1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 The Christian Operating System

Of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filczek takes us through his series, Uprising, from the book of First Thessalonians. Let's listen in.

God Is Leading His Church Through Transition

I'm glad we have the opportunity to come together as a community of worshipers of God through Jesus Christ, and be reminded each week on Sunday mornings that we're not alone, that we have a community that God has put us into and allowed us to be a part of, and it actually is a privilege to have the freedom to gather together as God's people.

It's been an amazing thing to be a part of the journey of Recast Church from the very beginning. We started off as just a few couples praying on Wednesday nights at another church over in Portage, praying Wednesday evenings, strategizing about planting a church.

We didn't even know the name. We didn't know the location.

We did not know where we would be,.

But we were trusting and heavily leaning on God to use us. We began to meet in the basement of a home in the Trestle Creek neighborhood up on the north side of Matawan, north of Red Arrow. We moved to a storefront on Red Arrow where we met and grew to the point where we had two services.

We were considering going to a third service at that location when we began to talk to the schools, and they allowed us to use the space that we're meeting in now. So we've been about three years setting up and tearing down almost every Sunday since then here in this place.

We had hoped that our building would be finished in mid-August, but now it's shaping up to be more like the end of September or the beginning of October. So I would ask that you please continue to be in prayer.

For the timing of that building,.

That we would love it to actually be what they're saying right now. So October would be fine, but not, maybe it ends up being a Christmas present, I hope not. But at this point, October is what we're shooting for.

And so be in prayer about that. The good news is that we can stay in this space. I don't know if you guys realize this, but originally, according to the very first plans, my very first communication with the superintendent of the schools, this would have been our last Sunday in this building.

According to the first conversation, we would have had to take everything out of here on this Sunday at the end of the service and be done. But they've allowed that to extend. Unfortunately for the school, the contract that they had for this building has fallen through.

So I feel bad for what that means for the community, but actually it is helpful to us because now we can continue to meet in this place indefinitely with some changes. They are gonna begin to use all of the space in the classroom area on this main floor is now gonna be used for ancillary services and offices.

And so because of that, all of our classrooms are now gonna be moved up to the upstairs, what we use there. And we are gonna be paring down the children's program for the next couple of months and seeking to just try to remain flexible during this time.

And I appreciate your willingness to be flexible as we try to make as smooth a transition as possible, but how many of you would just identify that you've experienced enough transition to know that smooth usually doesn't define it?

Did you know that? I mean, we pray and we ask for a smooth transition and usually God is gracious to give us exactly what we need, which is a choppy transition. So, and many of us in various ways, some of us kind of thrive off of that change.

We like that. And then others, it's like, oh, just call me when it's over, right? And I'll come visit in a new building, but hang in there. I believe that God is preparing all of us to be super excited when we get in the new building.

I think by that point, we'll be tired with the setup and tear down, going back to that again in two weeks. And so with that, yeah, and that reminds me, not this next Sunday, not today, not next Sunday, but the following Sunday.

Again, anybody that can help out at the end of the service, putting chairs away and all of that, we're gonna be back to that routine for a few weeks until again, until we get into the building. So, and so everybody's aware of that.

But God loves his church. God loves this church and he is guiding us out from this place to a new place he is providing for us.

And I think it's kind of interesting to think.

In terms of that being the overarching story of the Bible, God taking and carving out a people for himself and leading them to a new place. I don't mean to over-spiritualize a church building like that's the new Jerusalem or something like that.

But in a small scale as a church, we're gonna be living out that type of transition that God has for us in the bigger picture of our lives and where he is leading us and guiding us as a people. And as we consider what God has done and is doing here at Recast Church, I want to turn our attention to the text this morning to introduce us to this very short text that we're gonna be working through.

Rejoicing, Prayer, and Thankfulness as the Christian Operating System

In this section of scripture, we are going to find three things that are so fundamental to the Christian life that I'm going to call them the operating system of the Christian life. Now, that's in terms of, in case some of you might not, that might not speak to you right away, operating system, it's the program that you use to run your computer or your phone or your iPad or your devices.

And so it has something already pre-installed. When you get it, it already has Windows installed or it already has Mac OS or iOS on it. And so that's already taking up some storage. It's already there and it's the thing that you use to actually do everything you do with the computer unless you're like really into it and then you do DOS.

I don't know, and that's still a type of operating system. But anyways, these things that we're looking at here in our text are so fundamental that they should always be running in the background of your life.

They should always be present. They should actually be influencing and even bubbling up in you and through you to others around you. They should be the pathway through which you accomplish your daily tasks.

These three things ought to define and exemplify the life of the follower of Christ. They are that fundamental. They are, the text is gonna tell us in the very end, the will of God in Christ for you, church.

I'm actually standing up here this morning and going to be conveying to you through God's words something that I know because the text tells me he wants for you. Something that he wants to define you.

And I wonder how many of us before reading this text could name one of them.

If I ask the question,.

What does God most want from your life or what does he want to exemplify your life? What does God want to define your life? If I pose that question to you and you didn't cheat by reading it first, I wonder how many of us would be able to get at least one of them.

Now, it's a bit unfair because these three things are not the sum total of everything that scripture tells us that God desires of us. And so there's a whole, how many of you know that you've read scripture enough to know that there's a lot of different things in there and a lot of words could be going through your mind?

How many of you know there's more than three? And this text is gonna seek to kind of simplify that for you in what can become very complex in our minds. What does God desire of us? Well, some of you may say, faith, hope, and love.

There's the three things, faith, hope, and love. Well, those aren't the three that he's gonna identify here. You might say obedience, but that's not on the list. You may say that he desires for us to imitate the life of Christ.

That's not on the list.

None of those would be false. It wouldn't be false to say that those are things that God desires of us. Even our church highlights faith, community, and service. We're saying that those are three things that we believe that everybody needs to be growing and maturing in the Christian life, and none of those three make the list.

It doesn't say faith, community, and service. So does recast have it wrong? Should we change?

I don't believe that we have it wrong,.

But I do think that Paul was intentionally seeking to show us something here in this very short text to simplify for us what we often make very complicated. What God desires for each of us is rejoicing, prayer, and thankfulness.

Rejoicing, prayer, and thankfulness. It's kind of, I would call it, the trifecta of the Christian life as far as behavior and outward manifestation of your relationship with God. An outward showing that you really trust this one, that you really believe he is, and that he loves you and cares for you and has redeemed you and saved you.

Joy, prayer, and thanks. And that should exemplify our lives. Those things should be running in the background of the life of the follower of Jesus Christ.

I believe that as we walk through this text,.

We will see how powerful this very short passage is meant to be in our lives. It's meant to have power here. God wants us to be joyful in Christ. He wants us to be close to him in prayer, and he wants us to be thankful to him for the salvation he has provided.

Many other blessings as well. This text was very convicting to me personally this week. Confession, I can whine and complain with the best of them. I can forget about God throughout my day just like everyone else.

You say, Don, you're a pastor. Aren't you paid to think about God? Yeah, when I'm on the clock. I mean, I can forget. I can be forgetful. I can lack that discipline that is required of us to think about what we're talking about.

Pray without ceasing. That's not like a high and lofty task. Are you equal to that?

Are any of us equal to that?

What does that mean? We're gonna work through that and talk through that. But this text is much more than just a call to you to feel guilty. It's not what it is. The purpose of this text is not that you walk out of here feeling guilty.

It is that you walk out of here encouraged, that you walk out of here with motivation and fuel for joyfulness, for thankfulness, and a motivation to connect in prayer with a God who desires and hungers to connect with you, who has given us that as an avenue of relationship because he loves us and he wants to be connected with you and me.

It's not a duty, not a responsibility, not a task to check off a list, but an ongoing relationship of love with our God who has sent his son to die for us. So much more in this text than a call to get busy doing stuff for God.

It is a gentle reminder to trust him. And more than just trusting him, it's a call to show the world around us that we trust him. It's about our behavior and our actions that reflect on him. What God wants more than anything from his people is that we trust him by faith.

And we will see that joy, prayer, and thanks are all driven by a faith that has experienced the love of the Almighty. So let's open our Bibles, if you're not already there, to 1 Thessalonians 5. We're just gonna read three verses, 16, 17, and 18.

1 Thessalonians 5, 16 through 18. If you don't have a Bible, please raise your hand so that Mike can bring you one down front. There's one here. But everybody, if you just have a copy of God's word on your lap, then you can follow along and see that the things that I'm reading are coming straight from God's word.

And again, since it's gonna be a short passage, navigate over there quickly, or else it's gonna be done before we go. I think I might even read through it twice. 1 Thessalonians 5, 16 through 17. Short text, but brothers and sisters, this is God's word.

God is gonna speak through his word here to us. Again, I say, probably the most valuable thing that will happen today for any of us is this thing right here, that we get to hear the riches of our God speak to us through his word.

Starting in verse 16.

Rejoice always.

Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Again, rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you so much that you have given us an ongoing relationship with you, that we have the privilege and the blessing as your people to live out this life with joy, with thankfulness, with a deep gratitude for what's been given to us, and with a prayerful attitude of walking with you throughout the day, that beautiful metaphor of taking steps alongside of you, and you present with us as we make decisions at work, as we interact with our family, as we talk with others, as we get opportunities to testify of your goodness to us, as we receive news, both good and bad, as we endure hardship, as we excel, and things go well for us.

Father, in all of these circumstances, that you are present with us. And Father, I recognize that some are going on hard times right now. This has been a rough week, and this has been a draining week, and it feels like it's just been drawing down energy, and some people are here and their buckets are full, and everything has been blessing them this week, and it just seems like things have clicked for them.

And we come as a whole host of people with different experiences and backgrounds and circumstances in our lives. Father, I pray that you would meet each person where they're at. Father, I can't be general enough in my sermon this morning to hit everybody, but you can, by your spirit, convict where there needs to be conviction, and encourage where there needs to be encouragement.

And Father, I pray that right now, there would be rejoicing among your people. Regardless of how tough this week is, regardless of how bad the news was, or regardless of how good things have been that might cloud you out.

Father, I pray that you would move our hearts to rejoice in gratitude and thankfulness for the salvation that has been given to us through your Son, and the many blessings that you've poured out on us.

Father, help us to count our blessings, to rejoice, and to be a people of rejoicing and thankfulness this morning, in Jesus' name, amen. Thanks to Dave and the band for leading us. I do encourage you to get comfortable, and if you need coffee, juice, or donuts, take advantage of those up front.

You're not gonna distract me if you need to get up and stretch out in the back to stretch your back out, or whatever it takes to keep your focus on God's word for the next half an hour or so. If you asked the question and you wanted to know the answer to how does God want a church to act, and particularly toward each other, you ought to turn to the text last week.

Last week was about how the church ought to act, and then encouraged in our text last week, leaders to lead well, followers to follow well. We saw instruction to the church at large to help the weak, to encourage the faint-hearted, to admonish the unruly, and to work with all people with patience.

Further, we were told to do good to everyone, even those who would seek to do evil to us as a church. And so that was kind of a summary of last week, but this text this morning is answering a little bit of a different question.

How does God want you to relate to him? How does God want the church, and even you as a part of that church, remember the church is the people, and so how does he want us to relate to him? Last week, think about it in terms of the instructions and imperatives last week were on the horizontal scale, how to relate to one another, but this week is about your vertical relationship with God.

How should you relate to him? And so it's answering a bit of a different question, and that's why I've broken these up. I mean, you look at them as short passages. Couldn't you take them all together?

I'm breaking it up because I think it's valuable for us to see the distinction in this. And I would suggest to you that the fundamental answer to the question, if you had to summarize it in a word, how does God want you to relate to him, it would be summarized in the word faith.

I really believe that that's the fundamental thing. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. Some of you have read it, you know it. And so without faith, it's impossible to please God. If faith is the fundamental thing, it is the fundamental substance of our relationship with God is believing that he is and believing some fundamental things about him.

You see, first and foremost, we must believe that God is worthy of our trust, and it is reasonable for him to desire his people to trust him as their creator. Faith simply defined requires a few things.

If we're gonna define it, it requires a belief that God exists. That's a fundamental component of faith, believing that he is. It also, though, must to some degree believe or trust in his goodness toward his people.

And further, it trusts that he is powerful and sovereign. He is genuinely in control. Faith in God that pleases him, at its most basic expression, if you're taking notes, here it is, is the belief that God is both good and almighty.

The belief that God is both good and almighty. And all three of our imperatives, our instructions, our commands, all different kinds of words you could use for that, all three of our imperatives from our text this morning connect vitally to a life of faith.

Remember that Paul is giving instructions to those within the church about their relationship with God. And a church, by the way, the church in Thessalonica had been persecuted severely. They had been beaten.

Many of them, some of them, it's implied that some of them maybe even died as a result of their beatings for their faith. This church, though, has held on tenaciously to their faith despite a very rocky start.

And so we must make sense of these instructions in light of the context to a persecuted church, but we also ought to bring them to our own circumstances in our own context to make sense of what is this text?

What is God telling us through this text for us this morning? These are short words. There's not a lot of words here in this text. So am I gonna get, am I gonna use our time this morning? Yeah, of course, you know me.

You're like, shorter text? Is it a shorter message? By no means. Just more opportunity to expound a little bit. But they're simple commands. They're simple things that we can wrap our minds around,.

But they're pretty weighty.

They have earth-shattering and ego-displacing power to transform us into people who show the glory and beauty of our God to others around us. So the first, if you're taking notes, the very first point is a clear call for us all to rejoice.

Rejoice Always

Rejoice is the first point, and rejoice always. All three of our verses this morning begin in Greek with an adverbial phrase or an adverb.

And some of you just closed down.

I saw some eyes roll back in your heads. I said a grammar phrase, and you just suddenly like, bleh, okay, wake me up when it's over, right? I mentioned the grammatical term just to make a point here quickly, and then we'll move on from the grammar lesson.

But in Greek, the word order is often used for emphasis. Word order, by the way, aside from emphasis, doesn't even matter. So a Greek sentence puts Yoda to shame, okay? You know how Yoda messes up all his words and he always puts the verb at the end?

Anybody even know what I'm talking about? Raise your hand if you have. Okay, some of you. I thought I knew my audience, but. So, yeah, I mean, the word order does not matter. Greek is a really strange language.

Whoever created that language, I think it was God, whoever created this language had some creativity. I mean, different languages function different ways,.

And some of you have studied.

How many of you can speak at least part of a foreign language? You got some of that under? Well, Greek is really unique in that the word ending tells you whether it's the sentence, whether it's the object, and which adjective, the adjective, the end of the adjective will line up with the noun that it, so they don't even have to be in the same proximity.

The word can start with an adjective that modifies the noun that's at the end of the sentence. How do you know that they go together? How do you know that it's a yellow bus? Because bus is clear at the end, and yellow is at the beginning of the sentence.

It's because of the word ending. The word ending will tell you which word it goes with. So you've gotta memorize all these word endings and all this kind of stuff. So I say all that to say word order can be useful, then, to convey importance or value.

So often, Greeks would begin with the power punch.

Of the first word.

The first word was what mattered most, and we're gonna see that come to play here a little bit in these phrases, these instructions that are being given to us. The text reads this way. Always rejoice.

Unceasingly pray. In everything, give thanks. It is emphatic on the adverb, the description of the way that you do these things. This means that the way that we do these things is very significant to God.

We cannot divorce the adverb from the verb and just say God wants you to rejoice, and you go, I've done that. How many of you would say you maybe rejoiced at something this week? Mission accomplished, I rejoiced.

That's not what the command is saying. We're not gonna get off the hook on that. It's not saying rejoice sometimes. That's okay, just rejoice. Make sure there's some rejoicing sprinkled in your life. Make sure there's some thanks in your life.

Make sure there's a prayer before you eat.

Is that what the text is saying?

Make sure that you pray at the start of your day, maybe before you go to bed, and a couple times in between, good to go. It's not what the text is saying to us. He wants us to always rejoice. He doesn't just want us to pray.

He wants us to unceasingly pray. He doesn't just want us to give thanks, but he wants us to give thanks in everything, in everything. And so here in this first point, we see he wants his people to always rejoice.

This is a command, by the way, that personally has cut, has opened up a cut in my own heart this week that's allowed some pollution to flow out of me. I can be a complainer. I said that in my introduction.

Rainstorm halfway through my morning run? I'm gonna grumble about it. I'm gonna complain. A delay on the building? I'm prone to complain a little bit. Too long between meals? Anybody know the word for that?

Hangry, right? And I can excuse it and I can justify it, right? Like I've got justification for my, you know, I'm getting worked up and I can feel it. Oh, there it is. That's a nice, that's a nice graphic there.

So I don't know if I'm only preaching to myself and maybe three others of you in the room who can identify with being quick to grumble and complain and the rest of you are going, Donna, this is obviously not for me.

You know, I can zone out. But even if you feel like this doesn't apply to you and you're like, no, I'm just easygoing. I never complain about anything.

Everything's always good. It's all good, good, good.

If that's you, just humor me and keep listening because I still think this text is talking to you. I think it's for all of us. God is calling all of us in this room this morning.

To action.

He's calling all of us to take action. Verse 16, by the way, and this is kind of important because of the way that we think about scripture, the way we think that God works in our lives, this is not about your attitude.

This is not first and foremost about how you feel inside. We often think that God, we can get caught up in two faults, playing two things off against each other and really have one or the other. We can think that God is more concerned with our hearts and all he really wants is our hearts and he doesn't really want our actions.

That's the real popular one right now is to really say God does, just, you know, love God then do whatever you want and it doesn't really matter and just as long as all God wants is your heart. But how many of you know that as you read scripture, you kind of see some things that maybe he wants you to do?

He wants you to act on that. There's action involved in it. It's not a good translation, by the way. This is not an accurate, it's not accurate to translate this be joyful. So it's not just have joy in your heart.

It is express joy. That is the command. It is an expression, an action, something that you are to do as you go throughout your week, something that you are to behave on. How many of you know that you can have a joyful heart.

And not show it to others?

Did you know that? You can actually have a fairly good day and not tell your spouse about it. And they don't even know you had a good day and just kind of skate through and that's whatever, you know. But it's telling us to rejoice, to take action.

I believe that Paul, by the way, presupposes that if you're a follower of Jesus Christ and you have been saved by him, you have joy. It's there. It is available to you 24 -7 every single day of the year, every single week, every single month, every single year of your life from the time you came to understand what Jesus Christ has done for you, you have a limitless supply of joy available to you.

If you recognize your condition before Jesus saved you, if you've experienced the great exchange where you gave God your steaming pile of sin and he gave you in exchange his shiny, golden, beautiful, pure righteousness, those who recognize that exchange that has happened or the change in your destiny from eternal separation from God to forever in his eternal glory in a place without suffering, pain, sin, or the limitations of death or illness, those who've experienced that exchange, those who've experienced that change in destinies have an eternal, never-ending, limitless supply of hope and joy.

Do you realize that? It's yours.

Right now as you sit here, you have a limitless, bottomless, unending supply of joy available to you and it's eternal, an eternal source of joy for you. So then the question becomes in practice, what does rejoicing always look like?

Anybody kind of like, what is that supposed to look like?

Is that permagrin?

Just like, you know, like you ever get cramped when you're getting a photo shoot? You know, you get pictures taken. It's like, come on. Two pictures do that to me. I cramp up. I'm like, Linda, you got two good pictures out of my face.

And then after that, it's like, eh. Everything looks cheesy after that. So, I mean, you know, somebody's gotta be back there with a squeaky toy or something to get me to laugh or whatever. Yeah, I'm that juvenile.

But what does it look like in reality? Like, you're gonna go to, how many of you are gonna go someplace to work tomorrow? Even if it's to get up and go downstairs and work with the kids. I mean, everybody's gonna work tomorrow.

Everybody's gonna do something tomorrow. And does it look like annoying your coworkers with a chorus of it's a wonderful morning, like right away when you show up at the office? I mean, that's a recipe for workplace violence, right?

It depends on where you work, but that's not always the best recipe. So, what does it look like to rejoice always or to always rejoice? Is it to say, look at the bright side as someone shares the devastating news of the loss of a loved one?

Is that rejoicing always? Oh, but there's gotta be a silver lining in here somewhere.

Find that.

I hope that none of us are too fussy about the use of the word always here in our text. Without understanding that the call to the church to rejoice always need not preclude the ability to mourn with those who mourn.

We can mourn and still have rejoicing as the operating system undergirding everything. How many of you know that there's a wisdom that says that when somebody shares with you the loss of a loved one or when you are going through the loss of a loved one, you can have joy in the undercurrent while mourning at the same time?

Did you know that? You can have joy and you can even rejoice while at the same time saying, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Job, one of the greatest examples of someone who lost everything, lost everything and said, blessed be the name of the Lord.

He verbalized rejoicing in the midst of that suffering. And how many of you are just kind of saying, God, give me the grace to handle that. Should you take everything from me that I would still be able to bless your name.

When you know that that's a prayer that we utter now and that's something that is a reasonable thing to pray now and it's not something that's really a great idea to wait until you're pressed to then go and make up your mind how you're gonna respond.

But at the same time, God gives you the grace for the day. He doesn't give me the grace today for Monday. He'll give me the grace for Monday on Monday, right? So we ask for it. We say, God, walk with me through every day of my life, through the ups, the downs, the dark valleys of the shadow of death and the pinnacles and the high points and the times of celebration and great delight.

Be with me and hold me fast and keep me all the days of my life and keep me in the joy of who you are and what you have done for me. Paul doesn't spell out, single out for us the specifics of how to rejoice.

But on a personal level, I would ask you to consider this question carefully. Would people who know you best call you a joyful person? Would people who know you best call you a joyful person? Have you rejoiced consistently enough that they see you as a person whose trajectory is one of stability that eternal joy brings in the good times and the bad?

Now, that could be convicting. Maybe God by his spirit would be convicting some of us in the room about that. Like I said, I think he convicted me this week and I've been working through that. But Paul doesn't spell out the specifics, but he does expect that joy is indeed a part of the operating system of your life and mine.

If you've been saved, you take even a moment to consider what that means, you will be moved to rejoicing. When a diagnosis of cancer comes or the terrible phone call of tragedy that we all fear becomes reality, or when the next round of cuts includes our position, trusting God looks like remembering that he has made sure that cancer never gets the final word.

We can rejoice at least in that. He stands with us in the tragedy and we can rejoice at least in that. And our eternal worth has nothing to do with our worth to our business.

And we can rejoice in that.

Are you a complainer?

Are you a whiner?

Let me suggest that if you are indeed and you know it, you felt it when I said it, you know, oh yeah, that probably defines me, then you're a Christian complainer. Then I'd suggest that you ought to consider what's off kilter.

That's what I've had to think about this week. When I complain, I have something off kilter. I'm forgetting the God who loves me, the God who made sure that any suffering or difficulty in this life is light and momentary in comparison with the final glory and joy that will be ours in his eternal kingdom.

So let's practice that joy now by always rejoicing. Second, the second point, we are called to pray unceasingly, to unceasingly pray. And again, this call to always pray either requires us to redefine prayer or to redefine the word unceasing, okay?

Because many of us have in our minds an idea of prayer that wouldn't work always. You just can't always be doing the thing that we've thought of as prayer, right? I would suggest that since Paul begins this with an emphasis on the word unceasing, that we don't bend that word.

And since Paul seems to be calling the church to something he fully expects us to do, we may need to tweak our concept of eyes closed, hands folded, heads bowed, and all that formality that surrounds our traditional thoughts of prayer.

Otherwise, there's gonna be a lot of car accidents this week if you're following his instructions, right? If you think that it's eyes closed, head bowed, if you've got that traditional view of prayer, that it's always this imminent, like preparing myself and washing myself and cleansing myself and preparing my heart to enter into the presence of God, and it's gotta be a really formal, nice, rigid, quiet.