Playing with Fire

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak takes us through his series,

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Hope Rising, from the book of 1 Thessalonians. Let's listen in. Good morning.

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Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here. And I want to start off just by welcoming everybody and saying thank you for gathering together to worship our great

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God together this morning. My voice is rebelling against me for some reason this morning, and so I just want to get that out of the way and just say, hey, if it sounds like I'm going through puberty, it might just be that I am.

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I don't know. So if we get that out of the way. I hope that at least part of the reason that we are in this room and gathered together is to hear from God this morning, that you can see past the things that are going on around you to the

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God who desires to speak to you. That even as I just think about his sovereign providence over the events and the things that are going on around us, it's no mystery that he has my voice a little bit shaky this morning.

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But I think in part it might just be so that we can hear his voice, in part so that you can see past me and see past the things that I'm saying to listen to him.

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And so hopefully we're able to do that and not allow that to be a distraction this morning. The fact of the matter is we serve a

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God who speaks to us. Have you ever thought about that? We serve a God who speaks. He is communicative and he desires to communicate with his people.

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And he has decided in his grand wisdom to record written words for us to hear from him, to grab a hold of and think about and to wrestle with and to dive into his character and understand who he is.

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And in these words he discloses for us, of course, primarily who he is.

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But also he discloses who we are, what he has done, and how we ought to in turn respond to that revelation.

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So in our text this morning we're going to see that God is still speaking to his church. For the church in Thessalonica they needed to be reminded to pay attention to God's words.

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And in our text we see an impressive and very important balance being that every church needs to walk. And he's talking to a church and he's speaking to the church in Thessalonica, but no less is he speaking to us here,

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Recast. We are to listen for God to speak, but we are to make sure that what is said is indeed from him.

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That's the balance beam. To listen for God to speak, to be eager to hear from him, to be eager to listen to him, to be eager to hear what he has to say.

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But equally in balancing that is to make sure that what we're hearing is indeed what he's saying.

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Do you hear that balance beam? And that's what we're going to see here in our text this morning. So as we walk through this short text

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I believe we will see that the calling of the church is to play with fire. We are not to quench or to extinguish the

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Spirit's words. We are not to despise or ignore or consider worthless, according to this text, any prophecy without first testing it.

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And once tested we are to hold to what is good and to abstain from that which is evil.

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So let's open up our Bibles, if you're not already there, and read from the very prophecies that we are being told to hold fast to.

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We have those prophecies in our hands. And our text this morning is 1 Thessalonians 5, 19 through 22, a very short passage.

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But turn there, navigate there in your app. If you don't have a Bible on your lap or a means to navigate there, please do me a favor and just raise your hand so Mike can bring you a

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Bible. We want everybody to have a copy of God's Word there so you can see that the things that we're saying, you can read along, you can follow along and see that the things that I'm saying this morning are actually coming from the very

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Word of God. But recast, we have such a privilege, such an awesome and glorious privilege to take in His Word, to read it.

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It's astonishing to me to just think that we have the riches of God's self -disclosure to us, and we have a chance to read them together this morning.

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1 Thessalonians 5, 19 through 22. I'll probably read it a couple times.

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Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything.

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Hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. Again, do not quench the

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Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything.

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Hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for this gathering.

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I thank you that we have the opportunity as Recast Church to gather in this place. We look forward to a time when we're not setting up and tearing down, a time when we're in our building, but for now you have us here and you have gathered us together here on this summer morning to reflect on your self -disclosure, your revelation.

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And I pray that we would not be a church that extinguishes the fire of your prophecies. It's very easy for us to go and do that in the sense of not trusting your

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Word to be sufficient for us. But Father, I pray that you would create in us a hunger and a desire for your

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Word that is consistent with just how powerful and mighty you are and how glorious it is that you are a

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God who speaks to us and shows us who you are. And Father, I pray that you would move in our hearts as we have an opportunity to worship you and praise you, to see you as you are exalted and high and worthy of our praise and worthy of more than just singing to you on a

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Sunday morning. You are worthy that we would work on Monday through Friday at our jobs and our positions for your glory and for your honor, that all that we do, the way we interact with our spouses, the way we interact with our friends and our co -workers and roommates and children and children to parents,

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Father, all of these relationships can be rendered to you as worship. So, Father, I pray that you would be with us as we have a chance to do so in singing, that,

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Father, this would be more than an exercise of our singing skills, but it would ultimately be an exercise of worship to you.

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In Jesus' name, amen. You can go ahead and be seated. And I encourage you to get comfortable.

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If at any time during the message you need to get more coffee, juice, or donuts, take advantage of that. And again, if the chair that you're sitting in gets uncomfortable, you can get up and stretch out in the back if you need to.

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But I do ask that you please keep your Bibles open to 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, verses 19 through 22.

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Again, 1 Thessalonians 5, 19 through 22. Short passage, but you're going to see that even in the short passage, the words matter.

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There's a lot here. The notion of playing with fire in our culture, that phrase, is something that is dangerous, right?

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It isn't a phrase that we use in the English language for a good thing. We don't often think of playing with fire as a good thing.

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It would be a negative illustration, a negative statement. If someone plays with fire, they're likely to get burned.

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Okay, yeah, we know that. But I'm intentionally using that phrase as the title of my sermon because the church is being told to let the fire burn, to fuel it, to continue to allow it to burn.

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And fire can obviously be a dangerous thing, but it can also be a beneficial thing. And I think in the context of the

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Spirit of God, it is both. It is both a powerful thing and also equally a very good thing.

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But it is that the Spirit is a power that is fueling the church and is something that we're allowed to continue.

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We're allowed to continue to let Him have His way in our hearts. As a church, we are keepers of fire, if you will.

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And don't leave this sermon saying, Don encouraged us all to head over to firekeepers and hit the slots. You know, like he said we're firekeepers.

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I mean, come on, right? But the way that Paul in our text speaks about the revelation of God through the

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Holy Spirit conjures up images of fire that we are being commanded to continue, to allow to continue in our midst.

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So our text outlines into two main points. Two main points. Don't let the fire go out is my first point.

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Verses 19 through 20 explain that. Don't let the fire go out. And the second is to make sure that the right fire is burning.

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Don't let it go out, but make sure it's the right fire. And that's verses 21 through 22. And so that's really, hopefully you can see that outline as well as we read it and you think through it and spend a little bit of time dissecting it.

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So look at verse 19 with me and see why in the world I'm talking about fire when the word fire doesn't even appear in our text.

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Like you don't see it there. You can read it and you go, I don't see the word fire. Why in the world would it be using fire as a metaphor? But our first verse tells us this.

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Do not quench the spirit. Do not quench the spirit. Where the word quench there in the Greek language is a straightforward fire word.

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It is to extinguish. It could easily, and I think some of the translations in English use that concept of extinguishing.

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It was what would be used for a torch. If you wanted to put out a torch, if you were being commanded to extinguish a torch, you would use that word there to quench a fire, to pour water on it, to put it out.

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And the ESV of course translates it, do not quench the spirit. But the idea is that there is a fire going on.

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Paul issues this command, by the way, remember to the Thessalonian church. This is a young church who is new to the

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Christian faith. They had little to no experience with the Old Testament. They didn't go to Sunday school.

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They didn't know all the old stories. Most of them were raised in households. Put yourself in that context and think about it.

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They were raised in households and families where mom and dad, maybe grandpa and grandma, sat around the fire as they were getting ready to go to bed and told stories about the tales about the

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Greek gods and goddesses and demigods as if they were true. This is their religion.

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This is what they believed. This is what they held to. And so they would have heard those kinds of stories and kind of tales as children and now they have come into the faith and they've accepted

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Jesus Christ as their savior. They've forsaken those other gods. But interestingly in Greek culture, flame and fire were often associated with the revelation and prophecy of the gods.

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There was an eternal flame, a eternal flame. It was not allowed to go out. It was kept there until it was attacked and destroyed at the

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Oracle of Delphi. How many of you ever heard of the Oracle of Delphi? It was a place in Greek history where people would go and that were involved in the worship of the

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Greek pantheon of gods and they would go there to hear prophecies from, particularly, maybe you didn't know this, it was the god

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Apollo that they would go to offer sacrifices to. And he as a messenger of the gods would bring them a telling of the future or what was going to happen for them.

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In this sense, I believe that Paul was using a very common everyday illustration for this young church, something that they could associate from their childhood and from their upbringing and from the culture around them.

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And he was bringing that common day illustration for this young church to understand something.

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He was not encouraging, by the way, the worship of Apollo, but instead was suggesting that just as they had been raised to believe that Apollo would speak through his oracles, the one true

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God is a God who speaks truth to his churches. And the flames here were a very common

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Greek illustration and they are being told not to quench them and they are an illustration simply for the revelation of the truth of God to this church.

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So what is the fire that the church possesses and keeps? Think about that. What does recast have that the world around us doesn't have?

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What do we possess and what are we to be keepers of? What is the fire that powerfully moves us together as a body toward unity, toward love, toward service, towards compassion?

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What is that fuel? What is the fire we have to spread to the world around us that has the power to transform people's destinies?

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Intense power that has eternal ramifications for those that you work with, for those in your neighborhood, for those that are in your friends and your peer group.

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Is it not the very words of the Almighty? Is that what we're to be keepers of?

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Is that the flame? Is that the power? Is that the truth? Absolutely. It is the revelation that he loves us and sent his sinless son to die for you and me.

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It is this gospel and this good news that is the core of a message that extends all the way back to the very beginning.

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That God said he would send one born of the woman who would strike the head and destroy and crush the head of the serpent, the one who is our the enemy of our souls.

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It's this message that is what the church is meant to keep. In a real way,

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I mean this sincerely, it's something that's been moving in my heart as I have an opportunity. Even this morning, I've stopped walking the hallway up here.

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I go out to the building and walk around the parking lot and walk around in the building and pray every morning, every Sunday morning.

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And I walk through that building out on Front Street without a shred of pride. I don't walk through there thinking, wow, look at what

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I've built. Or even a pride for us, look what we've done, look at what we have accomplished.

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And I hope that we can avoid that. I walk through that building with the awe and wonder that metal has been set on metal and the skeleton of that building is built by his word.

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It is built by his word. The HVAC, the plumbing, the concrete, the blacktop, the electrical system, and now the drywall that's going up slowly.

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And how has all of that come about? In a most fundamental way, these things are coming together as God's word has powerfully moved to gather together a people for his glory and for his name.

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In a very real way, that's the way that a building is being built. Now you can go, well, that doesn't give the carpenters a whole lot of credit and, you know, the people that are working out there.

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We know in a very material sense that there's thanks for the money that's been given, there's gratitude for the way that it's been provided, and all of that.

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But in a very real sense, it is, if you could see what I have seen since the foundation of this church, and some of you have, a handful of us were here from the very beginning, and some of you came on early, and some come later, and some of you, maybe this is even your first week, but from the very beginning, from that small group of five couples who moved to Matawan to start

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Recast Church, we didn't have anything. We didn't have anything to give out to people, to get them here.

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We didn't offer free iPads, or we didn't offer free gimmicks, or anything to get people to come and stay, and yet I'm convinced that the reason that people are here is because the word of God has gathered us.

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It's the power of the word of God to create a church, and that's an awesome and glorious thing.

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His word has powerfully moved to gather people together for his honor and glory. We, I hope, are a people hungry for his word.

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I've seen that, and it is nothing less than the very dangerous, powerful, blazing hot fire of his spirit that is found in the revelation of his words that our church has been formed as a gathering of people from various backgrounds and various walks of life.

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I've thought somewhat incorrectly, by the way, and incorrectly and generally about this verse since I first memorized it years ago.

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Do not quench the spirit. How many know that's pretty easy to memorize? Some of you already had it, right? You were like, oh,

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I've already got it memorized. It's already there, but since I first memorized it years ago, I've thought incorrectly about it because I've thought too generally about it.

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I've always had some general and vague notion that quenching or extinguishing the spirit was a personal, internal, moral issue for me personally.

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That I just take it straight to me. I didn't let it filter through the avenue that God was trying to speak it to a church, to a gathering, but rather, oh, he's just saying that to Don.

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And so I've, in that process, sometimes we can misapply things. So I could,

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I thought, I've thought for many years, oh, I know what quenching the spirit looks like. Quenching the spirit would look like watching a raunchy

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TV show or saying the wrong thing to my spouse. Or I could quench the Holy Spirit just by ignoring him and not reading my

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Bible in the morning, and that's quenching the Holy Spirit, and that's the extent of it. But I never thought much about what extinguishing meant, aside from just maybe putting out his influence over me in some general and undefined way.

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If you'd ask me what I thought I was extinguishing when I quenched the spirit, I would have said something like his influence or his conviction or something kind of general, right?

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In my lazy generalization, I had ignored the context of this verse and just applied it directly to my own life as if it isn't part of a larger point that Paul is trying to communicate.

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But Paul is speaking to a gathering of God's people. He's speaking to us together.

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He's speaking to Recast Church this morning. And of course, certainly that is made up of individuals that we all need to take something on.

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But Paul is speaking to a gathering, and he wants to speak to all of us corporately together as Recast Church.

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And only once we understand what he wants to say to us as a group, can we rightly go out and live it out as individuals.

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So we need to move on to verse 20 to understand more clearly what he means by not extinguishing the spirit.

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I believe that verse 20 clarifies what is meant by verse 19. We can't just take that verse, put it on a coffee mug, and every day make sure that we don't quench the spirit.

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We need to understand verse 20. We are not to extinguish the spirit, and we are not to despise prophecies.

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Those are parallel in tandem statements. And hopefully this text snaps into focus for us when we read verses 19 and 20 together in this one point.

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Paul is saying, church, don't put out the fire. Don't put out the fire.

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Don't extinguish the fire. Don't despise the revelation. Let the fire of revelation play in our church.

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Let the fire of God's word and his revelation play itself out in our gathering.

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Let God's spirit play here among us. And the fire is the revelation of the spirit of God.

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But I think we need to be clear about a couple of things regarding the word prophecies here. How many of you have some questions about the word prophecy?

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Like you're like, what does that mean? Where's Don going with us? Are we going to start having like, you know, a meeting every Wednesday night so that you can come and I can be the oracle, oracle

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Delphi? Is that where we're going with this? Or you know, something like that. We need to understand a little bit more what the word prophecies mean.

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Paul is writing this to a church without the written word. They have no, they haven't had the full

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New Testament revealed. They had the Old Testament maybe, maybe. And that's only in as much as maybe some of the

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Jews that had become Christians had brought that along with them. Maybe not. I don't know if you ever considered that, but we are far removed from Israel where Thessalonica sat.

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And where it is in predominantly, we see that it's predominantly a Greek background context.

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And so maybe they didn't even have the Old Testament, but they had at least the Apostle Paul's teaching. We know that he was with them for a few weeks, had an opportunity to share the good news and proclaim some of the word of God to them.

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But with 1 Thessalonians even. 1 Thessalonians is one of the very first books of the

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New Testament written. They didn't have Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts.

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They didn't have the book of Romans to turn to. They didn't even have the book of 1 Thessalonians to turn to until it was delivered to them by Timothy.

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So I mean as we're reading this, as they were reading this, they're reading this for the first time. So how were they to discern truth?

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How would they know when God was speaking to them? How could they discern the difference between false teachers and those who taught the truth?

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And so I believe that image that we have in this young church is that some were tempted to shut down and close off the possibility that God was even still speaking at all.

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He has to tell them to not quench the Spirit because what's implied is that some of them were quenching the

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Holy Spirit. He has to tell them to not despise prophecies because some of them were despising prophecies.

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Maybe some were jealous of those who received revelation from God. Maybe some were doubtful about the revelations and prophecies.

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Have you ever had somebody prophesy something for you? Have you ever had anybody say something or just say God's told me blank?

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Anybody ever have that and you doubted it? I have. I'm going to share a couple of those here in a moment.

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But you know you kind of look at it you go well what is he getting to then? It seems sensible that some of them would be doubtful when somebody said

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God told me fill in the blank. Maybe others just found it more simple and less messy and confusing to be more orderly and maybe some were just even saying let's wait for Paul to show up.

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Let's wait for Paul to come and tell us what to do. Others maybe found it to be too much work to test the prophecies against the apostles teaching in the

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Old Testament and so they they just kind of threw up their hands and dismay at the whole thing. But for whatever reason

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Paul tells the church don't let the fire of the word of God go out.

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Fundamental to this text is that God is still speaking and the church is to have a humble and eager stance of listening to his spirit.

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Are you eager to hear from God? Are you eager to hear from his spirit? The word despising here in the text is a strong and picturesque word of annihilating something.

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Taking it down to nothing. Taking it down to ash is the idea it is causing something to disappear.

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And Paul expected this early church to encourage prophecy not to allow it to disappear or even cause it to disappear.

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But when I say prophecy you may have the notion of telling the future. You might, how many of you just quite honestly when you hear the word prophecy something about future telling comes to your mind?

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I think probably three of us. Okay. Anybody else? More than a few of us.

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About double a few of us. But it's this, it's not this idea of future telling at all.

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I don't believe that that's what Paul would have had in his mind when he used the word. Certainly some prophecies are about the future and that's where we get hung up because that's the really sensational prophecy isn't it?

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When when we see prophecies in the Old Testament about a Messiah that he's going to be born in Bethlehem. What?

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Are you serious? And so it just grabs our attention when we see Old Testament prophecies that came true or are fulfilled.

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We see the prophecies about the future in the book of Revelation and we're going whoa this is so cool. And we get really hung up on that kind of stuff.

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And some prophecies are about the future but they only account for a very small portion of what is prophecy in the

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Old and New Testament. Prophecy to Paul, remember who was trained in Old Testament Judaism, when he uses that word he probably would have meant the revelation, simply the revelation, the revealing of God's words.

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If God was talking about the future then that is what the prophet spoke about. If God was judging the sins of his people at that time then that is what the prophet spoke about.

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If God was encouraging and commending his church, guess what the prophet spoke about? Commending his church.

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So the prophet is the mouthpiece of God and is speaking his words to his culture around him. That's primarily what prophecy is.

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So what does that mean for recast church? What does that mean for us if that's the definition of prophecy is just the simply

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God revealing something to someone and then they share it? Does it mean we should expect a prophetic ministry here where people can come to someone like an oracle to get a message from God about the future?

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Do we quench the spirit? Are we quenching the spirit? Are we despising prophecies here recast by not having a time each week for people to come and ask me who they should marry, where they should go to college, whether or not to take that new job or to quit their current one?

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Do we despise prophecies? That's a genuine question. I had to wrestle with that this week. Do I despise prophecies?

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Am I quenching the Holy Spirit? At the risk of sounding to some of you like I'm towing a party line, which

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I never really, I'm not a party line tower. You can ask my wife about that. I don't like to tow the party line.

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I like to follow the truth. I like to follow the word of God and see where it goes. I don't like to have allegiances to theological concepts, to theological constructs, to big, you know, big long drawn out arguments.

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I like to see what the word of God says and follow that. And so that's what I'm trying to do here. The party line that I grew up with though, and I'm going to kind of tow it a little bit just because that's where I see the truth going.

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I see that as the pathway for this. I grew up with, the party line

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I grew up with said that God primarily speaks through His word and prophecy in our current era is centered on His word.

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It's centered here. In other words, we really do genuinely have all that we need to hear from God here to live a godly life, to believe and embrace the gospel, to be forgiven, and then to walk with Him.

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Everything that God desires for you to know of Him is already here, written for your edification, written so that you can research it, so you can study it, so you can go back to it time and time again.

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I'm going to let you know that a verbal word is pretty cool, but it's something about those old love notes from my wife to be able to go back and see those again and again is very different than just the verbal one -off here or there.

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You know what I'm saying? And that's what God has given to us is a word here that is in writing that we can we can dig in and get down to it.

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And I largely agree with that idea that the primary place for God's prophecy, the primary place for us to know what

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God desires to say to us is found here. Now I'm not saying that God cannot speak to you about specific things.

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I'm not saying that at all. And I would never put God in a box like that and say He cannot speak, He doesn't speak,

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He won't speak. I'm just saying that the biggest problem for me is knowing and discerning when it is

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Him and when it isn't. How many of you know that that's an issue? That's an issue that we genuinely have to cross that bridge.

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I believe that we've got to work through that and figure that out.

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I believe that we ought to look at this command to not let the fire go out in a very specific way here in our text.

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We can spend so much of our time concerned and quite quite selfishly concerned with the things that God has not revealed.

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How many of you know that most often when people go to God it's about the things that He hasn't revealed that concern us the most?

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Do you know what I'm talking about? Like who to marry, where to go to college, whether or not to take that new job in St. Louis or whatever.

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Like there's all different kinds of things that are out there that we want to know, we want to know, but I would suggest to you that often we are more concerned with the things

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He hasn't revealed at the exclusion of that which He has. Does that make sense?

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We are more prone to go to Him for those things and and not even pay attention or at the exclusion of paying attention to the things that we know

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He has said to us. Now we live in a different context than the

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Thessalonians. They didn't have this amazing book in print. They didn't have it searchable on a device with many translations and commentaries and study notes that are given to us by scholars for free and all different kinds of resources available.

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But we are just as in danger as they were of letting the fire go out. As a church and as individual members of this church we should be eager to hear from God.

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And I think we all assume we'd like to hear from God. How many of you would like to get a letter or a phone call or text from God?

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Just be honest, raise your hand. If that's you, I'll give you a second, I'll give you a second. Go ahead, raise your hand. You would like to, you would like to get that, right?

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I think a lot of us would, but what if it said stop looking at porn? What if that was the text?

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What if the text was stop gossiping? What if the text was love your wife, serve your family, stop acting too busy for them?

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Like do you see what I'm saying? I mean we were ready to hear from God, we're eager, and then all of a sudden we're like, what if, what if the text, you received a text from God and it looked a lot like this?

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What if you received a text and it looked a lot like 66 books revealed over 400 years to multiple different authors over time and He's communicated to you and He said, you know what

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I want you to know? I want you to know me. I want you to know me, says the

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Almighty. And the best thing that I could possibly share with you isn't where you should eat lunch tomorrow, isn't where you should go to college or what career path you should choose, but the best thing, the greatest thing

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I can share with you is myself. And so I've done that. I've showed you me.

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And, and, and I want a relationship with you. And I've showed you that I've gone to great lengths because I love you and I want a relationship with you.

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What if, what if communication from God looks a lot like, like this? And everything that we need to know is available for us right here.

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We can read it every day. We can read it all day. We can, we can memorize it.

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We can go back to it. We can let it roll over our minds and then memorize it, or we can, we can study it with others, or we can listen to others teach on it.

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And there's all kinds of possibilities found in this book. Anybody here that's, that's getting, getting older like me, that's kind of would testify that you've spent time in the

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Word and it's still mind -boggling. It's still got depth. It's still got richness. It's still every time I go there, there's something for me.

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Some, now that's not to say every time it's just like, whoo, it's an amusement park. Sometimes I go there, I'm convicted. Sometimes I've been cut to the quick by it.

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Sometimes I've been there and I've been like, Leviticus, really bro? Are you serious? We're in this again? Leviticus?

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Okay, you're reading through the Bible in a year. And then there's some times where I've been in Leviticus and I've been like, God, I'm so glad I don't have to kill lambs.

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I'm so glad. Like, I mean, it just hits you in a different way. And it's like, I'm so glad that I'm not under that old covenant anymore.

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And there are times where there's richness in all different kinds of parts of the scripture and I don't know, none of that's in my notes, but it's just a glorious and beautiful book that is worthy of our attention and our life because it's how

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God has chosen to reveal himself to us, church. It's what he's given to us. That's the bedrock, the foundation.

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Now we can talk about him, you know, revealing to you all different kinds of things and we can get into all of that.

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But again, I'm convinced that that's secondary and that's to be held very, very loosely. God told me to marry,

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God told me this, God told me that. We are in danger, though, of letting this go if we forget it.

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I think we quench the spirit when we despise this written word, when we get tired of hearing from him, when we get tired of his answers.

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It's despising prophecies. It's extinguishing the spirit. I don't really want to hear from you right now.

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I want to go my own way. I want to do this. Or when we quite frankly seek out a new and fresh message to tickle our itching ears because guess what?

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We already know what this says and we'd rather seek the counsel of our co -worker who's going to tell us what we like.

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Despising prophecies. We're extinguishing the spirit's role in our lives and accepting someone else's in that place.

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Do you know what I'm talking about? I think we, you know, maybe there's some conviction. I can do that as well.

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I believe that many in the broader church in America are guilty of growing tired of hearing a word about God.

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They're tired of hearing about God. He is faithful to reveal himself to us, but we want to hear about ourselves.

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He's faithful to tell us who he is and we want to hear about us. So how can

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I be a better husband? How can I be a better father? How can I be a better mother? How can I get ahead in life?

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Who do you want me to marry? Where do you want me to go to college? And what God offers us as a revelation of him.

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Here I am and I'm the best thing that I have to offer to you. There's an old parable that originated in India that's meant to convey that all the religions are basically groping for the worship of the same

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God. I don't, I don't believe that at all, but the illustration is I think beneficial and helpful for us. Some wise old blind guy set out to the task of describing an elephant.

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Now raise your hand if you've heard this illustration before. Some of you have already heard it. There's an illustration of it up there. The first is holding the tail.

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He says elephants are like a swishy broom that sweeps back and forth. He's blind. He's holding the tail. One is holding the leg and disagrees.

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The elephant is like a large tree trunk, thick and round. A third pipes up and declares them both wrong.

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The elephant is like a snake long and thin as he holds the trunk. The last is baffled by these descriptions as he describes the hard and pointed ivory tusk.

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And the illustration is meant to leave us with the impression that all religions have some part of the truth of God.

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All of us have just are groping out like blind men trying to describe this massive thing called an elephant.

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We can't get our arms around it. We can't figure out the whole of him. And so we're just each one.

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The Hindus are really good on one part and we're really good on another and the Muslims have something else. The Jews have another and and all of us really are just talking about the same thing.

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We're just holding different parts would be the idea. Problem with that was pointed out by Kevin DeYoung, a pastor and scholar formerly from East Lansing.

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He's the pastor of I think University Presbyterian Church over there. University Reform, sorry.

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But he spoke at a conference and he used this illustration. I attended this conference a few years back and he told that story with a twist at the end and he just simply said this, what if the elephant speaks?

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What if the elephant speaks? You see, if the elephant is God in our illustration, then the elephant speaks and tells you who he is.

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He tells you what he's like. He tells you how he rolls. He tells you how you should be in relationship to him and all the lengths that he's gone to to love you and to reveal himself to you.

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Do you see the problem with the illustration? The elephant speaks and has declared himself to us in the pages of scripture.

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A very different picture than what the illustration was intended to try to communicate to us.

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Do you rejoice that God speaks? Do you hunger for the fire of his revelation that transforms and changes us?

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Is your Bible reading maybe just a check box in the morning, something to kind of get through and get past?

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Or boy, here you are, here you are, Don, again making me feel guilty for not reading. I guess I'll be better tomorrow.

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I'll do better tomorrow. I'll get to it. Don't do it for that reason. Don't, don't, don't get back to the word out of guilt.

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Get back to the word because you hunger to know the one who loved you and gave himself up for you.

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Go, go to the word because you know you need it, because you know you need that connection to know how to live and how to walk and how to roll in this world, how to bless others and how to be a blessing and, and how to be blessed yourself.

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All that's wrapped up here in the riches of the revelation of God to us. Recast. Don't let the fire go out.

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Don't despise the prophecies. Secondly, be sure that we've got the right fire burning.

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Be sure that it's the right fire. They are not to extinguish the Spirit and the revelation he brings, but equally they are not to accept every single message when someone says,

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God told me. This is not a call to being gullible. In verse 21, we are told to test or discern everything.

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I like the word discern there. You should be careful to consider and think through the messages you hear from your preachers.

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You should be cautious about what you read, what you listen to, what messages and be at least mindful of the messages that the music you're listening to is communicating and teaching.

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Anybody who ever sat down with a pen in their hand to write a song had an intention for you.

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They wanted to communicate. Everybody who ever sat down with a computer on their lap and wrote a book had something that they wanted to tell you.

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They wanted you to walk away with a certain impression, feeling, thought. They wanted to change you, be discerning.

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I believe that Christianity, by the way, stands unique among the world religions because of this call to discernment, because of this call to test.

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The text calls the church, calls each one of us, and together corporately to wrestle with the truth.

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It says, check your teachers and make sure they are speaking what is true. I met a

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Muslim man when I was a ministry, a minister, missionary in England working among the

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Pakistanis there. He was a Hafiz. Now that doesn't mean anything to any of you, but it's a pretty impressive thing. I never thought I'd meet one in my life.

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A Hafiz is somebody who has memorized the entire Quran. The Quran is about the same length as the New Testament. So as far as word count goes, it's just right around that size.

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He had memorized it all during his youth. That's really, obviously, a massive accomplishment.

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His entire profession was to travel around and quote the Quran at birthday parties and weddings.

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A lot of times, like we would have at a wedding reception, music going on in the background. You'd just have something fun playing, and then people would be talking and chatting and eating.

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They would just have Hafiz come and quote the Quran the entire time. That would be the background of the entire atmosphere.

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They'd just be chanting that over and over. Of course, they probably wouldn't get through the whole thing during one gathering, but that's what they would do.

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But this man confided in me and a British friend as we were sharing the gospel, and he was starting to study the gospels with us, that he had been beaten, beaten severely as a child in the madrasa as he was asking questions about the things he was memorizing.

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Don't you dare ask questions. Now, I don't mean to malign all Muslims. I mean, that's certainly not the way that all Muslims roll, and I'm not trying to create some kind of a stereotype in your mind, but I'm just saying that was this one man's experience in the madrasa, in the

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Quranic school that he attended as a child. Think like vacation Bible school, only during school time and all the way through into the evenings, the madrasa.

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When those beatings began, a journey of questioning his faith. He even said to us at one point, what kind of faith can't stand up to questions?

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What kind of faith doesn't allow you to ask questions? God tells the church to test prophecies to make sure they line up with what has already been revealed by him.

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On what basis should we test prophecies? What is the standard? You know, if it weighs the same as a duck, is that what we're going for here?

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Four of us got that reference. Good for you. In this letter,

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Paul doesn't give detailed criteria. He doesn't give detailed criteria. I believe that the Thessalonians reading this together in their gathering for the first time were being encouraged to strike a balance here.

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They were granted a fire to guard, but they also were to make sure it was contained by the truth.

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Don't extinguish the fire, but test it to make sure it is the true fire. Testing the truth or discerning is as a theme in the

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New Testament. Paul later in the book of First Corinthians speaks of some being gifted in the church with the ability to distinguish between spirits.

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The imagery used is that some will be able to tell if a message has come from God or has come from another spirit, from elsewhere.

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Furthermore, Jesus teaches extensively on this concept of discernment in Matthew 7 verses 15 through 20.

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Jesus warns against false teachers and he says they will come like wolves in sheep's clothing up against the church.

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Then he goes on to explain that you can recognize them though. You'll recognize them by their fruits, by their fruits, by their behavior, by the way they live.

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In other words, one test that can be applied is the life of the messenger. Now not everyone who acts good outwardly is a messenger for God, but show me a person who is not living according to God's word and I can tell you that they are not speaking for him.

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The number one test for us now that we have God's word fully revealed to us is to determine if any alleged prophecy is consistent with the scripture.

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I've had people tell me that God told them to divorce their husband, just flat out told me that in my office.

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God told me, well what am I supposed to, now I'm going to argue with God for just a second, hold on. It's not, he didn't tell you that.

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I've had people tell me that God was okay with them getting drunk. God said it's fine for me.

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Some people will say that God told them to move in with their boyfriend or their girlfriend. Something's fairly easy to test, fairly easy to test.

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They're quite black and white and clear in scripture, but others are not.

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There are gray things, but let me remind you that I believe that the most fundamental revelation you will receive from God is found in his word.

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I am confident you need not go anywhere else to get down to what he desires for you.

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So what if you believe that God is calling you to the mission field? What if you believe that God is calling you to quit your job? He's calling you to get married or whatever you might think that God is telling you.

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Well let me encourage you to seek the scriptures to determine if you're off base. Start with square one.

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Before you go get advice from somebody else, turn to God's word and just try it.

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Now some of you are like, I don't even know where to start. Just give it a shot. Just see if you can dig in and on your own and find some resources and some places that you can search and look to see if maybe you can come to a conclusion yourself.

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One of the greatest things is that the Bible is available to all of us. You don't have to come to a professional to read it, to hear from it.

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So start there and then if you're lost and you're like, I don't even know where to start, then go seek help but after you've made an attempt at least to figure things out.

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Then seek out a godly person who knows the word and has walked with him for a while.

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You can come and talk with one of the elders. Go talk to a seasoned friend who's been a believer for a while and is in the word. Come and talk with me if you believe that God is speaking to you and we can work through that together and find what

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God's word is saying about whatever subject it is that you believe he's communicating. But let me just say this, be very cautious with saying to others that God has spoken to you.

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Be very cautious about that. Don't be flippant about it. Don't be, you know, just quick to ever throw that out.

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I've been tempted at times in my life to push my preferences, hear me carefully, my preferences off on God.

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Back in my college days, I may have been tempted to say, hey Linda, God told me.

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You and me, right bae? I mean, you know, hey, it's us. Am I allowed to use bae?

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I'm probably too old for that and it's, that's too old. Is that, is that too far gone? Anybody? I'm getting, some of the younger people are going, no, you can't do that.

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Okay, sorry. Baby, baby. But in an honest way, when in a very real way, when

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Linda and I returned from the mission field, we moved over there as career missionaries. We were back in about 18 months.

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Crushed. Our dreams of being career missionaries were just dashed and I was tempted to say to the many people who supported us,

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God told me to come back to America. I resisted that temptation because the truth was more like we worked with the other missionaries there to make a mess of relationships and I personally became disillusioned with the ministry that we had gone there to accomplish.

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That was the truth. What do you know? It would have been easier to say, God called us back. That would have wiped away a lot of things.

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Well, we had some pretty harsh criticism for coming back. We had people literally that we love tell us passages like anyone who puts their hand to the plow and looks back isn't worthy of the kingdom.

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There are mentors who would say this cutting things to us when we were already crushed.

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We wanted to be missionaries and we thought that's what God had for us for the rest of our lives. I mean, little did we know that God had this for us and I'm so excited about what he has here, but we thought that was our lives and it would have been so easy to just say,

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God said. Trump everybody else's comments and just be like, oh, you could argue with God about that.

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We're in America. Everything we believe that God may be saying is to be tested and then we are to hold fast what is good.

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But let me just say again, be careful even trying to communicate with others what you think

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God is saying to you. I believe there's a significant arrogance among evangelical Christians and Christian circles and a whole broad stripe of Christianity that speaks with arrogance,

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God said to me. God told me, God told me to go to Kohl's to buy that coat.

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I actually read a story about this. I was looking to buy a coat for a homeless person and I went to Kohl's and they said, oh, we've got a free one right here and God told me and I'm like, man,

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I want God to talk to me like that. I want God to say stuff. Have you ever walked away from a conversation and been like,

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I want that. I pray and I ask God to speak to me like that and I don't get that and it can become discouraging and sometimes the motives for why we're even saying it is a little sketchy.

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Are you getting what I'm saying? Be very careful saying that, but everything that we believe

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God may be saying is to be tested and we should hold fast to what is good. Cling to the things that pass the test, but we are to abstain from everything that comes of evil.

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And the fact of the matter is every form of evil, everything evil and many appearances of evil, evil comes in many forms.

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Have you guys identified that? Have you lived enough to know that evil comes in a lot of different guises, different forms and none of them are good for us.

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All are damaging and will lead to destruction for us. From self -righteousness to wild living, from pride to an unhealthy self -loathing, which kind of are related, from sexual sins to money sins to social sins, from disobeying parents to addictions.

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We are to fight and war with sin wherever we find it in our hearts. We are not to allow it to have any place, any hidden corner of our lives to sit and fester in.

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We are not to toy with it. We are not to give it any room. Abstain is a very strong word in Greek.

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It basically means to be distant. Don't draw close to the line. In other words, stay far away even from all the forms and appearances of evil.

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And that distance, that staying far from the line is separation and it's indeed a calling that's fading in our culture where we would look distinct, where we would look different, where we would look separate.

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We take Christian liberty in our current culture to mean that we can dance with the devil and believe that we'll leave that dance unscathed, but it's not true.

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God forbid that we as a church would be content to look just like the world, but equally

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God forbid that we as a church would be content to be arrogant and self -righteous, deceiving ourselves into thinking that we're better than everyone else because of what we avoid.

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Our only commending graces, the only thing that can be that's truly good that can be said of us is that we are forgiven.

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We've been washed and we are repenting and seeking to bless others around us with the good news with which we have been recipients.

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We have been blessed. This distance from others is not a physical distance or an arrogance, but our calling is to an ethical separation that is willing to stand strong in the workplace.

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When your workplace is full of cursing and refusing to curse, in a business full of shady practices and refusing to cheat, in a group of friends sleeping around and refusing to, not because you're better, not because you're better and arrogant, but because you know you belong to God and He has called you to hold fast what is good and He has spoken to you and you know what

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He has said. So recast. Don't let the fire go out.

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Don't give up on the Word of God. Trust its power, but equally don't be gullible.

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Discern what is true as a good student of God's Word. In this way we can guard the flame and be keepers of the truth.

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And the central message of this powerful fire is that God sent His Son Jesus to die for us. We come to communion each week to take a cracker to remember the body of Christ that was broken for us and we take a cup of juice to remember

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His blood that was shed for us. So those of you that are here that are all in with Christ and and you know if you've asked

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Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior and you've bowed your knee before Him and said you're my King, please save me.

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And then come to one of the tables during this next song and celebrate the central message that He has brought you into the family of God.

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But if you've not asked Jesus Christ to save you from your sins, you're here this morning and and you're just kind of you know saying

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I don't know that there's been a time where there's been a turn in me. Then skip communion this morning but please feel free to come and talk with me after the service if you'd like to know more about starting a relationship with Jesus Christ today.

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Recast do not extinguish what the Spirit wants to say to you this week. Do not despise what

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He has revealed. Put on your thinking cap, discern, study, test, seek wisdom from Him this week and then cling to the good and keep far away from evil.

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Let's pray. Father I thank You so much for Your Word.

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It's very practical for the for the place that we live and just the beauty of Your Word talking about the

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Word, the beauty of Your Word encouraging us to trust it and to to trust

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You in it and to trust Your Spirit in the process of revelation. Father I pray that You would move in each one of our hearts to to genuinely grab a hold of Your Word.

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That when the temptation to quench Your Spirit comes and and we have a tendency to seek counsel from others before going to Your Word, Father that You would bring us back, bring us to a place of of testing and wrestling and struggling with You.

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Not just taking it just not not just taking it rote what others have taught us, but being students to know

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You well. Father I thank You that You've revealed Yourself in Your Word and I pray that You would show show us

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Your glory, shine Your light through Your Word to all of us as individuals into this church specifically this week.

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And as we have an opportunity to remember and reflect on the death of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, it is both a a serious thing and a celebrating thing.

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It is a glorious release from the guilt and the sin and the consequences of it. And so Father I pray that we would rejoice as we come to these tables knowing the great deep penalty that was paid there on the cross for us, but also just seeing how much we are loved and rejoicing and delighting in that this morning.

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And Father if there's anyone here who doesn't know You, who has not put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ, I pray that You would give them boldness to go to either somebody that they know here in this church, to go to someone that they know outside of this church who who knows

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You, or even to me at the end of the service. But Father that they would come to know the riches that are available to them in Christ and the great forgiveness and fresh start that is available to all.