The Marks of a Good Church: Discernment

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  The Marks of a Good Church: Discerning

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  Turn in your Bibles to 1 Thessalonians 5. We will look at verses 21 to 22 this morning and talk about the mark of a good church. As Paul is landing the plane in this letter, the last mark of a good church that we can extract from this text is discernment. Discernment...and when I say that word, what comes to your mind? Maybe just the idea of a person having discriminating tastes, maybe the first thing we think about with discernment, and that could be just on a human level, that, you know, you consider yourself, a purveyor of the finer things in life. You're a cheese connoisseur. As somebody brought my wife and I a nice piece of cheese this morning as a love gift. A love offering to the pastor is so kind...to get fancy cheese. Does that make me discerning, my palate that I can, I don't know, taste the whatever tasting notes of a certain cheese. Maybe you are a foodie. And so you know, the difference between, grade A livermush and whatever else there is. Randy will tell you there is a difference. Some of us can't. That's one way to think about it. Another way would be that you would say that...well, discernment is beyond just, you know, the senses. It's the inner person that you have a spidey sense, if you will. I had a coworker who used to say her Spidey senses were up when she thought something was going afoul, when she thought that there was something fishy going on. There's all these idioms come into your brain, you know that I've got a hunch or I can't quite put my finger on it, or I got a bad feeling about this. Whatever you want to kind of connect to this idea of having discernment on a human level, we would all probably, at least I would think, want to identify as discerning, because the opposite would be to say you're gullible. I don't think anybody's really desirous to be known as the guy that you can really pull one over on. But at the same time, if you are non discerning enough or gullible enough to admit your gullibility, then you do have some discernment. So take heart susceptible one. There's hope for you. The friend usually asks me, Adam, how does a deceived person know they're deceived?...right? You know, if the nature of deception is to take something that's true and to twist it and you're fooled by it, you need something from outside of you to help you get out of that mess. And that's why the call to discern is essential for the Christian, because we need to be able to be those who can do what discernment does, which is it differentiates. It distinguishes between truth and error. When it comes down to it, being discerning isn't some mystical or, out there in the ether kind of thing that some of us have and some of us don't. Although I will admit...some people have more common sense than others. Some people have a little more Columbo in them than the next. A Sherlock Holmes type way to see through the mystery that's in front of them and get down to it and ask good questions. But Biblical discernment, strictly speaking, is just being able to say, that's true and that's false. And then the implications of that are then you can actually call something out for being right or wrong. I mean, that's what it comes down to. It's at the level of the thought life, ideologies, philosophies of our day. You can hear the arguments, whatever the thesis is being made, and think of the antithesis...the antithesis of it, as in, here's a category. Somebody makes a statement. I don't just accept it at face value because my discernment kicks in and asks the opposite. So if that's true, then what about this? And that helps you to be able to see your way through life, and it helps you then to be able to separate out right from wrong. Now, as adults, the more discernment we have directly correlates to the truth, the more you understand the truth of the Word of God, the more you are a Word-fed and Spirit-led Christian, as we saw last week. Verses 19 and 20 really are the prerequisite for applying today verses 21 and 22. And this is what's amazing about it. We are called to be discerning. But what we saw last week is we have been given the two most essential elements to have discernment...the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. If you have those two things, you can have discernment. I mean, that's just what it comes down to, because when you think about the nature of the Holy Spirit, he is the counselor. And he's in you as a Christian. So you could choose to have the Spirit of God in you as your counselor. Or you can go around to a thousand counselors in the world with PhDs. Who you betting on? Do you believe that you have the Spirit of God in you and have the ability...enlightened and illuminated by the Word of God. So you not just have the greatest counselor you possibly could have within you. You have the greatest counseling manual for all decisions you need to make in the Bible. And you put those two things together...how could you feel that you are unable to deal with the issues of life? I'm not saying life's going to just go perfect and smooth as we just sang, "Though. Satan should buffet, those trials should come." That's part of life. But to have the Holy Spirit and have the Word of God, and to not quench the Holy Spirit and not despise the Word of God, allows you then to fulfill what verses 21 and 22 command. And this is our passage for today. 
Examine everything carefully. Hold fast to that which is good. Abstain from every form of evil. The grass withers and the flower fades. But the Word of God, taught by the Spirit of God to the people of God, endures forever. 
So let's look at these categories today that Paul gives us for discernment. As in if we are to be Spirit led and Word fed Christians who have discernment and can apply it. How are we supposed to do it? First, there's a call to discern in verse 21. Examine everything. However, don't skip past, but examine everything. As in, that's an adversative conjunction. Meaning things were going this way. And now he says...but let's look this way. So what things were going that way? Well, he was just saying in 19 and 20, don't quench the spirit, don't despise prophetic utterances. So you would think if he's saying don't do that, then he could then throw out because that sounds really exclusive. Don't quench the spirit and don't despise prophetic utterances. But you might expect him then to say, but accept everything. You know, be open minded. All truth is God's truth. There's a little bit of good in everybody. There's a little bit of truth in all teaching. That he would take you the other way to then say, okay, you're not quenching the spirit. You're not despising prophetic utterances. So, hey, take it all. And he says, no. Examine everything...double down. Yes, you have the spirit and you have the Word of God. So whenever you are out in the world and the teaching of the day, the ideas, the philosophies, the books, the speakers, whatever it is, the neighbor, the coworker that's talking in your ear. Says, examine everything...every single bit of it take captive to Christ. Your Bible might take that phrase examine everything and means, test everything or prove it. And it actually is a word, examine that is a word that, on the literal level, sometimes used in the New Testament to just talk about testing metals. And so my mind goes to, you know, if you think you have fools gold or real gold and you got to light it up, you know, you got to burn it down. You got to remove the dross and see what you got. And that's this word for examination. It's to turn up the heat on something to find out the nature of its authenticity in order to approve it. As in, you don't take the gold you think you might have and test it, and then just be like, oh, that's cool, it's gold. And then you walk away. The nature of testing something for its authenticity is in order to approve it. And that's the vast majority of the way Paul talks about testing and examining in the New Testament. It's this idea of testing something, its validity. Is it true, its legitimacy, its veracity, so that then you can apply what he says later, which is okay, now that you know what you have, hold on to it if it's true. Get away from it if it's false.

  You can live your life that way. You've been given the spirit and the word to do it with. But you you have to include this step, this command, this call to discern, as in, so you're not just saying, I just take it as it comes. No, there's a depth and a breadth to discernment in this phrase, examine everything. Examine is the idea of you are testing the depths of it. You're going deep, you're studying it, you're examining it, and everything is the breadth of it. As in, where's the boundaries for my discernment? As wide as all the false teaching that could be out there and true teaching. But if you don't examine it to the depths, you can't separate it out, can you? So he's saying, hey, but here's the depths you're going to dive into. Examine this thing, check the facts, don't trust your feelings, follow your heart or go with your gut. You have the spirit and the Word to examine whether this word someone says they have for you from God is actually legitimate. And then that gets us usually into some form of trouble by way of accusation as Christians, that somebody might say, oh, I'm to examine you. Somebody gives you this word, it's from God, or so they say, and you want to test it or examine it. And they come from this camp that that's unloving or unkind to question their thoughts. So what do you do? Does the Bible call us to examine every thing...I mean, except when it seems unkind, unloving. Or does it just stay flat out...examine it? Doesn't care who it's from...your closest friend or family member. Or maybe your worst enemy, so to speak. The one could be wrong, the other could be right. Examine everything calls for that impartiality that goes back to what?...you have the Word and you have the Spirit, and you're going to put it to the test. But I wanted to put to the test this idea that it's not unloving and unkind to examine everything, to have this discernment, even with brothers and sisters, and perhaps especially with brothers and sisters in Christ. Because, um, you know, false teaching doesn't just kind of float into the church, you know, without what?...a Person walking in who's going to have a teaching. Or you're going to invite them into your home, and they walk into your home and sit down at your table. And based on what they believe...do you fellowship with him or not? And so to examine, to go to the depths...I took the 22 times that that word examined...and it's translated in other parts of New Testament approve or test. I looked up all 22 uses of it. 19 of them Paul uses. So he loves this word. Paul's into it. John uses it once, Peter uses it once, and it's used once by Luke. But the other 19 times, Paul is liking this idea to test something for its authenticity, in order to approve it or to disprove it. But then, I mean, because when we do theology in the church you take 22 verses and unless you're super Awana kid and you can memorize them all and pull them out like you know, at will, I have to take 22 verses and then try to systematize them and say, out of these 22 uses in the New Testament for the call to examine or the example of it. What buckets can I put them in to prove that we are to be examining and testing, rather than just accepting? 
And so the three buckets we're called to examine fall into are: God examines us, we examine others, and we examine ourselves. So if you ever met with a challenge by someone, or maybe you don't believe what I'm saying, test it. I mean apply it right now. I should be able to prove it to you from Scripture. And the Word of God in you as you're submitted to him, is going to say. Yeah, that I mean, it's right there. I guess it checks out. 
So the first way we are called to examine is that God is the great examiner. Look back at 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. Paul, by way of example is defending his ministry against those who had accused him of kind of being a drifter and a grifter. You know, one of those guys that's going to come into town. Have some revival, have some rally. Shake you down for some money to go start some new ministry, and then he disappears forever. And he got run out of town. We saw that in Acts 17 when he went to Thessalonica. He was only there maybe a few weeks to a few months. And this church was started and people came to Christ. And then, some jealous Jews started a riot and ran them out. And so his reputation is being questioned so that his teaching can be undermined. So chapter two we saw months ago, Paul says, look, you remember I didn't come to you in vain. I came to you with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I had the boldness to speak to you, the gospel, even amidst opposition. But then he gets into what his word for them was, his exhortation. Verse three. It wasn't from error. So he wasn't a false teacher. He defends the content of what he said. Then he says it wasn't from impurity. I wasn't coming here with false motives. As he says down later in verse five, a pretext for greed, seeking glory from men. And I didn't come, verse three, by way of deceit, I am not possessed by Satan trying to take the truth and twist it to flip your categories of true and false. I'm none of those things. But look what his appeal is in verse four about the examination that he had. He appeals to the highest level of it. He says, but just as we have been approved by God. That's that same word that's in verse 21 that we're seeing...examine everything. That's the word approved. I've been examined and approved by God. He tested me for authenticity and approved me to do what? To be entrusted with the greatest message there is the most valuable truth on the planet, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the only name by which, under heaven and earth, men may be saved. I've been tested and approved to preach it. Not to please men, as in even in preaching this, I could try to run to get something out of it, inflate my ego, win some followers. And he says I not only pass the content side, the character side. I'm not here to please men. It's God who examines my heart. So this call to examine starts with the great examiner. God's examining us. God's examining the content. God's examining the motives, which makes you have to take a cliché that floats around the church a lot of times. You know God doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies the called. That can be true and that can be false. So you got to test it. And I'm not here to make you feel sheepish if you've gone around saying that. I'm just saying, you got to test everything, right. God doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the called. Is it true? Well, it's true if we're talking about salvation. Because no one is righteous, no not one. So nobody's qualified to be saved. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is...he came to save sinners. And that's what we all are by nature and by choice. So, he qualifies us in the righteous law keeping life of His Son, Jesus Christ. It's his righteousness, not mine, that qualifies me to be part of the inheritance of the saints. That I have been moved from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of light because I was rescued, not because I saved myself. So in that sense, you can't say, yeah, you know, God doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the called, and he qualifies us by the only person that's ever been qualified by their own merits. And that's the Lord Jesus Christ. So you want to talk about salvation. You can keep that phrase. 
But let's talk about it in the way that oftentimes people use it when it talks about the call to ministry. It's actually false. Because God examines the minister. And, he doesn't call unqualified men into ministry. As in character is a prerequisite. As in their life and doctrine are what qualify them to stand up and preach and teach. And if that unsettles you, make it practical. If I were to have gone out Friday night...got drunk...got in a fight...got arrested. My picture's in the Hickory Daily Record yesterday. And I pop back up here this morning and I say, you know, friends, good thing only God qualifies the called. So open your Bibles to 1 Timothy 3 and let's talk about me being above reproach. You should close your Bible and walk out. Why?...because to be qualified to stand up here and preach is not talking about my salvation anymore. This is talking about...do I have the character and the doctrine to teach you the Word of God that you should listen to? So it's true on the sense of salvation, but it's false on the sense of calling for ministry. There is a qualification a person is to have. C.H. Spurgeon said, "True and genuine piety is necessary as the first indispensable requisite. Whatever call a man may pretend to have, if he has not been called to holiness, he certainly has not been called to the ministry." But see, we take a cliche like that and it sounds good and it's a nice turn of phrase. And it's true in one sense, and it's a lie in the other sense. Because when you allow it to pass, then you allow unqualified men to preach the Word of God. And if you lower the bar there, where's the church going to go from that point on? Where's the doctrine of that church going to go? If this guy you can't trust his integrity, then how could you entrust him with anything? He would be what the word calls it,disqualified. So God is the great examiner. He not only examines the minister, he examines all of us in our works. Go to 1 Corinthians chapter 3. That when we're talking about now how our works will be tested for what they have been built with. Now, this again isn't salvific. 1 Corinthians 3, Paul is talking to this church about, hey, the foundation of Christ has been laid. 1 Corinthians 3:11, no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. So we have moved on past this teaching about salvation. But he turns the corner to say, now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, those sound like good things. Wood, hay and straw...not so good things. Each man's work will become evident, for the day will show it. Because it is to be revealed with fire. And here comes the word we're looking at, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work. So, broadly speaking, in the church...our works, our labors in the Lord. When we're disciple-making. And that's for everybody. Teaching, evangelizing, counseling, ministering. What are you building with? Paul says here it's going to be tested. And again, this isn't the test of who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. For the believer, this is the test of the quality of our works. And look what the reward is. Verse 14, if any man's work which he is built on, it remains as an it goes through the fire of testing and you actually have something still standing. He will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved. Yet as through fire. That's talking about the works of the believer, that's talking about what you're doing with your life right now. You don't have to be ordained in the ministry. You just have to be a Christian who's called to make disciples of Jesus Christ. And if you're using shoddy material, shallow material. Stuff that it doesn't last beyond today. If your whole Christian life is a bunch of cliches and one liners. But there's no depth to it. There's no consistency. There's no whole council of God. This should make you sit up. Your works will be examined as a Christian. And again, may I be very clear. It will not determine your eternal destiny. But it does determine reward. And we want to hear the same thing, don't we? Well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful with what I gave you, and you used gold, silver and precious stones to build with. And that goes back to discernment. Knowing what you've been reading, what you've been listening to, how does that translate into how you're ministering the gospel to other people? Unless you think all I've said sounds kind of unloving, kind of hard. Go back to the starting point. This is God, the one doing the examining, not me. I'm merely the mouthpiece for this. God will examine our works. And they will be approved or disapproved, the works that are wrought in him. 
And then lastly, there's one other type of testing for the believer, which is in 1 Peter chapter one. And we know a little bit about the time period Peter is writing this in. It's a time of great persecution on believers and they are going through fiery trials. He uses that phrase. We sang about it already. Peter is writing in 1 Peter about the trials and tests of our faith. And if you just look right there in chapter one. He says in verse five, for believers...we have an inheritance. Chapter one, verse four. We're going to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, and protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. That's the blessed assurance we sang about. Okay. So all this talk about works being tested, examined and approved. You are secure, Christian. Your salvation is not in jeopardy, because your salvation rests with the righteousness of Christ in heaven. So an inheritance imperishable, undefiled won't fade away, waiting in heaven for you. Look at verse five. You are protected by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. That is good news. But that doesn't mean you are not going to go through trials. That God will not allow you to go through some suffering. Because He's the examiner, and he wants you to see the value of the faith that you have. For all that it's worth. And so look what he's going to allow to happen. Verse six. In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith more precious than gold, which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Now, what's he saying here about the testing? It's the same word again. That that testing...those trials that your faith gets put on the crucible, the heat gets turned up, the dross is melted away, the impurity is removed. And the reason God is doing that because he wants you then to look at the faith that you have professed and possessed. And he wants you to see it for the gold that it is. It's not some hay and stubble that's burning up, unless it was never true. But for the believer it is true. But we don't always take that precious stone of the pearl of great price, salvation in Christ, the treasure in the field. Sometimes it gets, you know, dusty, left behind, stuff piled on top of it. Life piles up, trials pile up, and he's got to burn it all away and say, let me show you what you have again. You have something priceless. You have Jesus Christ. And then you see its value. And what happens in your heart is you want to praise him. You want to give him glory. Because when everything else got burned away, what was still left standing was your relationship to Jesus Christ...imperishable, undefiled. Unable to be lost. And the trial had to do it. The suffering had to do it. The fiery thing had to do it. Otherwise you wouldn't have known what you really had if you never went through it. 
So God is the great examiner, whether it's the approved preacher, the laboring Christian, or the suffering saint all fall under God's great examining eye. So is it unloving and unkind and harsh and cruel to talk about examining our faith if God's the one doing it? Of course not. But when we take some of these other uses, we also find out, secondly, how can it be wrong to examine if we're called to examine others? Not just God's examining us. But if you go to 1 Timothy 3, the qualifications for an elder, for a deacon, for a deaconess. It says that they must be tested, verse ten. Let him serve if they're going to be above reproach. The overseer, verse two, must be above reproach. The deacon and deaconess must be above reproach. How do you know they're above reproach? There's a character quality to their life that needs to be tested. Which is what you look at and say they're either qualified or unqualified. Based on, again, God is the one who gives out the gifts. So you're not judging on the basis of what kind of gifts did he give? He's the one that gives salvation the greatest gift of all. This list in 1 Timothy 3 about leadership in the church; those that we should follow comes back to character. So back to my analogy. Why would I not have the right to stand up here again and teach you?...because I'm disqualified. I'm not to be a drunkard addicted to wine. I'm not to be pugnacious. Right there, back to back...a drinker and a fighter. So if I'm in the slammer for that, see ya. I got to find a new career. It's just that black and white. But see where discernment has been lost in the church today is when the enemy wants to take it and say, oh, did God really say, you know, isn't he a God of love, the God of second chances? Isn't there a way that man could be restored? If he's in Christ He's got everything he needs. He doesn't need his rollback. God will find someone else. If that thing, he was willing to give up the glory and the privilege and the honor and the joy of doing ministry for...he's not fit. He hasn't lost his salvation as we just saw. He'll make it through. But just as if burned up by fire...those works. But the examination call is not just God examining the man. This call in 1 Timothy 3 is that the church lines this guy's life up next to Scripture, or for the deacon and deaconess, and tests them to say, these are examples worth following. That's the examination. 
 And then lastly, how could it be wrong to examine if we're called to examine ourselves? Go to 1 Corinthians 11. Every time we take the Lord's Supper together, and we read this verse often. A man must examine himself, or a woman must examine herself, and in so doing to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks judgment to himself, if he doesn't judge the body rightly. That's a call to self-examination. I mean you're getting it from every angle, aren't you? God examines us. We examine each other. And we examine ourselves. We come to the Lord's table. That's the high point of our gathering time, because it gets us to the heart of our salvation. Christ gave his body, poured out his blood so that we could be righteous before our father in heaven. Our position before him...our standing in him is firm. And as a believer, there's no sin you could have committed leading up to that time in the Lord's table...no sin you commit coming out of it that's going to take that away from you. Your position in Christ is sure. Yet he does say examine yourself. So first off, to take it in a worthy manner is to rejoice because you're going. I take the Lord's table, not because I had some really great week coming up to it...because Jesus had a perfect life. That's why I can take it. So I praise him for it. But then I do examine my life, my practical righteousness, and say, am I walking in a manner worthy of the calling to which I've been called? And that's self-examination. And then there's also one last text for the self-examination is 2 Corinthians 13. Where Paul says, and again, I'm just taking the word. Now, it's translated test here. 2 Corinthians 13:5. Test yourselves to see if you're in the faith. And then he uses it, and then it gets translated exactly as we have it in this. Examine yourselves. Or do you not recognize this about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you? Notice that even the test, the looking at the fruit to go back to the root. It always brings us back to Jesus, doesn't it? It doesn't bring us back to a checklist. Even when you're examining the fruit of your life, it goes back to not some artificial list of things that you think you should be doing, or somebody else says you should be doing. The ultimate test to see if I'm in the faith is to ask, Is Jesus Christ in me? As we talked about a few weeks ago. Do I have the joy of the Lord in my life? Is the love of Christ in my heart...the affections for him. Because if you're settling for just checklisty stuff on the surface, but never asking the heart question, do I have joy in the Lord? Is he my strength? Because you could give yourself a bunch of passes for a lot of years just leaving it at...how often am I doing my devotions? How often am I praying? How much money am I giving? How frequent am I attending church? And never asking yourself the harder question, do I love Jesus Christ for what he did for me on the cross? And does that love move me into action, into the world, to love other people and tell them the good news? Does the joy I have in the Lord actually get expressed in the way that I sing, and the way that I pray and the way that I care? Those are the affections you can't fake. But notice you got to examine yourself for that. You got to see what might be standing in the way of that. So that's the categories. God examines us, others can examine us, we examine ourselves. And that's all part of the examination of everything. That's the depth I talked about. 
The breadth of it, not the breath. The breadth with the D in it. Back to verse 21. Everything is the breadth. As in like you take into account all things that deep examination we're doing, we're leaving no stone left unturned. And here's why that's important. Because, it's going to move us into these categories that we see about holding fast to what is good and abstaining from that which is evil. Well, how do you know what to hold on to that's good, and abstain from what's evil if you're not doing the work of examining, you follow? Like, how do you know if I should keep this teaching or avoid it if I don't take in whatever is within my purview? I'm not saying you have to like, you know, become the next great discernment blogger of the internet, reading every single Christian book ever written. But whatever would be in your pathway, whatever conversations you're having, the people you're around, you're saying, hey, am I testing that? That person that says they that God spoke to them and told them this or had this word for me or whatever? The preacher that preached the sermon Sunday. Am I testing it right now? Am I examining it against the scriptures? Submitted to the spirit. 
What in summation, Paul is saying in this critical examination is that not all questioning is quenching. When he just said, don't quench the spirit, and don't despise prophetic utterances. Then you might again be led to say, well, I guess I shouldn't question anything. And he goes, no, examine it all, because if you're doing it led by the spirit with the Word of God open in front of you, you can question without quenching. You can actually discern. Calvin says this about this verse, "Don't put out the fire. You need its light and its heat." Speaking of the spirit..."a person who is gifted by way of exhortation should not be immediately rejected by the skeptical and not immediately accepted by the gullible." Those are the two kind of I sometimes say, you know, here's the road where the road of discernment and we can fall off either side. In the ditch over here is the skeptic who doesn't trust, and he isn't teachable from anyone. And then on the other side of the of the road is this ditch of gullibility that just says there's good in everything. And Calvin saying don't fall off either side. So to the skeptical in the room, maybe you need to grow in how to question without quenching. If you're the life group member that when people are sharing, you know you're just sitting there waiting. Ready that the moment they don't dot that theological I...they quote a verse and they're off by a chapter. You nail them. And they don't want to speak up again. Uh, maybe this is for you to kind of rein that in a little bit. I would believe your motive is right, but maybe the mode of which you're doing it is not. The aim of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a sincere faith. There's love in your questioning, in your critically examining what somebody else might be saying. And on the other side, not being gullible just to take it all in. And to see that questioning things examining things is a good thing. We're actually called to do it. So beware the danger of falling into either ditch. 
Now, that being said, what are the categories for discernment? Well, there's only two. Look back at verse 21 B and then 22. It either falls into the category of good or evil. And if it falls into the category of good after you've examined it, you hold fast to it, you keep it, you don't sell it. Buy the truth and don't sell it, Proverbs tells us. Proverbs two says...young people get this in your heads. You are to seek out wisdom. You're to search for it. You're to call out for it. You're to treasure it. It's the greatest thing you could find at your young age. The wisdom of God in Jesus Christ to not be ambivalent to it. Because you find that truth in Christ early in your life, it'll carry you the rest of the way. And so this call to examine everything means once you found the good thing, hold fast to it. And once you've seen what you thought might have been good at first glance, and now is no longer. You abstain from it. You avoid it, you shun it. And so, of course, in our lives there is this element. Well, how do I do? Do I just open myself up to reading everything. Well, as you grow in discernment, I would say yes. But if you're new in the faith or weak in the faith, especially when it comes to discernment, then you need some people around you. You need disciplers in your life to say, hey, that book you were reading, I mean, I had this in my life, you know, moving west when I did half the books I brought out to LA, when I started getting around some disciplers at the church I was at, like, you know, friend, that I know that book meant something to you. Can I show you, you know, in this chapter, and this page where this actually teaches something that's not in Scripture. And I had a lot of that happening in my life. I needed people to help get me on that discernment track. And all it came down to was just being able to discriminate between truth and error. So the antidote to any poisonous lies that are out there is Biblical discernment. And in keeping the categories very crisp, black and white between truth and error, which is the entire opposite of what the culture is doing for us today. It's not just in some ways, it's not just trying to say good is evil and evil is good, Isaiah chapter five. The malady of the people of God in the book of Isaiah in the first five chapters. Go read that on your own. It's exactly what we're talking about today when it comes to Israel's lack of discernment in the time that they were in when Isaiah wrote that. I mean, they had sold the truth down the river to all the pagan philosophies around them. And they had been so pulled in by those cords of sin that they were even tempting God, mocking God. Isaiah five where he writes, this is your attitude. Woe to those who drag iniquity with the cords of falsehood. I mean, that's doubling down, isn't it? In their wagon, they're loading it up with sin, and they're pulling it on with cords of falsehood. And that's the picture in sin, as if with cart ropes. And they're saying, Let God make speed. Let him hasten his work, that we may say, he's saying, hey, you know, if we're so in the wrong here, see if God can catch up with us. Wow. Playing chicken with God. You'll never win. Let the purpose of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come to pass, that we may know it. Isaiah was pointing the finger in their chest and saying, you have become like all these pagan nations around you. You've accepted the foolish counsel of the Philistines, Chapter three. So now you will be led astray by those who guide you. Your paths will be confused. But listen to the summation of this Isaiah 5:20, woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight. There's even a cleverness that can sound discerning from a false teacher. Wow. That's really. I never thought about seeing the scripture that way. Well, if you've never thought about seeing the Scripture that way an church history has never seen the scripture that way, it probably isn't that way. That's why we have both the word, but we have the history of the church to go back and see that there's no new heresy under the sun. It's probably been said before, just in a different way, in a different time period. And the great deception of the enemy of Satan is to try to get us to see the evil things as good and the good things as evil, but he can't do that unless he's first gotten us to compromise on the categories of what?...truth and error. In our culture today, we no longer I mean, this is you see, this purveyed right now on the campuses...the Institutes of Higher Education. Just the concept of not judging something by the validity of whether it's true or false fact or fiction, just how it makes you feel. Have you seen some of the interviews of the protests? And some of the educated collegians who have listened to their teachers and go out there and they're protesting something they don't even understand, because interviewers are going and asking them, what is it...that word you're chanting? What is it that means? Oh, I don't know, but I'm just fired up about it. What worldview is that? It's a worldview that's taken away the category of is this true or false? And replaced it with how does it make me feel? If it makes me feel angry and whatever, you know, then I'm going to take action. I just don't like it. And so the facts have been replaced by the feelings, deceptions, the problems, discernments the solution. But you have to go beyond even the good and evil of the thing back to the roots of it...truth versus error. And you can't compromise on that one inch. And once you have those categories established, you hold fast to that which is good and true and right and excellent, and you avoid and abstain and run from every form of evil. I was reading a wall Street Journal survey recently. It's the same survey given 25 years ago, a generation ago, in 1998, and then it was done again in 2023. Same questions regarding five values that Americans had then versus now. Things that they would consider very important. In 1998, 70% of them said patriotism was very important, down to 38% in 2023. In 1998, 62% of them said faith was very important, down to 40% in 2023. In 1998, 60% said raising kids was very important, down to 30% in 2023. 47% said community involvement was very important, down to 27% in 2023. And then they had one fifth category that they had them rank...money. In 1998, 30% said making money was very important, up to 43% in 2023. So of those five values of people 25 years ago, the four that went down had what in common?...caring about something outside of yourself your community, your country, your faith, a family...all went down in one generation. What's the only one that went up?...money...me. The other stuff falls by the wayside. I'm in it for me. Discernment helps you look at what's going on out in the culture and make those value judgments, because you have the true and false categories from God's Word. You don't just read that and say, you know, it is what it is. It's probably because the economy is bad. How's the economy bad have to do with no longer caring about family and kids. Investing yourself in something that's going to last beyond you. Not caring about your community. Just turning inward. What can I get out of life? So I read those headlines and surveys and I don't take them as nothing. Biblical discernment picks up on when a society calls evil what was once good according to God and calls good what's evil. One writer said about this verse, about the hold fast to the good, abstain from every form of evil. The good is one because that's God, but the evil is manifold. What's he saying? There are many new evils to abstain from every day. But don't lose heart because you have the one thing you need...God's perfect and enduring Word. And by that you can discern. 
So last part of today, kind of a wrap up, I want to give you just some criteria for having discernment. And what I mean by that is when you do see a teaching or hear a teaching and you're trying to say, hey, how do I take that and take it captive to the Word of God? What are some categories the Bible would give me? Here's five of them: the Bible test, the Jesus test, the gospel test, the ethical test, and the edification test. 
I'm not good at acronyms. So if you're like, if I say that, how can I remember it? Um, Bible. Jesus. Gospel. Ethics. Edification BG. For the people of the 70s. My disco people. You want to stay alive with discernment. Remember the Bee Gees Bible? Jesus? Gospel. Ethics. Edification. 
Okay, let's go Bible test. This is probably the most obvious and simple, but the most dangerous. You test what you hear against the Bible. Why I say it's the most dangerous is because people could use the Bible without being biblical. I mean, false teachers deal in that. False prophets, deceived people, take the Bible and either ignorantly don't know what it really means, slap it on something and go with it, or they actually try to take it and twist it. So the Bible tests is a very clear call, which is not just does this square with scripture, but does it have the right meaning of the Scripture? Um, so leading into something with, hey, you know what I think the scripture means to me? You have to remove yourself and ask the question. What would this scripture have meant had you never come along? That's the meaning of it. You don't bring the meaning into it. The Spirit takes the meaning of the author of it and brings it to you. The Bible doesn't really care what you think it means. I face that reality every week when I study it. Why I study it before I speak it is because I just want to know what Paul meant when he wrote this to a church. Not what Adam thinks this church should do with it. So you shouldn't really care what Adam thinks. But what did Paul say inspired by the Holy Spirit when he wrote it? So that's the Bible test. 
Second, that Jesus test, does it exalt Christ? If you're trying to discern between truth and error, good and bad, right and wrong, beyond the Bible test, ask the Jesus test. Does it exalt Christ? Because the Spirit's work is to always exalt Christ, to shine the light on him. Does it point us to Jesus Christ as Lord. Does it point us to Jesus Christ as Savior? Does it take away anything from his deity or his humanity? Because there again, like I said, people can use Bible verses. People can claim Christ...Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, but they have the person and work of Jesus wrong. And so you discern, you discriminate, you differentiate that what we believe in here, in this church isn't the same as the Mormon or the Jehovah's Witness. It's the Jesus test. And if it doesn't pass that test, it's out. 1 John 4:1-3 says that...test the spirits. See whether they're from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world, Verse two...thanks, John, for this one...by this you know the Spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. So that's the Jesus test….who he is and what he came to do, his humanity and his deity. 
Third, the gospel test. Does it distort the gospel? If someone is saying they're moved by the spirit, have a teaching from God? Are they teaching a different gospel? By grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone, or are they trying to insert works in there. So this is what would differentiate what we teach here from Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox, that there is no shred of works based salvation in the gospel that we preach, that we come by the finished work of Jesus Christ, or we don't come at all. And so you have to examine what you're hearing, what you're reading, and it has to pass the test of the gospel or otherwise Galatians 1:6-7...it's a different gospel. 
Fourth, the ethical test. Does the person's life match what they're teaching? And we alluded to this already. 1 John 4:7-21 brings in this idea of, brothers love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Fast forward to verse 20. If someone says, I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar. For the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God, whom he has not seen. That's the ethical test, as in if you're listening to someone. Say they get the Bible thing right, the Jesus thing right, the gospel thing right, but they have some twist on their teaching. That, um has a ring of ethnocentrism to it. You know, these people are the real bad ones. A ring of racism to it. To the point there's a foment, a hatred. Does that square with what John just said, that God is partial to certain people groups and not others. If they're espousing that, they're out. Because it needs to match up. It needs to be symmetrical. This God you say you love but you hate this certain people group for where they're from and what their ethnic background is, you're gone. You don't understand the width of the love of God in Christ, that there is nobody, that he's x-ing out immediately because of where they came from. The ethical test. 
And then lastly, the edification test. Does it promote the building up of the body of Christ? So somebody that just kind of exists in their own vacuum of knowledge. A Lone Ranger teacher who has a word for the church, but never a church to teach them the word. Watch out for them. That always has, you know, some correction for the church today. And you say, well, what church are you actually part of? Who are you submitted to? Whose teaching do you sit under? How is your teaching checked by anyone else? It seems all you're doing is causing division, trying to point out where every other church is wrong. Are you part of the Instagram Church of God? Is that your accountability? You have TikTok elders? I mean, if that's your source for information today question, examine who is this person that they may be really good speaking. They may sound really doctrinally sound. But you have to ask the edification test. What church are they serving in that's for the common good. What group of Christians are they accountable to? What elders do they sit under in case their doctrine is going awry. So those are the tests to be discerning. Here's how we do it...Bible open, eyes on Christ, clear on gospel, holy life, building up the church. You get those five things right you'll be okay. 
Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word today. Thank you for its clarity. Thank you for its ability to discern our hearts, Spirit as you search us with the Word of God. You guide us to truth. You sanctify us by the truth. Your word is truth, so help that work to continue as we go from here today. With much being said about this issue of discernment, the first application of it is to let it examine our own hearts, help it shore us up in areas where we may be weak, and may it propel us forward to help those around us. We ask in Christ's name. Amen.