Growing a Healthy Flock, Part 7
Don't Quench the Holy Spirit
1 Thessalonians 5:19
First Thessalonians chapter 5 and we find ourselves at verse 19. We are studying these staccato commands of the Apostle Paul as he concludes this epistle, as he draws it to a conclusion. Rapid fire he gives some very basic elements of Christian living in command form to the very young Christians in Thessalonica. If it seems that these commands beginning in verse 16 and flowing down through verse 22 are rather simple and even somewhat simplistic, we need to remember that while being simple on the one hand they are profound on the other. And also, we need to remember that this is a congregation of relatively new believers. The church is only a few months old, none of the believers there is older than that and so they are in need of a reminder and a summarization of the basic elements of Christian living.
All of this, you'll remember, is in a context here in the closing part of the epistle where Paul is talking about how the Christians in the church are to be related to the Lord. He's been talking about growing a healthy flock and using the flock metaphor we have noted that he was teaching about how the sheep are to be related to their shepherds, how the shepherds are to be related to their sheep, that is pastors and people. Then he talked about how the people are to be related to each other. And now he's talking about how the people or the sheep are to be related to the Great Shepherd, the Lord Himself starting in verse 16 some commands with regard to our own spiritual relationship to the Lord.
We come to command number four in verse 19. We've already discussed rejoice always, pray without ceasing and in everything give thanks, three commands which are the will of God in Christ Jesus. Now we come to command number four, do not quench the Spirit. This is very direct, not difficult really to interpret, but needs careful understanding if we are to apply it living in the time in which we live.
Let me first of all say that there are some commentators, in fact a quite a large number of them, who have felt that verse 19 is really connected to the next three verses, that it is a reference to some abuses that were going on in the Thessalonian church with regard to charismatic gifts and that when Paul says "do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophetic utterances but examine everything carefully, hold fast to that which is good, abstain from every form of evil," he is really offering a corrective because they were abusing charismatic gifts. Those who hold the view that he is here talking about these charismatic gifts would say that when he says, "Do not quench the Spirit," he means do not stifle the exercise of certain charismatic gifts in the assembly of the church. Particularly then in verse 20, "Do not despise the prophesyings which come by the Holy Spirit," and then in verse 21 and 22 they would interpret it as saying no matter what is said you need to examine it and if it's good, hold to it; and if it's evil, abstain from it.
And so they would wrap this whole passage around the charismatic gifts, the gifts of prophesying that occur in the church, or word of knowledge, word of wisdom perhaps, or even the speaking in tongues and interpretation of tongues. They would therefore conclude that in the Thessalonian church there was some abuse and that this indeed is Paul's way to try to straighten that out.
All of the commentators who hold that view would connect it with 1 Corinthians 12 to 14 and suggest that the Thessalonians were not understanding the truths of 1 Corinthians 12,13 and 14 where you have great detail outlining the abuses of charismatic gifts in the Corinthian church and then, of course, Paul corrects that in very very careful terms...how those gifts are to be used, how they're not to be used, how to recognize the true gift, how to tell the false gift, how it is to be used in the service, how it is to be controlled and so forth. There's tremendous detail about it. He even gives the priority lists of those gifts and what is more important than all of the gifts, namely love as he talks about it in chapter 13 of that section.
So they would say that there were problems along the lines of spiritual gifts in Thessalonica, that people were not following the instruction say of 1 Corinthians, 12, 13 and 14, not understanding those principles that are given there. And so he is here correcting that problem.
However, having read about ten or eleven commentators who take that view, I have to confess that I remained unconvinced. In spite of all of the arguments that they put together, I still remained unconvinced for a number of reasons. There is no compelling reason, first of all, to see this passage that way. There is no compelling reason to see in verse 19 that he is saying anything more than don't quench the Spirit, period, in general. There is no compelling reason to see that he is not simply saying in verse 20, "Don't despise prophesyings," that word is used of spoken revelation from the Spirit and of written revelation from the Spirit and he is simply saying when the Spirit speaks, don't despise it. Just a very general statement.
In verse 21, again a very general statement. You need to be discerning, examine everything. Whatever is good, hold to it. Whatever is evil, abstain from it. If he was talking about prophesyings, if he was talking about things that are being spoken, he would say...hold fast to what is true and abstain from what is false. But here he says hold fast to what is good and abstain from every form or every kind of evil. It has to transcend the specificity of simply some kind of prophetic utterance.
So I see these simply then as different commands. Do not quench the Spirit, that's one issue. Do not despise the revelations that come through prophesying whether written or spoken. Examine everything in your life and when you find what is good, hold on to it and when you come across something that is bad, stay away from it...basic principles for spiritual life. So there's really no compelling reason to read some abuse into the text.
Furthermore, it would seem to me that if there was an abuse going on in the Thessalonian church, such a young church, Paul would have been literally passionate about solving it because he would have seen the potential for damage and he would not have been nearly as oblique as this, as general as this, if he was intending to address himself to a major issue in the church. In fact, he would have written to the Thessalonian church what he wrote to the Corinthian church if the abuse had showed up here first.
By the way, it is also true that the Thessalonians couldn't have known what was in 1 Corinthians 12 to 14 because it hadn't been written yet. And the reason it hadn't been written yet is because the church at Corinth hadn't been founded yet and they weren't even Christians in that city yet. So, we would have to assume then that if there was a problem along this line, this was the first time it came up in the Thessalonian church before the Corinthian church was ever founded and he would have addressed himself to it with the same seriousness and the same length and the same concern that he did in the case of the Corinthians. Therefore we conclude that there was no such problem there, there was no such corrective needed and there are no compelling reasons why we should make this address itself to that. Simply stated, he gives you several commands here in the same flow that we saw starting in verse 16 that are summarizing the basics of the Christian's relationship to his Lord.
Here verse 19 stands alone as a general command, do not quench the Spirit. Now obviously the next statement assumes that the Spirit is behind prophetic utterances but it too stands on its own. So let's just take this as a statement in and of itself, do not quench the Spirit...a general command.
The metaphor here is very graphic. The word "quench" means to extinguish. It means to stifle, to retard or as it's translated, to quench. It is used in Mark 9:48 for putting out a fire. It is used in Matthew 25 verse 8 for putting out a lamp. That's what it means, to extinguish, to quench, to stifle, pouring water on a fire. You, I'm sure, are very much aware that the Holy Spirit throughout Scripture is depicted as a fire. You find that in the book of Acts chapter 2 when the Spirit of God came upon the church there appeared cloven tongues of fire. The Spirit of God is seen in a number of places as a fire. In fact, you remember that in Paul's letter to Timothy he told him, "Kindle afresh the gift of the Spirit that is in you." In other words, the fire is there, throw some more wood on it, get it started again, it's so low. So the Spirit is on a number of occasions seen as a fire...a flaming fire. And the Apostle is saying, "Don't pour water on that fire. Don't put retardant on that fire. Don't stifle the work of the Spirit."
Now the Holy Spirit can be quenched, obviously, or he wouldn't have to command us in this regard. We shouldn't be too surprised by that. The Holy Spirit can also be grieved. In Ephesians 4:30 it says, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit." The Holy Spirit can also be resisted. In Acts 7:51 we read about resisting the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can also be blasphemed. Matthew 12:24 to 32, Jesus condemns the Pharisaical leaders of Jerusalem because they blasphemed the Holy Spirit.
Now just dividing that up, unbelievers can blaspheme and unbelievers can resist the Holy Spirit. Believers can quench the Holy Spirit and grieve the Holy Spirit.
You say, "Well what is the difference between quenching and grieving?" Quenching is what you do to the Spirit, grieving is how He responds to what you did. Grieving speaks of the personal anguish of the Holy Spirit when a believer quenches the holy fire that He has kindled in the heart. You do not quench the Holy Spirit without grieving the Holy Spirit and you will not grieve the Holy Spirit unless you quench the Holy Spirit, there simply two sides of the same problem...one describes what you do, the other describes what He does. You quench, He grieves...He grieves because you quench.
So as sheep wanting to be rightly related to the Great Shepherd, we must not quench the Holy Spirit. Now in order to understand this we need to talk for a minute or two about what is the Holy Spirit's work and how do we quench it. We have to get very practical about this and I think we can do that.
You remember when our Lord was coming near to His death and His crucifixion was imminent, He promised to send another helper, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth who was one exactly like Himself. His promise was that the Holy Spirit is going to come after I ascend to the Father, I'll send the Holy Spirit and He will assume the role with you that I have had. He, the Holy Spirit, being another member of the trinity, God of very God, He will come and fulfill the role that I have filled in the lives of the disciples. In effect He is saying, "I have been your teacher, He will be your teacher in the future. I have been your friend, He will be your friend. I have been your guide, He will be your guide. I have been your resource, He will be your resource. I have been your helper, He will be your helper. I have been your comforter, He will be your comforter."
In other words, the Holy Spirit will step into the role that I have had. I have done it alongside of you, He will do it in you. I have been, as it were, the fire around you, He will be the fire in you. And so, the Lord Jesus promised and sent on the day of Pentecost and consequently to every single believer that ever comes to Christ, the Holy Spirit to live within that believer. All Christians are indwelt by the Spirit of God. And He is there like a fire, not to be quenched, but to be fanned to full flame.
It is, I believe, common not only in the the life of believers but on a wholesale scale in the church of Jesus Christ to quench the fire of the Spirit. Let me speak in a general sense first of all. As I have recently pointed out in my book on Our Sufficiency in Christ, I believe the Holy Spirit is being seriously significantly quenched today and therefore is deeply grieved by what is going on in the church. First of all, I believe that the mysticism of the Charismatic Movement while promising and purporting to exalt the Holy Spirit's work really quenches His sanctifying purposes. And that's a very difficult thing to say, I know, and to hear and perhaps even to believe because if there would be anything we would assume to be true about the Charismatic Movement, it would be that they above all others exalt the Holy Spirit. They're always talking about the Holy Spirit. They're always talking about the gifts of the Spirit. They're always talking about the power of the Holy Spirit. They're heavy into that kind of Holy Spirit theology which they have highly developed, but the fact of the matter is no matter how much they talk about the Holy Spirit's work, they are in fact quenching the true sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit by misrepresenting it and offering a counterfeit substitute for the real thing. It is a quenching of the Holy Spirit of severe proportions.
The Charismatics have reduced the Holy Spirit to some sort of divine genie who does only things that are seen, felt or heard. If they aren't seen, felt or heard, He didn't do them and He does them on demand. And so, while the Charismatic Movement has an obsession with the Holy Spirit, it is at the same time a quenching of the true sanctifying work of the Spirit. And when you establish a false standard of sanctification, a false standard of spirituality, you quench the Spirit.
I also pointed out in the book that the current obsession with psychology also quenches the work of the Spirit by again substituting a false operation for the real thing. They substitute human wisdom, human