It was good singing. I know some of you will be
thinking of another word there, the word beautiful.
Well, we can describe the Word of God as beautiful as well,
couldn't we? Amen.
We're going to turn this morning in our Bible reading to 1st
Thessalonians chapter 5. Now we're coming near the end of
our studies here, First Thessalonians chapter 5, and
we'll read again from verse 16 to the end.
OK, just a couple more sermons and Thessalonians will be
finished. First Thessalonians chapter 5,
verse 16. Let's hear the Word of God
reading, of course, from the King James Bible, 1st
Thessalonians 5, verse 16. Rejoice evermore, pray without
ceasing in everything, give thanks, for this is the will of
God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
Quench not the Spirit, despise not prophesies, prove all
things, hold fast that which is good, abstain from all
appearance of evil, and the very God of peace.
Sanctify you holy. And I pray God, your whole
spirit and soul and body preserved blameless unto the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithfulness He that calleth
you, who also will do it. Brethren, pray for us.
Greet all the brethren with an holy kiss.
I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all
the holy brethren. The grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ be with you. Amen.
And we know that God will bless to us this reading of His own
infallible and very precious word.
This morning. May we welcome you in the Lord's
name. And we want to say how delighted
we are to see all of you. And for those who are visiting
with us, maybe for the first time or maybe the second.
Amen. Now this morning we are
continuing with our series of expository sermons in the book
of First Thessalonians. And today my text is in First
Thessalonians chapter 5, and we're in verses 20 to 22.
It reads as follows. Despise not prophesying, Prove
all things. Hold fast that which is good.
Abstain from all appearance of evil.
Now have entitled The Message The Touchstone of Truth, and
it's teaching. In these 3 verses, you've got 4
but weighty exhortations from the Apostle Paul.
Remember, these words are written to a young church
navigating itself in a world of confusion, persecution, and
spiritual claims. These three verses, of course,
are not isolated sayings, but they're part of a closing series
of rapid fire royal commands. Each one of these royal commands
press upon the believer the necessity of living by the grace
of God and a vigilant, sober stanfast discerning Christian
life. You see, when I read these 3
verses, one word screams out from these 3 verses, one word
seems to be written over them, and that word is discernment,
discernment, discernment. You see, that is something
that's missing today, even within the Protestant and
Reformed Church, and it's definitely something that's
lacking. Many of us, sadly myself
included, were gullible and we're naive.
So the apostle here is speaking to the whole church, not just to
the scholars, not just to the ministers only, not just to the
elders, but to the church young and old, the Church of men and
women. Every born again believer is
responsible to think and to test and then everything by careful
examination under the authority and sufficiency of the Holy
Scriptures. See, let me tell you, true Bible
believe in Christianity is not anti intellectual.
True Bible believe in Christianity is not passive.
It is not gullible. It is not careless.
It is not naive. It's not a cynical rejection of
all things. No Bible believe in Christianity
involves a careful and a cautious commitment to that
which we rightly call the touchstone of truth.
You see, this morning I want you to understand this.
There is a standard by which all claims, all ministries, all
teachings, all preaching, all doctrine, every sermon written
and spoken, all opinions of men, all philosophies, all religions
must be proved by. And that standard is the
infallible and errant Word of God.
And these 3 verses especially are needed in every age, and
I'll tell you, they're needed in our day more so than ever.
Today. Like in days past, error often
disguises itself as the truth and even believers, folks like
us, without the Spirit of God and without the grace of God,
maybe LED astray. If we fail to exercise
discernment, we need to examine what we hear and what we read.
And that's what these 3 verses are about.
So I have entitled it The Touchstone of Truth and it's
teaching. Now there's four things here
very quickly. One, the proper regard for
prophesying. Look at the text in verse 20.
Despise not prophesying. Now let's try and consider the
meaning here. What does that mean in the New
Testament context? We're going back to the 1st
century. Prophesying included revelatory
as well as declarative elements. In other words, there was a
foretelling and a fourth telling.
And at the formation of the New Testament church at its
foundation, God did grant extraordinary gifts to the
church. The gift of tongues, the gift of
healings, the gift of the words of knowledge, the gift of
revelations. Now we call these same gifts,
and these same gifts served as a temporary and a foundational
purpose. In Ephesians 2 and 20, Paul
writes that the church is built upon the foundation of the
apostles and the prophets. Now, how many times is the
foundation laid? Well, it's laid only once.
It's not repeated over and over again.
We've just put in the footings for the church months and that
will only go in once. Think of a foundation of a house
only goes in once. Now I believe when the Canon of
scripture was completed, the need for these same gifts for
giving us revelation ceased. The writer the Hebrew says in
Hebrews chapter 1 verses one and two, he declares God hath in
these last days spoken unto us by his Son.
And I believe that the finality of Christ's revelation is now
inscripturated in the Word of God.
The Free Presbyterian Church believes and affirms in the
cessation of the same gifts, not because God has grown weaker,
but because His revelation is complete.
The sufficiency, the supremacy, and the authority of the Holy
Scriptures leaves no room for an ongoing revelatory prophecy.
Now I know that others disagree with me, and they are at liberty
to do so. We believe in liberty of
conscience and freedom of speech.
And I think of some very dear brothers and sisters who are
part of the Pentecostal church. But hear me out.
I'm going to ask this question. You see, modern speaking in
tongues, What does it consist of?
It consists of babbling in a nonsense syllables, not a
language. But the New Testament gift of
tongues was a same gift, for the speaker could speak clearly in a
translatable foreign language that the speaker had not
learned. So let's say I met a man from
China and he could only speak Mandarin Chinese, and I didn't
know Mandarin Chinese, and the Spirit of God came upon me and
helped me to speak fluently in a language I hadn't learned in
Mandarin Chinese to communicate the truth of the gospel to him.
That's what was happening in Acts chapter 2.
That was what was happening in the House of Cornelius.
We'll ask another question. You've heard reports of examples
of miraculous healings, but not one report in the 20th or the
21st century compares to the healing ministry of the Lord
Jesus. The blind see, the lame walk,
the deaf hear. The lepers are cleansed, the
dead are raised. It's not there folks.
It's not happening. Even in Pentecostal churches
where they say they've got the same gift of healing, for 100
years there's been fraudulent and spirit spurious claims but
no reported of miraculous healings like in the ministry of
the Lord Jesus. We'll go further.
Where's the prophetic revelation from God today?
Nothing that is practised his practise with the sufficiency
and the accuracy and the authority of those who proclaim
the New Testament gift of prophecy.
And I will give illustration after illustration, but let me
just give one. You've heard the name John
Piper. John Piper had a woman come to
him when his wife was in the hospital.
His wife was pregnant with her fourth child.
And this woman knocked on the door and announced, Mr Piper,
I've got a word from God for you.
I've even written it down. Now think of it a word from God.
God told me to tell you this. Here's what she told them.
Your wife's going to die in childbirth and a baby girl is
going to be born. Now that was spoken about by
John MacArthur in his book Strange Fire in Page 241 to 242.
John Paper went in from that woman at the doorstep.
He closed the door nearly his study and he wept and he wept
sore because John Paper is one of those who believed in a word
from God prophetically, that that's how God speaks today.
But let me tell you this, it doesn't come to pass.
That's the test. What actually happened is this.
Some weeks later he shouted for joy because his wife was spared
in childbirth and she gave birth not to your baby daughter, but
to a baby boy. So where was this so-called word
from God? When someone says the Lord told
me to tell you this, or the Lord gave me a vision, or I had a
dream in which the Lord showed me this, or I have a word of
knowledge for you, or the Lord wants me to tell you this, treat
that with great caution because all that is spoken and all that
is shared must be tested. It must be evaluated by the Word
of God because it can be erroneous.
The speaker can be mistaken. The Bible says in Isaiah 8 and
20 to the law and to the testimony.
If they speak not according to this word, it is because there's
no light in them. Suppose I'm sitting in a
restaurant down there in Belfast, right?
And someone comes up to me and says, hey, reverend, you like a
bargain. Now we all love a bargain.
You love a bargain, don't you? I've got a wee bar of gold here.
And he takes it out of his pocket and he says, look, this
is worth between 4 and 5000 lbs. It's a Troy ounce of gold.
I don't know what weight that is in your hand.
Not very Bighamshire, but it's worth 4 or 5000 lbs.
If you give me £100, I'll give you this here.
Now there's another book in my study by John MacArthur called
Fool's Gold and I'm wise enough to know if someone offers me a
bar of gold that's worth four and a half, £1000 and they're
only looking £100 for it, Sammy, then I know that there's
something fishy here. You see, that's the picture.
What should I do? I would say to the man, let's
take the bar of gold and we'll go into Lund's Jeweller shop
here in Queens Arcade and we'll ask them can you test an
authenticate that this is real gold or Fool's gold?
Let me tell you another little story.
See, it's possible to be deceived.
That's what I'm worried about, right?
There's a man called Aben Johnston, and he was a very
wealthy man. I would love to have met him,
but he didn't come to this church.
But I'll tell you, he was investing in precious gemstones.
He spent $3,000,000 on a blue diamond called the Streeter
Diamond that Sam Walden, the founder of Walmart, won in a
poker game. He spent another on 2.7 million
for a collection of diamonds called the Russian Blue
Diamonds. He spent 17 million in a
collection of diamonds called the Sylvia Walton Collection.
She was supposed to be Sam Walton's daughter.
Over a period of time, he invested $83 million.
Wow, 83,000,000 He invested in precious gemstones and one year
later, one year later, he found out he'd invested his money in
fake diamonds. They were all worthless.
Sam Walton didn't have a daughter named Sylvia.
In fact, he didn't have a daughter at all.
And he sued his Florida based jeweller, a man by the name of
Jack Hanson. The FBI arrested Hanson for
fraud. And in the year 2000, that's
what, 26 years ago, he was sentenced to 40 years in gaol.
He's still there. He was ordered to repay
$78,000,000 to this man, Aben Johnston.
But I don't think the money was ever paid certainly to that
extent. Now, what was Aben Johnson's
problem? He took the gemstones at face
value. He didn't exercise discernment.
He should have had the desirements examined by an
expert. He lost his fortune.
And you see, let me pick that up.
That's serious deception, isn't it?
That's what we call fraud. But there is such a thing as
spiritual fraud. You can be deceived about
eternal life. There are religious truths being
propagated by spiritual con artists.
And what's at stake is the eternal destiny of the souls of
men. And of course, Satan is good at
counterfeiting, and Satan can make error look like truth.
That's the meaning here. The meaning is despise, not
prophesying because it's easily to be deceived very quickly
here. So what is prophesying primarily
in the broader sense, it refers to the faithful proclamation of
the word of God. We call it preaching.
When you think of going to prophecy, you go in the sense is
to declare something to expound something to to foretell to to
proclaim the Holy Scriptures. John Calvin said by prophesying
I understand the preaching and interpretation of Scripture
whereby the churches edified. Therefore, the command is clear,
do not despise the preaching of the Word of God.
Do not treat it lightly. Do not grow cold toward it.
Do not harbour bitterness in your heart toward it.
Do not sit under it critically without a spirit of humility.
Now you've heard me saying many times, I know we're visitors
this morning, but I want to repeat this 27 years.
I'm not here to bully anyone, but I want you to understand as
a church you should thank God for a minister today because
many churches don't have one and would love to have a minister.
Secondly, you should thank God for a gospel minister, one who
preaches the gospel because there's some occupying pulpits
who don't preach the gospel. And that's a fact in Northern
Ireland, and that's one of the things that's wrong with the New
Testament church here in Northern Ireland.
The third thing is you have a minister who not only preaches
the gospel but seeks to be faithful to the blood in the
book. These 27 years I've sought to
preach the personal book of Christ, present the doctrine of
Greece, uphold the covenant of redemption.
I do not deny the sinlessness of Christ.
I don't advocate and support the introduction of the Alpha
course, I certainly don't promote homosexuality or
transgenderism, and I don't approve of contemporary
Christian music like practised in Hillsong or Bethel in the
United States of America or any other church in the United
Kingdom. God is their judge to their own
master. They'll stand or fall to their
own master. They'll give an account.
But you also have a minister here, not only who occupies the
pulpit, who is a gospel minister, who's faithful to the
blood and the book, who who who stands by the doctrinal purity
of the personal word of Christ, but you also have a minister
here who's a love for your souls.
And I can say that truthfully, I love all in this congregation.
My heart and soul is in this work.
I'm here because God has called me here.
Now why has God called me here? Well, the Lord alone knows we
have to ask the question despise, not prophecy.
And that's a danger in evangelical Reformed churches
that there's the preaching of the word is despised.
Now why is it despised? Because there's a careless
rejection of that word in heart and mind.
Because that word confronts sin. Because that word doesn't suit
someone, doesn't make them comfortable, It hurts them.
But a sword is meant to hurt fleshly.
Preference. Some prefer trinkets over truth.
Doctor Paisley used to say sermonettes produce
Christianettes. See.
Think of Jeremiah. Jeremiah 6 and 10.
The word of the Lord is unto them a reproach.
They have no delight in that. In other words, they didn't
receive the word with delight, but but the godly man.
But his delight is in the law of the Lord and his Lord of the
meditate day and night. In Second Chronicles 36 and 10
we read they mocked the messengers of God until the
wrath of God arose. You see, to despise prophecy is
not merely to ignore the preacher simply because you do
not like him, therefore you don't listen to him.
But to despise the preaching is to ignore the messenger of God
to your soul. To despise preaching is to
disregard the voice of God speaking in and through his
word. And you see, once you begin to
neglect and despise the preaching of the word, the
reality is there's a problem with your heart.
It's a lack of appetite. It's a lack of knowledge,
Spurgeon said. Nobody ever outgrows the
Scriptures. The second thing I want to say
very, very quickly, if you look at the text, prove all things.
Here's the persistent responsibility of proving.
Not only is that the proper regard for prophesying, but
there has to be the persistent responsibility of proving.
Prove all things. Now here's the balance.
We are not to despise prophesying, but neither are we
to swallow everything uncritically.
The word prove means to test, to examine, to scrutinise, discern.
As I've said, Bible believing Christianity is not anti
intellectual. We are commanded to examine and
evaluate and test and think everything that we hear,
everything that we read. The example of the Bereans, Acts
1711, they search the scriptures daily whether these things were
so. Did you know that Paul's
preaching was tested? They heard Paul preaching.
Could that be right? And they searched the Old
Testament Scriptures not out of belief or out of unbelief, but
out of a revelation for truth. You see, to be discerning
requires an evaluation and an examination.
And that evaluation and examination must be tested in
the light of the Holy Scriptures.
The Bible is our sole infallible guide, the inerrant, sufficient
supreme guide for determining truth and discerning error.
We have to guard the Church from false doctrine, from counterfeit
spiritual experiences, from emotionalism without truth, from
man's centre teaching. Remember, even Satan can
misquote and misuse the Scriptures.
Matthew 4. He quoted the scriptures to
Christ but twisted its meaning. The Lord Jesus responded not by
rejecting the scriptures, but by rightly interpreting it.
Prove all things requires one knowledge of the Word. 2A
Dependence of the Holy Spirit, 3 Humility of heart, 4A Love for
the truth, 5A Fear of God and 6A love for Christ.
You see, if even the Apostolic teaching of Paul was examined by
the Holy Scriptures, how much more must modern preaching be
tested? Can Christians be deceived?
Yes. Think of fool's gold.
Think of strange fire by the late John MacArthur.
Genuine people can be misled. Even the South.
Even Abian Johnson, the man who bought the gemstones that turned
out to be fake, spent $83 million and lost his fortune.
You think of the woman prophesying to John Piper?
Was that woman wrong? Absolutely.
Was that woman totally insensitive?
Absolutely. See every purported prophecy.
Listen to me carefully. Every dream, every vision, every
pronouncement or word of knowledge, if it contradicts the
Scriptures, it's wrong. The Bible says thy shall not
steal. So if you go out and steal,
you're breaking the law of God. The Bible says thy shall not
kill, You go out and kill. Cold blooded, premeditated
murder. That is breaking the law.
The Bible says thy shall not commit adultery.
You go out and commit adultery, you're breaking the law of God.
The Bible says remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
And those who profane the Sabbath, they're breaking the
law of God. See, Jesus said, take heed that
no man deceive you. Paul said in Ephesians 4 and 14,
he warned of being tossed to and fro and carried about by every
wind of doctrine. It's not what the false cults
are doing. The Mormons, the Juve witnesses
think of the false religions that are blossoming in Northern
Ireland, Buddhism, Islam. You see, the possibility of
deception is real not because the truth is weak, because we
are often careless and I believe there needs to be awakening
within grassroots Protestant loyalist communities and a call
for them to repent and return to the House of God in the day of
God to receive the word of God has found in the book of God.
We should be praying to that in and that's what our state of the
nation prayer meetings are all about.
You think of a bank teller. He learns how to detect
counterfeit money, not by studying fakes, but by knowing
the genuine article intimately. And as a Christian, you should
know Christ richer, better and fuller than ever you have from
the day of your conversion. You should seek to know your
Bible. You should measure all and every
teaching that you hear against the word of God.
I say to you, reject all that contradicts the Bible.
Embrace the great truths of the Bible.
Embrace this fact that the Bible doesn't contradict itself.
People think it does. Oh yes, there's difficulties to
be reconciled, but recognise that sincerity doesn't equal the
truth. We live in a day of online
sermons, a day of podcasts, a day when people put on Facebook
posts and say anything they want.
A day of endless opinions, a day of urgence.
I've got a command from God for you or to prove all things.
Remember what we read in the Scriptures, beloved, Believe not
every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of
God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
Hereby know ye the Spirit of God.
Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ has come in
the flesh is of God. And that's a confession of the
great doctrine of the incarnation.
That's a confession of the virgin birth of Christ.
And if Jesus Christ is God manifest in the flesh, then
you've got to ask not only who came, but why did he come?
And the chief answer, of course, he came to offer himself a once
and for all sacrifice for sins. But this man, after he'd offered
one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down in the right hand of
God very quickly. Just give me a few minutes.
The personal reception of perseverance.
Notice this text. It says hold fast that which is
good. You see true discernment.
It's in this text. It's not an end in itself.
Once truth is recognised, it must be received, it must be
regarded. It has to be embraced and held
firm and held fast. Whole.
Fast implies effort, vigilance, perseverance.
Truth is not to be admired from a distance, but truth is to be
accepted with delight and conviction in the heart.
Timothy was told this and Second Timothy 113 hold fast the form
of sound words. Why?
As we finish, truth has been constantly challenged in every
generation of the church. Secondly, our hearts are prone
to wander, many hearts of a love for what is new and novel. 3 The
world pressurises us to compromise and change, depart
from the truth. Fourthly, you've got the
subtlety of the devil. It comes as an Angel of light
and to hold fast then against this background of truth being
constantly challenged and our hearts prone to wander and the
world pressurising us to change and compromise, and the subtly
of the devil is an engine light. We're whole, we're told.
Hold fast the form of sound words.
And what does it mean? It means that we lay hold of the
truth. We'll receive it to our hearts.
We will love the truth. We will live it out.
We'll be loyal to the truth. We'll refuse to dilute it.
We'll stand to defend it. Solomon said buy the truth.
That's what he told his children and sell it not.
Do you know why? Because it's not yours to sell.
Because the Bible says sanctify them through thy truth.
Thy word is truth. And one final thing as we finish
the practical requirement of purity.
Notice verse 22. Abstain from all appearance of
evil. Here's the final command.
Paul presses these truths into life.
Now it's not enough to discern truth.
You've got to be disciplined. You've got to decide that you're
going to live right. Think of the the subject of this
that will freeze. Abstain from all appearance of
evil. That means the word abstain
means keep away from distance yourself from deliberately.
Think of the scope here. Oh, avoid all that's clearly
sinful. Avoid all that resembles evil.
You see, we're not to to walk and the Cliff face thinking how
close we can get to the edge. We're to keep a distance from
the Cliff face. Our hearts are weak.
Sin is deceitful. The devil is busy.
Our witness matters. We're called abhor that which is
evil. This has nothing to do with
legalism. This is about living a holy life
unto God. This is having the fear of God
in our heart. This is having a a love for
Christ. Think of a father and child
relationship. What does the child want to do?
To live to please their Father and our heavenly fathers in
heaven. And we should live to please
Him. And we should avoid that which
feeds sin. We should avoid that which dulls
us spiritually. We should avoid that which takes
us away from the Lord. Abstain from all appearance of
evil. Here's the proper regard for
prophesying. Despise it not.
Here, of course, is the persistent responsibility of
proving. Approve all things.
Here, of course, is a personal perception of perseverance.
Hold fast that which is good. And here's the practical
requirement of purity. Abstain from all appearance of
evil. May the Lord take these few
thoughts this morning and bless them to your heart as I have
tried to open up this passage of Scripture once again.