1 Thessalonians 5:15-18 - Always Rejoicing and Praying and Thanking

It's back to that time. It is Tabernacle Talk.

Thank you for being here today. We are at the end of 1 Thessalonians, Chapter 5.

And we've been looking at kind of command after command after command of just little nuggets that Paul and Silas and Timothy are giving to these new believers, things that they want them to adopt into their lives, ways in which they want them to

grow. And we are continuing in that. It goes from about verse 12 up through verse number 22. And we'll see about where we end up today.

We're picking back up in verse number 15, where Paul says see to it that no one repays evil for evil to anyone, but always pursue what is good for one another and for all. Here, this is the natural thing that we do.

When someone insults us, we insult them back. When someone takes advantage of us, we would want to take advantage of someone else. This is just how the world at large works.

But Paul here tells these believers, it's not that way if you're a Jesus follower.

You can think even of Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount, where he tells the people gathered there and his disciples, you know, you've heard it said, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

Even as we looked back at Leviticus, we saw that the point of that was that you would have just punishment for crimes that were committed, that if you knock someone's tooth out, they couldn't kill you.

If you blinded someone, you wouldn't have, you know, maybe a family member that was burned alive or something by the authorities. There was a expectation that just punishment would occur.

So I do want to highlight real quick that what's being talked about here is not, you know, if someone robs you and you have the opportunity, you know, you have the footage that you can give to the police or the authorities to say, hey, I know who

this person is. You know, here's their contact info, here's their name, here's where they live. They committed this crime. It is not against God's word to seek justice for wrongs that are done.

Here, what he says is don't repay evil for evil. If they steal from you, don't steal from them. And here, he encourages them in that way.

But he doesn't just stop with don't repay evil for evil. He says, but always pursue what is good for one another and for all. So here, he contrasts repaying evil for evil, but pursuing what is good for one another.

That perhaps if someone does you wrong, they insult you, you're not just looking at not insulting them back. You might be looking at, okay, what is driving this person that they're at, where they're at in their life right now?

Are they struggling with their family? Are they struggling with finances? Are they going through a really dark place spiritually where they are not right with God, obviously, per their actions and their words.

But maybe what can I do to benefit this person? Like, can I help them out in any way? Can I, you know, bring some food by their house, give them a gift card, go out to lunch with them, and be able to be like, hey, what you did wasn't right.

But I'm not harboring, like, any bitterness or anything against you. Like, I've forgiven you. I've passed over it.

It's water under the bridge for me. But I care about you. And I want to know, like, what's going on in your life that that's where you felt like you needed to go.

What a counter-natural thing that is to say, this person is more than the evil that they have done. They're more than their words. They're more than their actions.

They're more than, you know, maybe their attitude. Who they are is intrinsically valuable. And so even when they do wrong to me, I can pursue good for them and for all.

Here, I think that for all, even looking at some of Paul's other books, one of the things that might kind of that comes to mind, at least for me, is that sometimes a person does need to have some consequences, like in Matthew 18 of going to a person,

they won't hear you. You bring along another person and then you bring it to the church and you say, hey, like we want you in fellowship.

We want your good, but for the good of this church body, for the good of the name of Jesus Christ, you cannot hold on to your sin and hold on to the Savior.

And so we are telling you, as those aligned with the Savior, that if you refuse to repent of this open, like blatant sin that you know about and you are holding on to in defiance of Christ, we can't affirm that you are a Christian.

Like you can say that you are a Christian, but those of us with the Word of God and the Spirit of God, in light of what Jesus has said in His Word, we can't like say, yep, we definitely believe this person is a Christian.

So that's one of the things that kind of comes to mind as I read that sometimes we pursue what is good for all in caring about, yes, I want the good for this individual person, but sometimes for the good of the group, there has to be decisions made

that would say, okay, this person that's doing evil, they cannot assemble with the church until they have repented based on their belief in Jesus. So that's verse number 15.

Then verse 16, 16, 17, well, really 16 all the way to 22 is now just a bunch of little short phrases. First, he says, rejoice always. Man, that, we think about that, okay, rejoice always.

We might think, okay, I need to always be in a happy mood, and if I'm not in a happy mood, maybe I'm in rebellion against God? Is that what that means?

No, even as I've highlighted before, I think of Jesus, where it says that Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus.

I don't know if rejoice always carried with it the connotation that you must always be in a happy mood, then Jesus wasn't doing right in that circumstance. That's not what it means.

There are times when Jesus was angry, and we looked at that in the Book of Mark, when he went into the temple and drove out the money changers, and those charging interest, and those taking advantage of people coming to worship God.

And in that anger, if he wasn't maybe in a happy-go-lucky mood, was he sinning? No, that's not what rejoice always communicates to us.

A rejoicing is a consistent fruit of the spirit joy in all circumstances that we know when we're going through hard times.

I know that there's a Southern Gospel music group, a group of family members called the Nelons, that they actually just passed a week or two ago.

And they passed in a tragic plane accident, private plane that one of their friends was flying, and they were going to go up and do a gospel music cruise up in the Northwest. And I saw a little bit of the funeral service. That was held for them.

And even in the grief that people had, the reminders of who God is and his promises and the hope of heaven and the knowledge that God is always with us, even in our darkest circumstances, the Psalm 23, even though I walk through the valley of the

shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me. Things like that, that even in sorrow, we're able to have that underlying joy that says, okay, God's still here. So I'm not despairing. I'm not despondent.

I might have great stress that might bring great drops of blood instead of sweat from my pores. But I know from Hebrew or sorry, yeah, Hebrew swell.

Jesus, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of God.

And that can be true for us as well, that we can, for the joy that is set before us, knowing that heaven is coming, knowing that victory is final with the Lord, that we can go through hard times. We can cry. We can have stress.

We can have anxieties. And we can bring it to God. And we can say, God, I need you to restore my joy.

Think of Psalm 16, one of my favorite chapters in scripture. Psalm 1611, I'm going to go over there real quick, just because, I want to quote it correctly. In your presence, there is fullness of joy at your right hand, our eternal pleasures.

When we realize everything that God has for us, when we realize that this life is definitely not the end, when we know all of the things that we've been given in Christ and that we are promised with Christ forever, I mean, that ought to spark some

joy in us, that we would have in all of our human emotions, something that's pushing us towards God more and more and more, and it's that joy, that rejoicing. So in your sorrow, in your brokenness over sin, in your anger, remember that there is joy

that is coming. One of the Psalms that we went through in Book One of Psalms, sorrow may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning, and the morning is coming in your life.

If you, man, if you've been going through it, if you have been going through health struggles, if you've been going through job struggles, if you've been going through relationship struggles, realize this is not the end, that even if you were to

suffer for every single day of your life until the day that you pass, and frankly from some things in scripture, I think we can even look for some hope and joy and respite in God even in this life, not just looking towards eternity. I think there are

times where he refreshes our soul day by day, even as Paul would say in Second Corinthians, though our outward man perish, yet our inward man is renewed day by day. So as all of that happens, like we've got joy that's coming, that year after year

after year after decade after century after millennia for all eternity is no more pain, no more sorrow, no more hurting, only the joy of God's presence. Then verse number 17 says, pray constantly. How can we rejoice ever more?

What impetus do we have to be happy in Jesus as the old hymn would say? What would prompt us to rejoice always?

It would be to pray constantly in our anxiety, as I've mentioned often from Philippians 4, that in our anxieties, we bring our requests to God.

It would be in our sadness that we pray something like the Psalms, that we would pray the same prayer that Jesus prayed in Psalm 22. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from me?

And then coming again to that point at the end of the Psalm, the same thing that Jesus would have known, you have not forsaken me or cast me off. I am in your presence. When we have emotions, we go to God in prayer.

Emotions are wonderful. They tell us, they are the warning lights on the dashboard of the car of your life to say, hey, something's wrong, something's not quite right. What do we do with that?

Well, we can certainly use the brains that God gave us and interact with our world and try and find out if there's things that we can do of maybe better planning or better time management or better interactions with other people.

We can certainly do that. That would be glorifying to God. But we must also always pray.

Pray always. If you're feeling wonderful, pray. If you feel burdened, pray.

If you feel alone, pray. How do you know what to pray? Can I tell you one of the best things that we can do is to pray scripture back to God, to say, God, you said this, you promised this.

You told me to bank on this. You told me to have faith in this and to rely in this and to trust in this. And so, God, I'm holding you accountable.

And that's a wonderful thing to do, to say, God, remember your promises, remember your word, because I have faith in your word. So we can pray constantly. We can rejoice always.

We can pray constantly. Verse 18, give thanks in everything, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

So talked several episodes ago about the first time that Paul says this in this book, which is this is the will of God, your sanctification that you would abstain, that you would keep away from sexual immorality.

He says, that's God's will for your life. And he says to give thanks in everything is God's will for your life. So you might wonder, okay, is getting this car or is going to this college, is this God's will for my life?

And as I mentioned several episodes ago, do the things that God says, this is my will, and you will find out as you rely on the Holy Spirit, as you are walking with God, that the decisions that you end up making, if you step by step are in God's

will, then the destination that you'll end up in is God's will. So what would it mean to give thanks in everything?

I think even of what James says in his letter in James chapter one, where he says this, Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and

let endurance have its full effect so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. James tells us, it can be easy to give thanks for the good things, the happy things, the promotions, the, you know, family members that you like.

It can be easy to give thanks for those things, but we're not just called to give thanks for those. We're also called to give thanks in the hard times, in the great trials that come into our life. Why?

Because even the bad things, they make us more like Jesus. They make us realize that we need God. They remind us of the fact that this world is not our home.

It sets our mind and our affections and our hopes where it needs to be on heaven because when our attention is drawn to God, when our attention is drawn to the things of God, we are more like Jesus.

We are becoming more of the person that we were made to be. We're not distracted by the here and now. We're not distracted by the material.

So when things are good, give thanks. Over and over and over again in the Psalms, we're told to give thanks to God. I'm actually going to link a song in the show notes from Sovereign Grace Music.

I think it's Psalm 107. It's either 107 or 113. Give thanks.

Amazing song along this line. So give thanks for your family. I want to preface with this statement.

I've heard it before. What would you have tomorrow if all that you had was what you gave thanks for today? And obviously, that's a silly thought in one sense.

But man, I want to be grateful for everything that God has given me. I want to be grateful for the roof over my head. I want to be thankful for my wife.

I want to be thankful for my kids. I want to be thankful for my in-laws and my family. I want to be thankful for my church.

I want to be thankful for our church building and the area that we're in. I want to be thankful that I live in the country that I do. I want to be thankful that I have been saved and forgiven.

I want to be thankful for maybe the history that God has given me, the people that he's allowed me to interact with, the spiritual blessings that I've enjoyed. I want to give thanks to God for everything.

And I also want to give thanks to God for the miscarriage that my wife and I suffered before we had Evelyn. I want to give thanks to God for the heartbreaks that I went through when I didn't know how I was going to face another day.

But God brought me through. I want to give thanks that even though God moved me and my family 3,000 miles away from our friends and kind of adopted family of half a decade, that He has given new opportunities and hopes and ministries.

I want to thank God for everything.

I want to thank Him for the fact that He has allowed me to see who I am in light of His word, of times when, frankly, to you all, you know, you're listening 18 minutes in, times when I have been gluttonous, that God showed me, hey, like this isn't

right, and you need to change some of your ways. You need to have some self-control. And I've been trying to follow in that. I'm thankful for the times when God has used people to speak into my life, to be like, hey, you're being a jerk.

You know, you're sticking your nose in too many things. You're not being kind enough. To maybe family or something like that.

I'm thankful for all of those things. I apologize for my video listeners. I accidentally whacked the table.

I want to give thanks to God in everything. Not just the good, but the bad as well. The things that hurt, the challenges.

Everything. I want to give thanks to God. I like that there are these three things put together.

There were to rejoice always. We are to pray constantly. And we are to give thanks in everything.

That we rejoice. We have that underlying hope that can't be taken away. And that is fostered by us, by me constantly going to God in prayer in every circumstance.

And as I'm going to Him, I'm thanking Him for every circumstance. I'm thanking Him that I can rejoice. I'm thanking Him that I can have hope.

I'm thanking Him that He has given me opportunities to believe in Him and to benefit others and for how good He's been to me. There is so much that could be said about even these verses from 15 to 18.

But I think that's a pretty good place to stop today. From verse 15, what's your response to those that wrong you? Are you seeking their good?

Are you repaying evil for evil? Or are you pursuing good for the sake of that other person that is wronged you? Are you rejoicing?

Do you have that comfort from God in every circumstance? I promise you, if you seek it, you will find it in your heartbreak. You can have rejoicing in your heart.

It won't always look like a smile. It might be that through your tears inside, you know, this isn't the end. God has a plan for my life.

God has a plan for my eternity. And so even in where I'm at, I have that underlying rejoicing and hope. From verse 17, are you consistently praying?

Are you praying about big things? Are you praying about little things? Are you praying for others?

Are you praying for yourself? Are you praying for our world? And then verse number 18, are you giving thanks in everything for the good and the bad?

Thanks for tuning in today. I think we'll probably finish out First Thessalonians tomorrow. Thanks for tuning in.

See you next episode.