Testing, Growing, Praying, Kissing

Take your Bibles this morning and let's turn to 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 as today we finish this epistle and our study in it. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, I'll be reading from verse 19 to the end of the chapter. do not quench the spirit do not despise prophecies but test everything hold fast what is good abstain from every form of evil now may the god of peace himself sanctify you completely and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our lord jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful.

He will surely do it. Brothers, pray for us. Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Let's pray.

God of heaven, now we come to you and ask that you would work. Bring these words to our hearts. give them life and change us as a result. We're thankful for your word. We're thankful for your servant, the Apostle Paul, as he penned your very word. Remind us again that this wasn't just intended for these people so many centuries ago, but for us today. Now, Lord, guide our thinking.

Help us as we look together at your word. In Jesus' name, amen. well, you've gone to the doctor, he's given you a complete physical. You made the appointment because you just were not feeling quite right, you were a little off, so you thought, I need a physical anyway, so you went and see the doctor. Now you're sitting in his office waiting for him to come in.

So he comes in, sits down, and he says to you, well, overall, things look pretty good. You're in pretty good shape. However, your blood pressure is a little bit high, your cholesterol too is a little bit more than it should be. So, look, cut down on the sodium intake, quit salting your ham and your bacon, and stop drinking so much pop and eat a few more grains a little less red meat you should be fine Well that kind of what happening here in our letter to the Thessalonians as we come to the end of it Paul, as we've noted, believes that this congregation is doing well.

Overall, it's pretty good. It's a healthy and robust congregation. It has a few problems, but they aren't major. Not yet. And so at the end of this letter, he gives them a few needed recommendations for their continued health. We read them, just read them in these verses in chapter 5.

Now, it's a bit difficult to arrange these, but I'm going to try. Here's how we ought to look at this. First of all, there are three things he tells us to do. Here are the three recommendations the doctor gives before he says goodbye to these folks. First of all, test for truth. Test for truth, two.

That's verses 19 through 22. Then pursue holiness, verses 23 through 24. And then lastly, engage in normal spiritual exercises, verses 25 through 28. All right? So let's start. Let's see what he has for us.

Test for truth, verses 19 through 22. Here's what he says. Do not quench the spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything. Hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.

Now, Paul addresses an issue with prophecy, so we need to understand a little bit about that. A prophecy. What is prophecy? Prophecy is a word from God, a direct, infallible revelation to an individual who then proclaims it as the authoritative will and word of God. So it's a direct, infallible revelation to an individual who then proclaims it as the authoritative word and will of God.

Now you see that in the Old Testament. You see that with Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Elijah, Elisha, all the prophets of the Old Testament. They received messages from God which were his infallible word to be pronounced or proclaimed to the people. Now remember, the prophets were more preachers than soothsayers. They don so much predict the future as they do preach And that typically when we think of prophets we think of people who just talk about the future But when you look at the Old Testament right we said this before about 25% of what the prophets say is predicting the future.

The rest is preaching the word that God had given them, particularly for the obedience of his people. So they didn't primarily predict, but they preached. Now, just like the Old Testament, the people of God continued to have prophets for a time. People who revealed the will of God for a congregation. Let's look over to Ephesians very quickly. You see them mentioned, and it gives you kind of an idea of them.

Ephesians chapter 2, Paul's talking about that we're one in Christ here. And he's talking about the fact that barriers have been broken down. And he says in verse 19, so then you are no longer, Ephesians 2, 19, so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

Now I want you to note, these are prophets that he mentions here. These are New Testament prophets. He's not talking about the Old Testament prophets. He's talking about the apostles of that day, the prophets of that day, and Jesus as the cornerstone of this foundation. If you turn over to chapter 4 of Ephesians, they're mentioned again when he says, and he gave to the church, he gave the apostles.

These are the gifts. He's saying, here are the gifts God's given to the church. What are they? And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ. All right. So here we find prophets mentioned in the church in Ephesus.

And they are the ones who proclaim and they're given for building up the church. Now, the most famous New Testament prophet was Agabus. We see him twice mentioned in Acts. He's the one who predicts a great famine and then talks about the imprisonment of Paul, says, Paul, you're going to be in prison. Luke talks about prophets coming from the church in Jerusalem to the church in Antioch And then in Acts chapter 13 he identifies a few of the leadership team of Antioch He identifies a couple of them as prophets Also in the book of Acts Silas is identified as a prophet Now in 1 Corinthians 14, Paul asserts that prophets must strengthen the church, encourage it, comfort it, build it up.

Their job is not to do anything spectacular. When they get a word from God, they will use that to build the church up. Now the problem in Thessalonica was that these folks started despising such prophecies and thus quenching the spirit. By despising prophets among them, they were quenching the spirit. Now how do you quench the spirit today? Let me suggest to you, you quench the Spirit today when you ignore what I'm saying right now.

When you decide not to listen to the Word of God. When you decide not to do what the Word of God says. Because the Spirit of God wrote that book for you. And if you don't do what the book says, you're not doing what the Spirit says. One of my mentors in biblical counseling once said pastor goo dear man of god he says why why do we expect the spirit of god to spend 2600 years writing a book just to ignore it right and expect him to start talking to us and doing things but anyway and so they were quenching the spirit they were despising any word that a prophet gave them we don't want to hear it they said now we don't know exactly what's going on back then.

We're not sure. Paul doesn't tell us the whole lie. There's just something going on in that church. But prophecy in the ancient world was not uncommon. Prophecy was common among all religions, including the Greek and Roman religions where these pagan idolaters would claim to get revelations from their gods. And quite possibly these folks said, no more of that prophetic stuff for us.

That's our pagan background. Anybody who says he's a prophet, forget it. That's what we came out of. Well, that would be like a Muslim saying to you, don't tell me God speaks in the Bible. Don't tell me that. Don't connect God with the text.

Because growing up, in my background, whenever the Koran was read to me as a kid, they told me, this is what God says. Well, we say, so what? God still is connected to the text. So the Apostle Paul is telling them, stop despising the prophets among you. So someone might say to me, so if someone claimed to be a prophet of Jesus, then we should just believe him, right?

And listen to him? No, absolutely not. God required these folks to test them. Do you see that? He says, don't quench the spirit, do not despise the prophecies, but test everything. Test everything.

God required them to test the prophecies to see if the prophet was indeed a genuine messenger from God. Not everyone who claims to be a messenger from God is a messenger from God. Even then. He said, just because someone claims to be a prophet, you don't believe them, you test them. Now that's nothing new. And you just heard a few minutes ago from the Old Testament how they tested Old Testament prophets, right?

Do you notice that Deuteronomy 13, it says, hey, if someone comes and does this miraculous thing, right, does this incredibly miraculous thing, that doesn't mean he's from God. How many of us have heard people say, well, he must be from God because he did this, right? He did this. He says, no. He says, even if they do something miraculous, but then they deny what God has said and they run contrary to what God has said, what are you supposed to do? get rid of them.

They're not the real deal. It doesn't matter how miraculous they are. I remember being in Romania one time. I can still see us. We're traveling in a car, and a couple of charismatic guys would take our classes. They would take our classes too.

So there's three of my Romanian brothers in the back seat. I can hear them talking. They're talking in English for some reason. I don't know why. I'm happy so we could hear. And one guy was telling the other two that he knew of a guy who had raised somebody from the dead.

He must be from God, right? And one of the other guys says, fine, he raised someone from the dead, but tell me, how does he treat his wife? Does he love his wife like God tells him to? That's what I'll look at, right? That's what he says in the Old Testament. Things haven't changed in the New Testament.

You heard a few minutes ago from 1 John. What does John say? John says if someone comes speaking great but if he denies teachings about Jesus if he denies that Jesus came in the flesh he not the real deal you got to test Just because someone claims to be a spokesman of God does not mean we take that at face value You have to scrutinize what he says to see if it really does come from God.

Then, after testing, you have a responsibility. What is it? If he passes the test, hold fast to what he says. Isn't that what he says? Hold fast to what he says. If it proves consistent with what God has said, don't let it go.

Now, if what I say to you from this pulpit proves consistent with God's word, then do something with it. Hold fast to it. Do something with it. In fact, I would say to you, if the proclamation from this pulpit proves consistent with the word of God, then you need to accept me as a messenger of God, or Greg, or Dan, as they proclaim the word of God to you.

If it's consistent with the word of God, then you take them as a messenger of God. However, if it proves contrary to God's word, abstain from it. Reject the messenger. And when it says here abstain from every form of evil, that's not just a general thing saying stay away from every form of evil. It's in the context here of these prophets. He's saying if what he proves, if you test him and he proves true, hold fast to it.

But if you test him and he proves false, abstain from it. Reject it. Stay away from it. keep away from any kind of inspired revelation that testing shows has originated from a source other than the Holy Spirit. Someone says to me, but we don't have prophets in our church. And I would say to you, that's right. Now this is a debated topic in the church today and we don't have time.

It's not the purpose of this text to tell us what prophets are. If we're going to do that, we can go to 1 Corinthians 14. But we're not there. So let me just say this. Even though it's debated today, some folks say, some folks that I love, some folks that I respect say that there's still prophecy going on in the church. There are still prophets who receive a word from God.

And I disagree with them. I don't believe they do exist in the church. Why not? Well, I think primarily because of Ephesians chapter 2, which we read a few minutes ago, verses 19 through 21. Notice in verse 20 it says that the household of God is what? built on the what? Foundation of the apostles and prophets with Jesus being the chief cornerstone or being the cornerstone Prophets were foundational to the church We don have apostles today Now again there are some people out there who say there are apostles but they are not We don't have apostles today.

They're dead. They're gone. We don't have prophets today. They're foundational. They laid the foundation. Okay?

So they're not with us. Having said that, you might say to me, Now why did you spend all this time on that if we don't have prophets? How in the world does that apply to us? What's the big deal? And I'll say to you, it does apply to us. Because you still have to test any messenger that claims that what he says comes from God.

It's still there. You still got to test the message. I'm sorry, you still have to test the messenger by what he says. Is what he's saying consistent with the word of God? Listen. Listen to me.

Just because a church sits on the corner doesn't mean it's a church. Just because someone wears a clerical collar, we're a tie. Doesn't mean that what he says goes. Just because he's been ordained doesn't mean that whatever he says is from God. You've got to test him. You know, some are making the argument, for example, today that homosexual relations are legitimate for Christians.

And you might say, but what about what God says in Romans 1, where he says that they give themselves over to these unholy passions and he gives them up to that and it's clear that God's judgment is against that and they say to you well really Paul is talking there about promiscuous homosexual relationships not committed gay relationships that's what he's talking about and you look some of you already looking at me like people say that yeah test it does it does it fit with the rest of the word of God. Is that what Paul is saying in Romans 1? You've got to test the messenger.

A friend of mine sent me an interview from the New York Times with Dr. Serene Jones, who's the president of Union Theological Seminary, which is one of the leading seminaries in this country. You know, going to Union Theological Seminary is like going to Harvard, okay? Princeton and Union and some of those other hi so here's the president of union theological seminary dr jones and nicholas christopher reporter for the new york times has an interview around easter time right and and this thing was kind of long i only going to read you an excerpt from it I want you to test the message This is someone who claims to speak for God Christoph, the reporter, to start.

Do you think of Easter as a literal flesh and blood resurrection? I have problems with that. Dr. Jones, when you look in the Gospels, the stories are all over the place. There's no resurrection story in Mark, just an empty tomb. Those who claim to know whether or not it happened are kidding themselves.

But that empty tomb symbolizes that the ultimate love in our lives cannot be crucified and killed. For me, it's impossible to tell the story of Easter without also telling the story of the cross. The crucifixion is a first century lynching. It couldn't be more pertinent to our world today. Reporter, but without a physical resurrection, isn't there a risk that we are left with just the crucifixion? crucifixion is not something God is orchestrating from upstairs.

The pervasive idea of an abusive godfather who sends his own kid to the cross so God could forgive people is nuts. For me, the cross is an enactment of our human hatred. But what happens in Easter is the triumph of love in the midst of suffering. Isn't that reason for hope? isn't christianity without a reporter christophe isn't christianity without a physical resurrection less powerful and awesome when the message is about love that's less religion more philosophy dr jones for me the message of easter is that love is stronger than life or death that's a much more awesome claim than that they put jesus in the tomb and three days later he wasn't there that one gets me.

Yeah, someone being raised from the dead, that's not a big deal, but us loving one another, that's really something. For Christians, now listen to him, for Christians for whom the physical resurrection becomes a sort of obsession, that seems to me to be a pretty wobbly faith. What if tomorrow someone found the body of Jesus still in the tomb? Would that mean that Christianity was a lie?

No, faith is stronger than that. All right, Now you test that. Test what he's just said, or he or she, what Dr. Jones has just said. Is that past the time? test? Yeah, but this is a seminary president.

This is someone who's been ordained to Christian ministry. Doesn't make any difference. Listen, God requires of you diligence in understanding the word of God and the commitment to test the claims of anyone who claims to speak for him we still have that responsibility and we have the responsibility to hold fast to that to hold fast that which is consistent with the word of god and to abstain be rid of anything that does not comport with the word of god so the first thing he tells us the first little bit that he tells us about keeping a healthy congregation is what?

Test for truth. Test for truth. Here's the next one then. Here's the next thing that our spiritual doctor tells us to do. He says, pursue holiness. Verses 23 through 24.

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. he who calls you is faithful he will surely do it now our epistle Paul has made clear all the way through here that God expects you to pursue holiness remember in chapter 3 verses 11 through 13 now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all as we do for you so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. You should live in such a way, he said back then, so that you can give a good account to Jesus when he returns. And then verses 4, 1 through 3, he begins with this.

Finally then, brothers, we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. Remember, they're doing pretty good, but do more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus, for this is the will of God, your sanctification that you abstain from sexual immorality And so he says the course of your life is such that it should please God and your sanctification remember sanctification means lives separated from sin devoted to God separated from all that sinful and devoted to God okay so that you become a distinct community in this world and so then he goes on to talk about it that includes your sexual lives that includes your working lives that means living as hopeful children of light it means loving one another respecting your leaders of people who rejoice pray and give thanks all those things are true that's a holy life but you notice here that this is a prayer that he offers this isn't a command he says i'm asking that god will do this and he's praying for their complete sanctification he says that the holiness you pursue isn't just this external thing.

Isn't just something so you obey a few rules. He's talking about being holy in a sense that it affects every part of your being. And he says what? That God will sanctify you what? Body, soul, and spirit. Now, again, let me just take a little bit of a detour here.

Paul does not assume here or make the argument that we are three parts, body, soul, and spirit. That we're made up of three parts. It's not making that argument. And I don't believe that we are made up of three parts. I believe we're made up of two. Body, soul, spirit.

Because look, Jesus at another point said, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. heart soul mind so if you add body to that are we made of four parts heart soul mind and body but wait a minute he doesn't say spirit so maybe we're made of five parts heart soul mind spirit and body a few weeks ago and i was you know when i was down in alabama i was lecturing on this very thing and people are coming up to me and saying no we're we're soul spirit and bodies no we're not jesus himself said um don't be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul so inner outer inner outer what paul is doing here is not giving us a a study in the makeup of human nature what he trying to do is pile up terms that that describe every function of your human existence and saying every part of you should be holy characterized by holiness Every function of your existence your physical life should be holy, your emotional life should be holy, your intellectual abilities should be devoted to God. You be holy. You want to be blameless in what you do with your body.

You You ought to be blameless in all your thoughts. Your emotions should respond to God. You should love what God loves and hate what God hates. You ought to be blameless in what you determine to do. What he's saying is every part of your existence should be characterized by this pursuit of holiness. That you stay away from sin.

You kill your sinful desires and you follow Jesus. All right? But notice, why does he, and that blamelessness should be evident when Jesus returns, he says. But notice that he's praying for that. He's not commanding this. He's praying for it.

Why? Because ultimately it is God who gets the job done. All right? That doesn't mean that you're not involved in the effort. You know, this is what I often tell folks. God tells us what?

We've seen it before. We've seen it here. he says, walk in a way that pleases God, right? He says, be holy in your sexual lives. Work hard. Live a quiet life. He gives us these commands.

He says, you do it. But ultimately, it's God who sanctifies you. Look, no one, no one is going to stand before Jesus on Judgment Day and go, yeah. You know, it comes to self-discipline. That's me. Right, Jesus?

Not going to happen that way. we're all going to fall down before Jesus and say thank you for sanctifying me no matter how hard you've worked no matter how you've disciplined yourself ultimately it's God who sanctifies you it's God who separates you from that sin and brings you to the devotion to himself notice he's called the God of peace you remember at the beginning of this of this epistle as we're at the end now let's go back to the beginning he starts up by saying grace and peace to you he starts out many of his epistles that way ends the many of them that way grace and peace what is this it like a shorthanded descriptive way of speaking of the salvation that God brings it it all about grace and peace So this God of peace this God of salvation this God, the one who is intent on your salvation, He Himself, do you notice the emphasis there? He Himself will see that the job gets done. He has taken it upon Himself, this God of salvation.

He is the one Himself who sanctifies you. he says the one who calls you to holiness is faithful he calls you to holiness he's called you chapter 2 verse 12 remember the one who called you into his kingdom and his glory why are you in god's kingdom anyway because he called you and then chapter 4 verse 7 do you remember what he says there for god has not called us for impurity but in holiness he's called us God's call is not just, hey, relax, you're going to heaven. It's a call to holiness. The goal of the gospel is to produce a holy people.

You see? Remember we talked about that? And so the call of God is, I saved you so that you can show your distinctive character in a dark world. I've called you so that you magnify me in a dark world. I've called you so that you magnify Jesus. That when people look at you, they see Jesus.

That's why I've called you. But notice, the God of our salvation who calls us is faithful. He will surely do it. He will make sure you reach the goal. Now, my dad wanted me to be a dependable, trustworthy worker. That was a big deal for him.

Right? Big deal for him. And so he had a goal for me. a hardworking, dependable, trustworthy worker. How did he get? I'm hoping he achieved that goal. How did he try to get me there?

Well, for one thing, he taught me. You know what he told me? He said, Tim, if your boss hired you to do a job, you have an obligation to show up even when you don't feel like it. In fact, in fact, he said to me, the only way you're not going to work I got my first, other than my paper route, I got my very first job when I was 15 years old, working for a guy raising cattle, and he was also a landscaper.

So the first part of the day was always cleaning up after the cows. The rest of the part of the day was going to places and doing landscaping jobs. But anyway, he said, the only way you're not going to go to work is if you're sick. Man, I can remember days I would try to throw up so badly because I did not want to go to work. I did not want to go to work.

But I didn't have a fever, so get going, pal. You're obligated to show up. He hired you. He's paying you. You get to work. He taught me that.

He forced me to do certain things. When I did not want to go to work for my first boss, who was an ungodly guy, whose way of, what's the word we have, human resources, management, right, personnel management, was to ridicule his workers. Man, I guess I must have been really dumb because he really ridiculed me a lot. Right? Ridiculed me a lot. My dad made me go to work.

It doesn't matter how he treats you. Right? Dad, I can't go to work. You're fine. Go. He forced me to do certain things.

And I think of another thing. When we had our paper out, you've got to be trustworthy. You've got to be a man of integrity. Well, some of our customers in those days, let me tell you how paper routes worked in the old days. You deliver the papers, and then you would go door to door on Saturday morning, knock on the door, and have the people pay for their weekly subscription.

Right? You know, people were saying, I paid. No, you didn't. Yeah, I did. You're ripping me off. So my dad's like, you've got to be a man of integrity.

So he ran off these cards and gave my brother and I these hole punches. He says, okay, you give one of these cards to your customer and you keep one. And every time you collect money, you punch his card and you punch your card. That way no one's going to say you're cheating them. Right? My dad was intent on that.

And so he taught me, he forced me, he helped me. He helped me. That's what God does. You see? He'll teach you by His providence. He put you in circumstances He will help you He will get you to the goal of holiness God is more intent on your sanctification than even you are And He is faithful and He will get you to the goal.

Now I don't know about you, that gives me confidence. Because I'm awful weak. I don't know about the rest of you, I know I'm weak. It doesn't matter how weak I am, how certain temptations seem to get me, God is faithful. He will do it. By the way, that ought to give you confidence in your brothers and sisters sitting next to you.

Because you're sitting there saying, I wish God would work in her life. Right? He is working in her life. And you can be confident of that. And you can love that sister. you can love that brother because God is going to be faithful to him or her too. So we, you know, we need to stop bellyaching about one another and be confident.

God's working in their life. He's working in mine. Let's keep going together, right? All right, so here's the second thing the doctor tells us to do, right? Pursue holiness. Here's the last one.

Engage in normal spiritual exercise. Every doctor tells us that, right? You need to exercise more. You know, doctors always say to me, look, just walk or something. Just do something. Do something.

Right? I know I'm not the only one. So here he's saying, engage in normal spiritual exercise. The normal exercises of your spiritual life. What are they? Verse 25.

Brothers, pray for us. Engage in praying for one another. The Apostle Paul. Even the great Apostle Paul is saying, hey, we need prayer. You imagine that? You know, Paul's the kind of guy who just bowls his way through everything.

And do you ever get the impression when you read his letters? Nothing's going to stop this guy. And yet he says, pray for us. Why? Because that's the normal response between people who love one another. Please pray for me.

That's what we're doing if we love one another. Remember, in this epistle, what has he done? He's talked about his longings for these people. how he desperately wanted to see them. He talks about his own afflictions and his own distresses. He opens up to them And so he says pray for us You know if we going to have a healthy congregation we need to pray for one another and we need to pray for one another at a deeper level then i got a scratch on my hand please pray for me we got to go deeper than that we have to start saying to one another things like this you know what i'm struggling right now could you pray for me you know i have a son right now who's just walking away from God, could you pray for him and for me?

You might say, you know what? There's this one particular temptation. Would you pray for me? That's what we need to be doing. We'll have a healthy congregation if we start praying for one another. Or, I'm sorry, if we keep praying for one another.

Because I know we do it here. But pray deeper. he says you need to engage in the work of becoming a family i know you've been waiting for verse 26 i know some of you didn't wait i can't wait till he gets to greet one another with a holy kiss yeah tell us about that one okay i don't think god's telling us to start kissing one another okay i don't think that's the issue here what's going on here well first of all mouth-to-mouth kissing, that's not what he's talking about. Because in that culture, that was erotic.

In our culture, it's erotic. You don't go around kissing. If you kiss my wife on her lips, I'll probably hit you. Right? Her lips belong to me. Right?

So he's not talking about that sort of thing here. He's not talking about that, right? It's kissing on the cheek. Now, when we're in Romania, I mean, that was normal, right? You do this little on the cheek. In fact, it's kind of like just they kind of just make the sound in your ear because sometimes they don't even quite touch it either.

But in Paul's day, that was a sign of respect, right? They did it at these big, it would be like if president, if the president would come and speak, whoever introduced him would kiss him on to cheat because that was a sign of respect It was also a sign of family It also a sign of family We family so we kiss one another Okay It shows that we a unified family You know when I was a boy the only women who would kiss me were my mom and my aunts I almost always hated to see my aunts right away because they were just always kissing my brother and me But that was okay, because why? Because they're family.

It's a sign of being family. In fact, historical evidence suggests that the early church followed the custom of exchanging this kiss after the Lord's table, to show their unity. Now, I think what the apostle drives home is the point that you must treat one another as family. We have to be unified as a family. We are family. Why do you think we call one another brothers and sisters?

Because we're family. And we ought to be close enough so that we can kiss. now look you know my family's kind of close you all know that we're a very close family probably too close but but you know that happened with a lot of effort right my children love one another truly love one another and they love their brothers and sisters who've gotten in the family by marriage. And we all love one another.

You know why? Because we did hard things. We said, look, friends will come and go, but she'll be your sister your whole life. Look, you have a problem with your brother, right? You know the four rules of communication. You go settle it.

You've got to settle it before the sun goes down. and it sounds to me like you're going to have to repent and ask his forgiveness for what you did. Now go do it. Right? It doesn't matter if you don't like your sister right now. You still have to go out there and play in the sandbox with her because she's your sister. Right?

It took effort. And it takes effort in this family. We solve our problems. We ask forgiveness from one another on a regular basis. And by the way, where do we start? I harp on this all the time.

Where do we start? We start by knowing one another. Getting out of our comfort zone. We ought to work hard at becoming a family as a congregation, so much so that our kisses will never be fake. Right? Have you ever seen, I remember this, have you ever seen like the talk shows?

I hope you don't see much of those, but every once in a while you tune in on a talk show and the celebrity comes out to be interviewed. And what does the host always do? Kiss them. Right? They always kiss one another. It's fake.

You know it's fake. They probably can't stand one another, but this is a professional thing. We've got to look good in front of the camera. That ought not to be the case here. If we were walking around giving each other holy kisses, it should never be fake. Our relationship should be the real deal.

We truly are brothers and sisters. The last thing he says in verse 27, I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers. Here's the last thing. So we're engaged in prayer. Here's our spiritual exercises. We engage in prayer where we are a family.

We engage in unity as a family. We engage in the work of listening to the word of God, listening to the word of God. The Apostle Paul wants the church to hear these instructions from Jesus And so he says I want you to make a promise that everyone in that congregation will hear this letter Everybody. If someone's absent, make sure they hear it. And the other thing you need to remember is most of the people back then, or quite a few, were illiterate.

They couldn't read or write. And there were no books like there is here. We didn't have printing presses. The letter they got was considered very precious. And so they would read it to the whole congregation. He says, make sure everybody hears this.

Make sure everybody hears this. Don't leave anyone out. Reminds me of Moses in Deuteronomy 32. Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, for it is no empty word for you, but your life. This is your life. you neglect listening to this your life will start to flicker the flame of your life will flicker always be present for the preaching and the teaching of the word of God every opportunity you have take it, listen to it read it it's your life it's your life so if the Rue Baptist Church wants to be a healthy congregation a robust congregation a championship congregation that has to engage in these normal spiritual exercises So after the examination of the congregation what does God tell us we need to do to stay healthy and even to grow healthier?

What's the final word to a church that has a good reputation? Here's what it is. Test for truth, pursue holiness and dependence upon God, and engage in normal spiritual exercise. That's what we need to be doing. And as we do that, we must always, consistently, continually, habitually seek Jesus. Very last verse.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. He went to the cross to buy us with His blood. He intercedes for us this moment. He's pleading before the Father. Holds out His hands and says, I paid for those people. They're yours.

He gave us peace with God. He gave us peace with one another. And all that we've read and studied in this book comes from Jesus. And so it is that He says, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you Father thank you for your word Thank you for its Thank you for the fact that it speaks clearly to us. That it doesn't leave any stone unturned. Lord, our prayer is that we will hold fast to it.

We will not let these words go, but we will certainly, certainly obey them by your power, by your faithful devotion to seeing that we are sanctified. So we're asking for you to help, as just the Apostle Paul did. we pray that you would work this in our lives for it is you who ultimately sanctifies us help us now we pray not just for the health of this congregation but for your glory the glory to be seen by the people that see us we pray this in Jesus name Amen Thank you.