Don't Smother the Fire! | 1 Thessalonians 5:19–22

Well, I am humbly grateful to be able to help you prepare for tonight's fresh encounter, as well as to prepare you for how life should go at First Family every week. So let's prepare to dig into God's Word this morning together, shall we? I do want to encourage you campus-wide to be back tonight at this campus, Central Campus. We're streaming at their place, our night of worship at Carlisle and our chapel campus.

Man, just make your way back to Central Campus here and let's gather together for a fantastic night of prayer and worship. I want this morning to help us get the most out of tonight. You know, we're taking a break from John because we decided earlier in the year that when we came to Fresh Encounter Sundays, we'd spend that morning looking into the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the work of the Holy Spirit, the impact, His ministry to us.

And so we're going to do that again this morning. So take your Bibles and locate 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 for a moment. And as you do, I want to remind you that you'll have many questions today.

I would love to take them live. I almost did, but I've got so much ammo today that I'll never be able to run through all nine yards for sure. But I'm going to do all I can.

And so just text your questions in, have your phone out, get it ready. I'll do all I can to answer those on the podcast, or I'll text you individually. I think today's text will be appropriately jarring and I'm praying it will be.

And it will move our church to adopt an even more biblical posture to the work of the Holy Spirit. And that perhaps it will not only show up this morning and tonight, but in every one of our campuses every week, we will see God's Spirit working among us, perhaps in this fashion. To help you understand more about where we're headed, can I just ask you to think about times that you've received perhaps a list from your mom or your dad about things that you're to do? I'm speaking among the kids who are at home still.

My mom is a list maker. She's listening to this. She's grinning about right now.

She was a list maker, a note taker. And so during the years that she worked, I was probably late elementary school and then junior high and high school. And so most mornings in the summer when we were home and she was at work, she would leave me a list.

Make sure these things get done today. And it was a wide-ranging list. Some included clean your room.

It may include take out the trash. It could include something you only do once in a while. But none of that was considered odd.

Whatever was on the list was just normal household procedure. You got it? I mean, that's not odd. You understand that.

You've left the notes for your children or if you're a teenager or a child here, you've received those notes. You just get the list. You're like, this is my job today.

It's kind of the way your household works. That was the way our home ran and it was pretty common. That's how I see 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verses 12 to 22.

You're at chapter 5, right? Just kind of put your eyes on the paragraph that begins in 12 and runs through 22. This is Paul, as he closes this letter to the Thessalonians, just kind of providing a list of like household, I'm going to use the word chores. Maybe we'll say household duties.

This is kind of a way that church should just operate. You see things in there like respect those who labor among you. To live at peace, warn the idle, comfort the discouraged, help the weak, be patient, pursue what's good, rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks and everything.

Right now you're thinking, Todd, that's normal church life. You're right. That doesn't surprise you at all.

You're not astonished to hear any one of those types of activities. That's actually what makes God's household look like God's household. Can I say to you in this place and to all of our campuses, this is a good house.

You have made this church by God's grace and his spirit's power, a good house to live in spiritually. I want to thank you. Hey, Lamoni, you've got a good house there.

Carlisle, Chapel Campus, newly began. All of our places, man, God's building a good house, isn't he? When you could sense it in our worship, you can sense it in your receptiveness to preaching, the way you're in your small groups, all of our locations. Man, I'm just thankful for the good house God is building, aren't you? In this list that describes a good house, you find verses 19 through 22.

You ready to read them? Don't stifle the spirit. Don't despise prophecies, but test all things. Hold on to what is good and stay away from every kind of evil.

You heard it, church. You heard it, house of God. Right alongside prayer, gratitude, patience, encouragement, and peace, all the things that you think are, yeah, that's expected.

That's how this house rolls, is the activity of the Holy Spirit, including prophecy. It's right there in front of us, in the same paragraph. So Paul didn't consider this strange Christianity.

He didn't bracket this off and say, that's the weird stuff. Here's the normal stuff. It's all one list.

And I wonder sometimes if we've not unconsciously divided this list. Like here's the stuff we all know we should do. Here's the stuff that maybe some people might do.

That's not how the paragraph is. I'm just giving the scriptures to you straight up. It's one list of household duties.

That's normal operating procedure in the house of God. It's word and spirit. In fact, when Paul puts together this inspired kind of list of how the house should run, I think he's saying this, this is our take home truth.

You'll see it unfold. I want to give it to you early, jot it down. It's this right here.

We welcome the Spirit's work by remaining both open to His activity and anchored in His truth. Because I think this paragraph really is, here's the word from the Lord to His church, and it's solid things we should just be doing as a church, as His house. And within that normal operating procedure is His Spirit's work, including this thing called the gift of prophecy.

Let's check it out this morning, shall we? Now I want to do it in two fashions. I want to do it in two segments, I should say. I want to look at the verses textually, and I'll say factually.

I realize we can have some disagreement on perhaps what they mean, but I want to just take the word for what it says and let it do its work. That's what we're known for, and we're going to stick with that. And then I want to try to apply that in some ways.

You with me? Let's dig in, shall we? Every campus, every eye, every person. Let's look at the verses again. I want to read them because there are two dos and there are two don'ts that I want you to take note of.

Let's read the verses one more time, and then I'll just kind of mark them out for you. Here they are. In the paragraph of just normal duties in the house of God, He says in verse 19, don't stifle the Spirit, don't despise prophecies, but test all things, hold on to what is good, and stay away from every kind of evil.

Notice the first phrase, the first do, excuse me, the first don't, it's in verse 19, don't stifle the Spirit. Other translations say don't quench the Spirit. He's saying don't put out the Spirit's work.

He's not saying He doesn't want them to extinguish the Holy Spirit. That's impossible. The Holy Spirit is God.

No one's going to extinguish God, but He is saying you could smother the work of God through the Holy Spirit of God. That's what He's saying, and He's encouraging them don't do that. Don't smother, don't stifle, don't quench, don't put out the work of the Spirit.

This is fire language. He's using the flame as a metaphor, and He's saying don't smother it, which brings me to this observation. I guess you can smother it.

Not a rocket scientist can figure that out, right? Paul's saying don't stifle or smother it, so He must know that it can occur, and we should not be surprised at that. You know, the Bible mentions several things we can do to the Holy Spirit. We can grieve the Holy Spirit.

It's in Ephesians. We can resist the Holy Spirit. Here we're taught that we can quench or smother or put out, I think perhaps in a slow fashion, the Holy Spirit.

So what's going on with this? Well, I think he's describing next how that's done when he says don't despise prophecies. Here's the second don't. I believe this text is not giving us two separate commands.

If Paul were to be doing that, and there may be some who believe that, then he's left us wondering how do these things occur? So on one hand, don't stifle the Spirit. How do we do that? Oh, something else you shouldn't do is don't despise prophecies. Then we're left with two things that seem unrelated, like how do we do both of these things? But they're not unrelated.

They're not two different things. I think he's saying this, and I think the grammar, the linguistics would bear it out. Don't stifle the Spirit, which is why you don't despise prophecies.

He's saying he's going from the general to the particular, from the larger to the smaller, from the broad to the specific. He's saying the way we stifle the Spirit, the way we smother the Spirit's work, the way we put out the fire and flame of the Spirit is when we despise prophecies. So I don't think it's a separate command.

I think it's a continuing, clarifying command. Now, let me tell you what Paul does not say here. Paul does not say don't despise the Spirit's work.

He doesn't say that, does he? I mean, you can read it, right? He doesn't say don't despise spiritual gifts. He actually names one of them, and he gets very particular, and he says, I believe, don't stifle the Spirit by despising prophecies, broad to narrow, general to particular. Let me talk about what these two words mean, this noun and this verb, the verb being despise, the noun being prophecies.

To despise something means to treat it as worthless, to regard it as something very minimal, just it's not, you know, it doesn't warrant our time, it's not valuable. And so it seems like in this church, Thessalonica, the tendency may have been to dismiss prophecies. I'm just going to stick with the word the Bible uses.

I'll define in a moment. That may have been because there were those among them who were date-setting. We see in chapter 5 earlier, they were perhaps claiming divine authority that wasn't theirs to talk about end times in a way that was upsetting.

And so perhaps they were on guard against those who were speaking falsely in this way, so they just expunged anything having to do with quote-unquote prophecies. We don't know for sure, we can only speculate, Paul doesn't tell us exactly. But it does seem that they were perhaps on the verge of doing this, if not already doing that, and perhaps the reason is because there were those among them who were abusing this.

So Paul here says when it comes to prophecies, don't dismiss them, don't devalue them, don't despise them. So maybe you're wondering, well Todd, what is a prophecy? If we're not to devalue them, or dismiss them, or not to make little of them, then what is it that we're supposed to actually then esteem? Well the word is prophecy, and the best New Testament definition is this, it's the human report of something God spontaneously brings to mind. Let me repeat that for you.

I'm convinced that the New Testament definition of prophecy is the report of something God spontaneously brings to mind. Now I didn't make that up, I draw that from the Bible, multiple places. First of all, Acts 11, prominent prophet in the church, his name was Agabus.

Acts 21, the second time Agabus prophesied, we know that Philip had four daughters who along with Agabus appeared to have prophesied in Acts 21, and then 1 Corinthians 14, where the text says that God can reveal something to someone spontaneously. It's called the gift of prophecy in 1 Corinthians 14. So based on four texts, I would confidently say to you, I believe New Testament prophecy is the human report of something God spontaneously brings to mind.

I can sense your nervousness, I love it. Now can I say to you first of all, I'm not alone in this understanding. I'm no famous theologian, I'm not this widely known pastor, but men that are widely known and that are trusted and are steeped in theology that I respect and follow, they hold the same view.

For instance, Wayne Grudem, quote, here's his definition of prophecy, it's reporting something that God spontaneously brings to mind, almost verbatim. Here's what D.A. Carson, his definition is this, the reception and subsequent transmission of spontaneously divinely originating revelation. Now at this moment you're thinking, you heard revelation, oh my goodness, he's talking about God giving more scripture.

That's not at all what I'm saying. I'm just using revelation as the noun form of the verb form revealed. I mean can we just be really eyeball honest? If God reveals something to you, then in grammar he gave you a revelation.

I'm not saying it's scriptural revelation, it's on par and has divine authority. I'm just saying if he revealed something to you, he gave you a revelation. This is the definition of the word, so don't hear Carson doing something he's not doing.

He's simply saying prophecy is a spontaneously revealed thing from God the Holy Spirit to his people. My favorite author, Sam Storms, whom I've met and talked to, been to his church. Here's his definition, the human report of something God spontaneously brings to mind.

So all three are pretty similar, wouldn't you agree? It's because the Bible actually says this. This is what a prophetic word is. It's not a word competing with scripture.

It's not always a future word. It's a word that in the moment could not have been naturally known perhaps, revealed by the Holy Spirit. I would even say gifted by the Holy Spirit.

First Corinthians 14 says for the consolation, strengthening, and evocation of another believer. So in that moment God gives you some information that's used to help another believer. That's what the Bible calls a prophecy, and Paul says don't despise those.

First Corinthians 14, listen to this, well I mentioned that verse about its purpose. And so I just want to say to you again, we're not talking about adding something to scripture, we're not talking about establishing another Paul or Peter. We're just simply talking about the Spirit bringing something to mind that is then communicated for the strengthening, encouragement, consolation, or edification of God's people.

Now sometimes people say this, well Todd I don't hold to that. I think prophecy is just preaching and teaching. Okay, that's a warranted argument, but I don't think that's what Paul means here, or does he mean that in other scriptures? So if I could just challenge you with this thought, you know that Paul distinguishes prophecy from teaching in his list of spiritual gifts.

Now I would admit to you, there does seem to be similar results, encouragement, consolation, edification. But similar results don't equate to the same gift. Preaching expounds what God has already revealed.

Prophecy reports what the Spirit spontaneously reveals. And this is one reason the text next says that prophecy must be tested. Now I want to acknowledge something here before I go on and talk about the word tested.

I realize that this is a debatable issue. I've held to this view for years before we planted our first family. I was in the throes of figuring out where I would land on this.

And I've been so encouraged by the Bible's teaching on spiritual gifts and especially prophecy. I do believe in the spiritual gifts of prophecy. I'm not a cessationist.

I am unapologetically but humbly a continuationist. Some say with a seat belt. I don't need a seat belt.

The Holy Spirit doesn't either. I'm just flat out a continuationist. I believe God sovereignly distributes any gift He wants as He wills.

Now you don't have to agree with that. I have really good friends. I have close family members who are not in that camp with me.

I don't hold that against them. Listen to this. I don't think they're trying to dismiss the Holy Spirit.

They love Jesus. Some of you are in this room thinking He's talking about me right now. I don't buy that.

I know you love Jesus. You hold to the gospel. You're not questioning God's work.

You're not questioning the way the Spirit works. You're not questioning His leading, His prompting. I realize that.

You have a system that doesn't allow you to believe that prophecy still exists. It's called cessationism. I don't hold to that system.

I frankly don't see it taught in Scripture. I don't think there's a clear verse anywhere that says the gifts ceased. I do think there are practical reasons we see the lessening of gifts in certain places.

But to say that God can't and He no longer does, it's just hard to find that verse. However, because this is not a gospel-dividing issue and because this is at best a third-level issue, I love you. I respect you.

I mean that. And I would ask for the same in return. That as we talk about this, instead of just saying, I'm done listening to Him today, would you give me an ear? Because the Bible is so clear about how this gift works, what it is, and why we're not to stifle it.

Because when we do, we stifle, we smother the Spirit of God. And that brings us right back to Thessalonians when He says, don't despise prophecies. He says this, test them.

Now notice what He doesn't say. He doesn't say, hey, stay away from them. He doesn't say that immediately.

He doesn't say, run as far away as you can from prophecy. He doesn't say that. Paul's answer to what appears to be abuse is not disuse.

Paul's answer is correct use. That's why he says, test it. In fact, he says, test all things.

You see verse 21? Test all things. This is the third item, but it's the first due. So we don't stifle.

We don't despise. Instead, we test all things. So biblical discernment is called for.

And this is where I think the church sometimes stumbles. If we hold to all the gifts being available and sovereignly distributed as God wills, and that a word of prophecy could be given for someone's consolation, encouragement, edification, then when that occurs, if some other brother or sister steps in and says, hey, can we test that? The one who received that word says, hey, I'm offended, man. You can't question me.

God told me that. See, that's so anti first Thessalonians five. That would be the first sign to me that God probably didn't speak to you.

You probably aren't experiencing a gifting in this moment because you're putting up some serious walls here. There should be a humility to say, yes, let's test this to see if God actually spontaneously revealed this. That's the posture to have.

Now the word test here is the word they used to find that if a coin is legitimate. It's a common word in the New Testament for testing, for discerning, but here's what I want you to notice, and I'm just going to appeal to your trust here a little bit. I could prove this culturally, historically.

I don't want to go to all that work publicly right now. I'm just going to tell you this. In that culture, when someone had a coin and wanted to find out if it was legitimate, they didn't assume it wasn't.

They assumed, man, I've got a valuable piece of money here. I better make sure this is legit. Does that make sense? They didn't say, oh, this ain't worth nothing.

I guess I'll find out that I'm right. Piece of trash in my hand. I'll go to the trouble to find out if it has any worth.

No one does that. You inherently kind of assume this is probably legit. I'm going to make sure I'm going to confirm, and so you test it.

That's the point of this word. So I think the posture of a New Testament church when it comes to the gift of prophecy is we know the Holy Spirit reveals the things that God wants His people to know, and so we're going to, first of all, just say, let's make sure we test it. We're not assuming it's not real.

Our posture is, first, God works among us. He does speak to us. Hey, let's test this one to make sure.

Does that make sense? I think there are ways to test things. I'll give you three scriptural ways we can test prophecies. First of all, through the Word.

The Word is the first and final test of every gift of prophecy, every one of them. The minute a prophecy contradicts scripture, it's not from God. There's no but.

There's no, well, are you hearing me, church? If a word from the Lord spontaneously given to you for the encouragement, edification, and consolation of an individual in our church contradicts scripture, we're not going to have a meeting about it. It's not from the Lord. It's the Word that governs the prophetic Word, spontaneously given.

But I think there are two more. Is there agreement? We find this in 1 Corinthians 14 when Paul instructs the church that if a prophet speaks, other prophets should evaluate. That's the word used in the text.

So if you can't, I don't want to say endure, but if you can't kind of pony up to other people saying, hey, can I hear that? And leaning in with agreement and evaluation, you're probably not ready for an environment where the Spirit might reveal things for the consolation and edification and encouragement of the church. We have to have an incredible amount of security without a fence because testing is required. This is another reason I don't think when Paul speaks about the gift of prophecy, he's not at all thinking someone else is giving another gift of writing scripture because Paul never says, no New Testament writer ever says, test the scriptures.

We're not told, hey, see if God really said that. Now we're told to examine the scriptures. We're told to make sure that who's speaking them is actually speaking the scriptures, but the scriptures are never under like question.

We're told to test these prophecies though. So he's not talking about prophetic scripture. He's talking about spontaneous information revealed by God for the good of the church.

And he says, hey, test those. That's why I'm confident Paul's not thinking of the 66 books, so to speak. He's thinking of those instantaneous, spontaneous moments when God reveals for the good of his church information we need.

And he says, you should test that by other people in the church. That's the second way to discern. Is there agreement? And third one is this, does it actually have the effect of the gift of prophecy? Now listen very carefully.

I've said this before. You probably didn't hear it. There are times when I ask you, if the Lord's given you a word, you're free to share that.

And I'll say this to you, but it must be for someone's consolation, edification, or encouragement. And if it's critical or demeaning or coded, and you're trying to, you know, launch a rocket in some kind of like spiritual garb, that's not a word from the Lord. I hope that's pastorally planned enough for you.

God doesn't give his gifts so you can kind of stab someone in the back. He doesn't give his gifts so you can make your point in front of a large number of people. So you can kind of stake your claim on what you think ought to happen.

That's not the way the Lord works in his church. Are you hearing me loud and clear? So I think there are three ways to test someone who says, I think I've got a word from the Lord. Is it biblical? Is there agreement? And does it actually do what prophecy does? When those tests are passed, then we're told to hold on to what is good.

This is the fourth thing we're to do. It's actually two parts because if you're not holding on to it, you're running away from it. But it's one response.

Once you test it, you're to either hold on to the good, which means the prophecies that prove true, they pass the test, you're to hold them. And that means simply this, you're to either do what it says or acknowledge or retain it or keep it in mind. We're not always sure what every prophecy is going to lead towards or demand from us.

He's just saying, when something's revealed and passes the test, don't dismiss it. This is very similar to the phrase, don't despise prophecy. So if you're thinking very little of the Holy Spirit's work, that he would never actually gift someone with spontaneous information for the good of the church, like he did in Acts 11 and Acts 21.

If you think that could never happen, then you will dismiss them. And when something is actually proven to be legit, you're like, well, you know what? I'm not holding on to that. I'm not keeping that.

I'm not acknowledging that. I'm not acting on that because you despise prophecies. But when you don't despise them, you keep it close and you're like, this is how the Lord is working.

So we should now do this or that, or we should acknowledge this. The actions could be, you know, a number of things. He's just simply saying you hold that and don't let go of what God is doing.

If it's proven not to be legitimate, notice his language. You're to get away from it. And they use hold here both times.

He says, hold one close and hold the other one far away. Like do not come near prophecy that isn't genuine and legitimate. Reject it.

Don't follow through on it. Don't give it attention or priority. And this phrase, by the way, has been used to mean everything but what it's written to mean.

I've heard this phrase used to say that you shouldn't do anything that could look like it's wrong. And I guess some translations, when they say abstain from all appearances of evil, if you take it out of its context, which is really about the gift of prophecy, if you take it out of that, you could really beat somebody up quick, couldn't you? Like, hey, that looks wrong to me. Don't do that.

That looks wrong to me. Don't do that. That looks wrong.

Man, you could have a list a mile long and man, you're controlling everybody with a joystick right out of 1 Corinthians 5, right? That's not the point of this phrase. This phrase is saying, when someone says I've got a word from the Lord and you test it, and it's like, ah, you know what? That's not a word from the Lord. Reject that and get far from that because sometimes the devil would like to trick us and deceive us with something that may look good, but it actually isn't.

It comes in the appearance of something, but it's actually detouring or distracting or deceiving. Are you with me? So this, this is what the verse is saying to us. And you can see the movement, can't you? Don't quench by not despising, instead test and hold to what is good or reject it.

You can see the general to specific, broad to narrow. That's what he's doing. This is in the normal list of household duties.

I just can't emphasize this enough because we love to compartmentalize the gifts and the expectations. Like, man, we're all for peace, Todd. We're all for patience.

We're all for prayer. We're all for thankfulness. You have preach on brother, but on the spirit and the prophecy.

Hey, could you quiet down please? That's what we say in our hearts. And I'm just saying to you, it's one paragraph. I don't want to leave out any of it.

I'm praying I had been this week. Some of you will kind of come on over to this side and realize the Holy Spirit loves the house of God so much that he can, when he wills, Romans 12, spontaneously reveal information to members of God's house for other members of God's house. So they're encouraged, edified, and consoled, and strengthened.

What a powerful Holy Spirit, amen? And that's what makes a great house. Not an organization, not our structure, not our staff, not our abilities. The supernatural power of the Holy Spirit makes this a great house.

And this is why I'm asking you to just trust the scriptures, let them weigh on you, and don't stifle the spirit by despising gifts of prophecy. Can I give you four ways to try to implement this? I'll do these somewhat quick, I think. Here are four application points to these four verses, these two do's and two don'ts.

I'm going to bring these home for every campus and see if we can land this plane with some practical ways to obey these verses. First of all, assume the Spirit speaks. I'm convinced that some Christians believe God is mute, like He's left us His Word and He won't say anything else, as if His Holy Spirit would not lead you, and guide you, and speak to you.

You know, the Bible tells us to keep in step with the Spirit. So for all of these things to occur, for us to have the right New Testament posture of being led, being filled, keeping in step, we have to admit the Holy Spirit speaks to His children. And so don't assume the opposite.

I think have a posture where we are waiting every day for the Holy Spirit to speak to us, and gift us, and lead us, and we're going to keep in step with the Holy Spirit. We're more prone to keep in step with our schedule than we are the Spirit. I'm preaching it myself here.

Ask my wife. That's my number one enemy. I don't adjust quickly.

I'm not real spontaneous. I like order. And often when the Holy Spirit nudges me, or our family, or me and Julie together, or her, and it's different than what I kind of planned or expected, man, I can get carnal in a hurry.

She's saying amen wherever she is right now, okay? My kids will tell you this. This is why, can I just be frank with you? I can be. This is why we need the Holy Spirit.

It's why I need the Holy Spirit, because I would get carnal. I would find ways to rationalize or reason my way out of what God is actually doing, and we need folks around us. I need folks around me to say, hey, listen, this is what the Spirit's doing right now.

Put aside the schedule. Your to-do list will be there tomorrow. Let's follow what the Spirit's doing right now.

It's not an everyday thing. Perhaps it's not every hour, but it has happened, and I'm just praying that God will continue to form me and wrestle away and refine away and carve away those parts of my character that inhibit keeping in step with the Spirit, while at the same time knowing that He's wired me a certain way that benefits our family and hopefully our church. So I don't want to just eliminate kind of the way He's made me, but I don't want the way He's made me to be a hindrance either.

So we're just always in surgery, aren't we? We're always in spiritual surgery, and I just want to make sure that I'm assuming the Spirit speaks. Now, this means that there has to be some sense of expectation, and I believe the Bible speaks to this. Listen to this verse, 1 Corinthians 14, 1. Paul says in a long section about spiritual gifts, he says, Pursue love and desire spiritual gifts, now watch this, and especially that you may prophesy.

Now, I don't know how you get rid of that verse. I know that there are certain systems that they find a way to kind of make sure that doesn't really mean what it says, but I actually take that at face value, and I want to say to you, I'm praying daily, and have been for years, that God would give us an increasing measure of the gift of prophecy. Prophecy is the most mentioned gift in the New Testament.

Now, if you have a weird view about it, I can see why you would say, we don't want to touch that, but actually if you just understand it's the Holy Spirit revealing information spontaneously that you could not have naturally known for the good of the church, and you can test it, and sometimes it's, you hold on to it, other times it's not really accurate. I think that makes practical sense, and we can go down that path. So, I want to encourage you, assume the Spirit speaks, expect the Spirit to lead you, to give the gift of prophecy, and don't let someone's excess, watch this church, become your excuse.

That's what we've done. We've seen excess, and we've said, I don't want to touch that, so we have it now. Well, we think it's a reason.

It's really an excuse. Paul's solution to false prophecy isn't trash it, excuse me, Paul's solution to the gift of prophecy isn't trash it, it's test it. And some branches of our family have chosen the trash it model to the entire spectrum of prophetic gifts.

I think the scripture says, here's a better way, test it. So, the possibility of abuse should make us discerning, not dismissive. So, assume the Spirit speaks, and then trust the Bible, and walk in the ways the Bible describes to test it.

Secondly, write this down, what you're talking takes time. So, if you assume the Spirit is speaking to you, and leading you, and guiding you, then you're going to give that relationship attention. And attention requires time.

There's no person in this room, or any of our campuses, who would go about their marriage, or their friendships, with careless non-attentiveness. You wouldn't do that. You give your important relationships attention, which means you give them time, you nurture them.

And I'm just going to be extremely shoe leather with you here. Some of you wonder why you never seem to hear from the Holy Spirit. You never get a prompting.

It's so hard for you to detect when He's leading and guiding. Here's why, you don't cultivate that relationship at all. You'll spend hours on your favorite streaming platform, and think it's a miracle that you read one verse.

You think it's a giant step to read a chapter in a week, but you'll binge hours of the latest show. You'll listen to multiple podcasts. I'm actually not against some of that, but I'm against it if it's taking the place of nurturing your spiritual relationship with God, who leads His people by His Holy Spirit.

And so, you have caused a deafness to occur in your life, because you don't give your relationship with God time and attention. So, talking takes time. This is why in front of you somewhere, you see one of these.

It's our liturgy here in this church. It's the way we go about each of our inside gatherings, we'll call it. And I just want you to see it again.

We've given it before, but I won't go through it step by step, except I want you to see this. It builds around the fact that we give time to things. We give time to prayer.

It's not a ton in our service. We have time to hearing the Word, time to singing. We give time to these things when we gather, because we want to hear, sense what God is saying, what He's doing, and then respond.

And this is why we give a response time. And for some, it's a little uncomfortable. You're still probably not quite used to it.

At times, I feel a little uncomfortable. We're still figuring out how to, you know, do this well with communion, and we're not experts at all. But our goal is not just to present information.

Our goal is to see transformation. I'm deeply committed to 1 Corinthians 14, 25, that when the church of God meets, it's potentially possible that an outsider could see that and say this, truly God is among you. I cannot describe to you how deeply I long for that, which is why I'm completely against seeker-sensitive services, culturally sensitive services.

I think we should always be polite, and we should always honor guests. We shouldn't be unaware where we live, but I've got no desire to gather you together for an hour and a half and then talk about things that you can read about in the paper. I want to help you interpret them, sure, but we gather as God's people.

We gather really in a house where the Holy Spirit's working in us and among us. That's what I'm craving. I hope you are too.

I'm not asking you for 90 minutes to come and just give a speech. We want to break God's word open, have the Holy Spirit illuminate our eyes to it. We want to sing in praise to him, and that the Holy Spirit will work in a way that with someone from Ankeny or any one of our campus areas, Lamoni, Carlisle, anywhere we're to look in and say, what's happening there? They wouldn't say, oh, they're just voting on something, or they're going over their bylaws.

They would say, I think God's in that room. That's what I'm after. That's what I'm pursuing.

This liturgy is designed to help us pursue that. It's not perfect. I don't think the Bible actually gives us a specific way to hold a church service.

It gives us principles to honor. We have some freedom there, which you can look around the culture and see, there's a lot of freedom, right? There's a lot of different kind of churches. This is what we think, we believe, honors the scriptural principles, pursues God's presence, gives you the expectation to respond with the goal being that when all's said and done, nobody here is getting credit.

God alone is glorified, because I will stand against boasting till the day I'm done. We want a glory in the cross of Christ. Thirdly, jot this down, would you? Discernment means being grounded and surrounded.

It's almost been long here. It's pretty clear what this means. Testing things mean you take the word and you take the body and you lean in together.

Got it? Make sense? If you sense a word from the Lord for someone, you're not sure, ask someone, hey, I'm sensing maybe the Holy Spirit is communicating this to me. How do you hear this? That's a perfectly legitimate. It's too humble.

The body and the word lean into that. That's why at our church, typically, we say if you sense you have a prophetic word about something, come tell the elders first. Let us kind of lean in with you, and then we'll go from there.

So it takes the word and the body to see this gift continue to be used correctly as opposed to running from it, because you've seen it abused. Remember, don't let excess be your excuse, but instead trust the word and test it. And then lastly, I would just say this to you.

There's so much more I want to say this morning. I knew this would happen, but it's all right. Don't release what God has revealed.

Don't retain what God has rejected. Over the next several months, you're going to hear about a prophecy that was given at First Family about 15 years ago. It was given to the elders.

It concerns this place. What was said and what was given was brood in Scripture, and it came true, and it proved to be worthwhile. It proved to really be a consolation and encouragement.

My sense from the Holy Spirit over the next several months will be that that word from the Lord in that year needs to be considered as we continue to move forward. We're going to retain and hold on to what God told us in that year, and I can't say a whole lot right now, but I will as the next few months unfold because I believe this is what's happening in this location with a word God gave us 15 plus years ago. And what I think God's moving us towards is directly connected with what he told us earlier, and it excites me because I see God's hand in all of that.

That is more than about projects or numbers. It's really about God's Spirit working among us and him leading us. So I say to you, that's why we would hold on to that word of prophecy that was given.

It's not Scripture. It's not apostolic, but it is a word from the Lord for our people in this house, and we don't want to despise it and stifle the Spirit. So because God told us that, we're going to hold on to that, and we're going to let it continue to guide us even now as he continues to say, here's what I'll be doing next among you.

Does that make sense? So we're going to hold what he gave us. We're going to reject what, or not retain what he rejected. So just some applicational points, and I want to admit to you, there have been whole books written about this on both sides.

I know that. There are three that I'd recommend on the front here. If you want to stop by, I'll show them to you.

The best book on this topic and what I think is spiritual gifts is by Sam Storms, The Beginner's Guide to Spiritual Gifts. You should get it and you should read it. Sam makes the strongest textual biblical case for the continuation of God's gifts as the Spirit sovereignly distributes.

I just say that to you because I want you to consider this, text in your questions. I'll do the best I can to answer them. My point today is this, my goal today is this.

I don't want us smothering the fire of the Holy Spirit. I'm not pushing for an environment or manufacturing a culture. I'm trying to make sure we're obeying the Word.

And Paul said, don't stifle the Spirit by despising prophesying. So I'm just being a faithful pastor to you and trying to teach you what I believe the Word of God says. I do think this is applicable.

I don't think it's suddenly no longer existent. And so because I believe that, I think the Holy Scripture leans in that way and teaches us how to appropriately go down this road. Today has been one of the steps to that end to help us, watch this, build a fire, watch this, with a fireplace.

Do you hear that okay? Because there's two ways to put a fire out. You can pour water on it or you can remove the barriers, the boundaries. And then it becomes not a fire that's beneficial, it becomes a dangerous, deadly thing.

I think when it comes to prophecy, let's admit that's a fire we don't want to put out, but it needs a fireplace, boundaries. You with me? That's what I'm calling us to pursue for this reason. For the person in Ankeny, Lamoni, Carlisle, someone near First Street in Trilene who doesn't know about Jesus Christ.

And watch my words here, because we know this doesn't happen, but this is how it looks. They just kind of stumble into the church one day. They just kind of pop in.

They wake up or they're having a week that's terrible and they just feel like, you know what, I need to get back to church. They meet you and you just invite them and this time they actually listen, they show up, you're surprised. But that's not an accident, that's God's sovereign spirit working and when they show up, you know what they want to see? What I want them to see? What you want them to see? A house on fire, or maybe I should say a house with a fireplace.

Maybe that's better, right? The spirit of God working, the flame of God burning, and the people of God sensitive, so that when he moves, we respond and that person says, God is among you. That's the kind of church I want us to be in every city we're located.