Matt Chandler - Do Not Quench Him

Well, good morning! If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab those; this will be our primary text for today. We are kind of doing some biblical theology right now, which means we’re going to jump around, but this will be the anchor text. I want you to be able to see it and interact with it as we walk through. I have been trying to continually keep before you and stir up in you the confidence that the Church of Jesus Christ was built for a moment like this. As we look at the chaos of the world around us, we think that God has shaped us, molded us, and placed us in this moment of human history for His glory and our good. I believe that, and I am continually trying to stir that courage up in you. I mentioned last week that if we were really going to step into this, we would need to be a people who believe in the Triune God. The reason I wanted to pull on one of the members of the Trinity is that He is the one we don’t know a lot about; He kind of makes us uneasy. I said last week that if I were to ask you about God the Father, you would be able to say all kinds of things. If I ask you about Jesus, you could talk all day long. But if I were to ask you about the Holy Spirit, my guess is you would want to downshift immediately into tongues or prophecies. But the Holy Spirit is so much more than that. If we are going to be the people of God in our day, it cannot be God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Bible, because that is not what the Bible gives us; it gives us God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Last week, I mentioned, «Hey, this is who the Holy Spirit is.» The Holy Spirit is not an energy; He is not a force; He is not wind or fire, although He is described as wind and fire because that’s how He operates. But who He is, is that the Holy Spirit is God. He is a He; He is a person. He is not an energy. We are not witches and warlocks tapping into energy; He is God, He is a He, He is a person. To know God rightly is to understand who the Holy Spirit is, and as I will cover today, it is to not grieve Him. Last week, we saw that the Holy Spirit was present at creation, hovering over the formless void chaos of the earth and ordering it to flourish. We also saw that the Holy Spirit does the work of illumination. Here’s what that means: no one in here is a Christian except by the Holy Spirit showing you your sin and revealing how wonderful Jesus and His salvation are. You didn’t become a Christian because you made a pros and cons list. You didn’t become a Christian because your parents were Christians. You didn’t become a Christian because of this or that; you became a Christian because the Holy Spirit showed you your sin and then revealed the beauty of Jesus. There’s no other way in which any person can be saved. So if you’re thinking, «Oh, no, I’m saved because of Jesus, ” absolutely! But the only reason you know that is because the Holy Spirit did the work of illumination. Here’s what’s crazy about the Holy Spirit: He loves Jesus! He’s always like, „Look at Him! Jesus is amazing; He is incredible! Let me encourage you with Jesus.“ The Holy Spirit’s answer to everything is Jesus. He is just wild about Jesus, which is why if you ever get so caught up in the Holy Spirit that you only want to talk about Him, I am concerned. The Holy Spirit is never like, „Look at me.“ The Holy Spirit is always saying, „Look at Him.“ We also saw that the Holy Spirit is the presence and power of God both in the Church and in our individual lives. We walked through all of that last week, and then there’s this thing we must deal with, which the Bible lays before us: the reality that although the Holy Spirit is God, does the work of illumination, and is the presence and power of God in the Church and in our lives, we see on multiple occasions our ability to grieve, quench, or say no thank you. The reason I love this passage, although I am going to focus on verse 19 to the end, is how the passage begins, describing the life of a believer before getting into „don’t quench.“ So let’s look at the passage together. This is 1 Thessalonians 5:16–21: „Rejoice when…“ All right, it’s going to be that kind of morning; you’re with me? „Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all…“