Exercising Discernment

Listen Online:

Transcript:

I remember one experience right after a tornado, and I can’t remember which one, because there were so many growing up. And sorry if you’re tired of tornado stories, but I don’t have that many harrowing adventures under my belt. Most of them involve the weather.

I remember on one particular occasion going to take it off after we had come up from underground, And taking off and going to check on friends and family and neighbors who lived in the area because after a tornado, what cell towers haven’t been knocked out usually are overloaded. And electricity is down. It’s hard to get a hold of people and you want to check and make sure everybody’s all right.

And I remember walking through my parents’ neighborhood, ankle deep in water, were in my shoes and had to go get new ones. But walking through this, slogging through this water and trying to get to the next house to check on somebody. And a lady pulls over in her car just frantic, just panicking and telling me and telling the others around me that we needed to get to safety immediately because there was another tornado that was coming right behind the last one and it had just obliterated Southmore High School, which if you’ve not been in that area, is huge.

It’s bigger, I think, than the town of Seminole, the campus is. It’s just huge, and that it had taken out this campus, and that there were thousands of people dead, and I’m thinking, wait a minute, okay, there are people around me hearing her and starting to panic. There’s another tornado coming, and I’m saying, wait a minute, wait a minute, we’ve all got radios.

Don’t you think Gary England or David, David Payne gets worked up about everything. It sprinkled. Don’t you think David Payne would have mentioned that this tornado had just obliterated half of Moore and was coming behind the other one?

Don’t you think there would have been some mention of South Moore? Wait a minute. Can we just exercise some discernment?

Before we all go off in a panic, I don’t think this is true. And thank the Lord it turned out not to be true. There was not a second tornado.

I don’t know where this woman got her. I believe she believed it. I don’t know where she got the idea, but I could tell from listening to her she believed it.

And other people were starting to believe it too. And even in me, they’re welled up that fear for just a minute, and I thought, wait a minute, let’s think this through. Somebody would have mentioned it, and it’s hard to see how it would have hit the high school and come to where we were.

It’s possible, but it would have been really improbable for it to make the term that they were talking about. Okay, let’s just calm down and apply some discernment here to the situation. We need discernment when it comes to life and death situations.

We need discernment in everyday life. When my wife asks one of the children, did you wet your pants? No.

And my wife says, well then who did? And they try to blame the other one. We could take the, yeah, y’all know that doesn’t make sense.

We could take them at their word, take them at face value, or we could exercise a little bit of discernment and say, I don’t think Benjamin wet Madeline’s pants or vice versa. I don’t think that happened that way. We need discernment in everyday life.

We also, folks, maybe more importantly than all of it, we need discernment in our spiritual lives. And I think that’s sometimes where we are most lacking. We’re quick to apply discernment in everyday life and in life and death situations, but we don’t always apply it in our spiritual lives because we tend to be, maybe we’re too trusting.

Maybe that’s the problem. But we tend to look at anybody who says, I preach God’s word. We tend to look at anybody who says they speak for God, unless they’re just obviously out in left field.

I speak for God, and he told me to have you kill yourself so you can follow him in this comment. Yeah, most of us are going to say he’s full of baloney. But barring the extreme, most of us, I think most Americans will look at somebody, if they believe in God, who claims to speak for God and say he’s one of God’s messengers.

When the Bible’s really clear that not everybody who speaks for God who claims to speak for God really does. The Bible is pretty clear that we shouldn’t automatically believe everything that we hear without applying a little discernment to it. And you may be asking yourself already the question, well, if you’re saying don’t believe everybody you hear and don’t believe everybody who claims to speak for God, why should I believe you?

I’ll tell you why. Because I am the first one to tell you, test what I say. Do not just blindly believe what the preacher says, even if it’s me.

Go to God’s Word. I encourage you as far as I know you do but I encourage you if you don’t bring your Bible to church with you. Bring your Bible to church with you.

Read along. Make sure that what I’m preaching really is God’s word. I encourage you to study study what I’ve brought to you.

What I’ve prepared and what I’ve shared with you. Go home and do your own homework because it’s a good habit to be like the Bereans of Acts chapter 17 who they had the Apostle Paul. They had perhaps one of the greatest missionaries in the history of the world preaching to them.

And instead of just believing what he said, the book of Acts records that they were more noble than the people in Thessalonica because after Paul preached, they said, hang on just a minute. And they got out the Old Testament scriptures and they went through the prophecies of the Messiah to make sure that what Paul said about Jesus being the Messiah was actually true. They went through and they did their own homework and they didn’t trust some preacher to speak for God.

Now believe me, I don’t want to talk myself out of a job here. The preacher is helpful. But don’t let somebody tell you this is what God’s Word says without checking it out first. Because I am not the authority.

I’m here to help you. I’m here to equip you and invest in you and help teach you and train you. But I am not the authority.

God’s Word is the authority. So I’m the first to tell you to go back to that. I’m not saying don’t believe anything you hear.

I’m saying don’t believe everything you hear without applying some discernment to it first by God’s word. And John bears that out when we start looking at chapter 4, verse 1. We’ve been going through his first epistle looking at what is some of the advice left by the last surviving apostle of Jesus Christ. As he looks out, probably two generations after the rest of them have already died, I’m the last one who walked with Jesus Christ, and I’m not going to live forever.

What is it that they need to know as they carry on in the faith? And we get to chapter 4 of it, and starting in verse 1, he says, Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Verse 2 says, Hereby know ye the Spirit of God.

Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. And this is that spirit of Antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come. And even now already is it in the world.

Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them. Because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. They are of the world, speaking of these false teachers, they are of the world.

Therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God. He that knoweth God heareth us.

He that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. So what he’s writing to them about is to help them to understand that there is truth and there is error and it is possible to know the difference.

Knowledge of the truth. If you want to know what really is true and what really is false, because who among us wants to believe a lie? We don’t want to be lied to.

We don’t want to fall for the lies, and we certainly don’t want to find out at the end of everything that we’ve built our lives around a lie, that our entire life’s work has been built around a lie. Knowledge of the truth requires discernment. It requires discernment.

That’s not a word that we necessarily use a lot today, discernment, but you kind of know what it means. Discernment is taking the knowledge and the wisdom that God has given you and applying it to a particular situation and saying, Is this true? Is this not true?

Discernment is that simple. Discernment is that little test in your brain that says, does this smell right? And in order to get better at discernment, we need to know what God’s Word says about a multitude of subjects.

Now, I’ll admit I have not been following the news all that closely this week. I’ve been very busy, but I’ve heard rumblings online of something called the Nashville Statement or Nashville Declaration, something like that. And as far as I can understand it, there were a group of evangelical leaders, including the head of the Southern Baptist Seminary and some others, who signed a statement on a biblical response to transgenderism, homosexuality, all that sort of thing.

And reading an article this weekend, I have not read the full statement, but reading an article this weekend by Albert Moeller, who’s the head of Southern Seminary, talking about how they wanted to make clear that God does love the transgendered individual, God does love the homosexual, that God commands us to love them as well, but at the same time, here’s what the Bible teaches on gender, here’s what the Bible teaches on sexuality, this and that. And it was his telling of it and his quoting of it, again, admittedly not having read the whole statement, because I just began to hear about it over the weekend, was a very gentle response. And yet people are losing their ever-loving minds.

Because it’s shocking that Christians would come out and say what Christians have believed for 2,000 years. And there are people online, I don’t follow my own advice, and I should, I tell you, never ever read the comment sections on websites. That’s where brain cells go to die.

I tell you that all the time, and yet that’s what I do. People are losing their ever-loving minds. Well, the God I pray to wouldn’t say that.

The God I pray to doesn’t condone your hate. The God I pray to, to quote what my mom said years ago, I don’t know what God you pray to, but the God of the Bible says what Albert Moeller says he said. The God of the Bible is very clear.

And I don’t mean that to say we should hate anybody. The God of the Bible is very clear. And all these people coming on and saying, well, I just don’t believe that.

Well, then you don’t believe the Bible. The reason you’re not able to exercise biblical discernment subject is because you apparently do not have enough of the Word of God in you to know whether something smells right or not. If we want to get better at discernment, we need God’s Word in us.

And so he says, he tells us to test the spirits, to try the spirits. To try them means to put them on trial. And when somebody brings you a teaching, when somebody tells you this is what God says, you test that. And we test it according to God’s Word.

He says, see whether they are of God. The is not everybody who says they speak for God really does speak for God. Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God.

That doesn’t mean we walk around as total skeptics. And I think Jared’s lying to me in the pulpit, and I think everybody else is lying to me too until proven otherwise. It’s not talking about skepticism.

It’s talking about a healthy dose of discernment. I’m not going to just believe anything anybody tells me. If that was the case, I’d be believing everything everybody said on those comment sections on the Washington Post this morning.

And believe me, there’s no shortage of confusion on there. He says, because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Folks, not every preacher preaches the truth.

I know this is shocking to us, but not every preacher preaches the truth. As a young child, I’ve told you before I was a weird child, my parents raised me in a Christian home, my parents raised me in church, and I wanted to know God’s word. And I remember watching what I called back then the church channel, TVN.

Danger, danger, danger. Or listening to some of the teaching on the radio. Didn’t know at that point that we were talking lots of heresy there.

But I’d watch it. And because I thought at five years old, at six years old, I think I know what story my parents are smiling about back there. But at five or six years old, I thought if you claim to be a preacher, then you probably were telling the truth.

And I think it’s only after we came in from church one Sunday morning and my parents were changing clothes and getting lunch ready, and I had gone in the living room and turned on the TV and ran in there screaming at them, He’s killing them! He’s killing them! It was Benny Hinn.

Pushing people down. Yeah. I thought he was killing people.

My parents finally sat me down and said, Okay, not everybody. Don’t believe everything. But that was hard to understand as a child.

I thought everybody who says they speak for God speaks for God. They don’t. It’s a hard lesson.

and John said because there are many false prophets gone out in the world. There are a ton of them. And I’ll tell you what, I have named names before and will continue to do so.

I know sometimes people don’t, they don’t feel right about you naming names and saying this person’s a hero. The Apostle Paul called people out by name for false teaching. Jesus called them out for false teaching to their face.

The whole New Testament calls people out for their false teaching because you know what, there’s a slew of them. And if we don’t call it out, the world thinks that represents Christianity. My problem in calling people out, though, is if I start listing people, there are so many that I’m going to forget somebody.

And y’all might think, well, the preacher, he named names on TBN. He called out Kenneth Hagan and Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer. This other guy must be okay because he didn’t mention it.

There’s a danger in there. Not everybody who claims to speak for God preaches the truth. And that doesn’t mean that they don’t.

You know what? Here’s the trouble. it.

Sometimes these preachers who don’t preach the truth can hit on a point that is true. I will tell you this, you turn on TBN, you turn on Kenneth Hagan, you turn on Joyce Meyer, Joel Osteen, you turn on any of them, you may hear some things that are true, but you may hear some things that aren’t either. Sometimes it’s hard to know the difference unless you have taken in God’s word to the point where you are strong on discernment.

It’s a hard line to find. It can be a very hard line to find. Not every preacher preaches the truth.

You know what? I may say some things that are not true from time to time. I would never deliberately lie to you, okay?

But I’ve told you, I’ve told you on Wednesday nights just recently, there have been times that I have read something in the Bible and said, oh my goodness, I said, I, what I said was wrong, you know, five weeks ago. Fortunately, praise the Lord, it’s always been a minor point. You know, I said, oh, nobody in the Bible ever said this, and there’s David.

He said something along those lines. Oh, I got the timeline wrong when it came to Moses. It’s always been something like that.

Could I be wrong on some things? Absolutely I could. Could I be wrong on the timing of the end times?

I’ve told you I believe in a pre-millennial second coming, a pre-tribulation rapture, but I shared with you all these other views of the end times. I could be mistaken on my view. There are people a lot smarter than I am who have the timeline different.

Could I be wrong on my interpretation of how the Lord’s Supper works? Could be. Could I be, I could be wrong on a lot of things.

I am not infallible and my wife would be the first one to tell you that. But when it comes to the big things, when it comes to who Jesus is, when it comes to the way we have eternal life, when it comes to the most basic and most important and most pressing and most eternity altering questions, we have to study God’s Word and be very clear on what it says because we cannot afford to get it wrong. Either you as a believer for your own sake or me as a preacher, I cannot afford to get matters of the deity of Christ, of the nature of God, of the plan of salvation.

I cannot afford to get these questions wrong because of the rippling effect it can have on so many others. And I’ll have to answer for the things that I’ve taught wrong and so will everybody else. Even a God-fearing, godly preacher can get things wrong sometimes.

But as we’re going to see here, there are some things that are most important that we’ve got to look and say are they telling us the truth or not because the doctrine of Christ is the test of truth. According to John here the doctrine of Christ is the test of truth. When we look at verse 2 it says hereby I know you the spirit of God.

He says you look at these preachers and they all say they’re preaching the truth but they all preach different things. He said here is how you know if they’re telling you the truth or not. Here’s how you know if they really speak for God.

Every spirit that confesseth Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. And this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world. This is the test of the doctrine of Christ. And you may be thinking this morning, well, everybody says Jesus, all the preachers say Jesus is come in the flesh.

It’s not exactly what he’s talking about. John was dealing with the beginnings of something called Gnosticism, and it was this idea that Jesus Christ could not possibly have come in the flesh. because the Gnostics believed that the material physical world is evil and the spirit world is good and that there’s this battle that goes on between them.

And the Bible teaches that there’s good and evil in the spirit world and in the physical world and there’s a battle that goes on. But they taught that anything you could touch is evil and the spirit world is good. They also talked about secret knowledge.

And so the problem with that, as I’ve shared with you before, is if you believe that all the spiritual world is good and all the material world is evil, then Jesus, by necessity to be good, could not have come in human form. He had to come just as a spirit. And the problem with that is that the last time I checked, spirits don’t bleed.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Ghostbusters, but I think you can go right through those things, right? Okay, making sure you’re with me. Blood is a physical thing.

The ability to drive the nails through his hands and through his feet, the ability to pierce his side requires him to have a physical body. If he did not, if Jesus didn’t have a physical body, then it was impossible for him to actually shed his blood and die for our sins. I see a big problem with that teaching.

And so when John talks about them denying that he’s come in the flesh, don’t take from this that, oh, as long as the preacher affirms that Jesus Christ is real, then he’s okay. John here is talking about they’ve got to get the doctrine of Christ right. And right there, the Gnostics are squarely in his crosshairs.

but they’re not the only ones who’ve ever gotten the doctrine of Jesus Christ wrong. The doctrine of Jesus Christ is the truth that the Bible teaches about his origins and his nature and his birth and his life, his power, his death, his burial, his resurrection, and his coming. The doctrine of Christ, just very, maybe an overgeneralization, is to believe that Jesus Christ is co-equal and co-eternal with God the Father.

That he’s God the Son who existed from eternity past, that he was there and part of creation, part of creating the universe with God, the Father, and that about 2,000 years ago he stepped out of eternity and into time and space and put on human flesh. And while he walked on this earth he was fully God and fully man. He lived a perfect sinless life and did miracles.

Everything that he taught was true. And then he shed his blood on the cross and gave up his life as the one and only sacrifice for man’s sin. that he was buried in a borrowed tomb, and that three days later he rose again just like the scriptures promised that he would.

Forty days later he ascended to the right hand of God the Father where he now exists waiting for the day that he will return and collect all of those of us who have put our faith and trust in him to be with God forever. That in general is the doctrine of Christ. There’s more detail and more nuance to it, but that’s basically it. And you look at any of the cults and any of the false teachers, they all deny some part of that.

They all deny some are part of that. To the Mormon church, he’s not the only begotten son of God. He’s not co-equal and not co-eternal. To the Jehovah’s Witnesses, he didn’t really rise from the dead.

He was at least not in physical bodily form. He was an angel. He was the archangel Michael who then came to earth as Jesus.

This is my understanding of their teaching, if not now, then at one point. You get off into any of the false teachings, The problem is that they err on the doctrine of Christ. They get part of that wrong. Folks, I don’t care what else you get right.

If you get the doctrine of Christ wrong, nothing else matters. And I’ll say there are some people that I disagree with strongly on some secondary issues, but they’re right on the doctrine of Christ, and that covers up a lot of problems. You know what? I enjoy listening to the Bible teaching of R.

C. Sproul on the radio. Presbyterian.

He believes in baptizing babies, and I still don’t understand why. I think it’s unbiblical. it. But you know what?

As far as I can tell, he’s right on the doctrine of Christ. And so we can disagree on the whole baptizing babies thing, and I can think he’s wrong, even though he’s smarter than I’ll ever think about being. And I can still look at him as a brother in Christ. See, it’s the doctrine of Christ is the test of truth. Does what they teach about Jesus Christ square with what the Bible teaches?

And we look at verse 4. Year of God, little children, and have overcome them, because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. You know what?

Just because a message is influential doesn’t mean that it’s true. A lie can be influential, right? Hello, look at 1930s Germany.

Hitler and his teaching that anybody who wasn’t a perfect Aryan was subhuman. We know that from the Bible to be a lie, and yet that lie was influential, right? Drove their policy for, I think, 12 years, 12 years that his empire was on the march until they were finally defeated.

A falsehood can be influential. Doesn’t mean it’s true. The good news is eventually the truth wins out in the end. Right now a lot of times in America we’re faced with the prosperity gospel and we like to we like to think it’s the name it claim it preachers or blab it and grab it.

I’ve heard several several names for that kind of teaching. If you’ll just send me a seed gift of ten dollars God will give you back a thousand. That kind of teaching.

We like to blame that but there’s a prosperity gospel vein that runs through a lot of Christianity in America, I’m afraid. We think the ultimate goal of Christianity, we think God’s ultimate goal for us is to be happy and to be healthy and wealthy and wise. Sometimes I have to fight that in myself.

I think, well, I belong to God. I shouldn’t have to be dealing with this. No, he said in this world you will have trouble.

That is a very influential message today, but if you just follow Jesus Christ, everything will be peachy for you. It’s not true. It’s an influential lie, but the good news is it’s going to be defeated in the end because he says, you’re of God.

He says, those who believe the truth, those of us who try to cling to the truth, you’re of God, little children, and have overcome them because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. It doesn’t matter what lie the world comes up with. Eventually the truth wins out.

Eventually the truth wins out. We let God handle it. And eventually the truth wins out.

But you know what? It also doesn’t matter how popular the message is. They’re of the world, therefore they speak of the world, and the world heareth them.

I hear sometimes when you mention, well, this particular view, this particular teaching is incorrect. Well, it couldn’t possibly be. Look at how popular so-and-so is.

I don’t care. Last time I checked, the devil’s pretty popular, too. Look at all the people who listen to him.

Just because something’s popular doesn’t make it right. I think we learned that in elementary school, right? Sometimes you can be standing alone and do the right thing.

Just because something’s popular, John says, they’re of the world, these false teachers, therefore speak they of the world, meaning they say the things the world wants to hear, and voila, the world heareth them. Well, no big surprise there. If you’re saying the things the world wants to hear, they’re going to flock to it.

So don’t ever fall into the trap of thinking, well, just that the majority believes this, it must be true. Or look how many people follow this preacher. They couldn’t possibly be wrong.

Yeah, they could. How many people were speaking up to defend Jesus Christ, and how many people cried out crucify him. The crowd can be wrong.

Amen. He says that the world hears them. That didn’t make them right.

We need to understand this morning. I know I could, as I’ve talked about all the false teachers that are out there and talked about the things that we dare not be wrong about, it can be daunting sometimes to think, well, can I even know the truth? I mean, look at this guy and his suit and his degrees and all this on TV.

Not necessarily my suit, my degrees. There are people much more successful than I am. But look at this guy on the TV in his thousand dollar suit and his fancy degrees from the seminaries.

Look at his following. How could he possibly be wrong and I be right? How could I even know?

If he doesn’t know, how can I know? Well, the Bible says the truth is knowable. There are some things about the truth that are mysterious to us, but God doesn’t intend them to be left as a mystery for us to be groping around in the dark, hoping we figured out his will and his truth.

He says, if we look at verse six, we are of God, he that knoweth God heareth us, he that is not of God heareth not us, hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. He says, we can know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error, and he said here’s how. We’re of God, he’s speaking of himself as the last of the apostles, he that knoweth God heareth us, he that is not of God heareth not us.

And it was already apparent in their day that there were people who wanted to bring in new false teachings, and the first that they always tried to do was to challenge the authority of the apostles. The first thing that they always did was, well, you can’t really believe him. First thing they always did was, well, who is Paul anyway?

Who is John anyway? They don’t really know. They’re washed up.

And by the way, the same thing is going on today. The people who want to undermine Christianity, the first thing they do is go after the apostles. I don’t necessarily mean that they attack their character.

I mean they attack their teachings. And the good news for us today is that we have the apostles’ teachings. Right here.

What are we looking at today? Some of the last thoughts and advice of the apostle John. Most of the New Testament, the thoughts and the advice of the apostle Paul, speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

We look at the gospels. Matthew, one of the apostles, wrote what life was like with Jesus. John, the same man, wrote what life was like with Jesus.

Mark, wrote down from Peter’s perspective, What life was like for Peter in following Jesus. What his experiences were. What Jesus did and said and taught.

And Luke. Luke was a doctor and very meticulous and collected the eyewitness testimony and said this is what happened in Jesus’ life. All throughout.

All throughout the New Testament we have the recorded teachings of Jesus and the apostles. We want to know what’s true. We need to listen to them.

You want to know if what the preacher is telling you is true or not? Whether that’s me or anybody else or some guy on TV, it doesn’t matter. Are they hearing and basing their message off what the apostles say?

Are we hearing John and his cohorts or are we not? I’m going to tell you what, and it’s not just an attack TBN day, okay? I’ve heard of conservative Baptist preachers doing the same thing.

Let’s read this verse, read this verse at the beginning of the sermon. Okay, now close your Bibles and listen to me. Red flag, danger right there.

See, you don’t need to be hearing me read a verse and then hear 30 minutes of my opinion. We need to be looking at God’s Word. Looking at the teachings of Jesus and His apostles.

And if what I say to you matches up with what Jesus and the apostles said. If I get the doctrine of Christ right, and I stick with what the apostles taught, you know that I’m telling the truth. And before I attack any other preacher, I’m going to put myself right here.

If what I say to you does not conform to the doctrine of Christ, does not conform to the gospel, does not match up with what the apostles say, then I’m lying to you. That’s how you know. That’s what John said.

That’s how you know. It’s got to conform to the doctrine of Christ and it’s got to conform to the teachings of the apostles. Because if we hear them, if we hear them, then we’re speaking, then we’re correct.

If I reject them and what they taught, then you know I’m speaking for the world. Now, why do I tell you this this morning? Is it so that I could come in this morning and bash TBN and tell you everybody else is wrong and I’m right.

No, I think I covered that at