Bible Guys Classics: 1 Thessalonians 5

Hey, Jeff, I just wanted to tell you you look

good today.

Oh that's so encouraging.

Yeah, and you smell nice.

Wow, don't get that close.

And I like your blue shirt.

So we're talking about encouragement today. I think on the

podcast he's Chris, I'm Jeff, and we're the Bobba guys.

So Chris, just in case you didn't know, there's a

difference between encouragement and flattery, there is.

Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I see. Sometimes they're hand

in hands.

Yeah. I think for somebody who has wu winning others over,

which is in your personality type? Yes, yeah, you might

not be able to differentiate between the two. So I

know you're doing the best. Tan Man.

It's part of my strength and we.

Love you for it. You're an encouragement to so many people.

So we're going to start off today. We did this

one other time.

Don't know if it worked or not, but we're doing

the Whisper challenge where I'm going to put headphones on

of a different sort, play music real loud, You're going

to whisper a phrase to try to guess.

Yes, I felt unprepared last time, but I've got a

good one today.

Oh good good. I'm gonna change that phone.

Let me grab my thing here and I'm playing my phone.

Imagine dragons right now.

Okay, can you hear me? Okay, here we go. Ready,

One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them.

Wow. Try that again.

It's one ring to rule them all, one ring to

find them.

The whiffle ball and the fathom. I have no idea.

No, no, here, one more time, One ring to rule

them all, one ring to find them.

Willie Mays threw the ball? No, no, what is it?

One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them.

Well that's a long phrase.

Oh yeah, all right, you know what that's from.

Yeah, it's from Lord of the Ring Ring, of course.

Okay, so okay, it's my turn. Your music already playing?

Yeah, no, it's not yet.

Okay now it is. Whoa, that's loud.

It is loud. But I have to okay, okay, here

we go.

Help you.

I will, yes, I'm your friend.

I have no idea. Dude, it looked like you said

something about Charlie Brown's going to hit you in the face.

Wow, one more time? Okay, help you? I will. I

I'm your friend.

I can't. I have no idea. Man. All right, I

don't even know. I can guess in that.

I literally said help you. I will.

I'm your friend, Dudey.

The lips are the same, just because I did the voice.

Okay, I got one more. I have one more? Yeah?

Wow, sure, okay, because you're really good at these. No,

I'm not. I did terrible last them. Dude, be quiet,

I'm trying to be terrible. I can't believe you have

one more.

Okay, this is an easy one. This, this should be

an easy one. Ready, ready, Not all who wander are lost.

Jack trainer on the hall.

No, not all those who wander are lost.

All those who are lost.

Oh almost almost. Not all those who wander are lost.

Okay, all right, but that's.

Another Lord of the Rings reference. I was into the

whole Tolkien thing this week.

I see, so you just had to do Oh you

want me to do another one?

I thought you were going to.

I'll come up with one.

Okay, okay, one more more? Here we go. Yes, okay,

this is riveting.

Roads where we're going, we don't need roads.

It looked like you said roses are read something something.

Roads where we're going. We don't need roads.

Where we're going. We don't need something.

Oh wow, good job, good job, I said, Rhodes. Where

we're going, we don't need roads.

Okay, ye, there you go.

Go back to the future. Reference.

There, you go back to the future.

That's excellent.

Okay, all right, that's hard. It is very really difficult.

Now Jimmy Fallon does those things, yes, and he has

them play the market the headphones and everything, and it

is but anyway, I just I enjoy watching that, so

hopefully that worked.

That's funny.

But so today we're in First Thessalonians, chapter five.

We're wrapping up, and we're wrapping it up. Yeah, this

is kind of the end. And one of the things

you're going to discover as we read through Paul's books

his writing says he'll write four or five chapters or

whenever he comes to the end of the book, and

then all of a sudden, the last chapter he crammed,

oh and by the way, don't forget this, don't forget this,

don't forget this, don't forget this, and he just kind

of dumps ten big ideas in ten verses. And so

that's kind of how he wraps up all of his letters.

And that's what he's doing today. In first Thessaloni, chapter five,

we're going to start in verse twelve. Won't just read

to the end of the chapter. He says, Dear brothers

and sisters, honor those who are your leaders in the

Lord's work. They work hard among you and give you

spiritual guidance. Show them great respect and wholehearted love because

of their work, and live peacefully, peacefully with each other.

Brothers and sisters. We urge you to warn those who

are lazy, encourage those who are timid, take tender care

of those who are weak. Be patient with everyone. See

that no one pays back evil for evil, but always

try to do good to each other and to all people.

Always be joyful, never stop praying, be thankful in all circumstances,

for this is God's will for you, who belong to

Christ Jesus. Do not stifle the Holy spirit. Do not

scoff at prophecies, but test everything that is said, Hold

on to what is good, stay away from every kind

of evil. Now, may the God of Peace make you

holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and

soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus

Christ comes again. God will make this happen for he

who call you. It's faithful. Dear brothers and sisters, pray

for us. Greet all the brothers and sisters with Christian love.

I command you, in the name of the Lord, read

this letter to all the brothers and sisters. And may

the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Mm.

So he's writing back to the Church of Thessalonika and

uh and this and this is the church where he

ran into a little bit of trouble, right, and he

fled and and he's writing back and he's giving.

Them he didn't get in trouble in the church. He

got in trouble in the town.

In the town. That's that's actually correct, because the towns.

We've been, we've been in trouble in churches and had

to flee. But that's a whole different story. That's the

story for another day, for another day.

That's funny, you know, I get in trouble with the town,

that's right. And they try to follow him, and he

is this is he sort of ran and went to Athens.

He's writing back to Thessalonians and uh and uh, and

he's he's encouraging them and and today is just sort

of like a slew of advice.

Well, there's a lot of excellent advice here.

So I have this thing in my life application study Bible,

and it's a check list for encouragers. And what it

really does is it breaks down pretty much exactly what

you read, but it just breaks it down like just

small phrases of advice. And this is how different the

pieces of advice are that Paul read.

Because so much of the second portion of this book

is all about encouraging one another. That's right, right, right,

So this is all about encouragers.

Yeah, Basically, in verse eleven, he said, hey, build each

other up. Then he said, honor your leaders, show so

leaders great respect. Live in peace, Warn the lazy, encourage

the timid, help the week, be patient, revisit, revenge, rejoice

or excuse me, resist, thank you. Revisit is also good. Visit, revisit,

and reconsider it one of these. Be joyful, pray, continually,

give thanks, do not stifle the Holy spirit, do not

scoff at prophecies, avoid every kind of evil, kind of

God's constant help. So think about the gamut in which

he has covered. It almost sounds like.

The Book of Yeah, doesn't it.

It's like it's like these things are sort of related

to good living with Christian brothers and sisters, but they're

all so different in terms of pieces of advice.

Right right. This feels a lot like Romans twelve. He

does that where he just unpacks all these behaviors of

how to get along with each other. He does it

so many different times, and I love it because there

are all these little one liners, this one liner, one liner,

one liner, one liner.

And each one of them packs a bunch.

Oh yeah, every one of them. You're like, oh, we

can preach a whole message on.

It, right, yeah, So tell me about this one here.

The one that stands out among every single one of

those that I just read is verse Noumber nineteen that says,

do not stifle the Holy Spirit. Now, now when you

when you read it, you memorize it says quench.

Right, yeah, yeah, quench, ch quench not the Holy Spirit.

And so when we grew up memorizing about that, I'm

sure you've heard sermons about that. How would a person

stifle or quench the Holy Spirit?

What does that even mean?

Well, so there's lots of different views on this. One

would be resisting the Holy Spirit's work for the purpose

of salvation, presenting Christ to you, and that would be

quenching the Holy Spirit. The problem is he's not talking

to lost people, right, So I don't believe that that's

what he's talking about here. I really think he's talking

about don't resist the gifts of the spirit in the church.

That that's really what because he immediately pivots into prophecy

from there. So he says that sentence and then the

very next sentence is, you know, do not scoff at prophecies,

but test everything that's said. And so I really think

he's talking about making sure that all of the spiritual

gifts are functioning. People who have the gift of mercy

need to be merciful, that people have gift of leadership

need to lead. Well, he just said that a minute ago, right,

give honor to the people who are your spiritual leaders,

all those kinds of things. I really feel like he's

just kind of summarizing these are the ways to behave

and you'd behave this way the best when the gifts

of the spirit are evident in the church.

Yeah.

Yeah, And by the way, that's exactly what the commentator

he agrees with you it should not ignore or toss

aside the gifts of the Holy Spirit, because he goes

right into prophecy, you know, when it says you should

not ignore or stifle the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

I think there's other applications to that as well, because

stifle is a pretty general word, right, to quench or

to stifle. You know, you quench a fire, you know,

you throw water on it and it goes out. Or

stifling something is to you know, muffle it, or to

you know, to push it down.

When you stifle a cough, or yeah.

Stifle a cough. Yet I think that there are times

in our lives as well where we you know, maybe

even in the moment, where you know, the Holy Spirit

wants to do a great work and we're so either

self centered or removed from the moment. I always used

to actually tell my teenagers when I was a youth

pastor that when the Holy Spirit's working, you can feel like,

you know, God is just capturing people's attention in the room,

and then somebody you know, does something completely inappropriate selfishly,

and always say, hey, man, that's kind of in the

category of stifling the Holy Spirit, right, And we could.

Do that you're muffling the impact of the spirit.

Yeah, it's it's sort of like when babies cry in church.

It's inevitable. A baby can sit there and be a

darling angel for thirty three minutes and then you say, so,

let me tell you how to come to faith in

Jesus Christ and across that line of faith. Ah, baby,

or just as bad as when that baby's darling sweet

and all of a sudden wakes up and starts smiling

at the people behind him. Next thing you know, there's

twelve people kuchikuchiku and this baby instead of listening to

the gospel. Baby, it happens. Man. I'm not saying that

that the that that baby is quenching the spirit, but

there's all kinds of things that I think that Satan

uses to distract us from the from the magnified power

of the Holy Spirit, and that that idea of don't

stifle or don't quench he's talking about, don't muffle the

impact of the spirit.

Yeah, And I think that sometimes we need to just

pay attention to that and just make sure that we

need you know, whenever we recognize God doing a good thing,

we need to make sure that we're out of the way,

and that we let God do his thing. Well.

I think so often as pastors, both of us are creatives. Right.

You help at the church that we serve at. You

help lead the weekend strategy and planning and all the

creative elements. I was a worship leader for fifteen years,

and I know God blesses us in spite of us, right,

but because of us, Yes, in spite of us, God

blesses the ministry. God blesses the furtherance of His gospel

in spite of us. But there are times, you know,

we're also co laborers with Christ, the Bible says, so

we're also supposed to be doing our part. And there's

times when we bring problems or we bring distractions on

ourselves that weren't needed, right, and then we can take

some of the brunt of that and we distract away

from the gospel. It can happen sometimes, That happens anytime

you're trying to be creative or any time that you're

trying to capture people's attention. There's always that risk, and

so it's this balance. Sometimes we get it right, sometimes

we don't. But this is one of those passages that

keeps reminding us over and over again. Don't get in

the way of the work of the spirit, don't muffle

the impact of the spirit. Don't hold back or resist

the work of the Spirit in the church.

Yeah, there's another comment that Paul makes that is so massive,

and yet he just sort of tosses it out there.

He says, see that no one. First of all, he

doesn't say most. He says, sees that no one pays

back evil for evil, but always not some of the time.

Always try to do good at least. The word tries

in there.

Yeah, right, to each other and to all people.

You know.

One of my favorite comedians is Brian Reagan, and he

says that he says he was on the way off

the door, you know, he sort of sort of makes

fun of how you pay a doctor for.

Him to insult you.

Yes, hey, Brian, those moles are looking kind of weird

and you need.

To lose weight. He's like, thanks, doc.

But then he says he's walking out, and he says,

and just as he's walking out the door, just nonchalantly,

he goes, oh, by the way, layoff all dry, and

he's like what, He's like, you just gonna nonchalantly toss

it out there.

It's like, no more happiness.

Right, it's right.

So it's so Paul just throws it out there and says, oh,

by the way, see that no one pays back evil

for evil. And I think to myself and on large

scales but also on small scales, that is so incredibly

difficult to do. And yet Paul is really inferring that

we are to pay back good when evil is given

to us.

Well, Jesus taught it right. So in the Sermon on

the Mount he talks about that, Jesus says, love your enemies,

And that's an easy one. If he just stopped there

for me and you, we'd be like, oh, yeah, I

do I love my enemies, right, because there's no proof.

There's no proof when if it's an emotion, yeah, I

just oh, I love my enemies. I don't like them,

but I love them, you know, right. And then he says,

pray for your enemies. Well now that, well, shoot, it's

a little harder, yeah, because he doesn't mean pray that

God brings judgment on them. He's he's saying pray for

their benefit, right, right, es, that's what he's saying. That

one now is measurable. Do I pray? Okay, you know

you make me mad, but God bless Chris sar, you

know I don't have to be happy about it. Back

do it. But then he says, Jesus says, love your enemies,

pray for your enemies. Then he says, do good to

your enemies. Right well, now that's a whole other love.

Come on, Jesus. There's a couple things that wish Jesus

had and said, that's one of them right there, because

now he pushes us beyond just being able to make

some kind of mental assent or grudgingly pray for somebody,

and now we have to do good. Paul keys off

of that concept and multiple times again I already mentioned

Romes twelve, but in Romes twelve he says that too,

and he in matter of fact, in Romes twelve he

piggybacks off the same idea, and he says, don't be

overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. That's what

he says. Right after he says, don't get you know,

don't pay back for revenge, because vengeance's mind, says the

Lord God says, I'll get revenge. Right well, ultimately there's

a little bit of satisfaction in that. Would I rather

have my enemy get revenge from me or have to

stand in front of God and God's going to get

his right? Okay, well I can hand him over to

God and let God deal with that. But the idea

of don't be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with

good is really what is This is a very similar

phrase to what he's saying here, right, that Christians should

be famous not for getting revenge but for shocking kindness

and generosity in the face of attacking.

And so there are so many of our listeners, I'm sure.

That, and so I just want to say, you should

work really hard on that.

Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.

I'm trying to encourage you.

I mean, I mean treating you kindly now, So I

earned that. So that's right.

So many of our listeners probably have a hard time

with you know, snapping back at somebody or you know,

somebody is mean, so then they say a remark. So

we don't have to necessarily treat others poorly. In action,

we can we can, you know, strike them with our words.

So sharp and harsh words, hateful words, those are the

same thing as doing evil to somebody, and you think

about this, We always say this if you come to

any of our worship services or weekend services, we always

say that art is a reflection of the heart, right,

and that's why we believe it's powerful. Some people don't

understand that because they grew up at a traditional church

or something, and they're like, what what place does a

movie clip have in a church service? You know, that's

not godly or holy because we're not praise and worshiping

or whatever. But it's like, no, no, no, no, that is

just as godly, I would argue, and I'm dead serious

when I say this, that is just as powerful as

any godly principle that we just read here. Now. Of course,

God's word, because it's God's commandment. In God's Word trumps everything.

That's not as powerful as a movie clips, right, But

what I'm saying is somebody acting out godly principle.

A movie clip that is equal to your comments. Yeah right,

So it's not equal to God's word, but your comments

about God's words or a movie clip that drives home

that same point in an artistic way, those would have

equal weight in your mind.

Yeah.

Well, no, I would say this, I would say, like, okay,

if you see me, give you the example.

I was thinking of.

Every movie, which you could probably name a million of them,

every movie where the hero wins and the and the

the enemy is about to be killed and then the

hero stops.

And helps them.

Yes, right, you know they pull them up off the cliff,

or you know, you know, you know, or you know

the Spider Man jumps in front of the Green Goblin.

You know that the Green Goblin stabs in the back. No,

you know, Spider Man, no way home.

Whatever it is.

What I'm saying is there's a reason why that resonates

with public.

There's a reason why.

It's like when you see the hero not give judgment

to the end and says, hey, they'll make us just

like them, and so therefore they treat they treat You know,

when when Harry Potter grabs Malfoy and and saves him

and he goes back for him and he risks his

own life. Right, these are these are all the movies

that we're familiar with. What I'm saying is there is

something deep down in the soul.

Of every human way won't kill Gullum.

Right.

What I'm saying is down deep down in the soul.

That is a godly thing that God has placed in

your heart. And the reason why is because we are

made in the image of God. We are image bearers.

And the reason why that resonates so heavily, even though

it's just goofy silly art, it's because God has placed

that in you. Yes to actually you know, to resonate

and be inspired. When somebody owes somebody something they deserve,

to be treated evil, and yet they give them love

or salvation or forgiveness, it's because listen, that's what I'm saying.

Yes, what I'm saying is that is God in me.

Yes right, Yes, So I'm not talking.

About the movie clip being equal to the principle. I'm

saying that's the godly principle of being lived in.

But it's why that becomes a part of our cultural art.

It is because we recognize there's a certain nobility in

living the way that Jesus says to live. Yeah, right,

and we're inspired by that. It captures our attension, and

I think it's one of the great opportunities for us

to have a strong witness in our workplace at our

school when you know other people are having bad days.

Other people are miserable, other people are going through difficulties,

and they might bite their head off. They might cause

us trouble for no reason. And the single greatest thing

we can do for the cause of Christ and in

that person's life is not to repay evil for evil,

instead to turn around and do good for them. And

by the way, the Book of Proverbs says that a

man's gift makes room for him in front of kings. Right,

the Book of Proverb says that a soft answer turns

away anger. You can just go on and on and on.

So when we go Jesus way, there is an opportunity,

perhaps to flip the script and change the entire storyline

of the future in that relationship. But there's no hope

of that if you go back and give them back

for what they gave to you. Right, right, And so

instead of us being the moon reflecting the energy coming

to us, we need to be the sun right where

we're generating good instead of just reflecting the evil that's

sent to us.

Yeah, hey, let's talk about one more real quick.

Oh we really don't have time, but let gonna get

your comments on it, okay, Where it basically says build

each other up, especially those who are providing spiritual guidance,

give them respect and all hearted love.

Yeah, you know, and then just live peacefully.

So just the idea of encouraging one another in the

work of the Lord and the ministry together. Give us

a phrase about that.

Twenty something times in the Paul's writings he says one another.

And so alls I would say, is you cannot grow

into the Christian God designed you to be by yourself.

You need the other people so that you can learn

to take the focus off of you and put it

on one another. Right, So it's us, not me, and

that that really is. It's about you. And I can't

grow spiritually unless I choose to build you up. That's

a big part of the writings that Paul makes you

here throughout all of his epistles.

Yeah, and I'm also reminded that when it comes to

actually encouraging one another, you know, the Book of I

Think It's proverb says, an encouraging word when it's given,

when it's in due season, how.

Good it is.

Oh yeah, it's so refreshing. Yes.

Yes, And even though that my gift doesn't isn't necessarily

encouragement like my spiritual gifts is not on the top

of the list.

I have to work hard at it.

But I have to tell you, the people who are

actually so encouraging are some of the best people to

be around.

Yes, absolutely, yep, that's good.

Yeah. So those are just little titbits.

That's a good place to end, and there's a lot

more information in there, a lot of great stuff to

ponder on.

But what an encouraging day. Thanks Chris.

Yeah, you're welcome, Jeff, I like that blue shirt. All right,

all right, we'll see you next time on the Daily Battle. Guys,