Tabor Baptist Church

• Love your God will all your heart
• Love your neighbour
• The greatest commands
• v12-22: various exhortations - what it means to love God and your neighbour
• Recap of last week's ministry: esteem, be at peace, comfort, uphold, patience, who to react to evil
• Last week was about our horizontal relationship with our neighbour
• This week is about our vertical relationship with God

Overview

• v16-18: three encouragements (positive things)
• Rejoice always
• Pray without ceasing
• Give thanks
• v19-22: four directives (negative things)
• Do not quench the Holy Spirit
• Do not despise prophesies
• Test all things
• Abstain from evil

Can be thought of as seven P's

• Praise
• Prayer
• Pattern of thanksgiving
• Not putting out the flame
• Not prejudging
• Proving all things
• Purposely abstaining from evil

Three Encouragements

Rejoice always

• The Thessalonian church had great joy even in the midst of persecution
• It is a command
• It doesn't mean we won't know sadness
• It means we are to be a joyful people
• We have every reason to rejoice in God
• Psalm 108
• "Count it all joy when you fall into various trials"
• "The joy of the Lord is your strength" - written in the book & time of Nehemiah

Pray without ceasing

• Doesn't mean to pray every minute of the day
• Our natural tenant must be to lift things to God in prayer
• We pray with the Spirit's help
• Pray for all types of people, at all times, on all occasions
• Do you see this command as a burden or as an invitation?
• Is it our desire to be more prayerful people?

Give thanks

• This is qualified - it is the will of God
• Psalm 103
• There are some many reasons to thank God in the Bible

Four Directives (Warnings)

Do not quench the Holy Spirit

• The Holy Spirit is a person
• He guides, comforts, teaches
• You can grieve the Holy Spirit
• The Holy Spirit indwells the Church
• The Spirit of God dwells within people
• We must not do things man's way and not God's way - quenching the Spirit
• Holding grudges, disobeying God, disobeying the bible
• Too rigid in church, finishing meetings or sermons at set times, dampen a new believer's enthusiasm
• The Holy Spirit is pictured as a flame
• We are to stay in step with the Holy Spirit

Do not despise prophesies

• There were Old Testament prophets and prophets in the New Testament church
• The church was founded on the apostles and the prophets
• New Testament prophets were less about forth-telling but teaching the church of God
• In Acts many in the young Church were blessed with gifts
• Prophets are not needed today since the cannon of Scripture is complete

Test all things

Test all things, just like the Berean Church

Abstain from evil

• Evil comes in all sorts of forms - from the fragrant to the 'naughty but nice'
• We are to call sin 'evil'
• There may be the appearance of evil
• We must not give a bad testimony
• We must be very careful

Summary and recap