Treating prophecy with contempt - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing,
majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of
him and what came to my mind and heart in 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22,

"Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but
test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil."

We often think of prophecy as the prediction of future events, a
foretelling. While much prophecy from the Lord is such, the
foretelling of future events is really only a "subset" of prophecy.
Prophecy is the intermediate telling of something God has said,
anything he has said, to an intended audience through someone, whether
a foretelling of future events or anything else God has to say.
Picture someone out of a group is on the phone with God. God has
something to say to the group and so the person on the phone with God
turns around to tell the group what it is God said. This is prophecy.

Consequently, Peter speaks of the Scriptures as prophecy, 2 Peter
1:19-21. Paul speaks of the prophets as those who wrote the
Scriptures, Romans 1:2. As such, our Bibles contain the written
prophecy of God, his message to us. In Peter's passage, he speaks of
the forty-some men who wrote the various books in our Bibles as being
"carried along by the Holy Spirit," such that what is written is not
from their thoughts or interpretations of things, but communication
from God given them to give to the rest of us.

Paul tells us to test prophecies. The nice thing about our Bibles is
that the material found there has already gone through the "testing"
process and deemed by the early church as that which is genuinely from
God. Other books and writings were rejected as not having been from
God, like the gospel of Thomas or the Didache, etc. However, the
twenty-seven books of our New Testament, as well as all of the Old
Testament have been recognized as divinely inspired, the prophecy of
God.

Merriam-Webster defines "contempt" as "a feeling that someone or
something is not worthy of any respect or approval." When we are
exposed to passages of Scripture that we disagree with or ignore
either through our comments or actions, we sit in contempt of what God
says. Consider the following passage, "Therefore, as God's chosen
people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion,
kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and
forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone.
Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on
love, which binds them all together in perfect unity." Colossians
3:12-14. Here is a passage that can be quite challenging for many of
us on occasion. I have this feeling that for us to struggle and
wrestle with this passage in a given challenge is one thing. However,
to blow the passage off as something to dismiss or reject is
altogether a different matter. That is when I believe we treat
prophecy with contempt.

Treating any prophecy of God with contempt is a matter of not fearing
God appropriately. When we esteem him for all he is and what he is
capable of, when we take to heart what he has provided us through his
prophets in the Scriptures, when we embrace them sincerely and give
them the attention and focus they deserve, we honor God.

Something to consider. Are we treating any prophecy with contempt? Do
we "pick and choose" what it is we will honor in Scripture? Or do we
recognize it all as coming from God and worthy of expending ourselves
for?

Something to think about today...

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share
what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to
hear from you!

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Trevor Fisk

trevor.fisk@gmail.com