2 Thessalonians 5:16-22
This is from the Apostle Paul writing to the church at Thessalonica, his closing words, and we’re going to read verses 16 through 22, just seven short verses. The Apostle Paul writes, rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the spirit, do not treat prophecies with contempt, but test them all, hold on to what is good, and reject every kind of evil.
All right, 1st Thessalonians. We’ve been looking at this letter from Paul to the Thessalonian church, and the theme is, Be Ready. And what are we ready for? It’s the return of Jesus.
And I don’t know about you, but I hope you’re ready. I’m ready for that. It’s all throughout the book, five chapters.
At the end of every chapter, Paul gives a reference to the fact that Christ is coming again. And so, we’re in the final stages of 1st Thessalonians. We’re in chapter 5 this morning, and Paul’s giving some, like, final instructions to the church.
He doesn’t know if he’s ever going to see them again, so he, like, gives us, like, almost rapid-fire all these final instructions. And last, two weeks ago, actually, we looked at verses 12 through 15, where Paul reminded the church to recognize and respect their spiritual leaders and to hold them highly in esteem for what they’re doing. So, respect your spiritual leaders, but then he goes on and gives some instruction of what we’re to do amongst ourselves as believers.
Live in peace, warn the unruly, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone, don’t retaliate or seek revenge, always strive to do what is good. And now, Paul has some more final instructions of what we’re to do until Jesus comes. There are six of them.
And so, we’re going to look at verses 16 through 22 this morning as we think about what to do until Jesus comes. You know, there’s two categories of sin in the Bible. There’s sins of commission.
That’s when we do something that God tells us not to do, lying, stealing, cheating. We all understand that. But there’s also another category of sin in the Bible, and it’s called sins of omission.
This is from James chapter 4 verse 13. James says, if anyone then knows the good, they ought to do and doesn’t do it, this is what James writes, it is sin for them. Well, that’s interesting.
James says, if we know what we’re supposed to do, if God tells us to do something and we don’t do it, then James says, and God says, that is sin. And so, here’s some things that God’s telling us to do this morning as we wait Jesus’ second return. And let’s look at the first one.
i. Rejoice always
Rejoice always. Rejoice always. This is all through Scripture, isn’t it? If you look at the book of Philippians written from a prison cell, it’s called the Joy Epistle.
The apostle Paul wrote it 16 times. He mentions the word joy and rejoicing. Philippians 4:4, rejoice in the Lord.
And again, I say rejoice so you get the impression that God wants us to experience joy in our life. And here Paul writes and he says, I want you to rejoice always, always. It’s actually one of the fruits of the Spirit.
In Galatians 5:22 and 23, there’s nine-character traits that as a believer, the Holy Spirit wants to develop in your life. Love, joy, peace, gentleness, patience, goes on to list nine-character traits. God wants us to experience joy.
Even in difficulty? Well, the answer is yes. And to be able to do that, we need to know something. And so, James gives us some help in James chapter 1. You don’t have to turn there, but I’ll share these verses, James chapter 1 verses 2 through 4. James is writing to people who are under persecution, and they’ve been scattered out of their homeland because of persecution.
And he writes to them and he says, consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds. I have to admit, when I go through a trial or a difficult experience in my life, my first response is not to think, oh, what a joy. The only way we can do that, and this is where James helps us, is if we know something.
And that’s where verse 3 comes in. How can we count even trials as joy? And James says, you have to know something. Here’s what we need to know.
Because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. It’s the word hupomoné. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
So, James helps us here. How can we count trials as joy? Because when we persevere through that trial, God is working in our life. God is building our character.
And so, even in the midst of trials and difficulty, we can have joy. What got Jesus enabled him to endure? What he went through at the cross and the beating that He took and the physical suffering and the spiritual suffering. Hebrews 12:2 says, for the joy set before Him, Jesus endured the cross.
He was looking at something greater that He would accomplish through His sacrifice on the cross for the sins of the world. And so, here the Apostle Paul says, rejoice always. Nehemiah says, the joy of the Lord is my strength.
Now, we need to think about this a little bit. Now, what a book that has helped me is a book by Gerald Peterson called Joy and Tears, the Emotional Life of the Christian. Here’s what he writes, Scripture does not support the perspective that joy is a continuous 24/7 experience.
Now, you might say, wait a second, I thought you just read and said rejoice always. Well, we need to look at that passage and think about some other passages in Scripture. Romans 12:15, rejoice with those that rejoice and what? Weep with those that weep.
Jesus wept at the graveside of His good friend, Lazarus. A third of the psalms are psalms of lament where the psalmist is writing and lamenting what’s going on in Israel and in Jerusalem. And we have a whole book of the Bible written by Jeremiah called Lamentations.
So, rejoice always, the Greek word is pantote, but here’s the key.
Sometimes this refers to something that happens continuously 24/7. So, John chapter 8 verse 29 says, Jesus always does His Father’s will. I always do what pleases My Father, Jesus says.
Does that mean 24/7? Yes, because Jesus never sinned. He always pleased His Father. But you go to another passage of Scripture in the Gospel of John, and sometimes this word means things that happen often or typically.
The word always refers to that. John 18:20, this is what Jesus said, I always taught in the synagogue or at the temple. Same word that’s used here.
Did Jesus always teach in the synagogue and the temple? Well, a lot of times He did. He normally did, but He gave a sermon on the mount. So, sometimes the word always means frequently or typically.
And so, I think what Paul is saying is that joy needs to frequently be the characteristic of our life. Gerald Peterson writes; joy should be the characteristic of our life. But if we have times of pain or weeping or anxiety, that doesn’t mean that we failed to obey the command of 1st Thessalonians 5:18 or Philippians 4:4. It might mean that we have obeyed the command of Romans 12:15. So, I hope that helps us. Yes, joy should be the characteristic of our life, but there are times of sorrow and weeping with those that weep, and it doesn’t mean that we’re disobeying the command to rejoice always.
ii. pray continually
Well, here’s the second one from 1st Thessalonians 5. Paul says, I want you to rejoice always, but then I want you to pray continually, pray continually. Verse 17, rejoice always, pray continually. This is all through Scripture. Ephesians 6, at the end of that passage about the put on the armor of God, it says, pray always with all kinds of prayers and supplications. 1st Timothy 2:1 through 3 reminds us to be praying for our spiritual leaders and those in authority.
And it’s all through Scripture that prayer should characterize our lives. I love the book of Daniel. And I remember the story about Daniel that Daniel’s enemies couldn’t find anything against Daniel.
And so, they decided that let’s set up a little bit of a trap and we’re going to have a law passed that you can’t pray to any other God other than the foreign God, the Medo-Persian God. And it was Daniel’s pattern to pray three times a day. And even though he knew that that law had been passed, it says, Daniel continued to open his windows and pray in spite of the fact that there was a law against prayer, and what ended up having him put in the lion’s den, to pray continually.
I hope prayer is not your last resort. This is something I’m still learning in my 61 years of being a Christian. That prayer needs to be the first resort.
If there’s ever a time that we as individuals need to be praying for our families, Job 1 is a great model for that, that Job prayed regularly for his 10 children. If there’s ever a time where we need to be praying for our churches, if there’s ever a time we need to be praying for our country, it is now. And so, what is prayer? Prayer is just simply talking to God.
And we have this wonderful privilege, never get a busy signal, don’t have to make an appointment. He’s there 24/7. In fact, that verse in Revelation chapter 3 verse 20 that many people used to have as a picture in their house of Jesus knocking at the door, it’s really written to Christians.
And it says, behold, I stand at the door knocking. If anyone will listen and hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and have fellowship with him. What’s it saying? Jesus wants to have fellowship with you.
iii. give thanks in all circumstances
And He’s standing there knocking. He’s waiting for us to open the door and to have fellowship with Him. Well, there’s a third command then in verse 18, not only to rejoice always and to pray continually, but Paul writes, give thanks in all circumstances.
And then he says, for this is God’s will for you. Many young people as they’re growing up are wondering like, well, what’s God’s will for my life? And there’s some great truths in Scripture that God simply says, this is what you need to be doing. And as you follow my will, then I’ll progressively open doors for you and show you what I want you to do.
But for all of us this morning, what’s God’s will for us? Rejoice, pray all the time, and in everything give thanks. Not for everything, there’s a distinction there, but we can give thanks in everything. How can we do that? Because God’s a sovereign God, and God specializes in taking evil and using it for good.
And so, I saw a post on Facebook that was referring to the funeral for Charlie Kirk today out in Phoenix, and it said, the gospel is going to be preached to millions and millions of people, maybe the greatest spread of the gospel in our lifetime.
Because God’s a God that specializes in taking evil and using it for good. And I believe there’ll be thousands of people that’ll come to faith in Christ because of what’s going to take place in Phoenix, Arizona today. So, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for us.
It’s interesting, when Paul writes his last epistle, 2nd Timothy, he writes about what life is going to be like in the last days, and he lists like 20 characteristics. One of them, if you go through that list, is ungrateful. People are going to be ungrateful in the last days.
They’re going to feel like a feeling of entitlement. And so, the Lord says, and Paul writes, give thanks in all things, this is God’s will for you. There’s a story in Luke 17 there, Jesus healed 10 lepers.
It’s Luke 17, verses 11 through 19. And so, He changes the lives of 10 lepers, and those 10 lepers leave to go to the priest to show themselves that now they’re ceremonially clean. And what’s interesting in that story when you read Luke 17, is one of the 10 took the time to come back and tell Jesus, thank you.
And Jesus says to them, I thought I healed 10, not just one. We need to give thanks, and the Bible says to give thanks in all circumstances, not just on the last Thursday of November, that’s appropriate to do that on Thanksgiving, that’s right around the corner, but to have an attitude of gratitude that characterizes our lives. All right, a few more here.
iv. do not quench the Spirit
Moving down to verse 19 then, the apostle Paul writes, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, do not quench the Spirit. So, he’s told us three things to do, now he tells us a couple things not to do. Don’t quench the Spirit.
The word quench speaks of suppressing or stifling a flame or a fire, throwing a wet blanket on a spark or a fire. Fire represents zeal and passion and enthusiasm. Remember in Acts chapter 2 when the church was born at Pentecost, there were tongues of fire that danced over the heads of each one.
Fire represents passion. And here the Scripture says, do not quench the Spirit, capital S, Spirit, and that’s the Holy Spirit. And if you know Jesus as your Savior, the Holy Spirit lives inside of you.
Paul writes to the Corinthians, what, don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who lives within you? Glorify God with your body. So, if you’ve received Jesus Christ as your Savior, the Spirit literally lives within you. And Paul writes and says, don’t quench the Spirit.
Now, how does the Spirit work in our life? Well, He takes Scripture and He leads us through Scripture. The Spirit also works through inner promptings. Did you ever feel that inner prompting that I need to help somebody or I need to pray for somebody or I need to do good, some sort of good work for somebody? That’s not your idea.
That’s the Spirit of God who’s prompting you to do good. Like, well, how do I know if that’s from the Spirit? Well, if it’s something that’s good, proper and morally good, it’s from Him. And I’ve been so glad over the years that I’ve followed, most of the time I’ve tried to follow the promptings of the Spirit of God in my life.
When He says, maybe you should check in on that person. Maybe you should call them. Maybe you have a burden for somebody and you need to pray for them.
And the Bible says, don’t quench the Spirit. What else quenches the Spirit is sin. And so, when we have sin in our life, it stifles the ministry and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Don’t quench the Spirit. And so, really, what we saw this morning from Kids Praise is really some individuals that are following the Spirit’s direction in their life. Our Beyond Awana program that I think we’re finishing up our third or fourth year is really because God put it in a couple people’s life that we needed to do something more for our kids after our Awana year.
And so, I’m so thankful for a church leadership that doesn’t like put a wet blanket on those ideas. Oh, those kids are too young. Or no, we probably can’t do that.
We’ll never sustain that program. That’s quenching the Spirit. No, if God’s put that in somebody’s heart, what we need to like get behind them and encourage them and pray for them and say, praise God, let’s see what God does.
v. Do not treat prophecies with contempt, but test them all
And so, do not quench the Spirit. Well, there’s a fifth instruction here. And really, I think the last of this kind of ties it all together.
It says, do not quench the Spirit. Here’s the second negative instruction. Do not treat prophecies with contempt, but test them all.
Do not treat prophecies with contempt. Now, what’s Paul referring to there? When we think of prophecy, we think sometimes, and this is often the case of some passages in the Bible that talk about the future, the book of Daniel, the book of Revelation. But in this context, the prophecy is anybody who’s speaking a word for the Lord, an authoritative Word of God.
And he says, do not treat prophecies with contempt, but test them all. And so, here’s the challenge. We need to be like the Bereans in the New Testament.
Acts chapter 17 verse 11, Dr. Luke writes about the Bereans. He says, the Bereans search the Scriptures daily to see if what the apostles were saying is true. And that’s what we need to do when we listen to messages or a pastor or something on through the media.
We need to test that against Scripture to see if it is true. Don’t take my word for it. Check out the Scriptures.
Don’t treat prophecies with contempt, but you are to test them all. It means to prove, to examine, to scrutinize.
An example, a cashier holds up a $100 bill to see if it’s real, if it’s genuine. And in one sense, that’s what the Apostle Paul is talking about here, that we need to test them, test the spirits. 1st John chapter 4 verse 1, the Apostle John writes, Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
vi. hold onto what is good; reject every kind of evil
You realize there’s a lot of false teachers out there, and not everybody that opens a Bible and stands behind a pulpit is preaching the true Word of God. And so, test the prophecies, and then the Apostle Paul encourages, what, to hold on to what is good and reject what is evil. So, the Apostle Paul had to write a letter to the Galatian believers who had made a profession of faith, but now they’re going back and following the law, Judaism.
And Paul had to write about this area of salvation, and he gives some very, very strong words in Galatians 1. Let me begin reading in verse 8. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one, we preached to you, let them be a curse. As we have already said, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, salvation by grace, through faith, through Christ alone, let them be under God’s curse. Paul says there’s some people there that are preaching the false way to heaven.
Many people think that good works will get them into heaven. The Bible says, the only way to heaven is through Jesus. I am the way, the truth, and the life.
No man comes unto the Father but by me. That’s putting our faith and trust in Jesus and what Jesus did on the cross for our salvation, repenting of our sin, and freely accepting the gift of God as we just pray and say, Lord, I’m a sinner. I can’t make it on my own.
And I like to tell people; sin has to be paid for. Either you will pay for it in eternal separation from God, or you could accept the gift of Jesus who already paid for your sin, who on the cross yelled, it is finished, paid in full. We simply come and put our faith in Jesus.
So, do not treat prophecies with contempt, but test them all. When the Apostle Paul was meeting the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20, and Paul was the founding pastor of the Ephesian church, and he meets their leadership in a central point. They’re both meeting, and the Apostle Paul knows this is the last time I’m going to see these leaders of the church at Ephesus.
And he gives them some instructions, keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherd of the church of God which he bought with His own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock.
Even from your own number, men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples from them. So, be on your guard. Look out for false teachers. One of the illustrations of that today is the prosperity gospel. There’s preachers that preach and say, come to Jesus and you’ll be what? Healthy, wealthy, and wise. I tell people, sometimes when you come to Jesus, your life is harder, it’s more difficult, but the reward is eternal life with Him.
application questions
And so, we need to test what is good and hold on to that and reject what is evil. Well, the Apostle Paul is giving his closing words to the Thessalonian church. And just as we think about these six commands, let’s just think about some application questions this morning as we think about how we can apply this to our life.
1. is my life characterized by joy?
So just a few questions here. Number one, is my life characterized by joy? It doesn’t mean you have a smile on your face the whole time, but joy is that inner feeling of celebrating God’s goodness and knowing that God’s in control, knowing that God specializes in taking evil and doing good, and we can have joy even in trials because we know that God is at work refining our lives and building character. Is my life characterized by joy? And by the way, nobody wants to be around people that, like, grumble and complain all the time.
2. is my life characterized by prayer?
But joyful people attract others, and God wants us to experience this joy. Secondly, is my life characterized by prayer? Is my prayer life continuous, and is it something where I can have a conversation with Jesus all day long? Or do the only time I pray is when I find myself in trouble and I need Jesus to get me out, and so I’m going to, in case of emergency, break the glass, and I guess I’ll pray. No, God wants to have this daily relationship with you.
3. is my life characterized by gratitude and thankfulness?
You can talk to Him and pray to Him any time of the day, and He’s longing to hear from you. Thirdly, is my life characterized by gratitude and thankfulness? One of the things I’ve talked about doing, and I know I need to do it, but I have four men who greatly impacted my life in my walk with Jesus. Two of them are in heaven.
But as I head toward the, what do they call them, the sunset years or the golden years or what are these older years called? I don’t know. God’s convicted me, like, have you ever expressed gratitude to those people that built into your life, these four men? Because a couple of them are gone. I’ll contact their wives, and I have Facebook friends with one of them.
I just want to say to Mary Ladd, who is the wife of our youth leader in the church that I grew up, thank you and your husband for loving on a bunch of teenage kids when we were trying to figure out life, and you taught God’s truth to us, and you had some activities for us, and that made a big impact in my life. We need to express gratitude, not only to God, and that’s all through Scripture, but to one another.
4. am I sensitive / aware of the inner promptings of the Spirit in my life?
Number four, am I sensitive to and aware of the inner promptings of the Spirit in my life? And do I sense that small voice that’s encouraging me to reach out to somebody or to make an impact in somebody’s life? And so, we need to be in tune to that.
And whatever He leads us to do, the Spirit to do, it’s always going to be in accordance with God’s Word. If the Spirit’s leading you, it’s going to line up with what God says in this book. I haven’t had to do this often, but I’ve had a couple of occasions and mostly a number of years ago when I was talking to some people in my office and they were telling me their stories, and God’s leading me to do this, and I said, God’s not leading you to do that.
I can show you the verse right here. That is not God telling you to do that because He tells us not to do that in Scripture. And so, it’ll always be in accordance with Scripture.
5. do I search the Scriptures?
And then lastly, do I search the Scriptures? Do I just take people’s Word for it or am I digging into God’s Word on my own and making sure that it’s truth, that it’s backed up by the Word of God? So, rejoice always and pray continually. Give thanks. Don’t squelch or quench the moving of the Spirit.
Hold on to truth. Hold on to what is good and reject every kind of evil. And God will bless you and God will bless us as we do that.