To Start
If there is something your family and friends remember you for, what will it be?
Our passage today gives various directions to believers that they should be characterised by and remembered for. We will be challenged to consider our lives and shape them around Christ!
Read
1 Thessalonians 5:12-22
Final Instructions
12 Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord and who admonish you. 13 Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. 14 And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. 15 Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.
16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil.
Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
What has stuck with you from the passage or the sermon on Sunday?
Discuss
The three exhortations in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 are as beautiful as they are challenging. While they lift our eyes to God’s sovereignty, they also call on us to respond.
So what does it actually look like to:
Rejoice always?
Pray continually?
Give thanks in all circumstances?
Sermon Extra
How can we help each other do 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22?
To Close
While this passage has contained a variety of instructions, encouragement and injunctions, you can see that the thrust of it is that we ought to take God’s Word seriously. By it we are taught, called to account, know God and determine the way we should live. At a minimum this passage ought to encourage us to be in the Word more and more.
Let us encourage one another in this!
Pray
That you may rejoice always, pray continually and give thanks in all circumstances.
That you may learn how to encourage each other to test everything.
For churches all over the world that they would teach the truth and guide people to the good.