1 Thessalonians 5:19-22
Don’t Neglect Prophecy
Grab your Bibles and turn with me to 1 Thessalonians 5. 1 Thessalonians 5. This section is short that we are taking on this week. We will Lord willing pick up our pace again and take bigger chunks, but this topic is tough to handle briefly and so we’re gonna take a whole sermon to look at vv. 19-22.
The apostle Paul writing to the church of Jesus Christ at Thessalonica says:
1 Thessalonians 5:19–22 (ESV) 19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not despise prophecies, 21 but test everything; hold fast what is good. 22 Abstain from every form of evil.
Five instructions.
Depending upon your interpretation of this passage they are either all interconnected, similar to our instructions last week on inner-life attitudes of joy and prayer and thanksgiving before God. These are either all relating to the issue of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the church through the prophetic word. Or, vv. 19, 21 and 22 are spiritual encouragements about living a godly life and v. 20 is the only verse that deals with prophecy.
At the risk of testing your patience by repeating myself ad nauseam, I’m going to re-iterate a presupposition for interpreting the Bible. Do not approach the Scriptures with a conclusion and then attempt to prove it from the text. Do not approach the Scriptures with a conclusion and then attempt to prove it from the text.
A good indicator that you need to watch yourself is when you read a text and it makes you feel a bit of discomfort because it doesn’t appear to line up with your beliefs. At that moment you can either begin to reinforce your perspective through what is known as confirmation bias—where you weight the data that you like, and you dismiss the data you don’t. You start out to disprove the other side rather than first objectively looking at the data.
In the process you miss out on being shaped by truth and having your theology refined.
So, we come to this passage and it deals with prophecy. Just for fun, here’s the basic ways this passage is approached, embellished for illustrative purposes.
The prophecy avoider. Talking about prophecy is alarming because it is dangerous. They come to a passage like this and get hit with the prophecy dumbstick. Prophecy? What prophecy? This passage isn’t really about prophecy. And even if it was, we all know that prophecy is just preaching. This passage means don’t disregard preaching the written word and don’t disregard the written scriptures. Move right along. Nothing to see here folks (MacArthur,
The prophecy accepters. Prophecy is an ongoing ministry of the Spirit in the church today. And in fact, this is proof positive that prophetic haters will exist in the church, they will despise prophecy and they shouldn’t. This also gives us the manner by which we test prophecy in the church and keep the good stuff and reject the bad. This passage validates a new category of prophecy that may or may not be true (Wayne Grudem, John Piper, D. A. Carson, Sam Storms, C.J. Mahaney). Called the “open-but-cautious” view.
We just need to figure out what it meant to this church, and then we can figure out how to draw out the timeless implications for us.
As you know, Paul has been dealing with how to strengthen the church and make it healthy. He is giving instructions on preventative maintenance to the body. It’s akin to a well-doctor visit where you don’t have any major ailments (at this time there are no major doctrinal issues in Thessalonica, no major moral issues) so these are instructions for how to stay healthy.
Love and honor your leaders (12-13). Shepherds bear a burden of the care of your souls before God and give an account. Understand the burden. Pray for them. Satan loves to divide sheep and shepherds because it undermines ministry. This is a preventative.
Minister to the strugglers (14-15). The church is a hospital, not for the healthy but the sick. God chooses the weak and not the strong. We are to help each other without favoritism. A call to be in one another’s lives and take spiritual responsibility for others.
Humble, dependent relationship with Christ (16-18). The Christian life is to be one of great joy and peace and gratitude as we depend upon our God in prayer. We saw how these attitudes preserve the body.
And now, today we come to the matter of cultivating a discerning church that loves and submits to the truth. A discerning church that loves and submits to the truth.
5 Tips for Protecting the Prophetic Word in the Church (a flourishing prophetic ministry)
Don’t resist the Spirit (19)
Don’t limit God’s word by your own opinion (20)
Be a discerning listener (21a)
Embrace good teaching (21b)
Keep your life pure from evil (22)
5 Tips for Protecting the Prophetic Word in the Church
Don’t resist the Spirit (19)
This passage is one that gets a wax nose. Whatever you believe about prophecy becomes how you approach this passage. Why? It’s so brief. It’s so few words. It’s eight words in the original. So, you’ve got to figure out what God wants us to understand from these eight words.1
Paul frontloads the concepts with the verbs listed afterward…
19 Do not quench the Spirit.
Quenched2 appears elsewhere in conjunction with putting out a fire. The imagery of the Spirit as a fire when at work is used in Isaiah 4, Matthew 3 and Acts 2. It’s a sign of his energy.
That is just almost too tempting for me because it just preaches so well. Don’t extinguish the Spirit’s flaming fire in your life. Let the Spirit burn within you until you are consumed.
Sometimes I’ll send Paul Ellsworth some song lyric ideas I’m writing, and I’d say this idea of burning and fire and the Spirit definitely has some legs on a CCM hit.
As enjoyable as that may be—Paul’s talking about the Spirit burning anyone. It’s an idiom. We use these to communicate the same idea all the time:
He’s a wet blanket
She put a real damper on the mood
His last glimmer of hope was dashed
That really doused my big plans
The Spirit isn’t burning. Quenching is an idiom that just means down stifle or shut down the Spirit’s work.3 Now this seems like a conceptual parallel with not grieving the Spirit in Ephesians 4:30. In that context it is focusing on the relational elements of your connection to God.
Paul says there by whom you were sealed. The whom. It’s personal.
If you are in Christ, you have a very special and precious relationship with the Spirit of God. The Spirit’s work in the life of the believer is irreplaceable: as he calls, quickens, regenerates, sanctifies, pours the love of God into our hearts, frees us from sins tyranny, places us into the body of Christ, enables us with grace-gifts to serve others, translates our prayers, leads us back to the Father and preserves us until we are with Christ in eternity.4
The thought there is that when you and I treat obedience carelessly then we are hurting the indwelling Spirit who seals us.5
Generally speaking, how you grieve or quench the Spirit is to neglect the truth. Stop reading your Bible and stop submitting to what you find in it. Neglect and unbelief are the path. Calvin says this is a warning against indolence (laziness) in spiritual things. It’s a warning against neglecting your soul and yet even so, the hope isn’t just more effort, but dependent striving.6
For although God works efficaciously in his elect, and does not merely present the light to them, but causes them to see, opens the eyes of their heart, and keeps them open, yet as the flesh is always inclined to indolence, it has need of being stirred up by exhortations.
But what God commands by Paul’s mouth, He himself accomplishes inwardly. In the meantime, it is our part to ask from the Lord, that he would furnish oil to the lamps which he has lighted up, that he may keep the wick pure, and may even increase it.7
God’s preservation through exhortations that drive us back to him for a fresh supply of strength to follow him. We are commanded not to quench.
5 Tips for Protecting the Prophetic Word in the Church
Don’t resist the Spirit (19)
Don’t limit God’s word by your own opinion (20)
Calvin says that v. 19 is generic and now v. 20 is specific. I don’t believe there’s an abuse of prophetic gifts in Thessalonica because the instruction here is so short.
20 Do not despise prophecies,
What are prophecies? Communicating a message of direct revelation from God by speaking or writing. Communicating a message of direct revelation from God by speaking or writing. It could include foretelling future events before they come to pass. But that’s a dimension of prophecy. Prophecy could also include preaching—they key is the source of the revelation is directly from God to the individual prophesying.
Active prophetic ministry in Thessalonica. And Paul has to say to the church…
Don’t hold them in contempt. Don’t disregard them. We have little work on in terms of the context, but if we stick to the words themselves this much is clear: the Thessalonians were not embracing the God-given, Spirit-enabled exercise of prophecy within the church. Despising here could be to simply regard it as without merit—worthless—a waste of time.
How they were doing this is a matter of speculation.
Perhaps they were not allowing prophets to speak during the service. They were cutting power to the mic every time a prophet would get up to share. Perhaps they were listening, but then dismissing such things as not being authoritative messages from God. However, it was a low ministry priority for them.
My best guess from the context is that they had gotten some bad prophecy and they decided to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.
They had gotten duped and said, “we’re gonna cut that part from the order of service on Sunday mornings. No more prophecy. No more funny stuff.”
The reason I’m inclined to think this is two reasons. The first is grammatical. Look with me at how v. 21 begins:
but
Grammatically this is a direct, correlating relationship. Don’t disregard, but (instead, in contrast)
test everything; hold fast what is good.
He doesn’t say don’t disregard prophecy but put it center stage during your church services. Don’t disregard prophecy but elevate it above the other gifts. He doesn’t say, prophets don’t stop prophesying but keep exercising your gift.
No. Rather he says in effect, don’t kick it the curb because of some bad experiences, but instead test what you hear. The solution is to evaluate the prophecy for its validity. Grammatically it’s clear that some bad prophecy was in play.
Second, we find bad prophecy addressed in 2 Thessalonians 2. In the very next letter Paul says:
2 Thessalonians 2:1b-2a … we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word…
A spirit or a spoken word. A spirit was another word for a prophetic word.
Not only that, but they had previously been in idolatry (1:9) meaning mysticism and incantations were part of their old worship. So they would have been skeptical.
We get this. I got sick one time after eating honey and peanut butter from that peanut butter machine at Winco as a kid. I didn’t eat peanut butter and honey for years. And the smell of that machine when I’d walk by it would always make me feel queasy. It probably wasn’t sickness from the machine, but that didn’t matter.
One bad experience with prophecy and you write the whole thing off.
You go to a church service expecting to hear truth and some prophet gets up and promotes another Jesus. Says something that shakes your faith. Makes you doubt your salvation. Causes your peace to be disrupted as you hear a message supposedly from God.
You’d be on board with cancelling open mic night at church… no more prophecy.8
But the problem is prophecy is a good gift from God to the church. And so, Paul says, “nah, hold on… breathe… test it and then cling to the good.”
The problem was they were trying to filter out and protect themselves by error through their own approach. They were trusting in their own opinions more than in God’s Word and their fears caused them to cut off the Spirit’s ministry in the church.
5 Tips for Protecting the Prophetic Word in the Church
Don’t resist the Spirit (19)
Don’t limit God’s word by your own opinion (20)
Be a discerning listener (21a)
test everything;
Put it to the test. Everything. Word for proving it. Take what you hear and test it by the book.
Celebrating how God used Martin Luther and his famous stand where he’s saying that he will be convinced he’s in error through Scripture and plain reason.
This is what the church does. The church is the pillar and support of the truth. The Thessalonians thought they would protect themselves by disallowing certain ministries in the church because of the potential for error.
They knew better.
Just imagine being in Thessalonica.
You’ve got no New Testament. No systematic theologies have been written. No Apostles Creed. No Nicene Creed. No church councils. No Reformation. No Westminster divines. No church history.
Pretty different from 21st century America.
We need to explain a few things here:
What is the NT gift of prophecy?
Longer discussion, but here’s the summary. Prophecy has its foundation in the Old Testament. And in the OT there is no such thing as an “oops” I didn’t get it quite right category.
Deuteronomy 18:21–22 (ESV) 21 And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?’— 22 when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.
Deuteronomy 13:1–5 (ESV) 1 “If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’ 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. 4 You shall walk after the LORD your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him. 5 But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has taught rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery, to make you leave the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.
No passage clearly distinguishes a neoprophecy in the NT. But this view is built from 1 Corinthians 12-14 and the passage here before us.
And in fact, Peter connects the OT prophet to the NT prophet. Quoting Joel talking about prophecy in the NT:
Acts 2:16–18 (ESV) 16 But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: 17 “ ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; 18 even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.
What do we know about this prophecy? Let’s pull out some concepts from 1 Corinthians 12…
12:27—it’s a gift to the church.
12:29-30—not all believers are endowed with that gift.
13:2—prophet powers hyperbole… love is necessary + superior and more important for edifying the body than any gift.
13:8—fade away
13:9-10—What’s the perfect? τελος is complete. When Jesus comes? No. The comparison is to a child becoming mature and leaving behind the immature and childish things.
13:13—faith, hope and love abide (but faith and hope cease when Jesus comes). Hebrews 11:1 teaches that faith is seeing the unseen. Hope is going to go away when we receive the object that we are hoping in.
14:1—prophecy is good it builds the church.
14:2-5—prophecy is superior to tongues
14:29
Ephesians 2:20—it’s foundational.
Ephesians 2:19–20 (ESV) So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone,
The church was being established…
The apostolic age, like many OT times, was an age of revelation. The prophet had a supernatural gift whereby he was able “to reveal to his listeners new truth from God.”9
One of the reasons people have a hard time with the idea that these gifts aren’t operating today is because they can’t find a verse that specifically supports that. What’s often overlooked is the starting assumption regarding God’s revelatory ministry.
As you read through the Old Testament you find many times where God is speaking to one person in the whole world at that time. Occasionally it would overlap, and he might be speaking to a couple. Or there would be periods of time when God wasn’t talking to anybody at all.
In fact, between Malachi and John the Baptist there was 400 years of what? Utter silence from heaven. Then you have Jesus. Then you have Pentecost. And then you have a God doing a new work on the earth through the church and as we would expect we find revelation and miracles… it was always the case. It fits the pattern.
Hebrews 1:1 (ESV) Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son,
It was a unique season in history. A new work of revelation until the Scripture was completed.
His function as a spokesman for God included foretelling (prediction) and forthtelling (preach- ing), in either case on the basis of possessing supernatural knowledge (cf. John 4:19; Eph 3:3-5). In order to claim the gift for today, some writers have identified the gift of prophecy with inspiring and enthusiastic preaching,10 or congregational prophecy, “based on a ‘revelation’ from the Holy Spirit yet not possessing the authority of God’s own word.”11 This is totally out of keeping with all biblical data.12
Bob Kauflin in an article entitled, “How Do We Make Room for the Gift of Prophecy” refers to “prophetic impressions”13 This is where a member from the church gets up to share with the congregation a message or an impression that they believe God is telling them to tell the church.
He admits that not all contributions will be “home runs” but that having two pastors near the microphone to screen contributions before they are shared is a good practice and a way to obey the command here in 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21 to test prophecies.
While I love Bob Kauflin’s ministry and have benefited greatly from it. We sing hymns he has written. And I appreciate his desire to involve the congregation in ministering to one another. I believe it’s a total misunderstanding of this passage.
Kauflin holds to a neoprophecy that is articulated most comprehensively by Wayne Grudem and supported in various ways by other pastors and theologians such as Gordon Fee, C.J. Mahaney, John Piper and Sam Storms.
For many of these testing essentially means, “pray about it and then go with your gut… if you sense peace then it’s from the Lord and if you don’t it’s not.” I know they mean well, but I find that an alarming way to begin to say things and cite your source as the divine creator of heaven and earth.
Some define prophecy not as a direct, flawless revelation from the Spirit, but as faithfully preaching the word of God to a church congregation. This appears incorrect, since prophecy elsewhere in the Bible seems always to be connected with a direct revelation by the Spirit. Others, however, explain prophecy as a direct revelation of the Spirit, which can nevertheless be mixed with some error. The likelihood is that prophecy in the New Testament is the same as in the Old (a direct, infallible revelation from God) and that the discernment of a prophecy throughout the New Testament is a matter of distinguishing between true and false prophets.14
The key issue is this: false prophecies are just that. False. Pseudo. Fake. Nowhere in Scripture do we find a situation where God’s people are told to figure out what the mixture of a prophecy is: this one’s 50/50; we’ve got a 90/10 split on this one.
It’s obvious because we are talking about the source of the message.
In high school I was very aware of designer purses. I guess I was trying to find common ground with my friends’ mom’s or something. In the 90’s it was Kate Spade all day long. You had the $300 Kate Spade at Nordstrom and then $30 Kate Spade on the cart outside TJ Maxx. No one ever picks apart either one trying to figure out which components of the purse are authentic and which are fake.
It’s either 100% genuine or 100% fake. There’s no partially authentic and partially fake.
Matthew 24:24 (ESV) For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.
1 John 4:1 (ESV) Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.
Matthew 7:15 (ESV) Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits.
1 John 4:1–6 (ESV) Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. 4 Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. 5 They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
1 Corinthians 14:29 (ESV) Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said.
1 Corinthians 12:10 (ESV) to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.
You have a responsibility to test what you hear. Teachers give an account, are judged strictly. But guess what? Hearers are also judged. No teacher gets every interpretation right. You are to test what you hear against the standard of truth in whatever ability God has given you.
Although Paul here doesn’t give the criteria for examining prophetic utterances, John Stott (The Message of 1 & 2 Thessalonians [IVP Academic], pp. 128-129) suggests five tests based on other Scriptures:
The first test is the plain truth of Scripture. Like the Bereans, we are to examine the Scriptures to see if what someone is saying is true (Acts 17:11). The second test is the divine-human person of Jesus (1 John 4:1-3). Anyone denying either His full deity or full humanity is a false teacher. The third test is the gospel of God’s free and saving grace through Christ. Anyone who preaches a different gospel is eternally condemned (Gal. 1:6-9). The fourth test is the known character of the speaker. Jesus said that by their fruits we will know false teachers (Matt. 7:15-20). The fifth test is the degree to which what is said builds up the hearers. An authentic message will strengthen, encourage, and comfort the church, as well as convict those in sin (1 Cor. 14:3-4, 24-25, 31).
But the main problem is this—how do you test a word from the Lord against Scripture if it isn’t pertaining to Scripture? Hey church, I think God wants some of us to sell our houses and downsize so that we can better influence various parts of the city and use the proceeds for other activities. I’ve just invoked God’s revelation to me. Or so I think.
You have to judge if that’s true or not. How?
We might be able to recognize it is something that would generally line up with a practice in Scripture. But practically how would you validate/invalidate?
The responsibility of NT prophets to weigh the prophecies of others does not imply that true prophets were capable of giving false prophecies, but that false prophets could disguise their falsity by occasional true utterances.15
B.B. Warfield:
Miracles do not appear on the page of Scripture vagrantly, here, there, and elsewhere indifferently, without assignable reason. They belong to revelation periods, and appear only when God is speaking to His people through accredited messengers, declaring His gracious purposes. Their abundant display in the Apostolic Church is the mark of the richness of the apostolic age in revelation; and when this revelation period closed, the period of miracle working had passed by also, as a mere matter of course.16
Prophecy in the New Testament is the same as prophecy in the OT; it is a continuation of the same office and function.17
5 Tips for Protecting the Prophetic Word in the Church
Don’t resist the Spirit (19)
Don’t limit God’s word by your own opinion (20)
Be a discerning listener (21a)
Embrace good teaching (21b)
hold fast what is good.
See prophecy is a gift of the Spirit that was blessing God’s people.
1 Corinthians 14:3b …the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.
There’s edification here. Strength. Encouragement. Comfort. Help. And if you make a wholesale abandonment of prophecy, you’re gonna miss out on this crucial blessing.
Rather than throw it all away, cling to the good. Hold it fast.
This is another reason the possibly true prophecy category is problematic. If a teacher says something and binds you to it, but you can’t verify it in Scripture you are obligated.
Revelation is a gift to us from God.
Consider the personal nature of God’s revelation to his people…
Hebrews 1:1–3 (ESV) Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
From a God who condescends to make himself knowable…
John 1:14–18 (ESV) And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’ ”) For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.
Jesus came in part, to explain God to us. The detriment of not having revelation…
5 Tips for Protecting the Prophetic Word in the Church
Don’t resist the Spirit (19)
Don’t limit God’s word by your own opinion (20)
Be a discerning listener (21a)
Embrace good teaching (21b)
Keep your life pure from evil (22)
22 Abstain from every form of evil.
Now if you grew up memorizing scripture in the KJV like I did, you learned this as:
1 Thessalonians 5:22—Abstain from all appearance of evil.
Great principle, wrong passage.
Most people’s discernment on abstaining from evil is this—does Scripture explicitly forbid me from doing something? By that I’m not advocating for making rules to define what does and doesn’t please God.
But I’m talking about the freedom of Christian conscience in the fear of the Lord that seeks to live a life that’s pleasing to Christ… Paul describes it as a worthy walk. To walk worthily. To walk in a way that is in measure Christ himself.
How does turning away from evil effect your discernment and your receptivity to the ministry of the Spirit? We have seen many times that discernment is intimately connected to your practice of the truth.
Mark 9:31–32 (ESV) for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.” But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him.
Lose discernment… unlike those who practice…
Hebrews 5:14 (ESV) But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
Practicing what? Believing and submitting to truth. And so immediately we recognize that we need the Spirit of God to do this work in our hearts. How devastating to tell someone your sin will blind you to truth, but you need truth to deal with your sin. It sounds like a catch 22.
But God is gracious. He promises to give wisdom to those who ask, to give mercy to the humble, to draw near to those who draw near to him. We draw near by faith, trusting him to reveal things to us that we cannot otherwise see.
I’d say the Spirit’s work was pretty effectual in those disciples.
Paul wants the ministry of the Spirit to abound in that church in all truth.
Hosea 4:6 (ESV) My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.
It comes from a great God who never lies…
Titus 1:2 (ESV) in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began…
Communion
The God of good gifts who has given us revelation and spoken to us, also gave us himself. That’s always the greatest expression of love—to give of oneself. My life for yours. No greater act of love has even been known that God taking on flesh and becoming the substitute for all who trust in him.
Unfair for a righteous man to be punished for sin. And yet that’s the means by which we are given freedom. The just for the unjust. The innocent for the guilty. The spotless for the stained. He was the perfect lamb of God.
And he is honored when we remember him. And it is also good for us to remember his death for us. If you belong to God through faith in Jesus Christ, then welcome. You are invited to partake and to fellowship around his table.
The bible refers to this time in various ways, one is communion. This is from 1 Corinthians 10:16 that describes what we do as a participation, a fellowship, a communion with Christ’s work. It means that we get the privilege of identifying with him in a close association. It’s a time that we reconsider our relationship.
In that, we want to come prepared with reconciled relationships within the body of Christ and reconciled relationships with our Lord. We want to take a couple of minutes and prepare our hearts for this fellowship. I’ll close that in prayer and then we’ll sing…
PRAY
Sing…
Communion reminds us of the love of God for us…
The Heidelberg Catechism gives us a wonderful answer to the question:
How does the Lord’s Supper remind you and assure you that you share in Christ’s one sacrifice on the cross and in all his gifts?
In this way: Christ has commanded me and all believers to eat of this broken bread and drink of this cup in remembrance of Him. With this command He gave these promises: First, as surely as I see with my eyes the bread of the Lord broken for me and the cup given to me, so surely was His body offered for me and His blood poured out for me on the cross. Second, as surely as I receive from the hand of the minister and taste with my mouth the bread and the cup of the Lord as sure signs of Christ’s body and blood, so surely does He Himself nourish and refresh my soul to everlasting life with His crucified body and shed blood.
As surely as… we gain assurance as we partake. One minister puts it this way:
Do you doubt what your eyes are seeing, what your hands are receiving, what your mouth is tasting? Then don’t doubt that Christ was sacrificed for you, loves you, and will continue to care for you!18
See this is a comfort to us. Imagine the comfort it was to the first apostles who had seen Jesus and been with him physically and then were without him physically…
1 Corinthians 11:23–24 23 For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; 24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”
Take. Eat. Remember. And Believe. That Jesus willingly gave his body for you. Let’s fellowship in it together.
As you know, the bread was the first part of the ordinance. Then came the cup.
1 Corinthians 11:25—In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”
This new covenant is a better covenant. A better relationship through promise. And as we saw, this promise is made by a God who cannot lie. This covenant says that you have been bought with and cleansed by the precious blood of the lamb slain for you.
Blood purified and cleansed things in the old covenant. It does so in the new as well, but it does so permanently. So, this is a reminder that you are clean.
Take. Drink. Remember. And believe. That you now are secure in the blood of Jesus for you.
Let’s remember Jesus together as we partake of the cup.
Our Lord is coming back for us and until he returns, we proclaim his death until he comes (1 Corinthians 11:26)… in fact as often as we eat this bread and drink the cup. We are going to sing about that now and so I invite you stand together.
