You say, I'll pray for you. Now, listen, I want you to know something. I want to impress upon you this morning that if you say that, you need to understand that you cannot be expressing, not as a Christian, a simple nicety, a simple Christian nicety. You know what I'm talking about. You know what a nicety is? A nicety is you're talking to somebody and you say something like this, well, we'll be thinking of you. Or you say something like this, we'll be keeping you in our thoughts. Now, all of those are nice and all of those are actually good. But the minute that you lump prayer into that as simply an expression of a nicety, you have reduced prayer. And I want to tell you there's only one reason why any Christian would reduce prayer to a Christian nicety. I'll tell you what it is. It's because we've lost the conviction that the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. There can be no other reason than that. I can't think of another reason why we would simply turn that expression, which is so powerful in the Scriptures, into something that's nothing but a nicety. We've totally lost the sense, the power of prayer. And therefore Paul says, here's how we should understand it. Paul says, pray without ceasing, pray. So that's the structure of the text. Something I wanted to remind you of, it's something I want to impress upon you, but now we're going to read the text. And as we read the text, I want to remind you that you are about to hear the living and active word of the living, and act of God. This word was given to the prophets and the apostles by the self-attesting spirit of God. And therefore, he bears witness in our hearts that this word is true. And he is that is the spirit of God is the great apologist. And he is the defeater of every argument that the world has against this word. So this morning, I would encourage you to listen to this, God's word, and hear it as the Thessalonians heard it, as it is in truth, the word of God. 1 Thessalonians chapter five, starting verse 12, and I'll read through the end of the chapter. Listen now to the word of God. We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything. Hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely. And may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it. Brothers, pray for us. Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. At first glance, first reading, this text appears to be something of a long fragmented section of text. I mean, when you read it, you can't help but think to yourself, well, either Paul ran out of paper or time as the courier was about ready to leave and so he hustles his thoughts down on paper and they seem to be somewhat fragmented, sporadic, jotted down in a hasty way. We have words about leadership, we have words about getting along with one another, we have words about prophecy, we have words about benedictory thoughts. We have all sorts of statements and that being the case, one might wonder why in the world I chose to preach on all of these verses in one sitting. Well, there are reasons, but this morning I'm only going to give you one. And I want to put it in the form of a question. Paul told the Thessalonians that he prays constantly for them. Now, for what does he pray? In the opening, Paul continually prayed for the godly efforts of the Thessalonians. You see it in the text. If you were to thumb back, and I'm not asking you to, but if you were, you would see that he prays for their work of faith. He prays for the labor of love among them. He prays that they would be, and he prays that they are steadfast in hope. In other words, what Paul prays for is that Christ might be more fully formed in them. Now, if you turn to the end of the letter, you discover a series of admonitions, as I've already said, and in the midst of those, near the end, you'll find those benedictory words that I mentioned a little bit earlier. I want you to listen to them again, and I want you to listen to their content. Listen to verses 23 and 24. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely. And may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it. Now think of that. At the beginning of the letter, Paul prays for their growth in grace. That's what he prays for. And here at the end, what does he do? He assures the Thessalonians that the God who calls them to be holy will ensure their holiness. And then he adds, he will do it. Now I believe that this in some sense helps us to see the framework of what otherwise appears to be a series of disjointed thoughts. In other words, Paul is here praying for the good of the Thessalonians. And what is that good? That good is that they might grow in godliness, that they might grow in grace. But here's the question. The question is, how will God accomplish such a thing in their lives? How will He do it? We know that He will do it. The question is, how will He do it? Now, you might say something like this. You might say, well, pastor, through prayer. And I would say to you, you've been listening. Through our prayers and through the prayers of others, God will do it. And that would be a right answer. But I'll tell you what, it wouldn't be the answer that we find here in the content of these last verses of this letter. Paul has something else in mind. To put it succinctly, leadership in Paul's mind plays an important, a significant role in our Christian growth and development. You know, one of the reasons why people often say, well, he doesn't really talk about elders here in this passage. No, he doesn't. You're absolutely right. But when you think about the short period of time that Paul was in Thessalonica, you understand that there wasn't time for all of the things that need to happen for the visible church to take some sort of organization. It just didn't happen. But you see, I want you to know something, and we'll see it in just a minute. Leadership was already developing, and that's what we would expect, because the Spirit raises people up to be leaders, and then the congregation recognizes that with a vote. And so what we find here in Thessalonica, in this last portion of the letter, is that leaders are rising up, and Paul is instructing the congregation how not only to act toward them, but how the leadership is to act toward the congregation, and so on. Now, I said to you that we wouldn't find elders expressed here in this letter, but we would find something that clued us in to the fact that that is what Paul's dealing with, and we see it. I want you to look at verse 12. Laboring is described in a twofold way. He says, elders are to rule over, have charge over, or simply be over, it depends on the translation you're using, the congregation. Now I want you to think about that. I want you to think about that. That is an expression of shepherding. But second, he says this, he says, they are to admonish or provide instruction in the congregation. Now, when you think about that, that's just a simple expression of what? What we call ruling and teaching elders. Here, Paul is saying to the leadership that is rising to the surface in this congregation, rule and teach. That's what he's saying. And we'll come around later and ordain those that the Spirit is raising up and that you recognize as elders. But for now, those who are rulers and those who are teachers, those who are shepherds and those who are instructors, ought to continue in what they're doing. They ought to continue to do what they're doing. Well, let me say this. The point is, that God is bringing about maturity in his people through ruling and teaching leadership in the church at Thessalonica. And when we understand that, it opens up what appears to be a series of fragmented verses. It brings them together under those particular points. In other words, you're going to see shepherding or ruling behavior encouraged by the Apostle, and you're going to see teaching or instructive behavior encouraged by the Apostle, and you're going to see that he encourages the congregation to respond in kind to those things. And so I want us to begin looking at the text in this way. I have just a few points for you, and they're all going to be centered around this. And the first is this, God will cause us to grow in grace, number one, through a leadership that engages in shepherding, through a leadership that engages in shepherding. Now, You need to understand something and you probably already do, but I'm going to say it because the apostle seems to indicate it. Paul realizes that not everyone appreciates leadership that actually shepherds. I think that's why he has to tell the Thessalonians that you need to respect and esteem those who shepherd among you. I think that's why he has to tell them that. That's not a natural inclination, especially in a person who is not inclined to receive it. but I want you to know something. I want you to know, it's a simple truth, and I think that we can apply it here. We all know that we do better with leaders than we do without them. We all know. I mean, you know, the person who is off on their own, without any sort of mentoring, without any sort of help, is a person that is in a sad, sad position. Years ago, I trained in the martial arts. My friend owned the school. Since he owned the school, he said to the instructor, he said, what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to come over to my house and I'd like you to teach. Teach me. And then he called me up and he said, hey, do you want to come on over and jump in on this? And I said, oh, that'd be great. Now, I want you to know something. You take more bumps and bruises when you fight with the instructor, but you improve quicker when you fight with the instructor than when you fight with your fellow students. That's just the simple principle of it. When you're with people better than you, they pull you up. I mean, all you gotta do is watch those who play with Sidney Crosby. You take moderate, medium players, and all of a sudden they become superstars. And they do because they're playing with Sidney Crosby. It's just simple. This isn't hard. And I'll tell you what, Paul is telling the Thessalonians to respect and esteem those men who labor and work among them. Because those leaders, if they are actively shepherding, will bring the congregation up with them. But I want you to know something. This is easier said than done, isn't it? And there are a variety of reasons for that. There are people who have differing views of what shepherding ought to be like. Some people believe that shepherding ought to mean hovering. But I want you to think about shepherding for a minute. I want you to think about how a shepherd watches his flock. He observes them, may give them a gentle touch with the staff. He may walk over and just nudge them a bit. But I'll tell you what. His wholehearted attention goes to who? To the one who leaves the flock. All of a sudden, then he has to leave the flock and go after the one that strayed. His whole attention is focused upon that particular person. And that's what we have here highlighted in this particular section of 1 Thessalonians 5. Paul is talking about those times when a shepherd needs to give his whole attention to a person in the flock who is in need of it. And so he does it this way. Let me walk through these. But I want to show you a pattern that emerges as I go through these. I'm not interested in necessarily looking at each one and exploring each one in detail. But there's a pattern that I'm going to call your attention to at the end. The first is this. The elders were to admonish the idle. Now, it seems that no matter what language you study, the word idle means something like worthless, useless, empty. You see what Paul's saying. He's saying in the church, there are people who are acting idle. They're acting useless, worthless, empty. You know what Samuel says, don't you? Samuel says that when David left Saul, he gathered around himself every worthless person in Israel. And this seems to be what Paul is thinking about. There are some in the congregation in Thessalonica who fit this description. And that seems to surprise us. But they're there. And what is he to do to them? What are the elders to do? Instruct them. Teach them. Second, the elders were to encourage the fainthearted or the discouraged. Now, I want you to think about this. There were those who had lost heart, and it was up to the elders to help those who had lost heart to find it. Some had lost some loved ones to death in the persecutions that had ensued. What do you do in that situation? Well, I'll tell you what you do. Paul gives us some wonderful instruction. If you go back to chapter four and look in verse 13, he gives this wonderful piece of instruction about what's going to happen. to those who are dead, to us who are alive at the coming of the Lord. And then at the end, He says, therefore, encourage one another with these words. In other words, how are you to help encourage the person who's lost heart? You're to teach them. You're to encourage them with sound words. That's the very thing He says at the end of chapter 5, verse 11. He says, therefore, encourage one another. And then thirdly, he says this, he says, encourage the faint hearted. It's hard to determine who the faint hearted are here, but I want you to know something. We can guess and some commentators do. Some commentators say, well, these are the weak in faith. These are those who struggle with sin. These are those who struggle with one foot in the world and one foot in the church. However you want to describe it. But I want to draw your attention to the remedy. These elders were to encourage them, comfort them. And how would they do that? They would do that with teaching. Now, have you noticed something? You've probably noticed a couple of things. The first thing you've probably noticed is when I've gone through this list and explained it the way I have, you probably noticed that this list is not describing magisterial shepherding. These are not governors, rulers that have the power of the sword. To hold it over the congregation and say, you had better do this. They don't have that kind of power. This is ministerial power. This is a minister, this is an elder, trying to persuade people to do what they ought to want to do to begin with. That's the kind of That's the kind of remedy that you see in this particular text. Now, that's hard, isn't it? That's really hard. Maybe you don't know how hard that is. I know it's hard. You ask any person that served as an elder, they'll tell you how hard it is. Why? Well, just take a look at verse 15. He gives a very practical, a very practical admonition. He says, there were people in the congregation who wanted to deliver evil for evil, return evil for evil. Why? because they had just been through persecution, and some had died as a result. And there were some in the congregation who said, I'm going to fix their wagon. And it was up to the elder to say, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Let me encourage you. Let me instruct you. Because it's not going to glorify God, and it's not going to work out good for the church, and it's not going to be good for you. If you return evil for evil, it's not. And it's the elder's job to do that sort of thing. And then you notice what he says, have you noticed the ingredient that's going to be a help in all of this, but a difficulty nonetheless? Look at verse 14. He says you need to have patience with all these people. Have patience with all of them. You need to bear with these difficult people. And one of two things is going to happen as a result. One of two things is going to happen as a result, and it's such a well-worn path that you can, I can tell you it's one way or the other. This person is either going to thank you for your shepherding, for your act of shepherding, and they're going to delight in it, they're gonna praise God for it, or they're going, to turn away from you and ridicule you and talk about you as if you are the worst person on the face of the earth. It's one of those two paths. They're going to grow or they're going to turn away. But Paul says it doesn't matter what they do. An elder is to actively shepherd Well, that's first. There's a second point that I want to draw your attention to, and that's this. God will cause us to grow in grace, secondly, through a leadership that leads by example. I want you to know something. Effective leadership is more than just persuasion. It is persuasion, but it's more than argumentation. It's more than even good argumentation. Just because all of your premises are true and your conclusion of true doesn't make you a shepherd. It may just make you argumentative. Good leadership causes those to grow under it, causes those to grow under it by leading through example. Let me explain. Look at verses 16 through 18. You'll find an interesting set of verses. Interesting, first of all, because we're told that these verses contain an express statement about the will of God. You know, you want to know what the will of God is for you? Read this text. Here it is. You are, this is the will of God, I'm telling you. You are to rejoice always. You are to pray without ceasing and you are to give thanks in all circumstances. That's the will of God for you. But I want to tell you something else. That threefold expression, that threefold expression of joy and prayer and thanks, that's a triad that explains or in some way encapsulates the Christian life. Not all of it, but a good portion of it. That triad appears elsewhere in Scripture. I already read it to you. It's in Philippians chapter one. And the interesting thing is, and here's that symmetry again, in Philippians chapter one, you find in chapter one, verse three, that the appearance of thanks and prayer and joy is matched in chapter four by joy, prayer, and thanks. In other words, you have this A-B-C-C-B-A pattern at the beginning and at the end of the letter. symmetry there. And what Paul is doing is saying, this is the way to live the Christian life. This is how you ought to behave. You ought to be thankful. You ought to be joyful. You ought to be prayerful. Now, if you go back to the book of Thessalonians, go back to chapter three, just look there. And in chapter three, this is what you find in verses nine through 10. We read, For what thanks can we render to God for you in return for all the joy with which we rejoice before our God on your account as we night and day keep what? Praying most earnestly that we may see your face. I want to tell you something right now. Paul is telling these people to engage in this particular behavior because this particular behavior is good for Christian people to engage in. This kind of, you wanna, look, you wanna do something for all the year long? You just ask yourself every day, what do I have to be thankful for? And it can't be what you were thankful for yesterday. What makes me joyful today? Grounded in the gospel. And what can I pray about that will bring glory and honor to God because of the joy that he's brought to me? You see, those kinds of questions will keep your spiritual life aflame. And Paul knows that. And this is what he says. He says, look, I want you elders to engage in this kind of behavior because I want to tell you something. The people will not rise higher than the leadership. But if you are doing these things, they have only one place to go and that's up. There's a third point I want to draw your attention to, and that's this. God will cause us to grow in grace through a leadership that knows how to handle the word. You notice I've been talking to you, and there's been a mixture of it, but I've been talking to you about shepherding, about ruling. I've been talking to you about oversight, and I want to tell you something. Let me just pause for a minute and tell you something. Oversight done right is really hard work. And you will most of the time never hear about the hard work and the labor that your elders put in to situations. Why? Because they're not going to run and tell you, oh, let me tell you about this. They're not going to tell you that. They're going to be quiet, because they're good elders. They're going to be quiet. And they're going to engage in it. And the only way that you're probably ever going to know how much work they put into any situation is if you're in a situation. But he's been talking to us about shepherding. And now he's going to transition to talk about admonition, instruction, teaching. That's what he's going to talk to us about here. And so God will cause us to grow in grace through a leadership that knows how to handle the world. Here in verses 19 through 22, we run headlong into five imperatives. Now here again, they look scattered, don't they? They look scattered, but each one has to do with handling revelation, and in this case, the Word of God. And as a preface to these remarks, I want you to know something. It's interesting to me that Paul talks to them about what they've already heard and received as the Word of God, when they first heard it. And what was that? That was Paul explaining to them. We know it from Acts 17. That was Paul opening the Old Testament Scriptures and explaining Christ to them. So we understand, we already know what he's talking about. What's the foundation for his comments? He opened the Word and he's explained the Word to them. And they heard it and they believed. because they received it as the word of God. Now, these five imperatives. The first is this, the Thessalonians were not to quench the spirit of God. Now, what does that mean? Well, very simply, it means to cause the spirit's presence to disappear. That's what it means. If the spirit is a fire and you extinguish that fire, you've extinguished his presence. And that seems straightforward enough, but it leaves us with a question, doesn't it? That's why we have these other imperatives. So second, the second imperative. He says, do not despise prophecies. In other words, this is how you will quench the spirit. Somebody comes, brings a word from the Lord to you. Remember right now, this is the way we may understand this particular text. There were no ordained elders in Thessalonica at the time. And somebody stands up on Sunday morning and says, I've been reading and I want to help you to understand our faith in Jesus Christ from this text. Well, don't extinguish the Spirit. Don't despise prophecies. Don't despise utterance that they're emulating as they watch the Apostle Paul do it. Open the Scriptures and explain. You know the difference between foretelling prophecy and foretelling prophecy. One tells you the future, the other one takes what was said about the future and applies it to you. Don't despise when somebody opens the Word of God and explains it to you. Then this, then this. Test everything. That's the third imperative. Test everything. You know, He doesn't just say, listen to everybody who wants to explain the Scriptures to you. No, no, no. Test everything. How do you test? Well, I think there's a certain sense in which the spirit will dump a cold bucket of water on you spiritually when you hear something stupid. Have you ever been involved in that where somebody says something absolutely foolish? I was in a situation that wasn't very old in Christ, very young in Christ, and somebody said something right beside me, right beside me, and I had to look at them to see if they got wet. It was that bad, you know what I mean? Like the Spirit of God dumped a cold bucket of water on me, and I was like, that's not right. I'm not exactly sure why. But I know it's not right, you know, that sort of thing. But how else do you test? You test by holding what they say up to the Word of God. And that's the ultimate, isn't it? You take what they say up to the Word of God and you say, does it match up with the Word of God? And then having tested it, you take what's good out of it. You take what's good out of it. If there is something good to take, you take it. But then this, even though they're to hold fast to what is good, fit there to abstain from every kind of evil. And there is evil in what some people say, even if they say it's from the scriptures. And Paul says, just like you abstain from bad behavior, you abstain from false doctrine because it's evil. Now, if the congregation in Thessalonica was to grow, it would need to be ruled, shepherded, and taught, instructed well. And the people would need to receive both the shepherding and the instruction. And why not? And why not? If the one who called us to be faithful is the one who appointed elders for our good, then let us listen to them while our eyes are on the coming Christ. For we have every confidence that He will do what He's promised to do in us. Father in heaven, thank you for the day, the time, the Lord Jesus, the gathering here, the opportunity to open your word, all of these things. Thank you, Lord. Bless us, bless these things to us, that we might be people gathered out of a very dark place. assembled in a very well-lit place, the Lord Jesus Christ, in order to hear his word, that we might praise the living God accordingly. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.