1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
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.
Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, song, epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The Epistle reading for Sunday, December 17, is First Thessalonians chapter five, verses 16 through 24. 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 to what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely, and may our 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. Here hence the reading. This passage begins with a number of statements that seem relatively unrelated to each other are kind of like a grab bag of commands coming from St. Paul to the Thessalonians. Rejoice always pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Now, sometimes these passages can be talked about as if they're supposed to be like the joyful thing. Rejoice always pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances. But sometimes I also think it's a little bit like what happens when my wife comes to me with a problem. And I tell her, don't you think you're overreacting? And she goes, Wow, that she actually never does that. Because I'm not that's, that's silly. I would never do that. Sometimes these commands that seemed wonderful are actually heavy burdens. For people who are really sad. And it's it can be a burden when your life is difficult to say, Well, Paul says that you should rejoice. What really we should be telling people is helping them to see how we rejoice in difficult circumstances. And I think that's what St. Paul really wants the Thessalonians to do. The Thessalonians, who just recently had gone through a difficult persecution, after Paul had left them. They had been arrested, they had been beaten up, find things were really bad. But they could rejoice always and give thanks in all circumstances, because they knew they had Jesus. Because Jesus was more and better than having good circumstances. He was eternal life. So the next thing he says Do not quench the spirit, do not despise prophecies, but test everything. So he says Do not despise prophecies. So when someone speaks, this could be called a prophecy from God. We often think of prophecy as like predicting the future. But that's not the only kind. Prophecy could be any utterance that is supposed to be from God. And so St. Paul is saying, Do not quench the Spirit. When someone says they're speaking for God. Don't tell them to stop. Don't despise prophecy and say, Ah, this is this couldn't be from God. But He does say test everything. And what we do is when someone says they speak for, for God, we should go and test what they say against the scriptures. Just like the Berean Christians did when St. Paul came to them, and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ, they were faithful, and they went back and they studied their Scriptures to see if that was true. And that's what we do when someone proclaims a sermon, or stands up to teach in a congregation, as we test everything. Next, he goes hold fast to what is good abstain from every form of evil, relatively straightforward, at least to say, difficult to do. Right? And finally, 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? Who calls you is faithful? He will surely do it. Now here we could get some misunderstanding when it talks about sanctifying you completely are kept blameless at the coming of the Lord. One might think is, Paul is saying that human beings can be fully sanctified in Jesus so that we do not sin anymore. But I don't think that's what's going on here. He's saying Now may the God of peace sanctify you completely as in, give you Jesus so that in Christ you may be found blameless it's the righteous pneus of Christ that makes us completely sanctified and keeps us blameless. And that's why he ends it with he who calls you is faithful, He will surely do it. Because it's not something that we can do for ourselves, but it's only Christ in us. The gift of the Holy Spirit through his means of grace keeps us holy, so that when Jesus returns we will be found blameless, not because we've been sanctified and have perfect actions, but because Christ's righteousness is in us. That's all I have for today. We'll see you on Sunday. Bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai